The traveler looked about as he stood at the entrance to the quiet, solitary gated garden he had discovered within Bree some time ago. Back then he had noted when gardeners came and went as they tended it and when revelers poured in during festivals, and too, the occasional meetings of furtive lovers wishing to escape public view. But now he had come to the terraced flowerbeds simply for the blooms, and he knew the place to be void of milling folk when he chose to arrive.
His shadowed figure slid round the raised beds, many of which had been pulled clean of the summer’s flowers by now or had been replanted by a few hardier overwinter varieties. One grimy hand trailed along the watertight masonry as his hooded eyes scanned what foliage was left, and eventually they settled upon a patch of yet-thriving purple asters in a topmost bed, surrounding a tree whose leaves had already turned the fiery shades of the season. Pulling himself up the stonework, he crept to them and selected a few of the largest, unblemished flowers to take.
Kneeling over the turned soil, the traveler withdrew an oil-stained paper sack, rounded out from the things it held and set it before himself. A faded and shredded ribbon now appeared from within the folds of his grey woolen cloak and with it he tied the bag closed, adding the flower-stems just before the last knot.
His gift for Kitten was complete. The things within the sack were a menagerie of child’s findings: a tarnished brass button stamped with the likeness of a snarling wolf, some nubs of charcoal sticks discarded by a bookkeeper, the wing of a bird crushed beneath a wagon wheel, a forgotten tattered stuffed bear infant’s toy with one eye.
Climbing down, the man's thin form melted within the darkened alleys of the town and meandered slowly back to the girl’s side where he left her, under some wooden awning near a merchant’s estate.
OOC: Happy birthday to my longtime RP partner. May your day be as awesome as you are.
