The following is an account of Brunferth Barringer’s journey to Combe from the small hamlet of Bree wherein he endeavoured to make acquaintance with the ever dashing and most wise Lord Nick Tallow.
Though his time with the Lord Tallow was cut short by the fatigue of his own over-worked form, and the natural comings of age, Brunferth did have the well-minded countenance to relay his learnings on a few scraps of paper which he believes will serve the archives well.
Like most men of his sort, Brunferth is of modest comings and going—not least because he has laboured into his years far more than the other men of his knowing, a circumstance that arose simply by virtue of his own late father’s debts.
And yet, Brunferth, of hearty build and with a face that still carried, in sorts, the glimmer of youth’s finish believed his lot to be a welcome one, nonetheless. Brunferth, something of a meditative creature, understood that for all he lacked there could still be yet. He knew his lot to be one of potential and contribution. That is, Brunferth knew himself to be something of a scholar—not quite an academic—but a man of letters if you please. His father, as we know, was of indulgent character, and filled the home with rich canvas and thick, fine paper on which to detail his own beliefs and so-called masteries. However, it must be noted that if one were to indeed share such scratching’s to any man of genuine scholastic measure—Nick Tallow, perhaps—they would think it nothing but a fantasy.
To Brunferth, however, the debt of his father’s untempered flourish was a lineage he was happy to carry into his fading years as he found the works that now lined the dry, speckled walls of his modest home a grace and gratitude.
And so, with a studious constitution Brunferth felt it his obligation to scribe the histories of Lord Tallow for those, whom unlike himself, lacked the literary adroitness he otherwise believed himself to possess: an endowment from his father, of course.
With permission from his foreman and at the behest of his own eagerness, he met the Lord Tallow with a rather self-effacing posture, sheepish at the modest affairs of his neighbours—having chastised a Hobbit for presenting the Lord Tallow with a mushroom pie of all things. Lord Tallow, he believed, was a creature accustomed to the finer threads of life and mushroom pie was a comfort beneath his otherwise worldly expectations.
Even in his brief address to the Lord, Brunferth, an otherwise mim fellow, saw himself a doleful, even feeble specimen. The Lord, adorned in a rich tapestry of colour and texture seemed to Brunferth a near divine fellow: a creature capable of conquering the ground upon which he set his feet, a man to whom even the sky above would bow in veneration—collapsing its domain and life for all but a nod of thanks from its suzerain. To all this, Brunferth slouched so as to hide his own worn, and tired robes, merely scribing the Lord’s tale in the partial belief that perhaps in doing so fate may restore even to him, a mere speckle of the ferocity and manner of being that now stood towering above over the beggarly crowd.
Brunferth’s scraps
-Lerd Telow.
-sevny tew had cam too see the lerd Talow in Comb.
-A grup of Elvs cam -- bout therty tew mayb. Thir hiar was long and thir faces like notin i hed seen befor in meye life
-Lerd Telow seemd a fyne gent and Te Elvs i found strenge. Thy talk not to symple and wer fyn dres. Ther werds aer lycikle and interesting.
-The men seem to now teh Elvs hyre. Maibe ther ayre kynds of men wo lynger wih them in tere wareabouwts.
-Teh Lewrd Telow wus kyndred wit teh prynce of dowl Amreth, Myster Imrehil it seyms, hevying hed afyrs with dregons end such.
-Syms to bee sum fygure ef a drygun [illegible] [...] dowl amreth, a plyce in gundor near the Shyre me thinks is teh houm of myster Prynce Imrehil. It wes greyn and wyde and meybe sum hylls hyere and theyre. Et is the Lerd's hyme me thynks.
-Teh Prynce is fryns wit a fealow nymed Bowrowmyre. Dyre seems to be a byg busted lydee nymed Lyelac. no neys of the draguyn but teh prynce seems to hev wed the Madayme.
-Teh Lewrd hynsef, heving ben swellowed bye teh werm thyre hed stebbed et frem teh insyde! A truest heyro theyre nyver wes.
-Seyms det sum of teh fowlk heyre downt beleyve deh Lewd's storeyes. End wyle the tail itself wus nut very inteyresteying theyre wus a loveylie mayden end not two mentiyon a dragun bet I remayne confusyd ebowt teh femalie tyes. R they bruther end syster? [illegible] lyclac he keypt seying [..] bust
-Teh Lewd hed net slept wit the Elvs frend it seyms bet mayb Lylac he ded slyeep wyth.
Regarding an Elf with whom he has a brief, albeit frightening interaction
-De Elf hed a blew tipe dres uf sum kynde with fyne sylver patches. i asyed hem ebout a thyng er tew bet he seemed tew busy few wet eye Hed to say. Seems det Elvs care litelle fer chat, end more fer musik. I em emazed stell to see something ef his kynde hyre.
-De Elf seems two sey they cen mayke wind and sters and such.
