Now that it's decided I won't be returning until the spring, preparations are unhurried, and I can take an evening here and there to lie on the grass and stare at the stars. As lonely as Bree can be, far from home and family and full of people who scarcely notice me, there are times when it seems welcoming. Or at least less so than the prospect of reporting my failure to the Thane, which fills me with dread every time I think on it. What lies after that moment is clouded with uncertainty, but it can't be good.
I spend about half my time at my camp in the hills, from which I stockpile dried meat and fish for the spring's journey, and the other half in Hookworth, where I have been learning from Miss Brynleigh how to tend the horses. I muck out stables, exercise the horses, curry them, and assist while she trains them. It's not like I'm an apprentice, but I wonder, could I learn enough that, if I'm allowed to stay in the Mark, could I find work as an ostler? It's a long way from here to where I might know enough for the horses of Rohan, though.
So mostly what work I find is simple labor. Mending fences, digging ditches, cutting firewood, hauling timbers. Miss Sareva, the tailor who's making my furs, suggested I might find work as a guide, given my experience in the lands East; and I've gotten one commission to escort a hobbit back to Buckland, which was a safe enough journey. But when I spoke to Miss Tylva about sharing the road over the High Pass, she wasted no time in putting me in my place. If the roads are dangerous (and she seems to think they all are), what use am I as a guide, who has never swung his sword?
Now I find myself wondering if I ought to learn how to use it. I met a most delightful lass, Miss Haritha, who seeks both a steed and a guide to Trestlebridge, to visit family she's not seen in some time, and be sure they're well despite the raids that Miss Tylva tells have befallen that land. I've never traveled there, but the road is clear enough, and Kestrel is more than able to bring us both, but if the road is full of peril, what use would I be to her?
And to think this came of the oddest thing: a butchered doe in the Pony. Indeed, Miss Tylva had been on the hunt, and was carrying the carcass when she -- and for reasons I still don't follow, me -- were called into the Pony by Miss Haritha. I offered to stay outside and watch the doe, but Miss Tylva brought it in anyway, earning frowns from Butterbur and worse from other patrons. I suppose if she'd sold Butterbur the meat, it would have all come to nothing, but had that happened, perhaps I would not have had the chance to speak to Miss Haritha enough to learn of her, and her need.
I have many things to speak to Miss Brynleigh about now. Mostly horses, of course; Miss Tylva wishes to buy one, Miss Haritha hopes to rent or borrow one, and I wonder about apprenticing in ostlery. When I think on all these things -- on learning of horses, or swordplay, on riding with Miss Haritha to the north, on what will come of me next year -- my thoughts are dark, full of uncertainty. I see in each how slim is the hope, how great the chance of ill turns. Yet somehow, after an evening in the inn, and with tasks before me, that slim hope feels more bright than it has any cause to be, and I can't tell why.
