Chronicled in the Scholar's Stair Archives of Bree in Eriador,
On this the 50th day of Firith in the Year 3018 of the Third Age.
It was, perchance, a mistake to make camp close to the Old Forest, for I awoke with bewildered mind and thoughts astray, lost in a mist of whispers. By good fortune, a passing adan set me back on my course to Bree, for I had forgotten even my road amidst my confusion; though at first I thought him to be a waking dream, for tall he was, black-bearded and clad in furs that brought to my mind the likeness of a bear. But then he spake and the illusion melted and the fog that clouded my wits cleared away; Folthorn, he is named, and he assured me that I was indeed on the East Road. For he himself had travelled from Bree, and I marvelled when he told that he had been in the Scholar's Archive to learn what more he could of 'wargs', which he described as fell beasts like unto giant wolves, that he was preparing to hunt. Never had I heard of monsters such as these, and they must surely be the spawn of Morgoth's corruption of the kelvar of Yavanna's realm.
Still unsettled by my ordeal I proceeded onwards, and again fortune graced me, for soon a cart of the Quick Post driving in haste towards Bree halted its rush along the East Road at the sight of a solitary elf wandering unsuspecting along its path. The driver, a Hobbit unknown to me, insisted that I board his cart for fear of brigands and outlaws who would be certain to waylay me were I on foot, and then carried me swiftly along the uneven road. Stopping briefly only once to exchange his frothing horses for fresh ones at a halfway station, we rode on through the night while I rested in reasonable comfort amidst the sacks of letters bound for Bree that he carried.
And so today I finally came into Bree, and it is not what I had thought to behold; for it is utterly unlike the havens and settlements of the Elves, nor does it resemble the tidy Hobbit villages and towns of the Shire. Perhaps it is because I spent my childhood breathing the clean salted air of Belegaer, but what first impressed itself upon my senses was its overwhelming stench. For the sky is filled with the smoke of ten hundred fires, and along its cobbled and muddy streets flows the effluences of a hundred hundred inhabitants and livestock, and always it reeks of... well, it smells awful.
However the Bree-folk must be much accustomed to their surroundings, for the streets throng with Men and Hobbits, and even Dwarves and occasional Elf. Which are inhabitants and which are travellers passing through, I cannot tell, for Bree stands at the crossroads of the Great East Road and Royal Road of old between northern Arnor and Gondor in the south; and many are they for whom Bree is but a temporary halt along their journey, or are visitors and traders from the nearby settlements of Archet, Staddle or Combe.
Nor is it the bastion of learning and lore that I had conceived within my mind ere my journey hither, for after narrowly avoiding being run down in the streets by several galloping horses, I obtained directions to the Scholar's Stair and fled there forthwith. And within the Scholar's Stair Archives I found aught but a single loremaster; a master of runes; a scholar learned in lore and the history of the Barrow- downs; and an adan who sought naught but to teach me to fish! However, there was one source of consolation...
Never did I expect to befriend one of the Edain, but here in Scholar's Stair Archives I met with a young Scholar's Assistant named Joesph Cardin, who is known to all as Joe, and whom I would call mellon; for though he might be the first among the race of Men that I have spoken with, much we have in common.
For he too is a student of lore, newly begun on his journey of knowledge. And at sixteen summers, he is to his fellow Men as I am to my edhellen kin: that is, not yet full-grown to adulthood, and therefore ofttimes underestimated; but I deem that he is noble in spirit, and I can sense the greatness of his fëa, though perhaps he does not yet know it within himself.
Alas that we should also share the misfortune of losing a much-loved kin to fell Yrch: I, my father; he, his mother. Though his loss is much the more grievous, for while my father perished far from our home in Mithlond, Joesph was with his mother when she was brutally slain nigh the settlement of Trestlebridge in the North Downs. And while Adar was but an unfortunate traveller on the road from Imladris, she and her son were on a mission of mercy to gather herbs so as to bring healing for the unhappy inhabitants of Trestlebridge. Ae, nínion an gurth lîn, Mother of Joesph!
Ci vellon nîn n'uir, and may the stars shine upon your road.
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