While waiting at home for her clothes to dry, the scout took up writing again. 'Reckons I knows abou' where I left off afore, an' can star' from there even withou' lookin'. So it don' matter that I's lef' the earlier pages wi' Cesistya.'
Bree turned out to be a lot bigger than I was ready for. I mean, Imladris isn't a small place, but it's almost all open, with little clumps of building here and there in the trees. Bree feels like just one building after another, sometimes I swear leaning on each other, and all with chimneys belching smoke and other less pleasant things making smells.
Since I'd come in with the traders through the south gate, I didn't know yet about there being smaller places close by. I had to learn about Staddle and Combe later. I wandered up the more main-looking streets of the town, looking for – I don't know, opportunities, I guess. I found the town had its Watch out in more force than Esgaroth ever did, so I figured that stealing food wasn't going to be a good idea. Not that I was figuring to need to, but I only had so much coin, and checking my chances was a solid habit. Anyways, following all that mass of people led me to the Prancing Pony about supper-time. That turned out to be about perfect.
The men that were there instead of at home were happy to buy me something and talk to me, despite how scrawny and scarred I am. Most of them wanted to buy me drinks, and I didn't like that so much. Remember, I'm little – tiny even. Even years later, as I'm writing this, I gotta stretch to say I'm five feet tall, and I'm barely over six stone. I was still a bit smaller then. It doesn't take much ale to get me not seeing straight, and that just isn't safe for a girl alone.
Anyways, I didn't drink all of the ale, and then I'd try to barter with some other folks to trade ale for bites of food. After the second day of that – and aye, I wandered town a bit to learn more about it in between – I figured out I could get the innkeeper, Mister Butterbur, to give me water to drink, and later food for their coin instead, if I talked to him ahead of time to remind him. I ate a lot better after that.
During the day, when the place wasn't so busy, I got to talking with Nob some, too. He'd let me get a bath for free if they'd been drawing them for other folks and didn't have to heat water special for me. I still was sleeping on rooftops and such, up against chimneys, but at least I was fed and got to bathe most days. It coulda been a lot worse – but winter was coming on, and I was living in the streets again. It was better than it had been in Esgaroth, but it still couldn't go on forever.
During one of those days, but getting on toward suppertime, I saw an elf-may. She took me aback at first – they just don't spend a lot of time in Bree – and she was blonde. I hadn't seen an elf that blonde afore. She was talking to a tall woman who was also blonde, almost as light as me, though something seemed kinda funny about her. I snuck closer to listen and watch, and figured out right quick that the woman was only so much older than me, and from far away. She talked funny, and she kinda walked funny. Not a bad looking walk, even kinda graceful, but it wasn't the way other folks walked.
As I listened, I figured out the elf was teaching the girl how to talk like Bree-folk. Cwynbur – the girl – was feeling up to trying things on her own, and was going into the Pony for supper. The elf said she'd be waiting at home.
Now, that made me take notice! An elf and a girl sharing some kind of home? I'd been saving scraps of food, so I didn't think I needed to try keeping track of the girl inside. I followed the elf. She kept stopping and looking around, so I reckon I wasn't sneaking so good as I hoped, but she never seemed to spot me, and finally she got to a house tucked in by the west gate, at the edge of the little farms in there, kinda behind the vaults.
From what the elf was doing, it looked like they had the whole use of a small house, and some horses in the pen beside it. That made me hope they wouldn't mind sparing a bit. Even if the house was small, horses meant wealth to me. If it weren't for the elf, I woulda said too much wealth, and maybe nobility even – but I figured the elf wouldn't be so touchy with me as a noble might be.
Of course, with me talking like a gutter-snipe, I didn't figure to get a good reaction – but I speak Sindarin a lot better, and I was fixing to speak to an elf, so that's what I talked in. I don't sound like an elf, but at least I don't sound like a thief that way. Her clothes were kinda worn, so I asked if she could spare some food and maybe a warm spot on her floor in turn for some mending. She was awful surprised, but she took me up on it, saying it was good I only wanted some floor, being as the bed wasn't hers to offer a part of. I knew by then that elfs mostly don't need a real bed if they don't want one, so that didn't throw me.
So that's how I started rooming with Cwynbur and Andrelanor – at least for so long as that lasted. But it lasted a good while, and more telling needs new parchment anyways.
She looked it over, and set it aside as she cleaned up. 'Time t' go look in on Mister Bogo again, I reckons. An' ge' more writin' materials. I's usin' up more'n I'd figgered on.'
