Bree has a way of being both lovable and distasteful at the same time. There isn't anything new about it. The same farmers and smiths and bakers and brewers as always. The same gossips and crossing-sweepers and shady, shadow-lurkers. The streets always seem full of rain puddles and the alleys stink of dirty straw and sour ale.
But it's home. I guess.
Butterbur handed me a rumpled old letter that he'd been holding onto for months. And that's not his fault at all. I'm not an easy person to find. I didn't recognize the hand on the envelope, but it's from the landowner in Trestlebridge. He says he has news for me, and asks me to come visit. I don't like that he didn't just put this "news" in the letter itself. Reading it made my stomach into a bit of a knot. I haven't been up that way since...I can't even remember when. But now my curiosity is awake, and it's gnawing at me, so I'll have to go and see what he has to say.
My purse is good and fat again. All that rain through summer and into autumn made for splendid hunting. I still don't feel the same joy when I hold a bow, as I used to. It used to make me feel so right. And like I belonged that way, with a bow in my hands. It's all I know, so it's what I keep coming back to. At least I don't have to worry about going hungry this winter.
What else can I ever be? I remember when a certain someone wanted me to put on a dress and play the would-be housewife. What a laugh that was! I was almost willing to do it, just to please him. Just to see an approving look on his face. He complimented the way I looked in the dress, even thought I told him I felt like a fish out of water. He didn't care that I was uncomfortable. He only cared that his eyes were pleased.
Good riddance.
I still think about going south sometimes. I wonder if I could find my sweet, wild hound. Of course I couldn't. The world is a huge place, and I wouldn't have the first idea of where to start searching once I got out of Bree-land. But he talked to me about the long-ago forefathers of Bree's people. How they came up from the south, so far back that nobody really remembers it anymore. He told me how the men down here have red hair like mine, and they hunt and run free and nobody thinks the lesser of them for it. Maybe that's where I've belonged all the while? Maybe that's why I've never quite fit in here in Bree?
Bah. Probably talking nonsense.
I found a woman outside the Prancing Pony last evening. She was struggling to carry a big bundle wrapped in paper. It didn't look like a hard task, but she kept dropping it, so I stepped over and picked it up for her and told her I'd carry it wherever she needed to go. She was so sweetly thankful, I almost felt guilty. I thought she'd been an old woman at first, with the way she had so much trouble getting on, but when I got up close, she was as young as I am, maybe a few summers older.
"Nobody notices an old widow around here," she said to me as we went out the west-gate.
"Begging your pardon, miss, but you aren't old at all," I told her.
"Maybe not," said she, with a good laugh. "But I feel old. Too young to be a widow, and too young to have a poorly back."
I told her I felt too young to be an orphan, and to have a gammy shoulder.
I walked her to her little house on a tiny farm just south-west of town. She begged me to come inside and have a cup of tea. I felt like she was a lonely sort, and my heart ached for her. But something made me turn down her offer.
I've made a note in my head to take her a good side of venison from my next hunt. And then to visit the mute, before the snow comes.
