Dusk deepened. Mist lay behind them among the trees below and brooded on the pale margins of the Anduin. The bloodred sunset was slowly seeping out of the world, giving way to the encroaching night.
“Lost?!” Altli bellowed incredulously. “What in Durin’s Name are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say that I have no idea where we are!” Hosgrim Ironbeard bellowed back at him.
The dwarrows were a ragtag duo - their traveling garments stained and dusty, their long beards ruffled. Hosgrim was arguably the more respectable-looking of the two, always obsessing over “the axe and the beard”, and his rich Uzbad garments.
Altli on the other hand, was as crude a dwarrow as could be. His bushy beard covered almost all of his torso and was visibly matted. He grasped a crude axe in one hand, and a leather flask in the other, occasionally taking a sip and looking all around with a confused stare.
“How could this happen?!” he kept asking. “A highly renowned Uzbad, and the finest Zabad that ever drew breath - lost on the banks of the largest bleedin’ river in the Middle Earth!?”
“Quit yer yapping, beardo!” Hosgrim grumbled. “It’s your thrice-damned onion liquor that got us here in the first place! Last thing I remember was getting drunk in yer tavern. My “Tiiipsy ToOaAaD” - he mimicked mockingly. “And look at us now!”
Altli chuckled heartily, his face glinting with honest pride. “Har! I’ll take that as a compliment! But don’t blame it on me though.”
“No? Who should I blame it on, Mahal?”
“I’m telling you I am innocent” Altli said somberly, “Thordralin’s the one who kept insisting on more onio-”
His speech was abruptly stopped. In front of them, out of the dense foliage of the woods, another pair of dwarves stumbled out onto the path, spilling out and falling over one another. They were even more ragtag looking, and visibly intoxicated. One of them had red beard and hair, while the other looked oddly similar. Between them, they lugged a huge pine tree.
“By Durin’s bathrobe!” Altli exclaimed, “Thordralin and Thorfralin!”
“What are you doing?” Hosgrim asked, surprised.
“Eh? Erm...Usbad Hozgrim!” Thordralin stuttered drunkenly, “We found it!”
Thorfralin kept silent, looking around mutely. He rarely spoke.
“Found what?” Hosgrim Ironbeard asked once more.
“The perfegt pine dree!” Thordralin assured him, “Fer the Yule fest, remember?”
“A Yule Tree?” Altli and Hosgrim asked confused, with hints of understanding visible on their faces. “Did..did we..”
“We set oud to find one, didn’ we?” Thordralin kept talking, “After the pardy…”
Hosgrim Ironbeard stared at them dumbfounded as memory of last night returned to him. In their drunken stupor they must have ventured far to search for a Yule tree. How they ended up here, no one could explain.
Throwing his arms up in the air, Hosgrim snatched Altli’s flask of onion liquor and took a deep chug.
“This better get us back home.”
He sighed and trudged onwards.
The winning entry to the Durin's Folk "Yule Short Story contest" in 2020.
