'Not again' Raffles groaned... he wasn't quite sure how Eldo had persuaded him to head out into the marshes again... yet here he was... and true to form he was lost... well lost-ish.
He'd just slipped making his escape from particularly agitated sickle fly, and was now sat at the bottom of a small hill, his trousers sodden, and his hat a way off, near the top of the slope.
He got to his feet, his eyes fixed on where his hat lay... he wasn't losing another. Grimly striding up the hill, he still had the where-with-all to notice a burrowing neeker off to his left. It chittered a warning but otherwise remain stationary.
Reaching the top of the hill, he surveyed the landscape, whilst plonking the hat on his head with some force.
Having been out here only the other day, he found he had retained at least some memory regarding the general lay of the land. If only the local wildlife wasn't quite so annoyed to see him again.
Still, at least it meant that the neeker shells were coming to him more often than not, and now he had a willing purchaser for these in Combe, it improved his mood somewhat.
Assured that he was no longer likely to be under attack, at least for a few minutes, his eyes scanned the ground looking for more of those mushrooms Barliman liked so much.
It made sense to try to supplement his adventuring income with these things... a hobbit couldn't live just on the generosity of those he occasionally helped.
Nothing.
He sighed and moved his attention back to where he might actually be.
By his reckoning this was the south west of the marshes, which meant he should be near the road to Bree that skirted the edge of the marshes.
Pushing the warning from Eldo about a possible goblin camps to the back of his mind, he set off.
Grumbling a little to himself
'should never have mentioned seeing those two goblins last time'
Why Eldo needed to know about marshes, and goblins in such detail he didn't know... but he felt he owed it to the old Hobbit to at least try and find out what he could.
