Cutch and Furlong greeted the sunrise as they rode east out of Michel Delving. The Man kept his horse at a leisurely walk; the hobbit’s pony easily kept up. Cutch asked, “Since we’d never met, Mr. Fairbairn, how did you know who I was?”
Furlong looked up at Cutch sheepishly. “Well…um…by your silvery hair and thick brows, eyepatch, and…”. The hobbit touched his nose rather than speak openly about Cutch’s prodigious proboscis.
“Ah, yes”, Cutch said. “I don’t suppose there are too many fellows who bear the same look. I’d no idea that She and I were such a subject for… gossip?”
Furlong laughed. “Aye, my folk are not at all shy about that! Perhaps the only thing we find tastier is a crusty loaf of warm bread, thick sliced and spread with fresh churned butter … maybe some strawberry jam …”. He trailed off as he noticed Cutch’s slowly broadening smile.
They laughed together for a while and pleasantly chatted as they clopped on toward Waymeet. Furlong told of how he was born at those crossroads, a popular spot for hobbit wagons to camp as they wended their various ways about the Shire, and sometimes beyond. Many of the waggoneers were Fallohides, like him, and spend most of their time in their quaint wheeled homes, drawn by sturdy ponies. Cutch asked for whom he was named, and Furlong said he was really named for himself. His family had been unable to settle on his name until he was a-crawling, and one evening as they discussed the matter at length, they failed to notice that he’d crawled away from camp; the infant already had the wandering way of a Fallohide. He was a furlong away when they finally found him, and so that became his name.
Furlong made his living hunting, fishing, and trading, and lived his life wandering between the hobbit settlements from Yondershire to Enedwaith, but when he was ‘hankering’ to set down for a bit, it was usually at Waymeet.
Finally, the hobbit turned the conversation to the subject of their meeting, Her Ladyship Seregrian of House Bar-en-Acharn, Cutch Crane’s ‘mell bereth’. “I met her at Sarn Ford. I was travelling west into the Shires, from whence she was coming, I supposed from Ered Luin …?” He glanced at Cutch who gave him an affirming nod before he continued. “There was another fellow at the camp there, a Ranger by the look of him, named Rothavaron…?” Cutch gave him another nod and the hobbit continued, “You know him?”
“Aye”, Cutch replied, “from my youth. Did he say why he was there?”
Furlong paused, noting Cutch’s answer, then shrugged. “No, but I’ve seen him there often on my wanderings between hobbit villages. At any rate, she asked him, in a rather guarded way to my thinking, about the Gaervarad ruins. Casual-like, but her eyes were more intent than her tone. The fellow pointed out the direction and distance from the Ford and asked her if she would like him to accompany her, as brigands occasionally camped at the ruins and there was no direct road, but she said ‘No’ in a final kind of way. When he insisted she might need company, she gave him a steely grin and just shook her head”.
Cutch smirked grimly, easily imagining the exchange. “Aye, that’s sounds like Her.”
“The next morning”, Furlong continued, “she headed out southeast and I continued across the Ford. Rothavaron stayed at camp but looked out to the southeast until she was out of sight. As for me, when I looked over my shoulder towards her, I think I saw a big bird keeping to her path.”
“Windwalker…”, Cutch muttered to himself. Furlong did not ask what that meant.
The two soon reached Waymeet, where Furlong introduced Cutch to friends and family, and the evening passed merrily with song, dance, and good hobbit fare.
(image from lotro-wiki.com)
Previousà Through the Delvings
