Sunday, March 3, MV 1622
St. Blothor’s Day, Serra Accendant, Horthol Waning
The sun broke beautifully on the horizon that day, but went unnoticed.
All of Marshdale Valley was swimming in a deep, clinging fog. Everything was damp in Durk Daggarbreak’s pack. The flat-bread was positively ruined, and the half-eaten raska-cheese certainly had seen dryer days. But no matter, town was but a few more throws away. No, no, not throws. No one throws a dwarf, especially this one. Did the kingdom really need such blatantly racist measurements? Really. Treefells were a perfectly good measurement, albeit elven. And the gnomish cogmarches certainly had a nice ring to them…
Durk’s boots squished in the half mud, and the sheep could here him coming a throw away. The shepherdess herself was nowhere to be found, but the sheep didn’t care much. They had a hill full of grass to worry over. The path he walked was one of the paved roads that wound throughout the empire. Paved indeed, for Durk had seen mudslides that were better paved than this. Not a good cobble in sight! No matter, there were but paces left to the town wall. Durk could see the spiked wooden palisade rise up through the swirling mist, and could just barely make out an armor-bedecked sentry standing to one side of the gate.
Durk called out.
“Soldier, you got any warm food on you? Or better, some ale?”
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Hank Acorn woke up first of his kin, like every day. First up gets first pick of chores. Hank didn’t like chores, and since the easiest chores always got picked first, Hank was always the first picker. Today, he decided to work on the south wall. He could smell the mist, and thought it would be a nice day to work outside.
He swung out of his bunk bed and jumped, landing softly on the floor. Being youngest, he had the top bunk, and after years of being first up, he knew how to keep quiet enough to stay first up. He had slept in his cloths, since they were only three days worn, and could be tolerably worn for another ten. Hank slipped on his leather moli, the slipper-shoes that were common among his race. Hank was, of course, a halfling.
He crept quietly across the wood floor of his family’s home, running his hand along the smooth, warm stone walls. It was so good of his father to build their hill with a heating system. It got so cold in the winter, and walking through a cold hall just minutes after you woke was not a pleasant experience. The round door was just ahead, the coat pegs on the walls next to it, which when unburdened by cloth were shaped like great dragon heads, scaled and beautiful.
Hank grabbed his fog-coat (halflings have clothing for every kind of weather, especially the cold kind), opened and went through the round door into the much cooler boot room, closing the door behind him. He stuck his feet, moli and all, into his boots, which were oak-tree brown and had his initials embroidered into the sock-lining (halflings are very lazy, and most of their shoes have the socks attached). He undid the board on the grey door, which lay across from the round door, went through, and again closed the door behind him.
Now he was in the inner mudroom. The floor here was covered with a special grass that his father had brought home from one of his adventures. It sucked up all the moisture around it. His father called it eloshi elven for dryness. When it was dry, it was a sort of dead brownish color, and utterly brittle. But on a day like this, when moisture seeped in all the way from the outside, through the outer bailey, the inner bailey, the outer mudroom, and finally into here, the inner mudroom, it perked up, and became soft and green. In any case, it worked wonders cleaning the bottoms of shoes.
Hank had simply to shuffle his feet, and the grass would dry up the mud, and then scrape it off. Wonderful stuff. It was poor that it didn’t grow elsewhere.
After lacing up his boots, Hank shuffled across the room, into the outer mudroom (much like the inner one, with taller grass (more moisture), to the inner bailey (which had a thick wooden gate with a peephole, very fun to taunt siblings from, down into the outer bailey (there were steps down), and finally outside.
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To be continued...