a returning halfling
Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 7:45 pm
The edge of town.
A halfling stands here.
He is small, even by halfling standards, and his girth also, which is unusual, for his people love to eat. His hair, equally thick on his feet as on his head, is not as dark as it once was, as if it had spent much time in the sun, and it had, as could be told be the tanned face. But the face was what stood out the most. The once cheerful and childlike features had been weathered down; toughened and scarred. Sorrow that once had been, and then driven out, had found its way again into his heart.
“How long,” he silently asks himself. “How long has it been since I last set foot here? Will I be remembered and welcomed? Or forgotten and shut out like a common stray?”
Slowly, he advances
As if his mind lost somewhere, his eyes are blank and staring. But his feet seem to know where they’re going. Step by step, he continues, paying no heed to the steady bustle of the quaint town around him. When he finally wakes of his trance, he finds himself in a familiar spot. Looking up, and thinking of all the times he had before, he slowly reads the messages on the wall. He reads of wizards, and murderers, and trolls, and runes, and plenty things that he does not like.
“Perhaps my visit here will not be as long as expected,” he sighs. Sitting down, propped against the wall, he takes from his bag a bottle. Dwarven-brewed rum. His favorite. He gulps deeply from his drink, until he falls asleep. He falls asleep with his bottle half-full.
Or is it half-empty?