[Diamond18]

Vogonwë skipped lightly down the path, and Pimpiowyn trailed behind with somewhat lesser enthusiasm. “I’m tired,” she pouted, “and I don’t like the look of these woods, and I don’t see how we shall find anything edible in this tangled mess of nasty trees.”

“Where’s you sense of adventure, darling?” Vogonwë replied glibly. “Come on, you’re with me, and I know the ins and outs of this place, so the very idea of having anything to fear is utterly preposterous.”

This heartened Pimpi a little, and she declared Tookishly, “I never said I was afraid. I just don’t think we’re going to find anything tasty and worth our trouble.”

“That’s because you don’t know where to look. I roamed these woods freely as an elf-child, and then as an elf-teenager, and still more as a grown elf. Follow me and we will bear the most food back to Merisuwyniel,” Vogonwë declared.

Pimpi was about to make a clipped observation about his eagerness to impress Merisuwyniel, when he suddenly skipped lightly off of the path and gamboled into the dark and dreadful looking forest. Pimpi froze and watched him with an expression of mingled surprise, consternation, worry, confusion, and secret admiration. “Eh…” she said.

Now, Workmud is known far and wide as being an unsavory place, though it was once peachy-fine, they say. But everyone knows that in this day and age, gamboling through the woods off the beaten path is not generally what one would classify as a “good idea”. Besides the abundance of queer noises such as grunts, groans, moans, hisses, scufflings, scurryings and hurryings in the undergrowth (plus the black skwerlz poncing about) Pimpi saw nasty cobwebs stretched from tree to tree. They looked dreadfully sticky and clingy, not to mention extraordinarily thick. She thought it very queer. But Vogonwë seemed not to mind, as he effortlessly pranced his way through the undergrowth and the dangling cobwebs alike. The grunting etc. toned down a bit as he passed by—no doubt the purveyors of the noises were also shocked at his nonchalance.

For a moment Pimpi debated whether or not she should stay on the path or tag along after him, but some odd grunting noises behind her sealed the deal, and she cautiously followed in his footsteps. “Eh…” she said again, then mustered a more loquacious, “Vogonwë, dear, wait up a bit.”

He paused. “Oh, one thing,” he said as if being struck with an idea, “on a scale of one to ten, where would you rate spiders?”

“Why?”

“I’m curious.”

“Little ones, or big ones?”

“Smaller than some, bigger than others.”

“Bigger than a breadbox?”

“Depends on the age,” he shrugged.

“You’re scaring me.”

At this Vogonwë laughed in a forced sort of way. He waved his hand gracefully. “It doesn’t matter then, don’t worry your pretty little reddish golden curly head about it. We probably won’t meet up with any here, unless…um…I mean, I was thinking about composing a poem about spiders. Perhaps, ‘The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the—’”

“Oh, look!” Pimpi cried all of a sudden.

“What?” Vogonwë said, yanking an arrow from his quiver.

“Mushrooms!” Pimpi replied, squatting down and pointing at a patch of luscious looking mushrooms growing under a log. “Great big ones, too!”

She began to gleefully scoop the fungus up into her sack, and all thoughts of gruntings, scurryings, spiders, and other unpleasant things were forgot for the time being. It didn’t even worry her when Vogonwë turned and struck up a chattering conversation with a black skwerl. And she didn't think twice when Vogonwë turned back to her and said, "If you're done there, I've heard of an excellent little grove not far from here where we can find some grapevines."

[ February 16, 2003: Message edited by: Diamond18 ]