[Bêthberry]

O'er Land with O Lando

As time tumbled on and on and on, a weed of the wind's thought, and as the Third Age passed on from personal witness, beyond media report, entered into history and then wafted in the very mists of marvelous myth itself, the stirring events of the Orcish Opposition and Fateful Retrieval of Gormlessar from Gaol came to be immortalized by Anon the Imputable in the most impuissant images imaginable. Let the lay be laboured here.

How they brought the Itship from Aching to Spent

Oro' sprang to the stirrup and Vogonwë and he,
Earnur and Pimpi and Meri all three,
Kuruharan and Chrys were galloping too
To Gol Dulldor by forest they galloped all through.
Not a word to each other they kept a great pace
'Lando's nose led them on in this resolute race.
He sniffed and he snuffed till they'd had enough.
The riding was hard; it was terribly tough,
And they ached aplenty in parts of their duffs.
Yet still they went galloping this Itship they did
No stone went unturned, no scent that was hid.
Calling their mounts pet names without peer,
They galloped, they galloped 'till Halfie was near.
Neither slacking nor slowing their pace not a wit
They determined determinedly never to quit.
They thought of their Halfie in all that they did.
Oh they rid and they rid and they rid and they rid.

[Obviously, Anon the Imputable was not brown(nos)ing here.]

However, at the time of the Orcish Opposition and Fateful Retrieval of Gormlessar from Gaol, the probable events passed more portentously thus:

The waxing moon polished the shiny night sky until the stars shone more brightly than any Simonized job. Slowly, each member of the Itship waxed on about the pursuit, until even Vogonwë could not render their words in a better tell'o it. No one could hold a candle to him; it was a wicked tale.

"I should be happier if I could see the print of a boot," sniveled Kuruharan, who saw profits dissipating on the long distance decline.

"Let's not let this drag on," sneered Chrysophylax, wishing he could have a drag on his fiery breath.

"Let us not be a pig in a poke about this," sniped Orogarn Two, thinking of the lovely pigskin leather of his missing wallet. "Let us sniff first and press our pursuit later."

"Let us not to the marriage of our herbs and our appetites admit impediments," snorted Etceteron. What the great sword Wylkynsion said cannot here be reported.

"We must trust O Lando," sniveled our hapless heroine Merisuwyniel. "He nose what to do."

"Nobody knows the truffles I've seen," sniffed Pimpiowyn, whereupon both O Lando and Vogonwë sought to avail themselves of the opportunity for an encounter of a closer kind with the scented half-halfling, o'erwrought as she was with the odour of fear, to say nothing of sanctity.

"I have not elf-nose enough," snuffed Vogonwë, wallowing miserably in doleful complaint about his maternal lineage. Piteously he performed an exposition extempore upon the rooting for delicate morsels in hopes of attracting Pimiowyn to his person, but it was O Lando who was the elf of the hour and action.

"Come," snickered O Lando, who was riding piggyback for the first time. "Let me be a true TofuRider. We must visit the polluted places of the Workmud where we will see such belching smoke stacks and fouled water as can nowhere else be found in Muddled Berth, for the pulp and paper industry here has fouled most unfairly the forest with its clear cut logging and sawmilling practices. You shall come with me and keep your word to the Lord Gormlessar."

To this the Itship agreed, though with no great delight.

Then O Lando raised his tired nose. Following the orcish scent was no truffling matter, but his morels demanded that he aid his third cousin's third-rate friends. It would have been creminil to have shirked their need, for evil was mushrooming all around Workmud. Indeed, they had all been kept in the dark too long and fed all manner of strangely composted matter.

This then was the trail that they pursued thus, but beyond their noses none of them had more foretellings as did O Lando to sniff the odour of the orcish trail. Even he, delicate of nostril and fair of olfactory nerves, was hard set to distinguish betimes the orcish scent from the sulpherous fumes of the mills and the noxious adours of tanneries and soap factories. Of course, it could also be said that the heady smoke of the campfire stew rather impaired than extended his senses.

But then at last they heard a great concourse of trumpets from the enemy and they knew they were arrived at Gol Dulldor. O Lando dismounted from Tofu to approach an elf who happened upon them, an elf he apparently knew by name, one Asparagus Snap.

"What's happening, dude?" he sneered at O Lando.

"We're having fun, Gus," snickered O Lando as he turned to view the ramparts of Gol Dulldor which lay before them.