[Kransha]

Toby Hornblower mused silently, slowly taking in what had gone on. No one bothered to answer his question well enough for the elder hobbit, but he gathered they were all too flustered by the event with Snaveling to notice a being barely half their sizes. He sat on the ground now, still attempting to comprehend all that had occurred. A low grumble emanated from his sore throat in the form of a gruff guttural noise that rumbled disconcertingly. He looked around and bit his lip, growing more bored despite the recent excitement.

“What do you think she meant by that?” he said to Snaveling with a contemplative look on his face and an elevated eyebrow, though not looking at the man for response, “All of that nonsense about a beginning or some such thing, doesn’t make a thimble-full of sense.” He chuckled incredulously, which was just another obvious exhibition of Toby’s nervous defense mechanism, “Eh, Elves and their mysterious ways, all the more reason not to get muddled in their affairs. I tell you, they can never just answer a question right out, they have to work their way to the answer with a whole lot of useless drivel first.”

Now, Tobias Hornblower had never known an elf, but he just made the assumption. He had spoke with some elves in the Green Dragon Inn, and of course attempted discourse with Ladies Galadel and Roa, but to no true avail. He could not get much of anything amounting to answers from them and was irritated by that, since he almost always got straight answers from the folk he addressed around the Shire and its borders.

Even though he hadn’t given Snaveling the chance to answer his question, Toby decided to speak up again with a totally irrelevant follow-up. He swiveled in his seat on the ground to face Snaveling, his heavy eyebrows lowering as he asked the second question. He raised a hand, with his index river raised as if an epiphany or startling revelation had suddenly come upon him and he was having trouble converting it into the common tongue. He fumbled blindly for words, his mouth hanging open dumbly. A second later, his mouth began moving, but once again no audible sound emerged from the miniature maw. Toby's mouth drifted closed, he settled himself into his makeshift seat, and continued.

“That hobbit…the one who darted before us prior to your fall…do you know him? It seemed, if merely in my own opinion, that the strange ailment struck you when you looked upon him. I may be only filled with foolishness, but I could swear that is what I witnessed, Mister Snaveling."