[Child of the 7th Age]

Child stood at the entrance to the barrow, peering leerily through a crack in the stones as she pondered whether to go inside. She had promised the party organizer that she would help serve drinks and food, a job with which she was throughly familiar. But now that the day was actually here, Child was having serious misgivings. It was one thing to go to a party cloaked in one of her barrowdowns personna. It was quite another to drop her mask and show a hint of the woman who lay hidden within.

Child could hear familiar voices and merriment emenating from the shadowed recesses inside the barrow. It sounded as if the others were having fun. Well. she fumed, it was easier for them. At least when they came to the Downs, they had no more than two or three alternate identities. As one of the wights stationed in the Shire, she was in an altogether different situation. Over the years, she'd gone by dozens of names and identities. Only Piosenniel could claim more notches in her belt. Child was even having trouble remembering the original name that she had been born with.

Before coming to the party, she had sat down to write out a name tag. There were now a dozen names scrawled untidily onto the tag, most of them carefully lined out with a red pen. At the very bottom of the tag, two names were still readable: Camilia Goodchild, and Sharon, the 7th Age Hobbit. Child vaguely recalled that at least one of these had something to do with the name she went by in 'real life' but, for all the tea in China, she could not remember which was which. With a sigh, she pulled a red pen from her pocket and scratched through the final two names. Then, she wrote in even smaller script: Camelia, the 7th Age Hobbit followed by two very large question marks.

With a sigh of resignation, Child pinned the nametag back on her T-shirt, rubbed a few dirt spots off her well worn blue jeans, and floated in through the stonework......