[Kransha]

Toby Hornblower spun around, a look of supreme indignation souring his already murderous face. His rat-like nose twitched oddly as his expression wrinkled into a grimace. He was already furious at Snaveling, and now to be interrupted at random by some passerby, it was too much for the gentlehobbit. Tobias quivered in place, shaking and seething. His skin’s red tinge deepened alarmingly as his hazel colored eyes narrowed and seemed to be shrouded by a crimson veil. He looked at the two folk before him and his rage grew, his face becoming almost livid. The expression in their eyes, though a subtle nuance, infuriated him further as he focused his ever-shrinking pupils upon them.

“Interrupting anything!?” the raspy, gruff pitch of his stiff baritone voice shot up into a higher range as he barely avoided shrieking at the man who’d addressed him, “Yes, I do believe you are interrupting something! What sort of question is that? Is there something you want? If not, do not linger in my company, for my tolerance has lessened considerably of late. If there is naught that you require from me or my companion, get you gone from here and do not interfere with my business!”

The hobbit, who stood several heads shorter than the two people he was grimacing at, took a deep breath through his flaring nostrils and relaxed himself as much as he could in this condition. His reddened face began to drain of color as he realized that he’d made another blunder. His chest, constricted by the narrow gait of the gaudy green vest he was wearing, heaved up and down slowly as the elder Hornblower composed himself.

“Forgive me,” he said meekly, looking down at the stable floor and fumbling for a valid excuse for that outburst “I am not in the best of moods at present…I’m not entirely sure what came over me, in truth. You see, an undesirable streak of rotten luck has dogged me, this past week, and it has put me off, so to speak.”