The next morning, the sky was bright and cloudless, but the traveler now knew better than to trust in consistent weather on this journey and expected a surprise rainstorm to appear at any moment.
He pulled on his wind-dried clothing and stuffed his rucksack with as much of the hanging pipe-weed as he could. Kitten watched him without judgment, but as they gathered up their belongings to leave before the farmer awoke to find two squatters in his shed, he noticed that she left a few paltry coppers behind.
Once they were safely away, she referenced her map again and lead them in the direction of her apples.
The longer they traversed the lands of the halflings, the more the traveler found himself desiring to stay within them. The rolling hills and small pockets of forest only made the idyllic countryside even more beautiful, and a lonesome drifter like himself could live a finer life here than in a great many other places.
He relished the idea for a time, daydreaming of enjoying good vegetables and sweet pipe-weed regularly. But that was all it could ever be for him: a reverie to give him hope for future lean times. He would not again have a place that he called his home.
They reached a larger village on the water, complete with a mill and a small inn. The residents gave them no trouble, but their eyes watched them warily. They crossed the bridge and followed the road up a hill, then cut across a row of tiny homes.
The apple orchard was before them, and Kitten could hardly contain her excitement. She bounded ahead straight away, hurdled over the stone wall, and gleefully harvested the all the shiny red fruit she could stuff in her clothing. The traveler stood outside the wall, watching, smoking.
There was an abrupt rustle in the trees and a hobbit appeared suddenly. Kitten hopped back over the wall quickly and crouched down behind it, but the hobbit seemed not to have noticed her. The two retreated away from the orchard and settled down by the water's edge.
There, she let her takings spill out from under her tunic. She devoured a couple of the fruit and handed him one, though he slipped his apple in his rucksack and had another smoke instead.
They spoke of places far away in both distance and memory as the skies darkened. She made no campfire that night. Instead, they laid flat against the ground looking heavenwards, watching the countless silvery stars illuminate the sky above them.
He began to pick out patterns in the nighttime sky, and pointed out a few of the most familiar constellations to her. Some of the figures were not known to him until he wandered this far north, he explained, and some of the ones he had known in another life were no longer visible here.
She seemed baffled by the idea of one seeing pictures where multitudes of tiny specks dotted the dark sky as far as one could see - and the traveler understood then that memorizing the positions of celestial bodies was a hobby of the outcast, not of one who had more terrestrial concerns and companions to keep their gaze earthward.
She was a comely girl who seemingly had never lost her light, and had no need to look beyond herself for it.
Then she did what he had feared she would do. She asked about his past existence, and as he expected, it brought the deeply veiled remorse inside of his heart roiling to the surface.
He got up then, leaving her questions to hang in the air, padded down to the stream's edge and splashed his face with the cool water. If he could not wash away the sentiment, he could at least mask it.
He did not desire further conversation that night.
