“It is the badger-folk. When comes the winter, they issue from their holes, and march upon our caches. I am surprised you do not remember them. When you were small we once came here in spring-time, and you met them. We had caught them digging into our caches. You were curious, and knew not the ways of the badger-folk, and attempted to scare them off. Oh they did not like that, not one bit. Their memories are long, and their lives are longer, Tirnel. They do not lightly forget insults! They were crafty, and they wished vengeance upon you. For them to forget their ire, I promised that you should labor for them, and aid them in their endeavors. You will work for them, and fulfill the promise I made many years ago.”
Tírirandir’s gloved hand tightened its grip around the shovel as he remembered the words of his former mentor Aranarion. Fulfill the promise, he had said, and with steel authority made clear that this was the only way to atone for his youthful trespasses. A great deed done for the Badger-Brock and his kin, and a gross offence finally forgotten.
With careful steps, Tirnel approached the middle of the clearing. The Old Forest was eerily quiet today; no winter wind howling through the crooked limbs of the ancient trees, no bird screaming bloody murder, no tinkle of fae trying to lead a wanderer into perdition - just the innocent rustle of snow as another critter scampered across. The man stopped, letting his gaze wander over the forest floor.
Like out of thin air, one badger after another appeared; no pitter-patter of tiny footsteps announced their arrival, nor did Tirnel see where they came from. At once many dozens of animals surrounded him, gazing up to him with their smart black eyes. They closed in on him, then tiny paws reached for his clothing, pulled at his cloak, his satchel, his tools. The shovel and Tarrin’s pickaxe were discarded, but the woolen cloak was carried away; and one particularly rowdy badger even managed to pry open the satchel to find - oh joy! - a bundle of oat-cakes within. Within seconds, a pile of grey-black furs was tumbling around in the snow and Tirnel needed not master beast-speech to know that they were fighting for command over the snacks.
He stood back up and dusted the snow from his knees. “Greetings, my friends!” he exclaimed in Sindarin, as Aran had done; though he doubted a little whether they understood him at all. “I have brought tools and planks to fortify your burrows. I will do as you bid me… oi!”
The fighting had stopped, and ever curious, with every of his words the badger-folk had come a little closer. Some hubbub was among them now; plenty of heavy discussion, but to Tirnel’s ears it was but a cacophony of squeaking and chittering. At last, something pushed him from behind, and he could just grab for his shovel and pickaxe before he was slowly herded away.
Suddenly, there was life and clamour in the Old Forest as this peculiar parade made their way through the wintry woods. The Old Forest knew no roads, only a few beaten paths - and where the badgers now led him was even further away from civilisation, and deeper into the ancient wood’s murky heart.
The further they trundled, the more impenetrable the thicket became. Now, large, snow-covered rock-faces bordered them left and right. Like gaunt arms above their heads, tree branches reached for one another and whoever dared to wander in their ghastly shadow. And while the trees seemed almost to step aside and make way for the procession of badgers, they as well widened their trunks and lowered their branches wherever the Man walked past. Bent to squeeze his long body through the underbrush, and nearly flopping face-first into the snow, Tirnel could have sworn an oak tree just lifted a root to catch his foot…
After a trek just long enough to make even the most observant ranger lose their orientation, the thicket suddenly gave way to another clearing, this time bigger and dotted with soft hills of varying sizes. In its middle, a large oak tree sat on the largest of the hills, spreading its heavy limbs and roots languidly like a king who had grown too fat and complacent to raise from his throne. At its feet, another tree lay, longer and straighter than the Oak, its barren crown reaching out for the sky like the hands of a dying beggar. Now, Tirnel spotted the many dark holes that dotted the hills - and how the fallen tree had squished and collapsed many of them. All around the glade were more badgers, though their scurrying had rapidly stopped with the Man’s appearance, and now countless pairs of beady eyes were focused on him.
Tirnel had stopped but a second to take it all in, but already his hosts grew impatient and bumped their noses into his legs from behind. Some rose on their hind legs, chittering agitatedly and pointing to the devastation, while some others scattered to take up position on the hills all around the glade. His tools still in hand, and accompanied by many chirps and whistles, Tirnel was then herded towards the fallen tree. One of them even grabbed on to the fabric of his trousers and with agitated chattering pulled him to one of the burrows, a collapsed hole that was now filled nearly entirely with rock and soil. Still lamenting, the badger jumped on top of it. Tirnel was sure it was putting its hands on its hips like the very image of a disgruntled market woman.
“Is that your home?” he asked, out of courtesy more than anything. The badger hopped in circles, likely telling a story of what happened; but Tirnel couldn’t do much more than nod and put up a sympathetic face.
He knelt to inspect the damage, and next to him, the badgers settled down as well. When he craned his head, so did they; when he looked up, so did they. When he rose again, they looked expectantly up to him.
“It looks like it is mostly just the entrances that have come down,” he assessed. “I will dig them out, then fortify the openings with wood.” The badgers watched his explanations closely; but it wasn’t before Tirnel grabbed for the dwarven pickaxe and began digging into the rocks that some excitement broke out among them.
The badger-folk was too proud and gleeful to help, of course. They watched the Man’s toiling with great amusement, and their giggles were particularly bright whenever he dove head-first into a hole, making only his long legs stick out. They had magnificent fun picking at the helpless victim’s legs, and at some point one even got hold of one of his boots. It was henceforth dragged into the woods and never seen again.
When after an afternoon of hard labour, Aranarion returned from his own meeting with Badger-Brock, the venerable leader of the badger-folk, and found his friend one-shoed and exhausted under a pile of badgers, he too could hardly suppress his laughter. But the badger-burrows were restored, stabilised with thick wooden boards; and as the badgers returned to their homes, they took with them all memory of a young ranger’s discourtesy which was then never spoken of again.
