Girl

He awoke lying close to her side, his head angled badly on his lumpy rucksack. There was a painful crick in his neck now, he felt, but he was more concerned about Kitten.

The next morning, Kitten grew agitated that her bear had been absent for some days. She paced and wrung her hands, then insisted that something was wrong. She lifted her bag of heavy books and took off in the direction she had last seen the beast.

The traveler gathered up his shabby rucksack and caught up with her as she cut across town and forest with haste.

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.

The next morning, the rain returned with a vengeance. He thought the previous clear, sunny day was a cruel tease now, as he found himself completely sodden and cold yet again.

His cloak held up against the downpour as well as a could be expected, considering its tattered condition, which is to say that mostly it clung very heavily around his body from absorbing excess water.

The rain subsided the next day, for which the traveler was glad. The wet and cold of the previous day had been uncomfortable, and were it not for Kitten's fire-building abilities he would have been in far worse shape for it. He slid on his crisply-dried clothing and followed the girl back to the main road.

The midday sun warmed the crisp winter air considerably, though the wind had a bite to it outside the walls of Bree. The roads looked clear as there were few others about their business that day once they passed the gates.

He'd perched himself atop a short wall within sight of the Prancing Pony that bright morning, watching the early crowd going about their business. Usually he found the area still relatively quiet that time of day, but the residents of Bree apparently decided that the day was a good one for mischief.

Just before the sun rose, the girl returned to the Scholar's Archives. The traveler couldn't see that she was covered with gore at first, in the grey of pre-dawn, and as she stopped to scrape her boots on the cobblestones before the door, he crept upon her silently.

The golden sun slipped beneath the line of the horizon just as the traveler crept past the closing southern gate door of Bree. The stout guardsman brusquely shouted at him to get out of the way, but the traveler gave little heed to him and habitually sought the torchlight-rimmed shadows of the side lane.

 The night was crisp and clear, the skies unobstructed by clouds, allowing the infinite stars above to shine their ethereal light down on those still walking the lowly earth. The traveler recognized a few of the larger constellations known to him, out of habit and with awe at the immensity of the heavens.