[Kransha]

Tobias was snoring loudly, his full chest heaving up and down in rhythmic succession. Every few seconds, his head would loll to one side and he would say something inaudible in his sleep, and then turn over again. He didn’t often dream, a trait that most Hornblower’s shared, and if he did see some nightly vision, rarely recounted to anyone else afterward. He did considered dreams a form of unnecessary escapism from reality which no decent person should indulge. Dreams and tales of things that will never be do nothing but mangle any hobbit’s perception of reality, which was a dire fault which the Hornblower family frowned upon.

Tonight, though, Tobias Hornblower was dreaming. It was truly more of a remembrance, a sequence of images he’d kept locked within him to recall whenever away from home. He didn’t love his home, nor did he hate it. He was indifferent about his family but did not shun them. He did love Longbottom, though, and his pipe-weed plantation near Sarn Ford. It was always a sight that gave him comfort and made him feel calmer and more serene, ever a welcome picture to view in dreams.

And he dreamt, feeling a new horizon, somehow familiar.

Right now he was standing on the furnished porch of the Hornblower Lodge that overlooked the valley of Longbottom, surveying the gentle slopes and rolling grasslands, dappled with the bright colors of autumn. He could see the green patches of pipe-weed stalks swaying slowly in the warm breeze. A red-rimmed sky surrounded him with the murky light of the sun at dusk darting meekly between the dense clouds. Rain was coming at Toby’s stash would profit from it, having suffered a lack of rain during the brief drought.

The first droplets fell, beginning a light wave of drizzle that soaked the parched leaves after several minutes. Tobias looked at each divided grove of the leaf, each separated by birch-wood fences. He saw the sturdy stems of the Southern Star pipe-weed, the mingled strands of Old Toby, and the blooming strains of Longbottom Leaf relishing the summer storm as it slowly but surely drenched the greenery. The elder gentlehobbit looked upon the diagonal slope that stretched downward into Southfarthing Valley were the peaceful city of Longbottom was nestled. Each thatch-roofed shack and homely cottage boasted a generous garden brimming with plant life. Tobias’ own plantation grounds expanded throughout the city and spread over into the land on the other side of the valley.

Longbottom was the ancestral home of the Hornblowers and other hobbits who befriended them. It was the prime city of the Shire’s Southfarthing and its greatest producer of the Halfling’s Leaf. Ever since Tobold Hornblower first introduced the addictive habit of smoking, it had become a practical fad of the Little Folk. Tobias loved this position, the patriarch of a powerful economic family line. He could get away with almost anything he wanted in Longbottom and often tried to do the same everywhere else. He lived a comfortable life on his plantation, sometimes traveling to other farthings or towns. In the rest of the Shire, he was less respected because of his shady nature and slight lack of morals, but he didn’t care. He bided his time, and didn’t like any nosy folk who might interfere with the business of others, although he himself had done so on more than one occasion.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 5:17 PM January 30, 2004: Message edited by: Kransha ]