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Kalimac, the flickering shadows of the grim forest cast over him, waddled over to the fallen tree as Harold scurried off to find his wife. She was certainly elusive; a thought that made Kalimac Whitfoot thankful that Elsa wasn’t that way. He would have quite a time trying to keep track of her and a wary eye on the children. He figured she wouldn’t get out of hand on the trip and was finally realizing that it was worth paying the Chubb children for watching his own, considering how beneficial it would be.
Holding an aged ax he’d been giving to chop the timber firmly in both hands, Kalimac made his way over the gnarled and twisting roots that protruded at random from dark crenellations in the earth. It was most unsettling to see the branches and scraggly roots practically grabbing at him as he hopped out of their reach. He pulled back his ax slightly and began carefully slashing away at the smaller protrusions of unnecessary branch with the half-dulled weapon.
It wasn’t until he actually tried to move in another direction that he realized that something had an amazingly strong hold on his foot. He looked down slowly, his ears again twitching, and pulled his trapped leg. The leg didn’t budge and the thing holding it merely tightened its stranglehold. He looked down fully, lowering the ax, and his widened eyes fell upon a thick, tangled root that had wrapped itself around his ankle and was actually pulling on it very gently, barely noticeable to the hobbit. Kalimac pulled again, but the root pulled back. He tried once more to the same effect. Other roots seemed to be creeping along the cold ground towards him, like vicious wolves stalking their prey as they circled around his defenseless lower left limb.
“Umm…Marcho…” said Kalimac, trying not to move anymore, “You may not be able to answer this, but, why exactly is the root of tree pulling on my foot?” The hobbit spoke with surprising pleasantness, but he was barely able to avoid visibly quaking as the conspiratorial trees looked down on him.
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