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Old 11-27-2011, 12:49 PM   #236
littlemanpoet
Itinerant Songster
 
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
Posts: 7,072
littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Jorje Tirril had much to do! The river woman had said so. The One-toes needed a pack leader and he was to be it. He had a long way to go but he knew how to scrounge up a meal where he needed to, and the river woman said he was allowed to sleep.

He sniffed his way back up the tilted land and through stony places where it was cold and windy with few scents on the wind. Then he scrabbled down past where the big snow had fallen (that was gone now and warmth had made it all turn wet) to where the one-toes were.

It took some yammering and calling before these silly over-sized dogs with the single toes and the wrong shaped noses understood what was needed from them. Jorje wished he was working with his own kind of dog - or at worst the fluffy stupid grass-eaters. These one toes, for all their length of nose, just weren't good dogs. Didn't they have any sniff sense? Well, some but not much. And the two-foots could ride them. No, grass eaters would not do.

Finally they got the sniff of it and allowed themselves to be hallooed down the tilted land. It was a long way around. They passed the walled burrow where many two-foots lived and kept going, following the big river, then kept the tilted land in sight to their right until they came to another river, the one the river woman said was the one to follow up into the tilted land. And there they were to stop. It took many sleeps to get there, but he got it done without losing a single one-toe.

It had been close one time when a group of one-toe riders had tried to herd his pack away, but the river woman must have helped because his one-toe pack had outrun them (sometimes it was good not to have riders on one-toes).

At last they came to the place, with lush warm grass for the one toes and little four-foots Jorje could catch and eat, and he sniffed on the wind the words of the river woman: "Good dog, Jorje Tirril, you are a very good dog! You have done well! Red-top is coming with all the others."

Red-top? Jorje was happy and waited eagerly.
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