[Kransha]

Beautiful…it was simply, utterly beautiful. Land as far as the eye could see, stretching and rolling and sloping and dipping all around. The light of the sun peeked gracefully and majestically through the clouds, shining down in slender beams on the new land of the Halflings of Bree. The grass seemed to bend in submission beneath the revolving quartet of wheels of the Whitfoot wagon, allowing it to pass smoothly and easily into the depths of the family’s land. The sky was calm and ever tranquil, the clouds billowed like a solemn but welcoming smoke that swirled around the single beam of unbridled light that shone down, wreathing it like wispy laurels surrounding a shimmering golden crown, radiant with light.

Though the week had been melancholy, leaving Kalimac to commit somber thought to the loss of Fordogrim Chubb, life would go on, the hobbits would prosper, and all would be well. Kalimac Whitfoot had long sat, with Crispin and Alora hovering above his knees, about the hardships of that journey, the sadness and the chaos. It was all for the cause, the mission that was now completed as the White Downs played out on every side of the wealthy Bree hobbit. Now, Kalimac looked on, a smile plastered eternally on his face as a single tear rolled down his cheek, something he was most unaccustomed to feeling as the crystalline droplet fell from his chin and calmly hit the ground, watering the thick, sturdy layer of soil beneath waves of bending grass. Soon enough, both Alora and Crispin were off in a flash at their mother’s serene behest, off to frolic and play on what the tall grass if the hilly slopes. Kalimac, laughing to himself, hopped nimbly from the wagon, landing like a bird alighting beside his wife as she stooped to take something from the earth she stood upon. He walked beside her and calmly laid his arm upon her shoulders, sighing with relief.

He could see it all again, playing out in front of him like a dream...

His little home, not necessarily little, but still cozy in its place, nestled between grassy mounds of rich, ready earth. A flattened roof, covered with ripe ivy, a picket fence rimming the yard in a semicircle, painted gleaming white that seemed to glow in the sun's light streams, a winding path of cobblestones that wormed its way from the swinging fence gate to the small, rounded door of the home, and, of course, a garden of plants and flowers, brimming bushes of herbs, masses of thick, evergreen foliage, multicolored sparks of flowery petals, each dazzling in their unique gentility as the litter the garden and yard, vines working their way calmly over the fence and outside. He saw, through eyes blurred in dreams, thin, curling plumes of smoke like those from a pipe swirling into the sky from the house's puffing chimney. Perfect...

And there, in the yard, where hobbit children, many. He saw a head of frazzled auburn, of dangling golden gurls, of unkempt black fuzz, and neat brown trim. He saw faces lit with the flowing energies of youth, feet dancing across the cobblestones with young agility. He saw too older folk, Halflings too, and his face sagged inevitably into a wide smile as he recognized his son Crispin and his daughter Alora, now adults each, scurrying through the tall grass and spread of flowers after their own children, his grandchildren. They played new games, sung new songs, told new tales, and ran about madly, gleefully yelling to each other...all but Crispin and Alora, who looked at each other knowingly. Just as he was thinking of them, they were thinking of him, and his heart sang as he came to the realization that not only would he prosper, but his family would prosper, and all hobbit's would prosper, because of this journey, this day, to this land.

There he was too, sitting in that lounge chair he'd always pictured himself in, his hair tainted a calming white with grey strands dappling it. He smoked his pipe in silence, letting the tufts of pipe cloud waft around him and evaporate into the air of his home. Beside him, in another chair, sat Elsa, her face as wizened as his in age, but rife with experience and widom. Around them, the sturdy, cushioned chairs all gathered in a circle in the light that peeked in through a window's glass pane, where an older Marcho, the oldest of them all, leaning forward and contemplating, and both Harold and Sarah Chubb, holding hands in the same silence. For one brief moment, all five eyes met at the focal point between them and they remembered...they remembered what they'd done...what Kalimac and his kind were doing right now...finding this new home.

Slowly, still smiling, Kalimac took Elsa’s hand in his own as their four eyes looked out over the home soon to be theirs. His fingers closed gently around hers, feeling the remains of the soil she held and smiling further as he glanced at her happily before turning back to the White Downs, “Elsa, I think we’re going to like it here.” He said, his voice at last calm, devoid of the journey’s gnawing stress, and filled with a jovial relief at the journey's end and sparkling wonderment, “I really do.”