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Old 10-23-2006, 07:10 PM   #19
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.
The river woman whistled from her two-leggeds' den. "Tirril!" she called in her sing-song way. "Jorje!"

Jorje lifted his nose from the ground and cocked an ear. He grinned. He liked the way the river woman used both his names. He kissed the air with his tongue and ran toward the den, panting and grinning happily all the way. She had human-hand-licked him and hand-nipped his ears right at the roots the way the best humans knew how to do.

"I have a running and hunting for you to do, Jorje Tirril."

Jorje sniffed at her reedy breath and glowy face. Running? Hunting?

"Remember Leaf woman and Dark woman and Man woman? I want you to find them."

What for? Bring them back?

"I want you to sniff out the dangers near and far in the high places and warn them."

She took his broad head in her two hands so that he was looking into her eyes. He did not like looking into the eyes of humans, for they were great and their eyes had things behind them he didn't know how to smell. Jorje knew that they couldn't smell the dog-sense he had behind his nose, but there was something great in humans behind those eyes of theirs, and it usually scared him; not with river woman though. He sniffed a difference in her, some way she had of smelling but not with her nose, so her eyes didn't scare him so much. He met her eyes now.

"Sniff out the strangers and tell the women if they be friend or fiend. Sniff for the bad elf, the one who ran the eermy ones back in the swamp."

Jorje remembered and almost retched right then and there. The river woman grinned.

"May the aroo go with you wherever you go. Be witty and sniff well, and may your paws be whole and may your legs run fast at need. Now go!"

She let go. Jorje was off at a gallop next instant. The ground flew by beneath his feet. After a little while he slowed his pace but his excitement stayed with him. The river woman had sent him on the hunt. He was glad to be running!
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