The winter rain has turned into spring rain, the clouds stopping their downpour only briefly to acknowledge the season change and then continuing on. The streets of Bree, even the main Great East Road, are quite muddy and full of puddles this afternoon, and those passing by step around or over them.

One pair, a short man and a much taller woman, arrives from a side-street. The man has to keep his pace quick to walk alongside his wife, and can only just make it over some water-filled holes. "Could you walk a bit further from me? The mud is spattering on my skirt, and I don't need another garment ruined," complains the woman loudly about the spashing and mucking steps.


At least most of the people passing along the road step around or over the mudpuddles. One thin figure goes in fits and starts: half-running a few steps, then stopping to jump into a puddle with both feet. Each time the rain-dimpled surface shatters into thousands of flying droplets. The girl's dark hair is plastered to her head, except for a small halo about her face where the dripping strands curl even more ferociously than normal. Her cloak hangs open, sagging back from thin shoulders and doing very little to protect her from either rain or mud. A few words catch her ear and she looks up at the whiny woman, her nose wrinkling a little in what might be contempt.

The short man notices someone peering at him; the look is returned by a pair of particularly beady eyes and a frown. The two walkers stop. "What are you looking at, girl?" Wilbert asks suddenly. His wife, who has hitched her shirt up above the mud, turns as well and looks over her husband's shoulder. "Don't bother the child," she murmurs, eyes moving down to look at the little man, who pays no attention and continues to stare right back.


"You," is the reply, given with a somewhat saucy tilt to her small chin. The effect (whatever Tathar thought it might be) is rather spoiled when her nose begins to twitch and then to wiggle. With one hand, she reaches up and scrubs at the itch, brown eyes still regarding man and wife curiously. She takes a few steps to one side, mud-splattered bare legs becoming even muddier by the minute. "Your clothes are very fine," she says finally, with the air of one delivering an unalterable verdict. "You shouldn't wear them out in the rain, you know. They will get filthy all through."


Wilbert wears nothing but his usual clothes, but his wife at least wears a cloak over her dress. "Sometimes one just has to leave the house," she explains calmly. "I can decide what to wear from my closet, but I can't choose the weather. Can you?" Holding out a bit of cloth, she continues, a bit snippily. "And this is an old dress anyway. I wasn't about to go out with nothing but my undergarments and a cloak, but that doesn't mean I want to get more muddy if I can avoid doing so."

"You wouldn't, if those in the street didn't hop about so hastily," Mr. Thistlewool says, finally looking up at his wife.

"That's right, dear," agrees the taller woman, now shooting over her own look of disapproval. "Your mother should have told you not to frolic in bad weather. You'll catch cold."


The girl moves a little closer to inspect the material, raindrops running down the back of her neck and pooling in the folds of her cloak. Nodding her head wisely, she says, "That is good. Mine is old too, so it doesn't matter how dirty it gets." The tone of the conversation grows chiding, but Tathar only giggles a little. "I expect she did tell me," she replies cheerfully. "But she tells me so many things, I cannot remember them all. And I am not in the least bit cold. And," she says, her smile suddenly giving way as dark eyebrows pinch together in an alarming glower, this directed at the short man. "I didn't splash you. I wasn't close enough."


Not to be outdone by a mere child, the little man furrows his brows more and returns the same look. "Did I *say* you had splashed me?" he asks. "Perhaps you should try listening to adults more often." To make matters worse, here, in the rain, Wilbert begins to tell a story harking back to his childhood. "When I was a boy," the little man begins, "my mother would keep me shut in the house all winter. I would get antsy, and who wouldn't, cooped up like a chicken for so long? So I sneaked out with some other boys, and they threw mudballs at a neighbor's house. When my mother saw us--"

"Wilbert, dear..." Mrs. Thistlewool interrupts. "I expect the neighbor told her. That was my house."

Evidently her husband doesn't consider this relevant to his tangential tirade. "And when she found out, I wasn't allowed out, except for school, until April. Even when it was sunny outside."


Utter astonishment replaces the scowl, Tathar's mouth and eyes growing rounder and rounder as she listens. "You stayed inside? ALL the time?" she asks at last. "Did.. did she lock you in?" Fascination wars with horror in her voice. "I would have climbed out the window."

Dark brown eyes flicker towards the lady and then back again. And a look of gleeful amusement tugs at her lips. "He threw mudballs at your house? He must not be as stuffy as he looks then." She gives a little hop, by chance or design not landing in a puddle nor indeed splashing anyone at all and grins widely at the Wilbert. "Did you truly?"


"Well," concedes the little man with a cough, "I was a little younger than you. But when it rained and snowed and was very cold, she was afraid I would get sick if I went outside too often, so I had to stay under the roof. I would have fallen if I had tried to climb out a window." Wilbert seems truly convinced of his stories of childhood though looking at him, that must have been several decades ago. His wife, however, seems equally sure of her story. "*He* didn't throw any mud. It was only the group of friends he had. I was watching them from inside." No comment follows that about Wilbert being stuffy.


"Oh." Tathar sounds a little disappointed. Then with a somewhat kindly, pitying air, she adds, "You wouldn't have fallen. I never fall. It is very easy. Although," eyes that scan him up and down linger a little on his greying hair. "Perhaps you shouldn't try it now." A quick dubious look from under dark eyelashes is all the response she gives the woman.


"Dear, your hair is soaked," Anabel points out, though by this time, Wilbert seems to have noticed. Indeed, all his clothes are sopping wet, and his curly hair hangs limply and drips. The little man grimaces at this observation. "Of course it is. It's been that way ever since I walked under our eaves when we left home." He pauses, then says, "And you'll be late for your gathering if we don't hurry." He gives a quick nod to the girl in the street and then the two continue toward the center of time. Mrs. Thistlewool leaves with one last word of advice: "Ask your mother to buy you a good pair of boots, and you can go romping in the field so you don't splash anyone in the streets." Was that a wink the woman gave just before departing?


Tathar watches after the two older people for several minutes before dismissing them from her mind and returning to her preferred method of progress. Several outraged cries follow her down the street, making it rather easy to tell where she has gone.