[Kransha]

A slithering beam of sunlight, bearing down through the bare slivers between wooden planks in the stable managed to pry open Toby’s single eyelid. The hobbit’s opened lid plastered closed in an instant, snapping as a trap would on a mouse. Slowly, but with a sluggish and lackadaisical sureness, the two heavy bulbs opened up, revealing beneath their wrinkled cloak a pair of disillusioned grayish orbs, watery and flanked beneath by bags of tinted red that told a tale of weariness and woe. With painful velocity, the inner workings and gears of Toby Hornblower’s brain began working as his lost faculties returned reluctantly to him.

Last night was still floating around in the murky ocean of his befuddled mind. He remembered, only fleetingly, his giving of the eleven…or was it ten, gold pieces to Miss Aman as a gift. He tried vaguely to reminisce, but found his mental and physical vision blurred as he tried to get up and failed, crumbling like so much jelly into a quivering mass covered in hay. He thought back, piecing together the events like a shattered jigsaw puzzle. He remembered the unfortunate incident in which a canine belonging to some partygoer was injured rather grievously. There was a deal of fuss made over it, which Toby and Snaveling saw when the two of them, dead drunk and stumbling with a luminous green aura of negative splendor dripping from them, had headed towards the inn stables. There were other incidents of gossip-worthy remembrance, but none that could be formed as moving images in Toby’s head. The hobbit grimaced mentally as he remembered the amount of alcohol he’d imbibed during the lengthy and lavish gala event yesterday eve.

Gradually, Toby’s stupor evacuated somewhat. The hobbit pushed himself miserably up into a sitting position, shaking his head and watching clinging strands of hay fly off his dangling brown and gray hair. He managed to shove his weak, shoeless legs beneath him and use them like great pliers to extract himself from the tawny mess of material. Yawning deeply, he became aware of a resilient and frustratingly consistent drumbeat that seemed to hammer against his cranium. The hangover was apparent, as Tobias immediately regretted every ill-aimed drop of ale from the night’s festivities. The pounding echoed more firmly, amplified now that the Fallohide hobbit was awake. Toby, beginning to flail his arms frantically to steady his unsteady balance, Tobias managed to bumble onto his feet, sliding with what could not be called agility out of the straw pile he was in, and onto the more solid, dirt ground. A nearby horse’s gaze caught his, followed by a disapproving whinny which jarred Toby’s failing senses.

Snorting indignantly, Toby examined himself thoroughly, despite the pang resounding in thunderous succession in his head’s empty halls, however empty they were. He smelled a vile smile, which permeated the air just around him. A veiled odor was dripping off his rustic-colored waistcoat and his greasy, unclean hands with their rough patches of skin soaked in an adhesive sensation from the previous night. Toby shook his two appendages over the hay, picking string of gathered dirt from the narrow niche between his jagged nails and scraggly fingers. He began walking, exercising his legs and pulling them up and down at a jogging pace as he tried to ignore the hangover. As he passed the great piles of hay and varying stalls, more horses perked up and protested the hobbit’s presence, though this particular Halfling didn’t seem to care. Toby knew the smell that surrounded him like a haze of thick smog was contrbuted to by his garb. Having brought no clothing change to the Green Dragon Inn, Toby hadn't changed his rust-brown waistcoat, evergreen breeches, or gaudy, limegreen, sequined vest in weeks. That vest, which he prized, was now bleached by dirt, dust, soot, and other debris that was magnetically attracted to it. Toby scowled again as he headed forward doggedly.

Still at a developing pace, Toby emerged from the stable and stretched, a full yawn punching out of his mouth where at had been waiting, followed by a walloping burp that had waited all night to be emitted by the previously drunk Shire resident. Toby coughed, recovering his ragged breath and forcing the wriggling frog from his throat as he gazed up, with a merry, if not slightly discomposed look gleaming in his one clearer eye. The beams freshly bathed him, soaking his shadow silhouette and blazoning it against the dull brown of the wooden stable. Letting a smile flicker over his soured lips, Tobias Hornblower strolled jollily towards the inn itself, whistling a merry tune to himself, which carried on the cool wind.

Galadel and Snaveling where within, in the Common Room, which was in severe disarray. Everything was arranged villainously in the order it should not have been. Toby had an inner sense of aesthetics, and this made his already wrenching stomach jump for some reason. He knew he was just overreacting because of the needed energy he had to vent, since he normally didn’t care how a room looked. Toby nodded an acknowledging nod to the elf and man, who had dutifully busied themselves with helping the long and tiresome process of cleaning. Most people seemed to be assisting in some way, no matter how miniscule or unnoticed in its unimportance. Toby figured he might lend a helping hand as well…a little bit later, that is.

Toby wasted no time in losing sight of the goals he’d been set on the previous sight when an enticing smell grabbed him by the collar and hauled him towards the kitchen. Shortly, beneath the noses of the few folk who’d awakened, Toby had easily appropriated (all in legal right, of course) a fully splendiferous platter splotched with the dappled, sweet-scented morning goodness of steaming ham, waiting to be eaten as eagerly as the eater to eat it. Toby sat himself down ceremoniously and prepared to plunge right in.