sorry it took so long wc: 353
The young man woke in his hut with a start. His breathing was shallow, his throat hoarse, and eyes wide. STRIDER! screamed the man. He was terribly tormented, scrambling upwards, without his usual clothes, and running bare and confused out of his home. His direction was straight for the stables. As fast as he could, he pelted his paws on the ground until he swung open the barn door, and he tumbled inside Strider’s stall headfirst. Strider… Frodo mumbled, scratching his head with bleary eyes to see the great white stallion peering down at his flustered master. The young luperci scrambled to his feet, mouth wide open. Strider was fine. He wasn’t dead. Not like his dream. Yes, dream…or nightmare. It had all been a horrible nightmare. How could Frodo have been so stupid? Oh, Strider… he cried, leaning up on tiptoes to hug the horse tightly. Frodo would never let the horse die, he should have known it was a dream straight away.
The man went through his normal morning duties of feeding his horse; and the communal horses as well, as it seemed he was the only one that really visited the stables that often. He brushed Strider down, let the horse out to graze in the field, and then marched back to his hut. The first thing he did was put on a clean shirt, washed in the river the previous day, and wrapped his cloak around his shoulders. There. He didn’t seem that bare anymore. The luperci shouldered his sheath of arrows and hung on to his bow as he marched back outside again, walking round the village with no particular aim. Usually he would go hunting, but today it was too sunny and bright for him to go too early; he’d be sweating all the way through and the prey would scent him from a mile away. So he sat down on a tree stump in the middle of the village, set his bow half-way on the floor, and then started oiling the weapon, washing the wood and shining it until it sparkled.
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