After the harrowing events of August, in the year of 1721 (recounted earlier, much to my dismay, in a saga entitled The Lost Ones), the transition from Summer to Fall in our village of Thimble Down was otherwise blissful.
Once the heat had dissipated, the clambering roses returned as resplendent as ever, while the tomatoes and eggplant reached their zeniths, along with squash, beans, radishes, pink and white cleome, and carpets of marigolds.
As usual, the folk in the village were bustling about, preparing for the inevitability of Winter and storing up as much of their garden offerings as possible. They were jarring, bottling, pickling, and fermenting by the hour, as well as saving finer examples of their horticultural handiwork for the upcoming Harvest Faire, held each year on the third Saturday of October.
Yet by the end of that month, things had gone awry … again. Instead of quiet, charming Thimble Down, our small hamlet had descended into the chaos of industry and villainous actions. A Halfling moved into the village and brought with him a boisterous business: a large smeltery that specialized in the heating and fusing of metals and ores as well as the fabrication of specialized alloys. It was all very complex and profitable, and brought with it the need for many workers, which was good news for some.
Yet for others, the forge’s smoky, smelly discharge was repellent and not in keeping with the gentle ways of our community. And thus the two sides came to a clash—and what a thunderclap it was—like two mountain rams butting heads in combat.
In addition to this, there were other matters that proved vexing: an unhealthy miasma spread through the village, bringing sickness and a rash of strange burglaries. There was also a political contest in progress, a rather uncivil one. All this, plus the arrival of strange visitors from the North made the Autumn of 1721, A.B. a wholly irksome and dark period.
Truly, at various points one could not say whether Thimble Down as we knew it would continue from one day to the next. We seemed forever—each and every day—on the verge of catastrophe.
And those were the good days.
Yours in literary kinship,
Mr. Bedminster Shoe, scribe, Ret.
May 21, 1774, A.B.*
[*After Borgo, the first Halfling King]