Count Your Chickens (December 3009) [Calon]

Mid-afternoon sun slanted through the tall maple and linden, grey and leafless for the season. A strong wind was blowing in from the sea, and the weather was damp and chill enough that Narbeleth expected a frost to settle in during the night. She knew without a doubt she would wish to rise before the dawn and see the sparkle and sheen upon the world. The splendor of a frosty day. There were fewer in Belfalas than there had been in Minas Tirith, and she could not wait to walk barefoot over the dried grasses and watch her footprints melt it away on touch.

Beleth was walking back from a farm on the opposite side of Dol Amroth. It had been a trek of some miles, though the woman had gone on foot for obvious reasons. A borrowed cart was being pulled along behind her, stacked with two wooden cages; inside both, a mass of feathers which squawked at every bounce of the wheels.

“Cal, did you finish the nesting boxes?” Beleth called out as she came nearer the house. The hound pups came running up at the sound of her voice as soon as she crossed over the footbridge leading from the spring where they fetched their water, and the wheels of the cart creaked and bumped over the wooden slats. She dragged the cart until she had made it all the way to the hen coop. Calon had been working away the afternoon with the finishing touches of roosts and nesting boxes. As soon as they had moved in to their little home they knew they would need add one great addition right away; a hen coop.

They would not be them without a hen coop. Their first chance meeting had taken place all for the sake of a loose hen in the streets of Minas Tirith, and it was never to be forgotten.

“My hen herder...” Beleth hummed the moment she saw her ocean eyed young husband, and she settled the rolling squawk wagon down to run and greet him the proper way before she flitted back to her cart.

“The farmer laughed at me when I said I'd carry the crates on my back, and told me I could borrow the cart if you'd fix up that squeaky wheel for him. I said I supposed it wouldn't be too much trouble, I hope you don't mind. I'll take it back to him tomorrow if you have the time today. Glad I didn't carry them though; I'd be a mess! I'm a mess already. One got loose on the way and I had to pull off my apron and catch her under it in a culvert. I'm so angry, I could cook her into a pie right now.”

She eyed the dusty orange hen with muddied feathers hunkered in the corner of one of the crates. Her boots were soaked, and her dress damp from the knees down. The apron she once more had about her, had the muddy print of hen feet and flapping wings upon it.

“Look at all the feathers from this bunch. Enough to make a pillow and we haven't even needed to pluck one yet. And that rooster, I may regret him already; he crowed the whole walk. I thought they only crowed at dawn, Cal? I suppose we'll have no trouble waking in the morning with him around. The trouble will be when we've stayed up all night and wish to sleep in… he'll be crowing in our window, like your Mother at dawn, 'Do not waste the day, dears!' They might be more trouble than they're worth!”

Beleth finally stilled her chattering for a moment to move the cart to a place nearer the coop, where it would not roll, and pull the two wooden cages out to settle on the ground. The first was tied with the leather that had once held Beleth's hair back. Once the incessant flapping had broken the latch and the hen had made her run for it; she'd needed to take her hair down to secure it shut again.

“I know I said eight… but...” she bit her lip, looking back to the feathered bunch. “Well, the way they looked at me, I just could not stand it. Their beady little eyes… And who ever doesn't lay eggs is going to be turned into a pie. I brought twelve… but we certainly won't be keeping all of them. Do you hear that, you fluttering fools?”

She stood, lips turned downward in a frown, and hands on her hips, and the rooster gave another crow.

“Well, I didn't mean you. Have to keep you if we want to have any babies about in the spring. You're the pie maker.” She pointed at the long tailed fellow, and then looked back to Calon, grin covering her rosy cheeks once more. As angry as she was pretending to be, Beleth was actually quite delighted. She had been raised in the White City, in the high sixth tier, where the upper-class gentleman and ladies did not raise hens in their back yards, nor have hounds trailing about their feet. Where one always need wear shoes if they were going outside. Beleth was already pulling off her muddy boots to cast them aside til she had a moment to clean them. The cool earth was where her feet loved to step and dance about.

“I'll show you my favorite already. She was the sweetest. Walked right up and about hopped into the cart to come with me. She told me she wants a pretty new nesting box, and I told her my husband was making one, and stuffing it with straw this very afternoon, so not to fear. And then she told me she was going to lay some pretty brown eggs for us, and if she wanted us too, she'd be broody right on them and hatch the chicks for all the rest of them. All for a bit of corn. What do you think?”

Beleth opened the crate and pulled out a speckled black and white hen. She made no fuss, only looked about here and there, as if searching already for her nesting box, making a soft clucking sound all the while.

“Look at her, Cal!” she giggled, and reached up to set the bird right upon the man's shoulder. She sat down as if upon a roost, still lightly clucking. “I can't tell if she's faithful or stupid. But I've named her Glavril.” Babbler.


Eventually the chicken took a little hop and a flap and landed on the ground, still clucking away and making a slow stroll toward the hen coop, moving straight inside to inspect. The pups stood shock still; even their tails making no wag as they watched the new resident make herself at home.

“I don't know what to call the rest,” she shook her head. “This sorry lot of feathers. They all need names though, so I know which one to scold,” she sighed, standing thoughtfully still for a moment as she studied them, then smiled again. “You name the next!” she declared. “You're the master herder, after all.”