Bramble Pricklebottom of Michel Delving, Shire, Bree-land
May 5, 2018 20:34:44 GMT -5
Post by Bramble Pricklebottom on May 5, 2018 20:34:44 GMT -5
.The Facade.
Character Name: Bramble Pricklebottom
Name Meaning: Brambles grow blackberries, which Bramble’s mother enjoyed in all forms while carrying her. It’s unfortunate that Bramble herself is allergic to them.
Age: 35.
Date of Birth: Lithe of SR 1375 - (June of 2975 TA)
Race: Hobbit.
Residence: Michel Delving, The Shire, Bree-land.
Profession: Currently, Bramble is titled “Junior Curator of the Mathom-house”, though it merely is a way for her to be a professional hoarder.
Appearance: Bramble is a young hobbit, youthful light in her eyes and round, rosy cheeks. She has brown hair, red-hued in direct sun much like the mulch of gardens in Michel Delving. Like all hobbits, she is soft in shape, round hips and full figure. She stands around 2'7" tall, and has thick curls upon the top of her feet that match in color to the soft ones upon her head. She wears no shoes, for like others of her kind she has thick, leathery soles upon them naturally.
She is often mistaken for Oxlip, for they are identical in appearance. However, unlike Oxlip, Bramble's wardrobe clings well to dark, earthy colors. Oxlip, perhaps due to the fact she finds her name atrocious, prefers bright colors and updated fashions, making her easy to spot at almost any social occasion.
Personality: Like all hobbits, Bramble is a pleasant sort, content within the borders of the Shire and never desiring to travel beyond them. She embraces and enjoys her six square meals a day, and has a partiality to the well-cultivated gardens of the Shire. She is well-sound in her family’s genealogies and histories (as told by Harlan, her father).
Unlike some hobbits, however, Bramble finds items themselves to be fascinating. This, in and of itself, is not entirely odd for her people, though the hint of curiosity she carries about things, sometimes foreign things, things from the Big Folk or dwarves, has labeled her a slight bit Tookish by some of the halflings of the Delving.
This of course is ridiculous, for she has no ounce of Took in her—and she reminds folk of it whenever the subject is brought up to her directly.
She dislikes all things blackberry, finding herself allergic. However, often she is gifted jams and pies by those who think it is “sweet” and “nice” that it matches her name.
She is close to her sister, Oxlip, in a way that is not entirely based on shared interests. Where Bramble herself is a bit of a hoarder of things that could very well be part of her curiosities at the Mathom House, Oxlip has a rather extensive collection of hats and dresses. Bramble is loyal to her family, however, and has pride as a Pricklebottom, greater now as she is of age and no longer teased.
While her name is strange amongst hobbit-folk, she is immensely thankful her sister was the one who got the odder of the names. Bramble suits her just fine.
.The Blood.
Patriarch of the Family:
Tobold "Pappy" Pricklebottom, "grandfather". 95. While Pappy Pricklebottom is not directly Bramble's grandfather himself, he is the younger brother of the late Erling Pricklebottom, her grandfather. Despite this, all of the family refers to him as "Grandfather". He is the oldest Pricklebottom living in the home in Michel Delving. Rather grumpy, and taken with talking histories and pipeweed, and the proper way to care for roses.
Parents:
Harlan Pricklebottom, father. 78.
Rosalind Whitfoot , mother. 73.
Sibling(s):
Oxlip Pricklebottom, twin sister. 35.
Other Family:
Will Whitfoot, cousin on her mother's side. Mayor of Michel Delving. Fattest hobbit in the Westfarthing.
Hugo III Pricklebottom, uncle on her father's side. 85.
Peridot Roper-Pricklebottom, aunt on her father's side. 84. Wife of Hugo.
Hamming "Ham" Pricklebottom, cousin on her father's side. 44. Son of Hugo and Peridot.
Primrose Pricklebottom, cousin on her father's side, 39. Daughter of Hugo and Peridot.
Estella Pricklebottom-Cotton, cousin on her father's side. 51. Daughter of Pappy Pricklebottom.
Griffo Cotton, cousin by marriage on her father's side. 53. Husband to Estella.
Spouse: None.
Children: None.
History:
To hear Harlan tell it, the Pricklebottoms are a proud line of hobbits that have lived in the Westfarthing for generations. They got their start out in the farmlands, making their living by the cultivation of Longbottom Leaf (a plant tamed by Tobold Hornblower by help of the Pricklebottoms) and roses. They made a comfortable enough living to move to the Michel Delving to live amongst the fancier folk, but they have never forgotten what it means to be a Pricklebottom!
In truth, Bramble is unsure her family had anything to do with Longbottom Leaf other than smoking it.
The Pricklebottoms now are neither wealthy, nor destitute, finding their home a fine space above ground with a sod and grass roof. They did migrate to the Michel Delving from the bordering farmlands many generations ago, when Bramble's great-great-great grandmother, Thornapple Pricklebottom, told her husband, Hugo I, that she no longer wished to wash farm-dirt from her clothes. He sold the farm within the week to a plucky hobbit of the Noakes family, and made for the city (though, not without transplanting the prize rosebush of the family alongside them).
Now the Pricklebottoms work as gardeners and stone-layers. No family can grow a better rose bush--or at least that is what a hobbit is sure to have heard from Harlan himself. So beautiful were Harlan's roses, in fact, that he caught the eye of the youngest daughter of the Whitfoot family he tended. Rosalind was the one who initiated relations with Harlan first, for so great was the Whitfoot family that Rosalind herself was often forgotten amidst her plethora of siblings and cousins. They were married, for Harlan was quickly enamored by the boldness of the woman and found her name fitting of his family, and Rosalind was happy to leave the plush burrow of the Whitfoot family for the proud home of the Pricklebottoms.
Rosalind took well to the attention--she was of greater blood than any other member of the family--and settled in nicely, surreptitiously spending family funds to help decorate the brick home to be "worthy of the family that dwells within". It was often done so stealthily that it might be weeks before someone walked by and actually noticed the swapped curtains, or the change of chests by the entry.
After marriage, it did not take long for Rosalind and Harlan to start their family. Will Whitfoot, the fattest hobbit in the Westfarthing, had competition during the time Rosalind was pregnant. She was content to sit in the great arm chair by the fire, feet raised upon the rest, and eat her blackberries and breads with blackberry jams while looking at the pretty golden oxlip flowers her husband brought her fresh nearly daily.
Harlan wished to have a daughter named Rose, for great are the roses of the Pricklebottoms, though Rosalind told him that she wished for a son, and declared outright in great Whitfoot stubbornness that no child of hers would ever be able to be forgotten by such common names. Harlan was not so certain he would not be able to convince his lovely wife to change her mind when the time came they had a daughter, a feat that turned out to be far closer than either of the hobbits realized. When the time came for birth, the midwife was as surprised as Rosalind and Harlan that it was not one son that was born: it was two daughters.
Harlan thought this a wonderful stroke of luck, for one daughter would surely be able to be named Rose, as he would like, and the other could be named by whatever name his wife would wish. However, when the midwife handed him his first daughter, she announced quite definitively, "This is Bramble, and your wife has Oxlip." Harlan tried for a few days to change her mind, but Rosalind was quick to add her beloved bundles--with their proper names--to the family genealogies of the Whitfoots and Pricklebottoms alike, and Harlan soon gave up, finding his daughters perfect beyond their names.
Identical twin girl hobbits, it turned out, were hard to tell apart. Rosalind's idea that they be dressed in matching clothes was short-lived, as Harlan and the rest of the proud Pricklebottoms, could not tell the children apart. Dressing them differently, however, proved equally as difficult for them, for they could not remember if Bramble was the babe in green or if perhaps she was meant to be the one in lilac. Bramble is unsure, therefore, if she was meant to be Bramble Pricklebottom or Oxlip Pricklebottom. She does, however, think she has made out the best in the end, and has never once pressed the matter.
As Rosalind had intended, both Bramble and Oxlip stood out for their names. The little hobbit children thought them laughing stocks, however, and as such, Bramble for a time became cripplingly shy and nervous to spend a lot of time with those hobbits that were close to her age. Oxlip, however, bloomed like the flower she was named for. She decided that if her name was going to be memorable, she would work hard to make sure it was remembered for her own doing, and not because Oxlip was named, well, Oxlip.
So it was the two sisters began to diverge in interests. Oxlip began to take great joy from sitting to tea with the young hobbits of the Delving, and Bramble began to look for companionship in objects instead. She spent a lot of time at the Mathom House, looking at the strange and useless objects collected there, and speaking with the curator as to why all those things were, and where they had come from. Despite the fact she was not in the least way Tookish--there was no drop of their blood in her!--she did have a particular fascination with the set of Mithril rings that Bilbo had kept in the Mathom-house until his departure in S.R. 1401.
She began working in the Mathom-house when she was 30, about three years before she came of age. Bramble's knowledge of all the items in the museum made her a natural choice when the curator himself began to feel stretched, like butter over too much bread, and needed the help. She has happily worked there ever since, finding the only sort of adventure she needs that which comes in stories and handling the mathoms of the house.
The halls of the Pricklebottoms are full to bursting of items, mathoms given out at birthdays that the family does not let go. They are known for the mathom giving at their birthdays, for they have access to many strange and curious things that might find their way into a hobbit's hand for re-gifting later. However, among these items of seemingly minimum import, the Pricklebottoms have amassed a fair share of things by Bramble's collecting. Among these items is a single silver spoon that Bramble received from someone who collected it from the Party of Special Magnificence thrown by Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins in the special tent where he disappeared in a burst of smoke. This is her most prized acquisition.
While the halls of her home are piled high, Bramble knows precisely where all things are inside, and knows their stories the same as she knows of her collections in the Mathom-house. If you wish for long bouts of conversation where you might be bored unto sleep, Bramble is but a question away from assisting.
She lives yet in the house of the Pricklebottoms, though can often be found amongst the mathoms at the museum. In truth, she lives a simple life; yet strange the days have grown, and every day there seems to be words of elves and dwarf upon the border, passing through toward the West. Bramble is unsure what, precisely, is going on beyond the borders, but it is probably wise to keep her nose out of trouble. Otherwise, trouble will come to you.