“Boy!” shouted a voice, rousing the child from his nap. The warm sun and the creaking cart and the sounds of the horse had lulled him to sleep. It was a big day, for some reason, he couldn’t remember. He sleepily rubbed his eyes and stretched. He had left home with his father for something; waking up much earlier than normal. Because it was such a long trip, his father had let him slip into the back of the cart and lay down in what little cramped space remained between the goods.
“Boy!” his father called again. “You up yet?” The sound the sleepy child uttered, in response, wouldn’t have been recognizable as speech to any civilized race on Middle Earth. “Oh aye? Is that so?” A grunt from the child this time. It had been a perfectly lovely nap. “I just thought you’d like to know, when we come over this rise, you can just barely begin to see it in the distance” A puzzled expression crossed the boy’s face. He stood up and began climbing up and over into the seat.
“See what?” said the boy, suppressing a yawn as he settled into the space next to his father.
“I trust it was a good nap, then; you’ve already forgotten where we're going?” He chuckled to himself and then pointed, “Dale.”
The little boy gasped as it all came flooding back. His father left their small holding once or twice a year to go into the city, and he was just now old enough to be allowed on this important journey. “Do you think we’ll see a dwarf?” Asked the child excitedly.
“I’d be surprised if we didn’t. It's their mountain, after all.”
The boy and his father kept talking as the cart slowly made its way down into the valley and toward the city beyond.
