[color=0072bc]”Gandalf...Firecracker?”[/color] said the wizard, turning towards the hobbit, bearing a serious inqusitive look of a general scolding a disobedient footman. [color=0072bc]”They call him Gandalf the Firecracker now?!”[/color] He then laughed heartily until he choked, then coughed to clear his throat. [color=0072bc]”Oh, Mithrandir,  what else should we expect of you... He does make 'em good, doesn't he?”[/color] he asked the hobbit, locking his eyes with hers, remembering how Gandalf spoke well of the little folk. He would have his opinion on his mind. Of course, he had seen Ellaryn before, 'spied' on her, and he knew her to be one of a kind -- the kind that every company needs. He sat his old bones down on a chair, slowly, laying his staff onto his lap. The pipe was fuming again.

[color=0072bc]”See, they have sharp ears,”[/color] he says in a voice suddenly clear, or too clear one might say, for a mortal.  Poitning the head of the staff at Calariel, he says:[color=0072bc] ”I can see Rivendell on your cheek, Calariel. I have many names, but your folk call me Ofnir, which is the name you might prefer over all the others. And as for you, master dwarf,”[/color] he adds, [color=0072bc]”we will have to allow some creativity, for no dwarf has yet given me a nickname in their tongue. I am looking forward to hearing one you might come up with, though!”[/color]

[color=0072bc]”And you, Aelin,”[/color] he says through a circle of smoke, [color=0072bc]”have a keen eye as well as ear. Yes, I am one of the blue.”[/color] He pulls his cloak aside revealing a bit more of his tattered blue robes underneath. [color=0072bc]”And don't ask... I don't know where the other one may be.”[/color] Ofnir looks at the floor. For a moment, the dust underneath their feet seems to him at once the burning sand and green vast steppe of the east, where he once travelled, but the vision passes, and he returns to his addiction -- the puffing of weed -- with an obvious sadness in his eye.