User:Belsaia/en/Seburga/story

	Master of Storytelling honorary title bestowed by Oakheart on May 25, 2021

~ Grandma tells ~

ello, I am Seburga, the grandmother of Sebranda and Sebohra and Sebylla's great aunt. A few years ago I moved from the Shire to Bree. My beloved husband had passed away some years before and the farm was getting to be too much for me. So I sold it for a good price to the Birkenheim family and moved to Bree into the old smial of my uncle – from the Bolger side. To this hereditary uncle I had contact only in the early childhood, there we were frequent visitors and he always played with me. When I got older he moved to Bree and the contact kind of fell asleep. But because he had a quarrel with his family and wanted to get one over on them, he made me the sole heir to the Smial at Bree-hill.

It's a spacious den with a big kitchen, dining room, four bedrooms facing the garden, and plenty of storage facing the hillside. Not as big as Bag-End. Of course not! (Bilbo once invited me to his home in our youth, so I know what it looks like there). But spacious enough to be too big for an old single woman. That's why I took in my two granddaughters from Staddle. First, the smial of my Marlutar and his wife is not so big that two girls in the twiens get along there without quarrel and then I like to have some life in the house. Bree is thanks to the city guard also safe for us Hobbits so that the two can also go alone to the market. I find it a little harder to carry the whole purchase for my soup home alone. It is practical to have young roommates in the house who can take over.

But because one of the beautiful rooms was still empty, and perhaps also because two Twiens were outgrowing their grandmother, I wrote a long letter to the son of my brother-in-law Drogo, in which I listed the advantages for all concerned if he sent his daughter Sebylla – my grandniece – to me in Bree. My arguments must have convinced him in the end. A few months later, Sebylla moved into the spare room and things actually became more relaxed. Not only did the girls immediately get along splendidly, Sebylla had a good suggestion to keep the girls from too much fluff in their free time: We made music together!

What started as house music to pass the time – the Silvertistle clan has always been musical – got better and better with time and we then also played in front of an audience now and then. The first public performances we had at the stone, left in front of the ›Prancing Pony‹. At that time I was asked again and again what the name of the band was and who the bandleader was (at that time we were still a purely female quartet). At some point I simply said that my niece Sebylla leads the band and that we are 'The Silver Thistles'. And that's how it stayed. That was some years ago and since then my son, the Marlutar, has joined the band and today we play every second Tuesday in Bree in front of the ›Prancing Pony‹. The people seem to enjoy it and we always get a few pieces of silver slipped to us by Butterbur, because there is a lot of drinking on these evenings. Also, the girls are much more balanced and don't get into so much mischief anymore. Well, they are already well-known personalities in Bree and the Shire. We have already given really big concerts. I hope this doesn't go to their heads. But then I'm still here!

But that's enough now; I've talked far too much again. I have to take care of the food, because as an old hobbitic proverb says: melodious sounds only come from a full stomach.