Back upstairs, Razzles sat forlornly on the rumpled sheets, wiping his face and wondering why it had gone suddenly quieter. Why did he feel so miserable? He was normally such a cheery soul. Why did that renling have to be so rude to Norris? She was only being hospitable, wasn't she? He gazed about himself glumly, his heavy brows low and wrinkled: a scented jar with coloured, dried flowers and leaves; a small china ornament in the shape of a fawn; a painting of some impossibly stacked boulders; a decorative make-up box; Grimmbros’ jacket somewhat drained of colour hanging on a hook. Razzles grimaced more thoroughly and then slid off the bed onto the floor.

He mooched round the room scowling at the assorted knick-knacks and other cheerily pointless ephemera, not admitting to himself what was really luring him. Next to Grimmbros' jacket was a hat of some sort, it looked new and had a bright, gleaming yellow bead stitched to each of its three corners. He made a show of studying the hat, yet his feet were leading him past it.

“She’s alright, she’s made a hat for Grimmbo and everything. Stupid renling.” Knocking it onto the floor, Razzles shuffled past the hat to the box of make-up sitting on a cabinet. "Stupid hat," he grumbled, "Stupid bridge." The effects of the jam were beginning to wear thin as his lungs took in more air. "Stupid oafe," he muttered, "Half-oafe, half-ellingphant!" This thought brought a bit of fresh verve back to his demeanour and he almost brightened. “Half-oafe, half... no!” She wasn't stupid, she had taken them in. They should be grateful. The knohm’s amusement turned once more to glum introspection. He couldn’t help himself..."

Fürgůïn had made it to the sink and was systematically flinging assorted crockery at Ebore who batted each piece away deftly, shattering it around an increasingly irate Norris. Norris tried once to peer around Ebore's shoulder and caught a saucer on the eyebrow. Seeing the awful couple advancing, Fürgůïn scampered up the kitchen curtains and onto the pelmet.

"Get him down you big green pantywaist!" Norris demanded, causing Ebore to jump and then to cast an injured glance at Norris.

"I am!" he protested, "Chair, gimme the chair!" Norris slapped the back of his head and reached for the nearest chair.

Razzles absently registered the commotion below, wincing at the raucous cacophony of crashing and banging. "That ungrateful renling just doesn't appreciate when someone’s trying to help," he thought, opening the lid and glumly eyeing the peculiar assortment of Norris’ beautifying agents within.

“He's wrecking poor old Aunty Norris' home! Who does he think he is? Breaking stuff and hiding stuff in his smelly cloak. Stuff with my name on it and maps.”

There came another crash from downstairs making Razzles scowl more deeply into his beard and unconsciously select the most garish item in the box.

Grimmbros, meanwhile had descended below the main level of the bridge into a gloomy room cluttered with all sorts of junk. He rubbed his stubbly chin and peered around for aunty's walloping stick, whatever that was. He hardly cared, but somehow he felt compelled to find it. Grumpily he eventually gave up and sat down on a box to brood, but a small, nervous voice issued from within when his weary posterior darkened its surface.

"Oh, don't. Leave me alone, or at least eat me! If you can’t get on with her at least stop taking it out on me!"

This unexpected plea made Grimm falter and listlessly reposition himself to glower down at the offending container. A simple catch held it shut. Grimmbros flicked it open to reveal a cowering field elbh, his arms held up before his face warding off impending danger. This was unexpected. His usual eloquence lost and stumbling in the mists of a drugged stupor, the urgh-bane managed, "What you up to, down here in a wooden crate?"

The elbh peeped around his upheld arms and whispered aghast, “Grimmbros Darktale Woeweaver? The chicken itching champ?"

Grimmbros reeled backward under the influence of Norris' pestilential preserve and flopped against the wall. "What of it? And I’m not itching, I’m scratching. Scratching chimp - I mean scritching champ - awwww, you know..."

"Mr Grimmbros, what's become of you? Consorting with oaves and drinking too by the looks of you? How you’ve fallen!"

Grimmbros sniffed, still wondering where this stupid stick might be.

"What are you doing sir?” the elbh asked.

“Looking for something.” Grimmbros stared despondently down at the small elbh, he was unusually tired and sad.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Mr Grimm sir, what's become of you? Are you an oafe doter? This isn’t the Mr. Grimm I remember," remarked the elbh again. Grimmbros sniffed a little more and turned away to a dark corner where he stood almost motionless, his brows knitted, deep in thought. Perhaps he was secretly hoping that the little field elbh would just go away, leave him to his misery.

“Mr Grimmbros, I know you’re listening. I know you shouldn’t be here. What’s become of you, sir?”

“It’s complicated,” the big urgh-bane admitted. “It never used to be... No one cares who wallops who.”

“It always is in the end, but that’s where you’re different from the rest of us. You are a champion and champions always find a way. You can rise above this, sir. I know you can. I know you are more than this.”

Grimmbros felt the sincerity of the little elbh and was stirred deep within at some unknown level.

“Wouldn’t understand,” he breathed. “Life’s not like being a champion... what’s the use? I just want to rest. Back to myself in a day or two. Can’t find the stick to wallop my ‘friends’. Gunna go back up and go to bed.”

“What’s that about your friends? You won’t be back to yourself in a day or two. She won’t let you. You must do something - now! Your friends - what’s happening with your friends? Please, Mr Grimm sir, you have to fight this. You have to rise above it. You have to...”

“Friends? Wallop! What friends? I got no friends. Best have no friends, all they do is let you down.”

The disgruntled urgh-bane gave a heavy ‘humph’ and made for the door back up to the bridge above.

In the kitchen upstairs, the frantic renling could see Ebore placing a chair ready to drag him down from his precarious perch above the sink. Fürgůïn had no desire to see how that worked out. Gathering all his strength, he leapt from the pelmet onto a small wooden shelf fixed high on the wall. To his dismay the shelf wasn't as well fixed as it had appeared and it gave way under his weight, landing with a clatter just out of reach of Ebore. The contents of the shelf spilt onto the floor - jars, small bottles and phials full of, of, of... what was that stuff? Jam? There was no time to investigate, Norris was already lunging forward and Ebore was twisting to get a better angle. Fürgůïn clutched desperately for whatever item came to hand, flinging it with all his might at the descending face of Norris.

The small glass bottle he had chanced upon wedged into one cavernous nostril causing the half-oafe to stagger backwards. Rolling over, he snatched up another item, smashing it onto Ebore's grasping hand, covering it with a deep orange goo. For a split second the oafe just grinned and made to flick the stuff off, but then he hesitated, sniffing the air. "What jar was that?" he demanded, stamping one rather fungus-damaged green foot onto the surprised renling. "Quick - what was it?"

Fürgůïn wriggled under the firmly placed, malodorous foot and tried to get a glimpse of what was left of the hand-written label on the broken jar. "It says ‘Marmalade of Misery’."

"Oh no," moaned the oafe, "Not misery, ohhhh, that's all I need!" Ebore looked utterly fed up, as if the confounded confiture was already having effect and slumped backward against a wall. That was all Fürgůïn needed, he was on his feet instantly and dashing past Norris who was trying to blow her nose onto a curtain. Seeing a new possibility, he stopped briefly, leapt up at Norris and smacked her hard on the side of the nostril, cracking the wedged bottle and releasing its unknown contents.

Then the half-oafe responded with an almighty kick of her fat foot that caught Fürgůïn unexpectedly and sent him flying off across the tea table. Fürgůïn slumped for a moment, stunned by the force of his landing. He was aware of a moody, green presence moving past him and then a bigger, darker shadow looming over him from behind. The befuddled renling shook his head, blinked and became conscious of Ebore leering at him, his bald head glinting in the winter sunlight, standing beside an open window, holding the curtain to one side. Briefly, he wondered where his friends were. And then it came: the most monumental of kicks up the backside. Fürgůïn was airborne and hurtling out of the bridge, fully expecting to plummet into the icy depths of the river. Norris' fat, green foot, however, carried more force than that and the landing was mercifully cushioned by the thick snow of the river bank.

An image passed fleetingly through the renling's mind, one of leaping to his feet, striding back into that squalid excuse for a bridge and... and… Instead, he just rolled over and ached in the numbing blanket of cold whiteness. Confusing thoughts were fighting for dominance and his brain was clouding over, the darkness inside his skull unlit for a while by any brightness of optimism. Maybe he shouldn't go back and save Razzles and Grimmbros. Maybe he shouldn't go back in there at all. After all, who did he think he was, leading everyone off on some journey headed who-knows-where. They didn't really need him to save them, did they? They were fully capable of taking care of themselves. Come to that, Razzles and Grimmbros didn't really want to be here in the first place did they? Razzles didn't have any true interest in heading off miles from home on the bequest of Missus Mistiness,* did he? And Grimmbros - well, why had he come along? It seemed that even Grimmbros himself didn't really know why. Fürgůïn knew deep down inside that the pair of them had been duped into this whole thing by his own constant pressing and relentless enthusing. No, he would not go back in. He'd sit out here and wait. See what happens.

* Nobody appeared to have paid any attention at all when the lady in the sky had announced herself as Nirvas. Maybe that was just as well - it wasn’t her real name anyway.

After half an hour or so, the anesthetizing effect of the snow turned to simple, dismal cold and wet. The bedraggled renling slouched heavily to his feet. For a while, he stood gazing at the bridge that had changed everything. Eventually, he turned and went off to find somewhere better to wait. His somewhat aimless wandering finally led him to a gnarled, little, old tree that just barely kept the worst of the snow at bay. Here he dug a shallow scrape in the snow as well as his frozen fingers would allow. He hunched himself in the saucer-shaped dip, shivered and waited.