Let me tell you about my friend Beardfoot.
She hates that name. I know she hates it, and she tells me she hates it everytime I tell her that she's Beardfoot. But she takes it all in stride, and I love her for it. Her real name is Acacea. She is a very great friend, willing to put up with an old dwarf like me through thick and thin, no matter how far in the Hells it is that I choose to take her, whether or not she is willing to go in the first place.
As an act of friendship, I've decided to subliminally instill my good word into her little head, to help her along on life's path, to help her make the right decisions that will benefit all of society. Cleverly, I have disguised these behind the simple idea of "training her to be a dwarf". I don't think she likes it much, but she'll thank me one day when instead of stealing to get by, she's picking up a hammer and beating metal for a living.
Acacea is, to say the very, very least, family to me. I think of myself as her principled father that she never had, though I bet she thinks far, far differently of me. She is probably one of the few halflings that I'd give a limb to save. Trust in me here, the number of halflings that I would do that for is a very scarce, rare number.
I know that, as my health deteriorates as it does, she'll live long, long after I'm gone... I can only hope that she remembers me for the rest of her happy, good-natured days.
