Falling

Middle-earth belongs to Tolkien. Thanks to Thranduil Oropherion Redux for beta reading. Dedicated to my dear friend Ignoble Bard. Teitho September Challenge, first place.

I

His life began, as lives do, with sustenance. In the room around him, the bustle had settled into a hush. A servant hurried along the corridor to give the news to the King, now a father. Word spread quickly through the underground halls. Outside, the leaves rustled as if nothing had happened. The trees seemed to huddle close to the Elvenking’s home, for with every yard of distance the gloom increased, however slightly. Not far into the forest, and spiders spun webs of noisome  stickiness and wicked purpose. Further South, worse things were afoot and would seep, inch by inch, into the trembling woods.

He knew nothing of all this yet. Comforted, satiated, he fell asleep at his mother’s breast.

II

That blasted spider! It was all the spider’s fault. It hurt a little, but not terribly much. There were scratches on his arms and legs and a small gash on his cheek where a twig had whipped him on the way down, but he could bear it. That wasn’t the worst. His tunic was torn and greenish-brown goo from the tree trunk had soiled his breeches. That wasn’t the worst, either. His bow had snapped when he landed; it was a bow he had been proud of, and it irked him to see it ruined, but that still wasn’t the worst.

The worst was that by the time he came home, everybody knew. The guards and the archers, the serving maids and the cooks, yes, even the King’s advisors and the ladies in waiting struggled to keep a straight face when the news made the rounds that the young Prince of Mirkwood had fallen out of a tree.

III

There were so many elf-maidens. He’d seen them all before, hovering about the throne hall, dancing in the clearings and, without doubt, getting their hopes up every time he so much as looked their way. They were all beautiful, all accomplished and all, so he thought, dreadfully dull.

This one, now, this one had only arrived recently. The Lady Arwen had sent her on an errand and, for some reason or other, she had stayed. She cast no sidelong glances at him like the other maidens did and didn’t fawn about his mother as if it was the Queen who would choose the Prince’s bride. She minded her own business, something he wasn’t quite sure what it was, something that involved scrolls and rulers and compasses and numbers. One day, he tried to peer over her shoulder to see what she was doing. She turned her head and gave him a look, such a look!

He couldn’t help it. He fell in love.

IV

He knew how to hunt orcs. Spiders, too, and the occasional random creature of darkness that had crept under the boughs of the forest. There were so many ways to kill them, though, alas, there were always more to come. So he hunted, and he killed, and that kept them at bay after a fashion. They did not dare come close to the heart of the Elven realm, and she mostly stayed inside with her parchments and her strange calculations anyway, trying to wrestle secrets from the stars. Of course, at times she would come out to watch and to plot further dots onto her maps, but near his father’s halls the forest was blissfully free of orcs.

It would never have occurred to him that she of all people would fall prey to them.

V

He hadn’t expected this. Coming to think of it, he couldn’t quite say what he had expected, other than giving his message and returning home, which, should it have come to pass, would have been oddly disappointing. Nevertheless, he wasn’t quite sure what had prompted him to throw in his lot with this group of strangers. He had no desire to go where they proposed to go and no delusions about the audacity of their plan.

Perhaps it had been the intense expression in the Halfling’s face. Such a burden put on one so small! The house of Elrond was teeming with elves; many could have represented his race. Yet as the Fellowship prepared to leave on this dim winter evening, he would have resented anyone who had wanted to take his place.

He fell in line behind the others.

VI

He was so used to his own graceful movements, he never thought about them. There was no need. His feet hadn’t sunk into the snow, they had danced across the rope bridge, and walking or rowing or riding he had moved with effortless and unconscious poise. He knew there was a thing called clumsiness. It was something that happened to other people.   

However, when the voices began to shout that the eagles had brought them back and that they were alive, he began to run and for once his easy grace failed him and he fell over a rock that really had no business lying there in his way.

VII

So now he was sailing. He felt inclined to think, at last, but this would not completely express his feelings on this long-expected event. He had been impatient to go and yet strangely contented to stay.

The ocean unsettled him. He had long nurtured his dreams of the sea, but the real thing was different. Wilder, colder and less poetic. It smelled rank, of seaweed and dead fish. In the wake of the ship, the murky waters churned up a pale foam.  Blobs of spineless creatures drifted past. Jellyfish. He watched them and turned a helpless glance at his companion.

Darkness fell before the last distant glimpses of Middle-earth had disappeared from sight.

VIII

Once on the way and for the whole, long voyage, he had been wondering what was awaiting them.  Someone, he felt sure, would hold him responsible for bringing the dwarf. This thought was uppermost in his mind, superseding others which nevertheless continued to simmer at the back of his consciousness and even soaked into his dreams. Would he be welcome? Would he be welcomed? He wondered how he would find his mother and, moreover, whether She would be there.

The immortal lands emerged gently from the haze, indeed, had taken shape before he was quite aware of it. Less than an hour took them to the shore and when he set foot on the glaring white beach, it was as if the entire land rose up to embrace him and pull him to its heart.

All his questions faded. He fell to his knees and dug his fingers into the sands of what would become Home.