The Wandering Elf

“Wake up. We must move on.”

Ara had never been fond of waking up early, and she was even less fond of waking to the sound of Thorin’s voice. With his words echoing distantly in her head, she rolled over, and, curling further into herself like a child, promptly proceeded to fall back asleep.

“Ara.” Somebody nudged her shoulder roughly. “Get up. He’ll leave without you.”

Groaning, she groggily rose to her feet. The sun hadn’t even risen yet, she noted through squinted eyes. They were up before the sun.

The dwarves and Bilbo were all lethargically lifting themselves from the ground as well.
“I suppose if there isn’t any time for breakfast, there won’t be any time for second breakfast either,” the hobbit lamented, though even without food, he appeared to be more awake than anyone else.

Ara couldn’t remember ever waking in such a foul mood. Morning dew had dampened her clothing, the air was so heavy and humid it smothered her, and sometime during the night she’d slid her head off her satchel into a patch of dirt. She felt like soggy, smelly mold, and to top it off, she needed to pee. Again.

Slinging the strap of her satchel over her shoulder, she broke off from the group. She felt someone’s hand on her shoulder not even a second later. “Will I ever be able to pee without one of you investigating me?” she wondered, turning around.

Kíli glanced at his uncle, who, as usual, was at the front of the group, ready to lead their trek into the mountains. “We’re about to leave,” Kíli said anxiously. “He won’t wait for you.”

“I’ll catch up.”

His doubtful expression agitated her more than it should have.

“I will catch up, Kíli,” she repeated. “I can navigate just fine, thank you. Besides it won’t take long. I’d have been done by now if you didn’t stop me.”

Without waiting for a response, she lifted his hand from her shoulder, and continued into the woods. She was still in ear shot when she heard Kíli call, “Thorin, wait!”

To surprise, when she stepped back into the clearing a moment later, they were all still there, lining up. She quietly took up her position at the back of the group, but she could feel Thorin’s eyes on her. She should’ve kept to herself, really it would’ve been less complicated that way, but she didn’t. On top of her foul mood, she could quite honestly say that Thorin had run in patience into the ground.

Matching his glare with a puny, insufficient one of her own, Ara snapped, “What?”

All movement in the clearing stopped. Thorin stared silently at her, as if he was silently assessing whether or not she’d been speaking to him.

“I told you to keep up or be left behind, did I not?” he said finally, like taking those three minutes to pee had done irreparable damage to their journey. “We will not be slowed down by an elf.”

Ara couldn’t recall ever being so angry in all her life. She felt it, her anger, unfurling in her gut and spreading to her head, toes, and everywhere in between. She felt like she was being hollowed out by it.

“Does it make you feel powerful, throwing the word ‘elf’ at me like it’s the greatest insult?” she asked, her voice sharper than it’d ever been. “Thranduil was wrong for abandoning you when you most needed him, and if I’d been there a hundred and fifty years ago, I would have told him so myself. As it stands, I was born twenty six years ago and had nothing to do with Thranduil’s decision, so you can take your cavalier, spiteful, ungrateful attitude somewhere else!”

This was clearly a very bold thing to say, and once she’d said it, a few of the dwarves glanced away and shifted on their feet, looking very uncomfortable indeed.

Thorin stepped toward her and said in a very low, rumbling voice, “You will not speak to me in such a manner, girl. I am a king.”

“A king of what, may I ask? Not once have I heard tales of a king with no kingdom!” She wanted to throttle him. She, who abhorred violence and used it only as a final resort, wanted to take Dwalin’s war hammer and knock Thorin’s stubborn head clean off his neck. “Pride is a wonderful thing to have, Thorin, arrogance is not. And this blind prejudice you have against elves is well passed arrogance and bordering on stupidity!”

“My kingdom was lost because of you! Your kind made an oath to my grandfather and you broke it!”

“Your kingdom was lost because of Smaug!” she exploded. “I hadn’t anything to do with it! I only want to help you get it back!”

“Do you?” Thorin let out a short, humorless laugh. “You think I did not see how you acted in Rivendell?” he asked bitingly. “How you did whatever you pleased without any thought to how you inconvenienced others, how you placed your kin in danger? You think I did not notice how Elrond struggled to keep you in line? You are impulsive and selfish, and the only reason you are here is because you want to be here, and by some miracle managed to convince Gandalf to side with you. Do not claim to have noble intentions, you will not fool me.”

The iciness that usually lingered on Ara’s skin began to seep inward. It amplified as it spread, numbing all but the anger that continued to grow within her like a parasitic weed. Her moist clothes stiffened with frost and her breath huffed out of her in blooms of smoke that melded with the fog around them. Kíli was the only one who perceived this, and he’d grown quite alarmed.

“Ara, perhaps you should…” he trailed off, standing between them with his back to Thorin. His face, so often lit with mirth, was hard and serious. It took Ara a moment to realize his severe expression was focused solely on her.

Incredulous, she took a step back, lifting a hand to gesture at Thorin. “You’re defending him?”
From somewhere beside her, Fíli cleared his throat and said very gently, “Come, Ara. Ori and I need to check the supplies. Join us. Please.”

Still shocked to find Kíli staring at her so forcefully, she stammered, “But…but he’s wrong…” Surely, she thought, she wasn’t the only one who saw that.

Nobody uttered a single word. Not Kíli, nor anyone else.

And just like that, her anger left her like a breeze had swept it away. Left in its place was a terrible, deep sadness. She’d actually let herself to believe for a moment that some of the dwarves could accept her in a way that even her kin would not. She’d been hoping she could perhaps slowly carve out her own unique home, where she could finally stop feeling like such an anomaly.

She’d been an absolute fool.

Even Kíli, who she’d considered her closest friend, not just of the dwarves, but of any friend she’d ever had, wouldn’t stand beside her in this. Perhaps she’d misunderstood their friendship. They hadn’t known each other for that long, after all. In her experience with friendship, she’d clearly interpreted it to be more than it was.

She was doomed to remain in this bleak, solitary place forever. The thought filled her with such a bone-deep exhaustion that she wanted to cry. For once, she willingly donned the stoic mask that elves were so skilled at wearing.

“And there we have it,” said Thorin upon seeing her changed visage. “Her true nature.”

“My true nature?” she repeated, more to herself than anyone else.

Could you tell me what that is, exactly? she thought. Could anyone please just tell me what that is?

“Ara…” Kíli said. His face had softened and he stepped forward away from Thorin, who was still furious.

Ara moved back, distancing herself from him. For the first time since their meeting, she wanted to be far, far away from him. When she met his gaze something in her eyes made him look away. Very quietly she said, “Thorin, you said we hadn’t time to waste, did you not?”

In an uncomfortable, tension-filled silence, they began their journey into the mountains. As usual, Ara was at the rear of the company, further back than she typically was. As they walked, Kíli glanced back at her so often that one might’ve thought he’d acquired a twitch.

“I’d give her some time, laddie,” said Bofur. “Aren’t many things more difficult than an upset woman, I’ll tell ye that much.”

After struggling with his ambivalence, Kíli ignored the older dwarf’s advice and dropped back beside Ara. Fíli and Ori had been lingering back by her. Upon seeing Kíli approach, Fíli said pointedly, “Er…I think I hear Nori callin’ us.”

“What?” Ori said. “No, he’s no—”

“Aye, quite certain he is. Comin’, Nori! Let’s go.”

With that last word, he practically threw Ori forward, leaving Ara and Kíli alone.

She continued staring forward, as if he were nothing more than one of the trees they passed. She heard him take a deep breath and saw his Adam’s apple bob with a hard swallow before he quickly started, “Since we left Rivendell, I know you’ve wanted to make a good impression with Thorin an’—”

“Me, make a good impression?” Oh, if only Kili knew how terrible a thing that was to say. “I think you’re confusing me with yourself! All you’ve done is try to impress him. Heavens, Kili, you’d happily leap into a pack of starving wargs if you thought it’d please him!”

The dwarf ran his hand across the stubble on his chin. He should’ve listened to Bofur, he thought. “I know my uncle can be difficult, but he’s suffered so much hardship. I just want to make things easier for him.”

Again, terrible thing to say.

“Oh, and I suppose if allowing him to berate me and hate me for something that happened well before my lifetime would make things easier for him, I should just let him have at it!”

To his great distress, she’d begun to cry. To her great distress, the streaks of moisture her tears left behind froze on her cheeks.

“What? No!” he stuttered. “That…that’s not at all what I meant! I just…he’s my family…you just…he’s just…please stop cryin’!”

If she’d been in the mood for laughing, she would have found his discomfort very amusing. As it were, she kind of felt like digging herself into a ditch to disappear in forever.

“Do you agree with all the things he said, then? About hating elves and me being impulsive and selfish and inconvenient?”

“No! I mean…I don’t…I never hated you…I quite like you, actually…and bein’ impulsive isn’t a bad thing, really…an’…you’re not inconvenient. Ara, he’s like a father to me. He’s my family. You must understand,” he finished pathetically.

“I admit I don't know much about family, but I don't think it means you have to say whatever comforts him to hear. If anything, you and Fíli should be the first to tell him only what he needs to hear, however upsetting it may be,” she said. “For him to say all those things and for you to defend him, you out of everyone…it’s just….I’d thought that you…you said t-that we were…friends.”

She wrapped her arms around her stomach and looked down at the ground, for not only had she become a blubbering mess, but she’d noticed that up close, his stubble looked very soft and she’d very badly wanted run her hand across it the way he did when he was flustered. And when he’d said her name and asked her to lift her head and look at him, his voice had sounded so deep and so troubled that she’d felt very inclined to forget all that had happened and fall back into their normal way of him teasing her and her asking him to teach her things. And, above all, she could still feel the cold lingering inside her, beneath her skin, and she hadn’t the slightest inkling of what that meant.

So, all this being said, she was very understandably knotted with confusion, hurt, and a many other things she didn’t have names for, and so she closed her eyes and said in a very congested voice, “Go away, please!”

She sensed his hesitation, felt the warmth of his body hovering by her shoulder, but he seemed to think better of it, and soon he was gone.

“There is a storm coming!” Thorin called out later in the afternoon, when the sky darkened and grey clouds stirred above like boiling water in a pot. “Do not fall behind!”

Ara wrapped her arms tighter around herself as she followed the winding, rocky trail. She felt as though if she loosened her grip, her emotions would all come gushing out like blood from a gaping wound. She still felt frozen. The chill had breached the barrier of her skin, and as hard as she tried, she just couldn’t force it back out.