in which the witch of the wilds has spent her whole life avoiding the prophecised true king of gondor until he shows up on her doorstep with four hobbits, an elf, a dwarf, a warrior and an old wizard with a sparkle in his eyes and asks her to join t...
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IT STARTS here, in a hut in the middle of a forest, situated just on the river bend so that the flowing, sky-mirrored water can be heard in the background of all dreams, and all nightmares, and all memories that sink into the forefront of thoughts.
There's a woman inside the hut, and it starts in her heart, turned cold through the centuries of her life as the years get longer and the nights get colder and her bed feels lonelier and lonelier with just her inside of it. She tugs a mossy green cloak over her shoulders, covering the length of her dress coloured by the juniper berries she'd found growing near the outskirts of the clearing too many years ago for her to remember now. She steps out of the hut, letting the wooden door bang softly behind her, the winter breeze chittering in her bones as she hauls a wicker basket on her hip.
She kneels by the clear water, watching white foam cling to the edges of the muddy riverbank, broken branches flowing down the babbling brook, fallen leaves swirling over the murmuring surface. She can barely see the pebbled river bed beneath the gurgling water. The woman – a witch, someone had called her long ago and allowed the nickname to stick – grabs the dress on the top of the pile in the wicker basket, holding it up to the winter sky blearily blinking through the gathering clouds. The dress is the colour of crushed lily beetles. She dunks it below the water line in one fell swoop.
The water sloshes over her fingers. It's colder than the winter breeze that whistles through the gaps in her hut, numbing the tips of her fingers. Her fingernails will have started turning blue, a dark shade that makes her skin look bruised in the pale winter sunlight that tries painfully to crawl through the gathering clouds. She grabs the scrubbing brush from the wicker basket and starts her work on the gown, using the lack of muscles in her arm to get the cracked dirt off the hemline, watching the horse-hair bristles get in the crevices she never would have noticed before.
The dirt washes away in the ice-cold river water, adding to the mix of twigs and fallen leaves that bob along like little elven boats carrying them to Valinor, swirling with the foam that's started to collect too close to her gowns for her liking.
She gets to her feet, holding up the dripping dress. The redness has started to dull after so long of being worn out in the sunshine and there are loose threads near the neckline. If she had any fabric she'd make a new one, but Gandalf hasn't been around in a few months and she has no idea where on Middle Earth he could even be, so she'll just have to make do until he passes by.
