Come to Morning Through The Shadows

Lonely Paths To Travel

 "Home is behind, the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread

through shadows to the edge of night,

until the stars are all alight."-J.R.R. Tolkien

The clouds hung low in the sky, glowing a brilliant peach and grey against the dark night, illuminating the entire valley below her feet .

These were snow clouds. Rich, billowing beacons of winter's firm grip, drifted slowly overhead, propelled by the biting wind that nipped at Lyla's cheeks, ruffled her hair, and flitted down her spine, making her shiver. In a way it was beautiful, the sky lit up by the clouds' dominating presence, casting a soft glow over ever rock and tree, making the already fallen snow sparkle in the dim light.

But the silence was unnerving. 

 She pulled the cloak—gifted by Thranduil all those weeks ago—about her person and gazed ahead, willing her feet to move as her heart hammered in her chest as she moved further from the mountain, her eyes darting about as she crept in the shadows, wary of any guards patrolling.

It was best not to alert anyone.

No matter how much she wanted to turn round and return to her warm bed, and the familiar faces of the company, she knew she could not.

Even the prospect of leaving the mountain and returning to The Shire seemed more appealing that what she was actually going to do. Familiar, rolling green hills, smials with carefully tended gardens, the party tree. All of it whispered to her, filling her with a longing, a longing for a familiar home.  If she wasn't within the Erebor's glittering halls, she'd rather be nowhere than back in her own little Bag End, among her familiar forests and grass and books and maps.

But it could not be so. Even if she had intended to abandon Erebor for good in favor of the comforts of Hobbiton (a rather silly notion if she were honest), her current path was NOT taking her towards familiar roads.

Far from them, actually.

No, a far more sinister, and wearying road lay ahead of her.

'It is a fool's errand' the familiar hissing voice muttered in her ear, 'you are a fool.'

Lyla shook her head and continued onward, eyes scanning the horizon as she slipped past Dale's ruinous walls, careful to keep a wide birth of the city and any curious eyes, cresting the overlook and making her way carefully down the hillside as the first flakes of snow began to fall. Even though the pathway was still in tatters, stones still overturned and crumbled, signs of Bard's work were present. Life was beginning to return to the desolation that littered the hillsides and covered the city in ash and scorch marks.

There was improvement.

There was life.

With one last glance around at the valley and the Lonely Mountain, Lyla descended towards the shoreline of the lake.

With the world around her illuminated by the snow clouds as it was, Lyla made easy work of navigating through the underbrush and sapling trees, inching her way towards the far bank where Laketown used to be. She caught glimpses of the remains of homes and the dock, standing like blackened shadows on the still, icy lake and she shuddered to think of the dragon that lay beneath the surface.

Smaug had been the stuff of nightmares and Lyla was grateful to leave that image in the depths of the frigid water. And she was even more grateful when the shoreline widened and the expanse of the hillsides and forest began to loom closer as the sky started to turn pink, making the falling snow sparkle and the clouds grow in brilliance above her.