One Ring to troll them all

A New Resolve

After leaving the Council Meeting, it didn't take me long to reach the entrance - well, it was the exit now, but whatever. And I realized that I had absolutely no fucking clue about which way to go to find Thorin and the others.

Shit. There was no GPS here.

Fucking hell.

"Well, now what?" I grumbled, absentmindedly kicking a pebble into the river below. Why did I have to wait for the council meeting, really? Couldn't I have just left with the dwarves and Bilbo when I had the chance?

Nah, that would have never worked.

I had spent the evening talking to Elrond, Glorfindel, and Gandalf, so there was no way I would have ever been able to escape those three. Well, Gandalf would have let me. He honestly didn't care whether I went to the meeting or not.

I was a little miffed that Bilbo had left with the others without waiting for me, but in his defense, he probably didn't expect me to be directionally challenged. Which I wasn't. Well, sort of.

I knew my way around places, okay? I just didn't know this place. Middle-Earth was fucking massive, and the movies or the book descriptions certainly didn't work as reliable directions.

They always skipped all the boring parts, so most of the travel time went right out the window. Heck, they did it so much that when I was younger, I thought the Fellowship had only needed like a month to reach Mordor. Only that when I read the books, it turned out to be more like a fucking year - granted, that included the time they spent resting in Rivendell and Lothlórien, but still.

How was I supposed to find Thorin's Company like this?!

And Gandalf was taking forever to speak to Galadriel. What were they even doing up there?!

As I wondered whether to just fuck it and choose a random direction while hoping Lady Luck smiled on me, or to ask someone for directions - which would be embarrassing but would probably save me future embarrassment as well - someone called my name from behind me.

I turned around and saw Estel waving at me cheerfully.

What the heck was Estel doing at the entrance of Rivendell? Shouldn't he be studying or whatever it was he did all day long?

"What are you doing?" Estel asked me once he joined me in front of the bridge. I looked at the joyful little kid and sighed. Fuck it.

"I do not know which way to go," I admitted to Estel, who merely tilted his head and thankfully didn't comment on my complete ignorance of the world map.

"Where are you going?" The boy asked then, which was fair. He didn't know about anything that was going on outside Rivendell.

I kind of envied him in that moment. Ignorance truly was bliss most of the time.

"The Misty Mountains," I told Estel after a moment of trying to remember where Thorin's Company had encountered the stone giants. It was the Misty Mountains, right? If it wasn't, it would be pretty awkward.

"Oh," Estel nodded and pointed to the East, as if it was normal for a little kid to know these things. Future ranger indeed. "It is that way, then. You will need to cross them to get to the other side, though. And there is still a long way across Eriador!"

I stared at those mountains, which looked absurdly far from here, and I wondered how the fuck the dwarves managed to cross that distance so fast. It had only been like four hours since they had left, hadn't it? Maybe even three, at most!! What the heck did they do?! Fly?!

"Right. Okay. Thanks for the help, buddy," I told Estel, gently patting his head.

The boy playfully swatted my hand away and adjusted his flower crown - which he was still wearing. Wasn't he the cutest kid ever?