Wandering Souls {Aragorn Love Story}

Chapter [Four]

First off, it's been a really fat minute since I wrote anything with the intension to publish. Like, graduated high school-am-now-a-sophomore-in-college fat minute. I kinda distanced myself from Wattpad because I didn't like the premium thing or the coins, and I out-read the supply of fan fiction I wanted and went to A03. All that said, I just wasn't having the time of my life but recently I've begun writing for myself again, and today I saw a notification that one @Khadija1184 left on this story, and it just...pushed me to write again. I'm not sure why it worked now and not two years ago, but thanks. I hope you like the chapter.

Instead of riding her mare she took some supplies off Bill the pony in the early morning to make it easier to travel. Bill looked underfed, and she pitied the creature for his earlier treatment. 

The Sun had barely turned the sky purple before she had begun to clean their small camp, rolling her own bed up and starting a new fire to make breakfast. After she began cooking the hobbits weren't too long in their dreams before the thought of food penetrated their minds. Aragorn woke shortly after Frodo, and before the last hobbit to awaken, Pippin. She knew by the look on his face it was relieving to be able to sleep knowing his back was watched for him. 

She suspected leading the four halflings by himself he had not slept more than five minutes during the midday meal, being a paranoid man(and not for good reason) and also traveling with beings that had the experience of children. 

The days passed at a moderate pace, if not slower than usual due to their companions height and therefore length of stride. They were not unpleasant, though the skies were more grey than blue and the tone was more subdued than cheerful--she supposed this was more because the Hobbits were so far from their Shire and their food than any Ringwraith that might be upon them. While they sulked about the loss of seconds and thirds and luncheons, she felt the shadow of the East settle into a dark cloud in her mind, and she knew it was the same for Aragorn who was always more worldly than her. 

The tenth night after she had joined them she sat next to the man for supper instead of Pippin who would prattle through chewing. 

"I saw five, you know, the night I came to Bree." He glanced over, hardly surprised but a flicker of concern was in his expression. 

"Were you discovered?"

"Nay. I hid as soon as I saw the ponies and horses run out of the destroyed gate," she shook her head while speaking. Aragorn stirred his dinner absently.

"That is good. They harmed non of the Bree-folk but they consider most Men to be weak things. Elven-kind would not have been spared, I think." His lips twitched upwards as he spoke next, "Though you resemble no elf I've met since we parted."

"Hmm, would you prefer me to dance in silks and silver?"

"It would not suite you."

"No, indeed." She finished, though they both laughed. "Cotton and fur and leather are all too welcoming for me to abandon them."

"Very man-like of you," Aragorn teased. She smiled, though, not continuing the joke. 

"Yes, it is."

She had, after all, the mind of a mortal even if her body no longer showed the weight of years. Most elves assumed she was raised by a mortal parent, or perhaps she was an orphan of a slaughtered outpost and picked up by wandering Men--either way, she did not fit into their society. Truly, only Elrond and his children, Gandalf, Galadriel and her husband, and Aragorn knew the truth of her.

A mortal woman stuck in a world not her own, brought by reasons undiscovered, and left to stay by the forces that be. Most elves could not fathom mortality, nor could most Men imagine what life is like beyond their own. They were two species--nay--two genus, wholly separate from one another living in the same world. A cat cannot know what it is to be a dog even if they are raised as one, and vice versa. 

She had met beings on both sides who were disgusted by the other, or fascinated, or simply detached(though humans tended to think elves were a myth due to their recluse homes and cities). She dressed as a human, lived as a human, marked time as a human and ignored her long lifespan for as long as she could before she moved off again to avoid seeing friends die of old age. 

She was not elven, and couldn't survive as such (or so she told herself). 

As they kept on plodding through the marshlands, and then more grasslands before the terrain became rocky and hilly, she reflected on what a bitter hypocrite she had become.

She could not properly remember her nature from when she first arrived, and with the years had only become bitter and reclusive, hiding away from truths that were in every single step she took but refused anyways. 

Arlen though suddenly, with a terrible snort that Pippin threw a questioning look about, that she was now the same age her mother had been when she left her world for this one, but was perhaps just as moody as she had been as a teenager.