A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Tenth Entry - A Great Deal of Singing

“Follow me down through the cotton fields,

Moon shadow shine bright the way you will.

Lead us down a road where no one goes

We can run away.”

I found this one particularly fun to sing, considering the subject matter and the springing, lilting folk tune behind it. I sang nearly every song by this artist that I could remember, even though I had to pause in the middle for a guard to drop off a tray of food for me. It wasn’t their best, but why should they waste their best on prisoners? Either way it was still better fare than what the gobins had given me, or what I had expected. The bread was crispy and soft and sweet, the meat steeped in gravy, and the water carried a few drops of wine. It was lucky that there wasn’t any more in it, because while the plum taste of the water was delicious, after chugging the lot of it I recognized the brush of silliness through my thoughts that told me any more of the wine would put me off my top. I picked my way through my food the way I always did, wiped out my bowl with my bread crust and arranged the tray neatly outside my door. Then I continued singing. My voice echoed in a wonderful way down here.

Another meal came later that day, and the guard who brought it paused at my door, thinking he was out of my sight around that edge, but I knew he was out there listening. I saw the shadows move when he left at the end of the second song. I let him go this time.

The next day when a meal was delivered for the morning I wasn’t so kind. “What kinds of songs do you like?” I asked, before he could sneak away. A guard walked by every hour to see that I was still here, so he would be back sometime, but I wanted to see if he would respect me enough to give some form of reply.

There was a very long pause, and I was certain he’d left and I just hadn’t noticed before he answered. “Those of hope,” he said, “introspection.”

I pursed my lips and thought.

“It’s empty in the valley of your heart

The sun, it rises slowly as you walk

Away from all the fears and all the faults you’ve left behind

The harvest left no food for you to eat

You cannibal, you meat-eater, you see

But I have seen the same I know the shame in your defeat

But I will hold on hope and I won’t let you choke

On the noose around your neck

And I’ll find strength in pain

And I will change my ways

I’ll know my name as it’s called again.”

When I finished the song I saw the shadow of his nod, and then he walked away. I smiled.

“Where did you learn to move in the ways that you did?”

I jumped to see that Tauriel had appeared at my door. She didn’t appear suspicious, merely inquisitive. I smiled up at her in greeting. “Hello. I was an acrobat in my realm. It took a few years but I spent every moment I wasn’t in school or working elsewhere learning how to do it.”

“In school?”

“My realm is older than yours. We have changed a lot of the ways we live. One of those changes is that most boys and girls are no longer taught at home, but sent away for several hours each day to learn what we think they need to learn to be adults.”