A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Fourteenth Entry - Guest Privileges

Two days passed this way. I conversed with the elves as merrily as I could, and did have genuine moments of joviality, but for the most part I just felt cool and strange and lifeless inside. I was tired; of seeing the same faces outside my door, the same walls, eating the same foods every day. I considered myself a patient or tolerant person as needed but I was running out of both of those things as my time began to dry and curl up at the ends. I had wanted to live before I died, not exchange one prison for another.

“I am sorry for your melancholy,” Tauriel said one day, stopping at my door.

My lips twitched. “It is not entirely sadness. Being tired makes me miserable and I’m not used to being tired all the time anyway. I’m starting to struggle with being in here all the time. For the first time I’m starting to feel trapped.”

Tauriel regarded me silently for long moments before unhooking my keys from the wall and unlocking my door. Opening it she said, “Accompany me today.”

I looked up at her. “What for?”

“Exercise,” she decided, and beckoned with one slim hand.

I slid down from the bench with a sigh and emerged from my cave. Tauriel left the door ajar behind me and placed a hand over my shoulder, but she didn’t steer today as much as she had in the days before. “Where are we going?” I asked, kicking at a loose stone. We heard it echoing all the way down into the wide canyon in the center of the chamber.

“To do inventory on the guards’ supplies,” she replied. “It will be less of a chore with someone to keep me company.”

“Quite possibly.” I determined not to disregard her generosity by being sour about it and straightened my spine.

“Are you prone to these lengths of sadness?” Tauriel wondered as she let me into a wide room with multiple levels. The walls were lined with wooden shells and cabinets, there were long tables and benches in most of the open areas, and a few stacks of crates and barrels. One guard—I couldn’t tell male or female with their head down—was asleep over their folded arms at a table.

“Not particularly. On occasion though. This is just an unfortunate mess of a multitude of things that all happened to fall down at once.”

“An unfortunate mess indeed,” she agreed, taking a narrow scroll and a charcoal pencil from a desk near the center of the room.

“I honestly don’t know what shenanigans the dwarves are up to,” I said, pulling myself onto one of the benches. “Are you allowed to tell me? I know you all have your suspicions.”

Going to one of the leftmost and highest cabinets near a kitchen area Tauriel began to take a tally of the contents. “What do you know of the history of this region, Mabyn?”

“None at all.”

“Well, east of here there was once a great city called Dale, at the foot of a mountain once called Erebor. Thorin’s grandfather Thror ruled Erebor, which was reknowned for its riches and particularly its gold, which ran in underground streams through the mountain.

“One day however a dragon named Smaug flew down from the north. He smote Dale and emptied Erebor, killing a great number of its inhabitants. Thror, his son Thrain, and his grandson Thorin were among those who survived long enough to flee. We believe Thorin and his company have returned to kill Smaug and retake the mountain.”

My mouth was hanging open. “How big is Smaug?”

“Large enough to lay ruin to two prospering cities,” she replied, still opening and closing cabinets. “This was of course a few centuries ago.”