A/N - Apologies for the long absence... work/rl got in the way. However, once I start something I have to finish it so by publishing this I know I'll actually write the rest of it. I'll aim to update regularly (at least once a week, more often if I can).

So... here we go. Short-ish prologue to get started :)

Disclaimer: I do not own The Hobbit, Middle Earth, or any characters contained within, as much as I wish I did. I am not making a profit.

It was funny really.

An avalanche was a cascade of snow. Endless. Unstoppable. It was a huge wave of white ice that blistered down the side of the mountain, throwing hunks of rock before its path.

He had expected that. He wasn't sure why, but he had been ready for that… the extreme white, the sharp stinging pain that attacked him, even through the thick layers of his clothes. But the noise…

It was funny. He'd been told stories of avalanches. Great hulking things that only Mahal would have the strength to stop. The rumbling… he thought he knew what an avalanche was, thought that he could imagine it in his mind's eye… but the rumbling… he could never imagine that.

When he heard it, really heard it, he'd laughed. He stopped running… running wouldn't help him now. He was trapped. He had nowhere to go. He stopped and turned and laughed because the noise… the noise was so unexpected. It was louder than anything he could ever have imagined.

Thinking back he wondered why he hadn't kept moving. Maybe there was the smallest of chances that he could have escaped it. But he knew still what he'd known the moment that seismic thundering had reached his ears, growing so loud he couldn't even hear his own voice… his own laughter… there had been no way to escape… there had been nowhere to go.

The wall of snow had engulfed him, the ice had pierced him, and he had found himself suddenly breathless as he was whipped about beneath the white currents, falling thousands of feet in mere seconds with a crushing weight pushing against him. Blind, he had seen nothing… but the noise… that was still there, splintering his eardrum with its incessant roar.

He felt his leg twist impossibly. He couldn't hear the crack over the din of the avalanche, but he certainly felt it… a rush of white hot pain shooting up from his leg as he felt the queer sensation of bone snapping and pushing against the skin. Had he had breath to give he would have gasped. Instead he went quite dizzy.

He felt a hard pain against his head. His mind flooded with pain… fractured… unable to think. But as he drifted off he could still hear it…

The roar of the avalanche chased him into unconsciousness.

/

When Kili awoke he couldn't see anything.

He felt cold. Chilled to the bone… and he shivered. The movement caused his leg to scream in pain and, this time, he did gasp.

It was an empty sound. It was quiet, but it echoed in his ears… it echoed off the silent walls of his grave built from snow.