Notes:

There are two versions of this story. Head over to AO3 for the (sort of) fem!Thorin version. I am RabbitPie and the story has the same title. You won't find any changes yet, however.

I will end each chapter with a list of the chapter's OCs.

Feel free to tell me if you you spot any spelling/grammar mistakes! (There are some I honestly will not care about and cry stylistic choice, but.)

Thorin's Prologue

Only winter itself is not weary of the cold and the bite that pinches and spits at the exposed skin of travelers. Only the rangers and the dwarves are habitually inclined to travel now, forced by duty or circumstance, and the orcs that emerge from their burrows to prey upon them.

The white sheet has been ripped off the road. Streaks of footsteps muddy what snow has not been turned to dirty mush and black dirt is exposed, lying in puddles next to grimy bodies with inhumane faces and wounds that spill black blood onto the white ground. Their eyes are empty.

The ranger Givhael draws her sword and pulls her hood away from her ears lest she miss the sounds of an enemy that still lies in wait. On one side of the road the land stretches low and barren until it falls out of sight, on the other the trees of the Old Forest watch her. The mangled lines in the snow run from the road to between their trunks and beneath their leaves, and if the orcs have entered the Old Forest, Givhael has reason to believe that none are left alive.

It is not something that she can count upon, though, so warily she takes note of the brightest spot in the grey clouds above, the sun's position, and makes her way between the trees. Even with a skirmish recently fought in it, the forest is not quiet or wholly still. The trees themselves hum and leer. They grope with white hands and stick out their black roots before her feet.

More orc bodies lie, dead to sword wounds. A tree's roots are already pulling one body beneath the earth, and Givhael stays far from its slow, groaning movement, fear brushing at the hairs on the back of her neck.

There are no live orcs here, she decides, and checks the position of the sun again. But she does not re-cover her ears, and even though the way back is clear of orc bodies it is not clear of the angry trees that live in the forest. More tracks dip the snow, and these are not the tracks of orcs. Givhael recognises the tracks of a dwarf when she sees them.

This is the orcs' killer, and the forest's enemy by virtue of their race. The rangers have different loyalties to the forest, though, and worry for an unknown ally sits in Givhael's stomach. She follows the tracks deeper into the forest. Unease grows greater within her the longer she travels. It is a challenge even for a ranger to exit the forest from this deep, and they are not sworn enemies of the trees.

She spots the dwarf's short bulky dark shape behind a tree and speeds up. "Ho, dwarf!" she calls. "Are you well? What happened on the road?"

The dwarf does not respond, does not even twitch around to look at her, and worry spurs Givhael to move even more quickly. The last meters vanish beneath her feet, and she sees the dwarf in full. He (a guess at the dwarf's gender, she didn't have the skill to tell) is as tall as dwarves get, covered in thick warg furs and his face is decorated with a thick beard that hangs to his chest.

The tree have caught him. His arms are strung out on either side, both in the grip of the tree's groaning boughs, bending backwards how they shouldn't. The dwarf doesn't struggle. When he sees Givhael, surprise flickers dimly in his eyes before his lips widen in a smiling grimace that exposes his bloody teeth and a cracked incisor.

He nods at her. "Begone," he spits in a muffled voice through swollen lips, and slams his head against the tree and his face scrunches together in pain, his eyes fluttering closed in acceptance. "This one will take me soon enough."

"I would be a monster to leave you to this fate," Givhael answers, because the differences between men and orcs are not merely cosmetic and she prides herself on her honour.

The dwarf glowers at her. "It would be kinder to leave me." He flinches as a leaf touches his neck and a spindly branch begins to slither his collarbone.

Givhael cannot leave him here. She stabs at the questing twig with her sword, cutting through it and into the tree. The branches that hold his arms are thicker, too thick for her sword to cut, and she glances over the dwarf for an axe or the heavy swords they often carry, but the dwarf is unarmed. Another groan from the tree as her grab her sword, and seeing no other option she readies herself to stab it into the tree.

It is unnecessary. The tree shivers in pain and it has loosened its grip around the dwarf, the boughs squirm away like worms and the whole trunk bows away. The dwarf slides down and she catches him.

He is lighter than she she expects, and sags in her arms making no attempt to get up. "Are you injured?" Givhael asks, readjusting her grip and pulling him up. The dwarf gives a snort and moves away from her, raising his shaking hands and pressing his face into them. He stumbles away.

"That direction takes you deeper into the forest," the ranger calls, and the dwarf stills, looking at her blearily over the edge of his hands. "Come, we are many miles from town but it is a quicker route on the road." She would benefit from a companion if she is to get out of the forest alive.

"And what shall I find there?" the dwarf snarls. "A man's hearth, filled with creatures that would sooner take a blade to their friends than feed a stranger?" He tugs on the mountainous furs that rise above his shoulders and a clump of it falls into his hands. Givhael realises that this is a smaller coat, fitted for a child. The dwarf buries his face in it.

Givhael feels cold with more than mere chill at the sight. A terrible suspicion is coming over her and she reaches for him. "Come with me to Bree," she says. "You have done these lands a service and my people would thank you. Then I shall return and clean up the orcs."

"They will burn," the dwarf snaps, and strides purposefully away from her reaching hand, this time in the direction of the road. His face his stricken, and his eyes are growing red half-hidden in the child's coat. She follows after him as they find the orc bodies and pile them. The dwarf goes about this quickly and in bursts, pausing often to grip his hair and wail quietly to himself.

Givhael looks away when this happens and tries to give him what privacy she can. She is curious, burningly curious, but she gets the feeling her curiosity will no be well-received, so she concentrates on the curdling worry and fright that the sight and sound gives her. The dwarf is a writhing mass of anger and sorrow, his firery eyes could almost set the orcs alight alone.

At last, the fire is burning. The dwarf refused to take any plunder from the orc carcasses and Givhael does not have the tools to carry it, so they leave them unstripped. The dwarf leans in close to the fire and begins to speak, his voice bleaker than the white world around them.

"No creature can rely on another when the weather turns foul. The halflings hide in their burrows and my kinsmen do much the same. The weather bares us all for the gutless traitorous cowards that we are."

Flecks of red fall into his beard it lights up with a tongue of flame. He barely seems to notice, and watches it for a moment before putting it out with a gloved hand. Half his beard has been devoured by the flame but the dwarf is not much changed. He continues to stare emptily into the fire.

"There are others that rely on you, though, surely?" Givhael asks.

The dwarf fists the cloak again. "Aye. Aye. Perhaps you are right." He rubs his eyes on the cloak. "I shall return to Bree, but I have no need of your thanks." The dwarf delivers the last word scathingly, and looks up at her if she is orc-dirt beneath her feet.

The dwarf leaves, and Givhael lets him go without complaint and with some relief. She continues on her way to The Shire. She worries about the strange, angry dwarf with the child's coat and the empty eyes, and worries about his words about the halflings, and worries about the presence of orcs so close to the shire.

Then she looks out on the white and black world and imagines a blank canvas waiting for hope to paint it brightly, and hopes fervently that the dwarf might someday see that too.

OCs this chapter:

- Givhael the ranger

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