No Home Here

Disclaimer: No recognizable characters, places, or anything else LOTR related belong to me (wistful sigh.) They all belong to Tolkien and I am making no money off of this story. This extends for the entire story.


Chapter One: The Road goes ever on and on.

Estel guided his horse along the path. This area was unfamiliar to the young ranger and the youth certainly didn’t want anything ill to befall him while on this trip.

It had been hard enough to convince his father to allow him to leave Rivendell on his own for the scouting mission, but it had been even worse when attempting to get away from his twin elven brothers, who could sometimes be on the overprotective side. He had actually been forced to pry Elladan’s fingers off his saddle before he was able to leave Rivendell’s stable yard.

But now he was days away from his home and his bad luck seemed to have caught up to him yet again, nipping at his heels like wild wolves and generally making his life a misery.

The ranger scowled as the tiny flakes of snow that had started falling gently about half of an hour ago began to pick up in pace and ferocity, slanting in at just the right angle to get into his eyes and numb his nose.

Grumbling, the ranger inwardly fumed at himself, the weather, as many of the Valar as he could currently remember, and, most of all, the weather.

Before the man had simply been able to ignore the snow flurry, but now he was beginning to go numb… and angry. Sighing, he pulled the hood of his cloak up further around his head and tucked the edges into his tunic.

The cold weather hadn’t been expected, so the young man had traveled light: without overcoat or, as he was just now discovering, gloves.

After all, the trip was supposed to be short and simple: a quick trip along the great road and over to the borders of the shire to check on unfriendly activity.

Though there had been nothing unusual for Estel to report back to Elrond when he returned, it looked as if his trip might end up taking longer than anyone had originally planned. Well, that was if the snow continued to fall.

The man finally gave up rummaging through his saddlebags for his gloves and turned his body back around so that it was no longer twisted in an unnatural position. Sighing, he looked at his hands as if checking to make sure that they weren’t blue yet.

Wrapping his hands tighter around the reins of his dapple-gray horse, he sighed and tried to think of other things, such as the town that he should be coming upon in the next couple of miles.

Though he couldn’t quite remember its name, he knew that it was one of the smaller farming towns that was in reality little more than a few houses and an inn surrounded by acres of rolling farmland.

Frowning slightly, Estel tried to conjure up the name of the little village in his mind, but to no avail. He couldn’t remember whether it started with an A… or maybe a S.

Shaking his head in frustration, the man fervently wished that he had at least glanced at one of the hundreds of maps in Imaldris before he had left.

The movement caused the hood to fall back to his shoulders, exposing again his long, raven-colored hair that fell down to his upper-back and was tied back in practical eleven braids. He quickly caught the majority of it in one fist, however, and tucked it inside his cloak before pulling his hood back up.

The young man turned his attention back to the path before him, examining the snow that was quickly piling up on the ground and along the tops of branches.

Reaching up, the man skimmed his hand along an overhanging branch before the movement of his horse carried him onwards. Estel’s brow creased with anxiety as he examined the large clump of snow in his hand.

There hadn’t been enough time since the snow had started to fall for that much snow to accumulate on the tree limb, signifying that it must either have been snowing for longer here or that the icy precipitation was coming down harder here than it had been a mile or so down the trail. Either way it could only mean one thing: that the young man was riding into a storm.

~--~--~--~--~--~--~--~--~--~--~

Hours later found Estel still sitting on the back of his horse, though now hunched over as close to the horse as was physically possible.

Both his head and that of his gelding were hunched over against the fierce wind that mercilessly drove what seemed like every snowflake on Arda right into their faces.

The horse plowed valiantly through the ever-growing drifts of snow that covered the path, halting often as he searched for an easier way through the mounting snow. The man on his back was far beyond caring, however.

He was soaked through and through, his sodden cloak clinging to his body and seeming to give off more chill than even the frozen air that whipped around the pair.

The hands that wound themselves into the horse’s mane were blue with cold and so numb that Estel feared he would never regain feeling in them again, even if he did manage to make it out of this blizzard.
With half-lidded eyes the young man gazed again at the path that he knew was buried somewhere underneath all the snow, searching for any sign that might lead him to shelter.

The nameless town that he should have reached hours ago had yet to make an appearance, but the young ranger wondered if he had indeed passed it without seeing the lights.

He shook his head at the thought, dislodging the layer of snow that had settled on top of his exposed hair.

Muttering, he wondered when his hood had slipped off his head, frowning with the thought that he hadn’t been able to tell the difference between when the hood had been on his head and when he had been exposed to the raging elements.

Sighing, he pressed turned his head to the side and pressed his cheek against his horse’s neck, trying desperately to share some of the animal’s body heat. The elven steed whipped his head around concernedly at butted his shoulder with his long head, but when Estel didn’t respond snorted and turned back to the road ahead.

The young man wished for what had to be the fiftieth time that day that he had elven endurance and resilience against the cold.

It was yet another shortcoming that had become evident during his childhood in Rivendell. He remembered how his Adar had always bundled him up it layers of warm clothing before he was allowed outside during even the lightest of snowfalls.

Now Estel desperately wished for Lord Elrond to be here beside him, telling him that everything would be all right and to hold on just a little while longer. He could almost feel his brothers’ warm and protective embraces, holding him and keeping him warm.

The man sighed: he thought he could hear Elrond’s voice on the wind, bringing him comfort and hope. “Hope,” he thought, “estel.” and then slipped from his horse, darkness taking him before he hit the ground.