Terrible things always happen when least expected.

One moment, Aramorel was outside trying to move firewood into the house. The next, she was a sobbing wreck on the floor with what was left of her family.

Aramorel's father, Bledoc Fletcher, was chieftain of the Rangers of Ithilien, and had been since the Fell Winter, only a few years before Ara had been born. He went on many missions with the rangers to keep the old road between Minas Morgul and Osgiliath clear of orcs and other foul beasts. He was one of the most skilled archers out of all the Rangers of Ithilien. He was a master swordsman, and had taken down many an orc in his time. He had even set traps out for Mûmakil and their Haradrim riders, which resulted in him taking down quite a few of the gigantic creatures and the ruthless men.

Because Bledoc had been such a skilled ranger, Ara didn't think that he could have been killed by anything or anyone. And yet... he had.

On a routine mission to harass anything across the Anduin, the rangers were attacked by a fearsome pack of orcs that had been waiting for them. In an attempt to protect one of the younger rangers, Bledoc Fletcher took a hit from a Morgul arrow in the chest, and died instantly. The rangers managed to drive the orcs away, at the cost of not only their chieftain, but many other lives as well.

The news was brought to them by Armod, Bledoc's second-in-command. Ara's mother had just started preparing dinner when he arrived at their house in the tiny village where most of the ranger's families stayed. Elion, Ara's mother, immediately called Ara and Gwaddyn into the house from outside, where the two siblings had been squabbling over firewood.

Armod tried to break the news to them carefully, but Gwaddyn and Aramorel had already guessed what had happened simply because of the look on the ranger's face. He took his leave of the family, wanting to give them some privacy as they mourned the loss of their father.

There was no burial, as the rangers hadn't had any time to return to the place where the fight occurred and recover the bodies of the dead. The families of the rangers that fell in the fight held a memorial service to honor the dead. Things were much quieter in the village in the weeks that followed, as people continued to mourn the loss of their loved ones.

One by one, any of the able-bodied men left in the village were told to take up arms and join the rangers. The rangers called Gwaddyn to take up his father's place as chieftain of the Rangers of Ithilien. After all, he had been trained by his father since he was big enough to wield a sword, and he was sixteen, which was just old enough for his mother to not make too much of a fuss about her youngest child having to join the rangers. Gwaddyn had no want to be part of the rangers. He declined their request, and said that they should ask Aramorel, who had grown more stubborn and insistent in the days after her father's death. She wished for nothing more than to join up with the rangers and help people.

It seemed ridiculous for the rangers to ask a scrawny girl who was barely nineteen to join them, and they said as much. They claimed that it would be too much of a burden to make sure that she was safe, and that she could not hold her own at all. This disgusted Ara, who made a silent vow to herself to prove them wrong. Elion, of course, was against having her daughter fighting in any capacity, but Gwaddyn was enthusiastic, and even offered to teach his sister everything their father had taught him. It took a year and a half of training before Gwaddyn ran out of ways to train her, but Ara was a natural, having inherited her mother's ability to learn any number of things quickly. Coupling that with her father's strength and perfectionism (which she had inherited), she mastered the skill of archery in due time, and became an impressive swordswoman.

Her brother decided that she would have to showcase her skill to the rangers, and he tried to get them to consider letting Ara join them. Though they were in awe of the young woman's prowess with a bow and arrow, and her capability with a sword, they still declined when she asked to join them. They still said she would be too much of a hassle to take care of, claiming that she was a woman, and that women are not meant for fighting in any capacity.

Dejected, but not without hope, Ara decided that if the rangers would not take her, she could find somewhere else where she could be a ranger. This led to her leaving the village one chilly morning, taking her father's old bow, as many arrows as she could find, a sword that she "borrowed" from Gwaddyn, and two daggers that she kept hidden inside of her boots. Along with a pack of food and some other supplies, she also took her father's old cloak, which was a dark green, as were most of the cloaks of the Rangers of Ithilien.

She followed the road towards Dunland, where the Great West Road became the Greenway, and followed it north. She managed to stay out of the way of trouble until she ran into a grey wizard in northern Enedwaith. The wizard, who said his name was Gandalf, asked where she was from, and why she was travelling alone. Aramorel had heard tales of the grey wizard, and told him that she was a ranger who was going to find somewhere where she could be of use. Gandalf decided that he would escort her to Bree, saying that she would most likely find work to do there. She argued that she wanted to have daring adventures and fight battles, not work in a pub.

The grey wizard simply laughed and told her to stay in Bree for a while, leaving her with the promise of an adventure in the future. And so Aramorel found herself doing odd jobs in the old town, sometimes doing farm work for farmers outside of the city, other times waiting on tables in The Prancing Pony. She stayed in Bree for a year, waiting for some sort of adventure to find her.

Her waiting was rewarded with the return of a certain wizard, who came bearing an invitation to join a quest.

(A/N: Hello! This is my first fanfic on here in over two years, I think, and it is my first Hobbit fic, so please bear with me. I'm super into the history and lore of Tolkien's world, and I'll try to stick with it as best I can, but otherwise, it is a fic, so things can be tweaked here and there, right? Anyways...

I'm trying to make this not your average OC insert fic. Sure, it will have a few elements that are almost always in a fic with an OC, but I hope to introduce some new aspects to the genre as well. Aramorel is my baby and I love her to death. Been with me a year now and I'm finally getting around to putting her story out there.

Thank you for reading, and please, things do get a whole lot better in the next chapter (hint: dwarves appear!), so go ahead and add me to your alert list and drop a review, if you would. I'd really appreciate it.)