Death drops her in the middle of a field and says, "Make some friends with the horsemen of the south" before disappearing. Thea, unappreciative of Death's methods, flips him the bird with a grumble before finding a herd of wild horses and making friends with a white rouncey mare instead. Naming the mare Ague after a word she remembers but doesn't know the meaning of, Thea and Ague take off north, finding a river and following it.
"Hey there, rider!" someone calls out to her one day, a few weeks into her journey north, after passing settlement after settlement, learning just how medieval this world is that she's found herself in. Thea looks over from where she waits with Ague, who obligingly eats from the bag of feed she holds, seeing a fair-haired, pointy-eared man on a white destrier. He smiles glibly, approaching her with a fair expression at her raised eyebrow. "Say, have you come across trouble? I do not see many bags or belongings on your horse and certainly, there are no settlers nearby."
"I don't need supplies," Thea eyes him. "Are you native to these parts?"
"I am, yes." The man swings down elegantly from his destrier, silken robes fluttering in the breeze – sword all the more visible. "I am Glorfindel."
"Thea," she pats Ague's head gently before setting the feedbag down on the ground. "Might I ask you a question, Mister Glorfindel? Why are your ears so sharply shaped?"
Glorfindel's face betrays his surprise. "You do not know of elves, Lady Thea?"
"To be quite fair, I've not been in this world long," Thea looks out onto the river, watching the sunlight ripple on the water as she discloses the truth to him as she had done to the first human she had met. His reaction had been one of disbelief and scorn – how would this Glorfindel elf fare?
"Do you come from Valinor, milady?" Glorfindel asks quietly, after a long pause.
"No," Thea looks back at him, little Lily Luna's auburn locks – so very different from the infamous Weasley red – twirling down in front of her eyes as she fiddles with her gloves, dragging the elbow-length arms back into place. "I am from somewhere far further afield. You would not believe me if I told you."
"Let me try."
So it comes to pass that Glorfindel joins Thea on her trek across Arda, becoming acquainted with each other as he tells her the histories and stories of Middle Earth. In turn, Thea tells him of the impossible worlds and planets she has seen, finding a companion in the reincarnated elf who remembers far more than he should.
"Ague is a sickness, you know," Glorfindel says one day. Thea lets out a small giggle of amusement, pausing in cleaning the sword of Godric Gryffindor on her lap of orc blood.
"Illness is not something that finds its home within my mount! Such an irony," she shakes her head before listening to Glorfindel's song of Beren and Lúthien, mind still lingering on his words as she hears of how Beren watched Luthien Tinúviel. Thea knows she is the Mistress of Death – is it irony, too, that her white steed would be Ague, plague, Pestilence? Now, I only await companions that I would call War and Famine.
Glorfindel parts from her side when she reaches past the Greenwood, home of King Thranduil. Thea finds a strange reluctance to part with the Balrog-slayer.
"We shall meet again, my friend," he soothes her worries, holding her hands gently, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I swear it that we shall and so it shall be."
Thea settles within Dale, but no sooner than a year later, does a dragon swoop down and force her from her newly-designated home. Horrified that dragons of this land have intelligence, but even more horrified at the actions of King Thranduil, Thea turns into her lupine form and hurries to Erebor, transforming back into a witch as the young Prince Thorin carries an Ereborian from the smoking doors of his Mountain.
"I will deal with the dragon!" She shouts to the wide-eyed boy before racing inside, sonorous enhancing her voice. "FACE ME! THIS MOUNTAIN'S DEFENDERS ARE NOT DONE WITH YOU YET, DRAGON!"
The dragon known as Smaug falls swiftly. Thea distracts him, shielding everyone from his fire with her magic and sticking the poisoned sword of Gryffindor into a patch on his belly, where a scale has been knocked loose. Smaug painfully dies and the dwarves of Erebor are quick to call their people back inside, securing columns and stone walls that would save the structure of the main castle.
"You are a witch," Thorin whispers frantically, however, when she tries to leave, clutching at her black tunic-sleeve. "Please, you must help my grandfather! He is consumed by gold-sickness!"
Thea tries. She sees to his grandfather and then she sees to his entire family, for she sees the curses upon their line. It is plain as day when she truly looks at it, but Thea does not know how they have been ensnared a second time and how, so recently. Curse upon a curse, it is not feasible without something truly powerful being at play.
"A spell was cast upon your grandfather," she says to Thorin in a hush, hands on his shoulders as she speaks, words muffled but urgent, not telling him that it affects him too. "Who cursed him? What cursed him?"
Thror calls for the Arkenstone as he searches through the Treasury.
"Where is it? Find it! Find the Jewel of Erebor!"
The Heart of a Mountain, oh why would you take its soul? Thea questions dwarven sanity as she walks over piles of gold, knowing exactly where it had ended up. She easily dispels what little start of dragon-enchantment lays upon the gold, but the heavy atmosphere lingers. Thror shouts for her to hand the shining stone over when she picks it up, eyes burning bright amber as the soul inside it shimmers.
"You are despicable," she says when she finally turns and for a brief moment, Thror stops, but his greed and desire for the soul within her palm overturns his fright. Thea is quick to knock him out, looking to Thorin and his father, Thrain. "You call it the Heart of the Mountain and that is exactly what it is. Only returning it from whence it came will ease the sickness to tolerable levels."
"Tolerable?" Thrain mutters, "Our gold-sickness was exaggerated?"
At least someone understands. At least someone was aware they had an age old curse of greed upon them in the first place.
The Arkenstone is, with little ceremony, dropped down a mine-shaft with Smaug's corpse, sans his head – the skeleton inside to eventually be hung over the gates of Erebor as a warning to those that might try to attack them. They all agree to her request afterwards, all dwarrow of Erebor swearing not to speak of the witch that truly killed the beast. In return for her services, however, she is granted the titles dwarf-friend and Lady of Erebor, Thror gifting her a swathe of gold that she asks to remain in Erebor.
"One day, mayhaps I will claim my portion and move on, but for now, I would ask it be kept within the Royal Treasury."
Thea already sees tapestries of her feats being woven – of her defeating Smaug and saving the King from his own mind – and knows she should have been clearer about not wishing to be known as such a saviour, knows she should have asked them to word their vow differently, but in truth, she does not mind. Dwarves are like the rock from whence we came, Thorin says to her, and when we are loyal, we will lay down our lives.
The dwarves of Erebor are her allies. It is always a good idea to have allies.
Thea stays two summers and a winter before leaving in the springtime after the death of Thror and coronation of Thrain, promising Thorin, Frerin and Dis to return, her young dwarven friends wishing to see her face again in the near-future. It is unfortunate enough that she will roam for more years than planned – thirty-eight to be exact – before returning, circling Arda and allying with more people than she can count on two hands and two feet.
"You took your time," Dis says when she returns to Erebor, eyeing Glorfindel at her shoulder despite the lion-haired boy on her hip. "Who's your friend?"
It is to Thea's quiet amusement that Glorfindel becomes enamoured with the princess and vice versa, sitting with Thrain, watching as both Frerin and Thorin try admirably to scare Glorfindel off. They quite fail and in two years, they are married and parents, besides.
"Dwarves only wed once," Thrain explains early on. "Our One is our only. Dis married for politics and then Vili died a day after Fili was born, defending Thorin from assassins. He will be missed and not forgotten – but Glorfindel will too have his place in our history now."
"Was their mother your One?" Thea inquires.
"Aye and her death pains me to this day. I'm afraid you were a little too late, even with your daring rescue of the Mountain, milady."
Thea has the good sense to leave the King then, as his advisors approach to batter him with courtly matters. Grief and politics don't mix and Thea has no want to be there when he begins to shout. It is by her own mistake that she bumps into Prince Bard and causes them both to go flying off the side of the rampart.
"Oh gods!" the human prince of Dale panics, clutching onto Thea's wrists as she holds onto him, her foot being caught by a nearby dwarf, who lets out a shout.
"Don't let go," she orders him as they're hauled upwards. He is quick to stand when they're on solid stone again, pulling her up to her feet and against a wall, holding her tightly as if she were about to fall once more. "You can let go now."
He doesn't let go. Thea doesn't blame him, instead looking to the dwarf that saved their lives. In an instant, she's struck by the fact that he has a Mohawk.
"Um…thank-you for saving our lives," Thea still stares at the Mohawk, not paying any attention to anything else.
"Was nothing. Watch where you're going," he gruffly states, cheeks red before he pounds off quickly, scaring a dwarf going the opposite direction.
Thea quickly realises that the prince is in shock, however, quickly ferrying him back to Dale to his castle healers. They fuss over him and then her, too, after he calms down and explains what had happened.
"Don't forget that you wouldn't let go of me, afterwards," Thea tries to note humorously, after he finishes his short tale. "I think you might have felt me up by accident."
Immediately, the prince is mortified. "My apologies, my lady!"
"It's no bother. I'm thousands of years old – it happens."
Frankly, Thea would be worried if he hadn't taken an interest in her after she said that.
Bard – as he asks her to call him – likes her company and follows her around, stopping whenever she asks him to. He's perfectly mannered and good-looking to boot. Having previous experience in wanting children and having Death tell her that they disallow it from happened, Thea isn't afraid of anything when they start a romantic relationship – after all, Bard's older sister, Ingrid, has a pair of boys that Bard is ready to make his heirs, when the time comes and he says as such when she brings it up.
Thea, in retrospect, should have probably asked Death more questions about their little habit of preventing pregnancy.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, Thea is already over the Misty Mountains on an adventure to the Shire when she realises late, that she may be, in fact, pregnant. Sending a letter to her husband at Rivendell, Thea directs him to address his correspondences to Hobbiton post-office in the Shire, not wanting to miss her chance at seeing her hobbit friends, who could very well have died, seeing as she hasn't seen them in decades. The majority of her pregnancy ends up passing on the road, but luckily in her last two months, she is resting up in the Shire, at her friend Wisertop Gamgee's smial. When her daughter, Sigrid is born in wintertime, she sends her husband a letter along with a sketch, telling of her plans to travel back to Dale when spring comes.
Bard, for his part, is patient. Dale itself is joyful and throw her a week-long party on her return with their newest princess. Ingrid's boys are happy that their aunt is able to bear children and ask her to have a boy, so they aren't to inherit the Dale kingship. Bard and Thea are happy to oblige and a year and a half later, in the high heat of summer, Prince Bain is born, young Tilda coming some seven years afterwards.
"I am a lucky man, to have such a beautiful, courageous, clever and independent wife."
"I am lucky to have you, my love. I shall miss you all so very dearly when you are gone," Thea cries then, for them all. Bard holds her tightly to him and later, when he dies of old age and later still, when Bain, Thorin and Dis die in the Battle of the North, during the Last War of the Ring and Sigrid and Tilda die happy in their beds, Thea drifts.
Glorfindel, in much the same boat as she, survives by his sons, clinging to Kili desperately as Tauriel too, does. Thea wonders at them both sometimes, wondering why they take the risk – they are not like she, for Thea is not an elf or dwarf and is not bound to solely one.
"Love," Radagast says, as if it is as simple as that.
Death visits Thea in the night, after she has once more drifted, thinking of love and pain and family, a simple oak door waiting for her to step through behind him.
'It is time, Mistress.'
When Thea goes through the door, she thinks, War came in the form of a Ring. Famine deprived me of love. Pestilence came as my gods-damned horse – and I am Death.
A new world waits.