With Fine Frost and Untouchable
Prologue
A Touch of Weakness
~ \ ~ Start ~ / ~
It started with the wind, a gasping and wheezing of the valley that initiated the set of events which would earn this day the name of Sul Dahmaan voth Krosis: the Day Remembered with Sorrow in the Common tongue. Along with the wind came a howling so loud it reverberated in every ear, shook every bone, plundered through every mind for miles in the distance; the howling of a beast demanding tribute and fear. Then the sky opened up, the beast's shadow blanketing the mountain, and it rained fire, stretching destruction into every crevice and raising an even worse adversary: a hopelessness that spread like the workings of a lethal plague.
She could do nothing but watch as the land she once protected fell to ash and ruin, too late to act, too little will to fight against the despair. Her teeth grit in devastation, her eyes darkened in grief, her throat quivered in misery—all the while, the cinders of a broken promise flickered into nonexistence.
And on that day, better not to be than be forgotten, she forged a new oath: Smaug the Terrible, greatest of the fire-drakes of the Third Age, would fall by the claws of a "lesser" dragon, the first shifter born from the line of the cold-drakes, Bellinda the Wintry.
No matter how many years passed, how many generations perished, how many ages prevaricated by—she would regain what was hers by birthright: the Lonely Mountain and by proxy the kingdom of Erebor and city of Dale and all of their people, Dwarves and Men alike.
She could not abandon the mountain—not even if death was nearly certain. It was a matter of living or existing, and she could only stand the latter for so long.
Smaug would pay for leaving the Fire Draken territory to the East, for thinking for one moment that because her Fron (Common: "kin") were Cold Drakes they were feeble-minded and weak and so he could seize what was not his to take. It was far time their brethren acknowledged them as something more than servants—she was not to be tamed, to be silenced.
He would hear her ire, feel her rage, taste her wrath, even if it was her final act in this life or the next.
.
.
~ \ ~ End ~ / ~
A/N: Short introductory prologue. This has been in my head for quite awhile (since I heard that Benedict Cumberbatch would be voicing Smaug actually, so, about a year and a half ago). Draken, the language of the dragons, is, in fact, Thu'um from Skyrim. This will eventually be a romance, but not for a long, long while. You will find out soon, but for now I'll just say that our heroine is incapable of love at the moment. Not sure what pairing this will be, though: Legolas/OC, Smaug/OC, Bard/OC, Thranduil/OC; who knows. (I don't, case-in-point.)
—A Whisper None Can Hear