Chapter 1
Fire and Water; Ashes and Mist
"I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning." Ursula K. le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
Tauriel stood, transfixed, as the dragon plummeted to earth. It became a streak of red and gold illuminated by its inner fire as it fell.
In flight it had been magnificent, in battle terrifying. In death she found it breathtaking. For centuries she had heard tales of the beast beneath the mountain from her elders. They spoke of a creature of darkness, slumbering in its nest of shining gold. In the stories it had been a creature incapable of anything but destruction and greed. She could not prevent the flicker of doubt that entered her mind. The dragon was so bright. The jewels Thranduil desired must pale in comparison to the image in front of her. She blinked, dragon fire caught in her moss green eyes, freed herself from the strange spell.
Bard's daughters were cheering, teeth white in their sooty faces as they smiled. Their eyes shone brightly in the light of the burning trees that surrounded the lake, their sadness over the loss of their home temporarily forgotten with the defeat of the monster who had burned it.
Tauriel was surprised to find herself smiling along with them.
There were hard times ahead for the people of Esgaroth. They would have to rebuild the town, pick up the singed remains of their old life and accept that which had been irrecoverably lost.
But Esgaroth could rise again, Tauriel thought. Bright and new, refined by the fire that had sought to destroy it.
Next to her Kili shifted his weight to his uninjured leg. The two dwarves were more subdued. Tauriel hoped for their sake that the other dwarves had somehow managed to escape the dragon's wrath, as unlikely as it seemed. Kili offered her a brave attempt at a grin as he caught her looking at him. He was oddly endearing with specks of ash in his dark hair and his brown eyes warm with an emotion that Tauriel recognized in herself as well. She reached out to touch him. He was less than a step away. She felt Thranduil's cold disapproval like it was a physical thing, remembered the silent, forlorn look that sometimes crossed Legolas' face. Tauriel lowered her hand and clenched it into a fist.
How tired she was of it all. Of Thranduil. Of keeping her distance, of always watching what she said. Of knowing that Legolas felt the same, but would never utter a word of defiance to his father.
And yet he had defied their king to come to her aid…
There was a faint crying in the warm, smoky wind that brought Tauriel back to their current situation. Fili was frowning at her.
"He needs rest. The dragon might be slain, but there could still be orcs about. We-"
"I know of a place near the river. It's not too far from here," Sigrid said, interrupting the dwarf and blushing a bit.
"I sometimes went there with father and Bain to help them with… well to help them." Her eyes wandered to Esgaroth and the smoldering remains of the tower from which the black arrow had been fired. Some of the happiness left her face.
"We will go to find them first thing in the morning," Tauriel said gently. She understood the girl's fear all too well.
She glanced at the burning town. Movement caught her eye despite the rising mist and smoke. The crying in the wind took on a new meaning. It is only a human child, Tauriel told herself as she watched the tiny figure. "It is not our concern," Thranduil's voice echoed. She had already disobeyed her king for the sake of a dwarf and let her prince enter battle alone. Was a little girl's life worth braving a town that was burning like kindling?
Once, there had been someone who had come for her in the depths of Mirkwood when they had found her parent's bodies. Her earliest memories were of the endless shadows beneath the trees, of things whispering, waiting. The terrible fear. Of blue eyes, bright after so much time spent in the dark. Strong arms lifting her. Safety. An end to the terrible loneliness.
"Go on ahead to the shelter. I need to do something."
She was away before they could answer, her eyes set on the small figure silhouetted by the orange flames. The girl was slowly fading from view in the rising mist.
Tauriel made her way towards the town as quickly as she could, mindful of the pieces of the broken bridge which could sink the boat. When her oar hit something yielding in the water she looked over to find a blackened corpse, the skin on its face peeling away from the flesh. The lidless eyes stared up at the sky as it grinned, lips shrunken from the fire.
As a captain of the guard she had seen plenty of grotesque sights on her forays in the Mirkwood that would have left many elven ladies quite pale, but she could not help but shudder at the sight in front of her. Burning was not a pleasant way to die.
It did not take her long to reach Esgaroth. When Tauriel listened carefully she was able to hear the girl's crying over the low roar of the fire. Elvish sight was no use in the hellish mist that covered the town and billowed outward over the lake. It was tinted red with the light of the rising sun and the flickering orange flames around it.
"Don't be frightened. I'm here to take you someplace safe!" She shouted, hoping that the child could hear her. The sound of the girl's crying quieted, but there was no answer. There was a scrabbling sound that Tauriel turned to follow, hoping that it wasn't just wood collapsing. She almost walked straight into the girl. She let out a sound that she refused to call a scream.
Tauriel knelt in front of the girl, grasping her around the shoulders.
"Are you injured?" She asked, taking in the child's appearance. For the most part she seemed unharmed, except for a few burns. The girl tore herself from Tauriel with a cry.
"The light." The girl pointed to the sky. "It fell. It fell like a falling star!" Her voice was hoarse from breathing smoke, her hair singed and as wild as her eyes as they reflected the light from the fire.
"Light?" Tauriel asked, uncomprehending. The girl nodded enthusiastically. Tauriel looked up at where the girl had pointed and remembered Smaug's glowing chest and the way the first light of morning had bathed his scales in gold.
"Don't worry, little one. The dragon is dead. We need to leave this place, come with me."
"No! It can't be gone!" The girl backed away further, new tears making pale trails down her sooty cheeks. "The light mustn't go out!"
Before Tauriel could prevent her the child disappeared through an opening in a collapsed wall. She could hear her footsteps moving down a wooden path on the other side. She would have to find a way around, the opening was too small for an adult and the rooftops were a hazard.
Reluctantly Tauriel started her nightmarish journey deeper into the burning town, blinded by the mist, her grace lost as she dodged glowing wood and stumbled over the occasional dead body of a villager that had fallen victim to Smaug's wrath. It all seemed vaguely surreal to Tauriel. The redness of the mist, the child's mad flight and the crying that rang in her ears like an echo. She passed a dead dog on her way. The animal was chained, its body strained toward a channel and the unreachable refuge of the water. It stank of burnt fur. She looked away quickly and walked a little faster.
Tauriel found the girl again near a pigsty. She ran forward, hoping to end the mad chase and bring the child to safety. There was horror in the child's face as she stared down at the dead pigs. Some of them had burst as they had cooked inside their own skins.
"The babies…" The girl said, her voice shrill with horror.
"They must have been trampled by the adults in their panic." Tauriel said as she looked at the piglets. "It happens sometimes." There was a flash of green, green like new leaves, as the girl looked up at her. The colour was startling in the sea of red, orange and black they found themselves in.
She took the girl's hand and pulled her away from the grisly scene. The girl, however, started pulling in another direction.
"Please! I'm almost there. I'll come with you, I promise. I just need to see for myself."
Tauriel nodded, puzzled at the girl's insistence. Oh, she understood where they were heading. In front of them the buildings where dripping, the wood still hissing like angry lizards. Smaug had fallen not far from here.
She knew what the girl had seen as the dragon had fallen from the sky even though she could not name it. In her innocence the child did not understand that what she saw was only a little thing… And the dragon it was part of held too much evil for that light to overcome.
Still, she allowed the child to lead her by the hand in the mist that kept on growing thicker and thicker.
There was a pale golden glow a little way off. Tauriel let go of the girl's hand and drew her bow.
The dragon was half submerged and clinging to the smouldering remains of what could have been a block of houses. There were fish floating on the black water surrounding it, boiled by the heat of its body. Tauriel's lips parted in silent shock. Somehow the dragon had survived the fall.
The golden light from the dragon's eyes fell on her bow. It snarled, threatening her with rows of yellowish white teeth, sharp as daggers, black blood spraying from its nostrils as it growled. It did not speak. The terror of its own death had robbed it of both words and strength. It lay glaring at her balefully, brought down to the level of a dumb animal. It was humiliated by its weakness, shamed by the she-elf who saw it and would remember his shame all the long years of her life.
Tauriel found herself pitying the creature. It seemed wrong, somehow, for a dragon to die in a lake surrounded by stinking fish and the waste of a human town. She readied an arrow.
Her copper hair turned to fire in the paleness of the mist and the wind sent her hair writhing in the air even as it quickened the hungry fires in the distance.
She was about to shoot when she noticed the girl. The child approached the dragon with a look of mesmerized wonder even as tears streamed down her face. Tauriel stood rooted to the spot, holding her breath in apprehension. The girl showed no hint of fear. It was an agony to watch the girl near the growling dragon with the total disregard only children could have for danger. What was the child thinking? She kept her aim steady. If the dragon moved she would put an arrow through its eye in a second.
Before Tauriel could warn her about the dragon's blistering hot scales the girl reached out to touch the creature's glowing chest. To Tauriel's relief she avoided the black blood that was still trickling from the mortal wound.
Smaug reared his head, despite his weakness, and roared like his heart had been torn from his body. The sound shook the wooden planking Tauriel was standing on and rang in her ears.
The girls fell backwards without a sound. Tauriel was at her side in an instant and drew back with the child in her arms.
The light in the dragon's chest expanded, turned his black blood to molten gold as it ran from his body. For a moment the great beast glowed like a beacon, every inch of muscle straining against some great force before the light suddenly died down and only the tiniest flicker was left. The dragon exhaled and the little light left with the breath. Tauriel watched the massive body slide into the lake.
It was only much later, after she had crossed the lake and tracked the dwarves and the children to the shelter that she realized the girl was grasping something in her hand.
"Strange," Tauriel thought. "Where did she get that seed?"
She shook her head. This night had been too much. She longed for a tankard of good, strong wine and the company of her friends. They would call her mad as she told them of what she had done tonight, with a grudging respect. Legolas would bring up her infatuation with Kili, they would tease her about it and it would becoming a running joke.
Or, her rebellious nature added. She had been trying to squash it for as long as she could remember.
Or she could leave with Kili when he went. They could set out to explore the world outside of Mirkwood as she had longed to do for years. She and Legolas had talked about it so often she already had a route planned in her mind. But it had always seemed like a silly dream with the prince. He seemed as curious about the outside world as she did, but in almost three thousand years he had never been any further from Mirkwood than Rivendell. She could guess the reasons for that. It had much to do with his father.
She thought much as she followed Kili's footsteps to the little shelter with the child in her arms.
Tauriel made a decision that morning, looked up at the red sky and imagined a phoenix, rising.
A/N: Edited 5 January 2015.