Summary: Treebeard's awakening of the Huorns, the half-aware trees, to lead them against Isengard before they turn aside to hunt the Orcs at Helm's Deep. From the Huorns' perspective. What would it be like to be partway between an Ent and a tree? Oneshot.
Author's Note: I wrote this because I found zero results on a search for "Huorn" in Lord of the Rings. If you like my fanfic, or if you think I botched it, why not write another one about the Huorns yourself? :)
Slow creaking of branches. Leaves rustle in the wind. Roots draw water from the earth. We are content.
Teacher calls. Not the old teachers, not the ones with quick, dancing feet, like tall squirrels with pointed ears. One of the ones they taught better, or who remembered more, than ourselves.
"Come, sleeping ones," he says. Fangorn is his name, we remember. We listen. Why does he call us? Our minds are still mostly filled with our sleep, with water and earth and slowly reaching branches, but our teacher is important enough to listen to.
"There has been burning in the forest," he says. "You have all felt it. I hear your leaves crying out in the night. And there have been evil things about, with axes." His voice drops to an even lower note than usual. "Burárum," he rumbles. "Orcs."
We know. As he says, we have been feeling the evil, sneaking into our dreams. And more: some of us have stood near while our kin died at the claws of those evil creatures. Their pain has been turning some of our dreams to nightmares.
From some of us, the thought of those axes and fires brings a poisoned hate; from others, only clean fury. From all of us, it drives away the desire for sleep.
Our branches begin to whip back and forth. Our agitated leaves rustle loudly. Our roots, still deeply buried and motionless in nourishing soil, begin to remember how to walk. And our whispering leaves speak without words, all of us saying the same thing.
Teacher nods his head, with its long mossy beard and deep eyes. "Yes," he says slowly, agreeing with our meaning. "Time for war."