'Tip-toe through the dungeons,
Taking gold with me
One step – then two step
Smaug can't catch me!' Six little girls sing, as they skip and prance in a merry little ring.
The town of Dale is unusually bright and cheery this afternoon. There have been no dragon attacks for over a month now, and so all of the children have been let outside. They dance and play in the patches of long, thick grass, and some float along in barges up and down the river. Dale is a town of trade, a fishing community, who sell great silver fish far and wide by barge, and so their children are learned in the craft of boating.
The mountain trembles once again, but all of the residents pay no heed to it. This has been happening the whole of springtime but no attack has followed the great rumble of earth for a long time. The merry music continues, as do the street-dancers. Men of trade lurk near their stalls, preparing to pounce on an unwary buyer who is caught off their guard. Money and goods are being exchanged in hand and the whole town is outside, in the market, playing with their children, fishing…
All of a sudden, the air becomes cold and heavy. The sparse voices in the market soon quiet down, and all people slowly turn to the looming Lonely Mountain, which is belching a black cloud of ash and flame. Young pine trees leading down from the mountain are scorched, some are felled, while others are charred down to the roots, which are a startling ivory for some strange reason, against the sickly canopy of ebony.
Finally, an elderly woman's lingering scream rings in the air. It is a scream of terror, which reaches the whole town. From North to South, East to West, all the residents of Dale know what is coming… But they already did, didn't they? 'DRAGON!'
And suddenly, great winds beat around them like the epicentre of a storm, uprooting trees in their wake, and tearing up sheaves and fields of young, golden crops. Children scream and flee to their homes, to their mothers. Traders begin frantically packing up their stock, but it will be to no avail. Smaug is here. Smaug is here, and he will not leave anything untouched.
The great golden dragon comes hurtling from the North, wind whistling behind him. He shoots out a spout of fire, snorting and screeching at the wind with, quite frankly, psychotic cries. With a single blow of his horned tail, Smaug takes out twelve little shacks, the debris clattering and snapping, before forming a charred heap of ruin. Flames lick the sides of every home on the north side of Dale.
A girl is rooted to the spot, as if massive vines have ensnared her legs and tangled in a twisted thicket around her ankles. Smaug cocks his head slightly and leans towards her, as his wings continue to beat, his poisonous yellow eyes boring into her warm cocoa ones. He smiles a contorted smile as the girl opens her mouth to scream – but no sound comes out. She is gone in a blast of flame. Smaug takes no prisoners from Dale, not ever. He will simply char them alive, eat them whole or just get bored and forget about them.
He continues to swoop and glide over Dale, humming to himself gleefully as he goes.
'Ten boatmen sailing,
Sailing, but they will fall
'Ten boatmen sailing,
Sailing, but they will fall
There will be no bodies, because I'll have ate them all!
Ten boatmen sailing,
Sailing, but they will fall!'
Then he growls and roars and bares his teeth at the men who have bows to try and shoot him down. Ha! My hide is the thickest of those in the whole of Middle Earth. No measly arrow can pierce me! He proceeds to blast flame upon the people and circles Dale until he is bored and flies off.
A small bird persistently twitters and tweets outside the window of Bag End. It whistles a merry tune as a pair of bleary, brown eyes open up sluggishly and blink a few times in disorientation. Hairy feet swing down from the bed and pad towards the round, neat, little green window. There is the click of a latch and the window swings open, letting in a soft spring breeze. The sun is a hazy, golden orb lounging lazily on the horizon as Bilbo Baggins gets up… And if you were to ask him later on, he would have truly wished he hadn't.
A/N: There it is, then, Chapter 2. I would just like to say a big thank you to TheWoodElfOfAsgard, who is pretty much my little book of ideas, and to all of you, for even just glancing at my story. I really appreciate it. Place a review if you can, please.