Disclaimer: I do not own The Hobbit/Middle Earth or the characters contained within. I am not making a profit.
The growl echoed loudly across the entire mountain, and finally reached Thorin's ears with a faint whisper. He looked up from his work to see the flurry of snow cascading down the mountainside and watched its flow with a mixture of awe and appreciation; only nature was capable of matching Mahal's strength.
Finally the flood of snow disappeared from sight, the mountainside unmoving once more, and a few moments later, so too, did the roar of the avalanche leave his ears with only the gentle wind left to interrupt the silence.
He watched the white sheet of the mountain for a few moments longer and then turned back to his work, lifting his hammer.
/\/\/\/\/\
Fear encroached on Kili as he found nothing but darkness before him.
Carefully, he shifted a little, to take the remaining weight off his leg. He probed the damaged leg, just above his boots, and bit his lip hard as his investigation caused the pain to flare up once more. His leg was broken, of that he was certain, but his heart fell as he fingers found the sharp splintered end of bone that now protruded from his skin, having also pieced through his breeches.
'Not good,' he muttered to himself, the words sounding loud in his silent tomb. 'Really not good.' His voice sounded strange to him, almost as if he shouldn't be talking at all, and he quietened, as he panted desperately in the dark hollow.
He extended his arm above him, and found compact snow less than an arm's length above his seated position. Not enough room to stand then, he thought. His back was to a wall of snow and ice, as was his left side, but when he reached out his right arm he met no resistance. His legs, too, were fully extended, so although he couldn't stand he did, at least, have a little room to move.
He wanted to investigate further, to see how much room he really had, but when he tried to slide away from the wall his leg pleaded otherwise.
'Alright,' he whispered. 'Think this through. Go slow.'
First things first: fix his leg. Not literally fix it, even Oin wasn't that skilled a physician, but he could at least bind it. It occurred to him that he couldn't tell if it was bleeding much, but asserted that he would feel more lightheaded if he was bleeding badly.
He'd lost his pack; somehow that had come off as he'd been whisked away down the mountain side, but he found his hunting knife still in the sheathe on his belt. He still had his bow, although he could feel that it had broken in his fall. He grieved for the damage; it had been a gift from Balin, with beautiful etchings running along the grain of the wood. His quiver, too, had survived somewhat intact, although he could not say the same for his arrows.
Plenty of weapons but no food or water, although he had only a meagre supply in his pack anyway; he had been due to return home that same evening.
'They'll realise I'm missing,' he tried to reassure himself. 'They'll notice when I don't return.' He tried not to think about the fact that the mountain side was huge; there was no way they would easily find him beneath the snow, and then there was the issue of the air. Kili had been trying not to think about it, but no light meant there were no gaps to the surface, not even small ones, and that meant there was no more air.
'Stop it,' he scolded himself as his thoughts wandered into dangerous territory. 'First things first: leg. Air can wait.' He was avoiding the issue, but he didn't care; at the end of the day, he also knew he wasn't going to manage much if he didn't sort out his damaged limb.
He unfastened his outer jacket and then, using his knife, he tore pieces of his shirt away from his underclothes, before refastening his outer clothes. The furs and fabrics were damp, but the layers still kept him a least on the right side of zero degrees. Disentangling his broken bow from his back, he cut the string away and then cut the wood in half as best he could without his eyesight.
'Sorry Balin,' he whispered his apology. 'It was a beautiful bow.'
He carefully splinted his lower leg using the broken limbs of his bow, and wrapped around the fabric from his shirt, before fixing everything in place with the string of his bow. He pulled the string tight and groaned as his leg throbbed painfully. When he was done he slumped back against the cold wall and gasped in a few heavy breaths before finally getting control of his breathing.
He pushed his damp hair out of his face and felt the warm sticky liquid that clung to the roots of his hair.
'Oh yeah,' he grumbled. 'I got hit in the head too.' It was stupid, really, to be talking to himself, but he needed the conversation. Besides, no one was going to make fun of him for it down here.
He lifted his hand once more and probed his head until he found the gash just beneath the hairline. It wasn't too big and it appeared to have stopped bleeding so he left it along.
'Step Two,' he said aloud, 'how big is this place?'
His leg now splinted, he found it slightly easier to move. It was still painful by all means, but it was a manageable kind of pain. Moving slowly and deliberately he traced the walls of his prison.
He found that it was large enough for him to fully lie down, but not much longer than that. The right wall, however, took some finding, and as he shuffled along in the dark, it took him a good minute to find the wall of snow. At this side of the small space, the ceiling also lifted, so he would have been able to stand, while bent over, if his leg had been able to support him.
The space was considerably large given that he had been wiped out by an avalanche. He didn't know much about them if he was honest, but he was certain that he should have less space to manoeuvre.
He pushed himself onto his right foot and held onto the icy wall for balance. He traced his hands across the surface of the ceiling above him, and then he felt it; a gravelly texture… rock.
He almost laughed out loud.
He was in a cave! By some miracle the path of the avalanche had pushed him into a cave.
He was still trapped, yes, but he wasn't buried, or at least, not as buried as he had thought. A cave he could work with.