Sometimes life is kind of sad, kind of not. There are a lot of tragedies that happened in the LOTR-verse, and frankly, if I tried to make them humorous, I feel like it'd be unrealistic. And I've always liked to be even the teeniest bit realistic. So. Remember, this story is a drabble-fic, so I won't exactly be following chronology. Though it mostly will be because that's how I think...what was I saying again? Oh well, on to the story!

Nobody (except Tom Bombadil) knows that In the Beginning, when Eru was all alone (…maybe), there were Things that already existed. Even Eru doesn't know when they began, just that they had been there since He could remember, which implied a lot of things his ego didn't want to think about. Obviously, it meant that they were somehow as encompassing and as boundless as Himself. (Or even more so.)

Love, and thus its counterpart, Hatred.

Eru Loved, everybody knew. He Loved the way a father loves his children. The way a ruler loves his subjects. The way a Creator loves his creations. But just as no single sentence could describe his Love, so too, could no single mind fathom it. Which was why only Eru Himself could Love as thus, and such a Love could only come from Him.

But was he, in turn, able to fathom the other, multifaceted parts of love? Could he understand romantic love or love between friends? The unequal types of love conveyed singularly from one heart to another?

Ratha didn't think so. Also, she thinks (knows) that Love and Hatred are so much older than Eru, they are even more boundless and encompassing than Him. Such that even the mind of the Creator cannot fathom their depths and lengths.

Ratha cannot be bothered with Hatred.

That's why she fell in love with Love.

xXXx

When Eru first created the Children…he'd had neat little plans in neat little parts with neat little functions. He'd gathered all that spilled matter and somehow turned it orderly into shapes that he felt were suitable and good. And yet…somehow…perhaps because they were Children and not Himself, the gathered stuff mostly came lose and mixed in with everything else and the spaces between what was Good and Bad were filled with it until Good and Bad were two thin pillars between a great ravine of grey.

That was…when Gandalf the Grey first came to being.

Olorin was wise, he was The Wise. He was practically the First Proper Maiar to be created and universally accepted to be everyone else's big brother (yes, even Ratha's). He did not flaunt his position, and instead used his own knowledge and smarts to help everyone. (Mostly elves, but frankly, even Ratha had to admit the Early Elves needed lots of help.)

So he was probably the only one not a little dumbstruck when the first cross-race couple…happened.

(The only Proper Maiar. Ratha was hardly surprised, she used to attend Pride Parades.)

Mairon (SAURON) got something like an aneurism, as much as a Twisted-Maiar could get an aneurism. He'd wanted to go smash them up a little like his (previous) Master Aule, but he was stuck hiding in the Shadowlands and Ratha had been especially fierce about leaving them alone.

Of course, that was mainly because one half of the couple was of her beloved Skinwalker race.

The Skinwalker in question was a female bear. She'd run into a male elf in the shared forest and there had been mutual curiosity and then further meetings and long conversations and…

(Well, you know what happened.)

And now there was an entire race (elves) pondering whether they should be baying for a blood price or begging for forgiveness or flaying the culprits, because a bear-elf-boy had been Beorn. Cough, I mean born.

Oh, the other race?

The thing is, Skinwalkers were very familiar with their particular Watcher. They worshipped her like a goddess, treated her as a sacred guardian, and drank lots of liquor when she visited. Which she was. The second part I mean.

She took her duties seriously, but mortals were not meant to know of the ways of immortals, and thus they could not know of how seriously she protected them, nor how…violently. In fact, they mainly knew her because she regularly joined in revels and dances and could outdrink entire tribes. (She introduced the First alcoholic drinks…so sue her, she's more than legal. She's older than legality!)

But that's not the point. The point was that they knew her in a way the Elves did not quite know their respective Watchers. She was not a mysterious figure to them. She'd talked and laughed and taught them many of their ways. And their ways included Love which was boundless, which was more encompassing than Eru, that did not condemn people for what they were, and did not despise the circumstances they were born in.

They knew that a bear-elf-boy or bear-elf-girl or whatever-hypen-whatever child was fine and Good and to be cherished like all other children. Because Ratha said so, and whatever she said, as long as Eru wasn't sending a bolt of lightning crashing down on her, must be so.

But the elves didn't know.

The point is not to show how discriminative the elves could be, neither is it to look down upon how haughty an entire race can be, nor is it to maybe point out that the other Watchers should spend more time with their Watched races. It is not to shame anyone.

(Cough…maybe a little)

It is simply a shame.

xXXx

When the Valar are startled, it may not be for as long as when Eru was startled (which did not happen in this Time), but it is still a good long time—enough for several generations of elves and skinwalkers.

The story of the first cross-race couple…can only live on in Ratha's memory. And, perhaps, Beorn's.

Skinwalkers are a kind removed from their fellow sentients because despite their familiar shape, they are a people more primal, more raw than the Ents of Orome's forest. And elves, being who they are, can sense that.

Elves cherish connection with Nature, but one must know that there will always be different schools of thought. One side professes deep academic love and appreciation akin to artistry—a delicate balancing of the people and nature side-by-side. The other simply plunges deep into the instinctive, the emotional, and tries to reach for the primordial force that they can only brush.

Ratha, being who she is, can only pity the second kind.

He was rare, that tall, handsome elf. He had a deep belief in nature, in the beauty of it, and the strength of it. He loved its savage wildernesses, its deep, raging depths. His stormy eyes—the colour of the sea—would peer into the Forest, as if trying to hold and consume all its secrets.

Oh, he was a wild one. If there were monkeys, he'd be the first. Swinging from tree to tree, nary a crisp from his naked feet. Ratha rather thought she could like him, for an elf.

She was there when they met. Maybe one day she will recount the story to their son.

But that was then, this was now.

The couple are no more.

(Maybe one day Eru will realize that there are some things you cannot defeat. And one of them is Hatred. Because no matter how much you profess to Love, there will always be Hatred in the corner of your heart.

Maybe one day Eru will realize that there is a reason Melkor was the way he is.

Maybe one day Eru will realize that Melkor is his Hatred unmasked and unmuffled.

…Maybe one day Eru will acknowledge it.)

xXXx

Years pass, a measure of time Ratha does not bother to count, and Beorn still lives. She likes to visit him in his little cottage, even more removed from civilisation than other skinwalkers. He's an odd one, her bear-elf-boy. Even Manwe professes to be confused as to how long he will live.

He favours his mother, but has his father's eyes. The tips of his ears are round. He grows beards. He can shift into a bear so large he could have been Chief of a tribe. Or a King. She wouldn't mind making him a King.

But instead, he lives quietly in his cottage, welcoming the few visitors at his door.

Ratha is like his concerned aunt—she comes every week. They chat and she teaches him a new thing off the top of her head each time, and he grows taller and more well-spoken, though still quite the surly adolescent.

Aiwendil, now Radagast the Brown, often 'visits' him on his haunts to find his many scattered abodes. Ratha thinks he's the original rabbit, with how many burrows he has. She made a pair of giant rabbits and gifted them to him when she thought that, because rabbits did not yet exist.

(Eru wondered how she came up with such strange shapes. And hopping animals. His later attempts at recreation resulted in grasshoppers. Which. How?!)

Gandalf (You can still call me Olorin, Ratha—Gandaaaaaaaalf—…sigh. Yes, Ratha?) ended up stumbling upon Beorn whilst chasing Aiwendil for a ride on his new sleigh. He stayed for tea. And biscuits. And roast beef.

(Yes, roast beef. Beorn was a growing boy who did not yet keep 'children' in his house like it was a barn.)

So in the end, the morale of the story was…

Something.

When the 'first' cross-race couple of elf and human occurred, Ratha decided to be forgiving and not destroy them.

When trying to portray Ratha, you must understand a lot of things which are perhaps not really human but still human. She's older than dirt. She is a reincarnated human who's read the Books. (Yes, it was only barely hinted in the beginning because she's not really applying it.) She's so powerful as to be able to withstand the power of a Valar and escape unharmed. (Remember, she's NOT a Valar. She's a Maiar.) She's probably the only person (except Tom Bombadil) who's chit-chatted with Eru so much. In practice, this makes her basically omnipotent.

When you're THAT powerful, THAT knowing, THAT old...your emotions become a bit muffled after the first couple eras. So she was excitable in the beginning when everything was new and strange and not even in the Books...but then she's basically been watching everything happen as the Stories unfold. Which makes practically every mystery known to her. The only breath of fresh air she gets is when new Firsts happen, except she's only really interested when it's not elves so. Yeah. (So much of the Story is about elves, so she basically skimmed the entire beginning of ME.)

Well, I guess I wrote this in a weird mood too, so I wonder how it came across? Do let me know how you felt about this chapter~

Memory25