Old Tales of the Shire: Wife of the Thain

by LA Knight

It was often said in other families that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd, BUT...." - The Hobbit, Chapter One, Page 2. Nominated for MEFA2008.

37. Like Snow In June

Chapter Thirty-Six

Like Snow in June

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"There'll be snow in August before this... is set to rights..."

-Cook, Nanny McPhee

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Snow.

That's what he thought it was at first, soft white flakes of ice falling from the sky in the middle of June. But no, it wasn't that. No snowflake was ever so big, even to one of the Little Folk.

They were feathers. Huge, shining, whiter than snow or moonlight. They floated gracefully to earth, and the swans were slowly sinking to the ground.

All except one, the smallest. It was gliding back towards where the Elf Queen of Lorien stood, and when it landed before her, it was again the slight and small form of Nencarion, the boy with all his baby teeth and eyes of blood.

The other swans fell to earth as the feathers did, in a slow, languid drifting down. When they landed upon the earth again, they were men.

All around them, the feathers swirled about on little eddies of air, like giant snow flakes.