Chapter Fifty-Three
A Kiss of Frost
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"I just don't like winter, that's all..."
-Gerda, Hallmark's the Snow Queen
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He has been in the Shire a month. The storm has continued all that time. The crops of the Shire are failing, the animals becoming ill. So are the children. Many are freezing in their homes.
He will have to go soon, or someone will be coming- one of the Maiar, perhaps, in human form- to investigate what it is that is occurring in the hobbits' homeland.
And so he carefully woos the lady of the Took Estate, Amaranth. He is close, now. It is a soft night- the snow has abated a little, so that it falls softly and the wind does not blow like a gale. He can take her now, give her that which will put her under his thrall- the kiss of the Ice Prince, the kiss of frost.
And so she is looking at him with her innocent, upturned face, and he leans in, and ice cold frost touches her warm lips, and does not melt, but turns her flesh cold as winter.
She melts into his arms.
