Author's notes- I haven't updated in a long time- and this is only the most rudimentary form of a second chapter. I know it sounds somewhat Sue-ish, but that's because I can't write beginnings. I've got over a hundred pages of the middle, but I can't really post that yet. Still looking for a beta, so Tolkien fanatics, please reply …
Disclaimer- the world, languages, themes, and history are Tolkien's, but most of the characters are mine.
It was a cold spring day in the town of Bree. Dark grey clouds covered up the weak April sunshine, the rain pounding down like a thousand fists upon the roofs of the town. The region's best inn, the Prancing Pony, was busier than a beehive, full of travellers desperate to get out of the torrential downpour, to get somewhere warm by a fire where they could have a drink or two. The old inn still had the best beer on the entire Bree-hill, though there were many larger inns, some in better repair; without creaky stairs, loose shingles, and many of the other things that characterise a very old building. But no other inn was as good as the Prancing Pony, men agreed.
That soggy April day, the inn was full of all sorts of folk: there were a few Dwarves moving from their mines in the East to their western settlements, a merchant caravan from down south making its way through the Northlands, and many other travellers and folk of Bree, there for the news, or for the beer. The proprietors of the inn, the Butterburs, were hurrying this way and that, scurrying to and fro, trying to help ten people at a time. The timbers of the old inn groaned as the rain beat down ever harder. By the time people had stopped arriving, and were all settled in, it was evening. Many of the guests were in the common room, in addition to the landlord's daughter, Estelle. She sat down on a bench near the wall, exhausted from all the scurrying around she had done while helping her parents, when a noise at the door got her off her feet. She edged past dripping patrons till she opened the door and looked out into the wet night, not seeing what could have made the noise. When she shut the thick wooden door and turned around, there was a dark hooded figure behind her, tall and menacing.
"Aaah!" she shrieked.
The stranger's hood was removed, and Estelle calmed down.
"Oh! You again! You do seem to pop up like that! Whyever do you do that for?"
"Do what?" said Peregrine, the tall woman, shaking her head like a dog; droplets of rain flying off her dark hair.
Peregrine was one of the people that the Bree-landers called rangers- the wanderers who seldom showed themselves in civilised places, often about on mysterious business, a close people, untrusting and wary. Of all the rangers that passed through, this one was The Ranger, because she was the one who came by most often, and seemed to hold the greatest secrets and knowledge. But the only one whom she seemed to want to divulge any of those mysteries to was the innkeeper's young daughter.
"Will you be wanting a room, or just the fireside tonight?"
Peregrine smiled and took the girl's hand.