My friends think I'm alone but I got secrets
I don't tell everything about the love I get
I got a loving man but he's a spirit
He never does me pain, never treats me bad
He never takes away all the love he has
And I'm forgiven oh a million times.
- "No Man's Woman", Sinead O'Connor -
I crouched in the brush beside the silvery waterfall. Peering down at the deep pool below, I watched a herd of deer tentatively approach the water's edge to drink. The sun was high and I could feel the sweat slide down between my shoulder blades and soak into the rough burlap of my tunic. I pushed the short fringe of bangs from my forehead as beads of perspiration began to gather at my hairline. Shifting my weight, I gripped my bow with both hands.
A strange, evil stench mingling with the scant breeze drifted up to where I perched. I knew that musk; dried blood, thick fur and hot breath. It was a warg. Only one from what I could tell, a rogue stupid enough to find itself on the land of Beorn. I stiffened my spine, moving along the rock into the shade. Retrieving an arrow from the quiver at my back, the dark form of the evil animal came into view as it stalked the trees behind the unsuspecting deer. The buck straightened up, its ears twitching as the warg moved down wind.
The warg must have sensed its prey growing wary. It leaped from the woods, stained fangs glistening with saliva and claws distended. Its growl turned to a whimper as my arrow sunk into the thick hide at its neck. The deer scattered, racing across the stream and kicking up the cool, fresh water in a frenzy of panic.
I traversed the ancient rock slide alongside the waterfall to where the warg lay bleeding on the damp, mossy ground. I pulled a hefty hunting knife from the sheath at my waist and cut the animal's throat swiftly.
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder nearly knocking me to the ground.
"Good work, Cub." Beorn bellowed, "Now let's see that the scoundrel stands as a warning."
Beorn helped me skin the creature and we nailed it's hide not far from the stream to a massive, half dead oak tree.
"That should keep the nasty beasts away for a spell." Beorn spit on the ground before the bloody, dripping skin.
Hitching my bow on my shoulder, I struggled to keep the pace with Beorn as we began to make our way home. The giant skin changer made the ground tremble with his footfall. I skirted beside him, my bare feet knowing the way by heart. It was a lovely thing to remember a path.
Even though it had been years since Beorn had fished me from the dark enchantment of the river, the residual effects of the spell were an everyday struggle for me. Some mornings, all I could recall was the bearded, half human face of my preserver. My loyalty and dependence on Beorn was my life blood. Though he was notorious for detesting the company of any other than his animals, he cared for me as if I were a wounded hare he found in the meadows surrounding our home.
Whatever I was before the river, I had become a thing as feral and skittish as a creature of the forest. My red gold hair had been shorn roughly to my shoulders and feet thickly calloused from years of going without shoes. With skin brown as the summer earth from standing in the sun for too long, a spray of freckles decorated my short nose underneath grey eyes.
Beorn had called me Cub since I had come to live at his lodge. And so that was what I had become; the skin changer's Cub.
Author's Note: I was reading the chapter in the Hobbit about Beorn and got so excited about seeing him in the movie that I decided to satiate myself by writing a short fiction. This isn't going to be anything epic, but it's fun (: