The days passed and slowly faded into weeks, which merged into months. Evie was restored as if by enchantment (her mother never told her the details of her recovery or of the mysterious visitor, who had managed to travel in and out of the Shire relatively unnoticed [or perhaps, for once, their neighbors were too reverent to discuss his movements]). When the hobbit regained her strength, her spirit returned also. Evangeline began to travel again, leaving the Shire behind her and once more saying goodbye to her resigned mother (who had completely surrendered any hope of keeping her daughter in their cozy little hole after the fourth day she had been healthy), and stepping once more out into the great unknown.
Yet she was a different hobbit, now. Just as adventurous and headstrong as ever, but somewhat more matured. Evie knew just what she was abandoning when she left the Shire, and she understood the risks she was taking rather more poignantly than she had when she embarked on her first few journeys. She focused on improving her skill at healing, rather than on seeking out the enthralling or the sensational. Evie promised her mother before she left that she would not go looking for trouble, although the Took family knew more than most just how dangerous it was to walk out your front door, whatever your intentions.
And so Evangeline wandered from town to town, spending time in many of the greatest cities of Middle Earth and practicing her craft. She learned much from the other healers she encountered, and the hobbit was warmed to see the immediate effects of her work; she enjoyed mending the wounds of the injured and tending to the sick, especially with her own malady so fresh in her mind. The traveler wandered from place to place, and little was constant in her life save one thing – she and Thorin exchanged letters almost weekly.
It seemed that no matter where she went, his ravens would find her. They would wait patiently for her to write a reply to their master for as long as it took her to do so, and she grew rather fond of their company. His ravens were her constant companions; she would feed and look after each visitor for a day or two before she sent it back to Ered Luin. Thorin wrote of his building projects, the modest metal wealth of the mountains, and the promising success of Durin's Folk as they established a safe and prosperous home for themselves. It was slow work, he claimed, but they were making great progress.
He wrote to her of the dark, smooth stone they selected for the entrance hall and the modest grandeur of the small city they were founding, of their mining projects and the size of the throne room. She tried to imagine it all in her head, but having never been in a dwarven dwelling, she could not quite picture all he described. Living in the mountains had always seemed so strange to her, so cold and unfriendly. Hobbit holes were warm and comfortable, full of nice smells and small spaces; the large, open caverns Thorin wrote of seemed so foreign to the Shireling… She had seen the halls of Minas Tirith and so could guess at how Thorin's new home must appear, but even so, she bet her inkling was just that, and only by seeing it for herself would she ever truly understand his meaning.
Unfortunately, that did not seem like a possibility, for the time being. She was exploring and learning her craft, he was building a home for his people and learning how to be a king… It was too hard, now, to come together and start something new. And so she waited, as did he. For what, they could not know… But Evangeline supposed she would feel it when the time came – feel it in her very soul like the tugging of the imaginary thread of her unquestionable destiny, calling her forward into a future she was meant to possess with all the fullness and vitality of incautious youth feeling itself growing old and fighting against age's indelible pull.
It was like her life had been tied up by a string and every time she tugged on it and followed where it led, she would end up right back where she started, with the dwarves. It seemed her first adventure had been so much more than that – it had been a sign of things to come. Wherever she went and whatever she did, Evangeline Took was certain to cross destinies again and again with the dwarves of Erebor. She was beginning to accept it and, if she divulged all, to hope for it. Every time she met Thorin Oakenshield she felt her life change as if the ground was shifting beneath her. It was destabilizing and terrifying and wonderful all at the same time, and the only thing she knew for sure was that she did not want it to stop.
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The first call to action she had received, however, was not from Thorin Oakenshield. It was from her old friends in Gondor, who she had gone exploring with when she had first reunited with Thorin in Minas Tirith. At the time, they had not found whatever or whoever had been attacking travelers on the borders of Gondor's territory, and had called their quest complete by guessing that whatever it was had retreated or been killed. On the contrary, it seemed the threat to their hinterlands was coming from the Harad, a tribe of Southerons who had begun raiding people and towns at the very edge of Gondor's territory shortly after Evie had left for the Blue Mountains with the dwarves. Rangers had been sent to do reconnaissance in the area, and those few who had returned told stories of terrible poisoned arrows – any shot that hit its mark was sure to kill, and even a graze could spell demise for the victim. Unprepared to deal with such devious deathdealing, Evie's former companions had remembered their hobbit friend and sent word begging her to join them in the south and save as many lives as she could. The healer could not deny such a request, and so within a few weeks of receiving Barenir's letter she arrived in Gondor and was quickly directed to the camps the rangers had constructed near where the conflicts were prevalent. And so this was how Evangeline Took set to her work, using every ounce of the knowledge she had gained in practicing her craft and relying on her quick thinking and unmatchable endurance to protect another people she had come to know and respect.
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In saving the lives of others, she tried very hard not to think of her own.
When Evie had first put on Thorin's ring, it had been heavy. Whether it was from the newness of its weight around her neck or the gravity of the promise it symbolized, she always felt its presence resting close to her heart. Yet as time went on, it became much lighter. She grew accustomed to the feeling of it against her skin, and sometimes, in a brief moment of inexplicable panic, she would think it had gone missing – the hobbit would reach for it at the center of her breast and the wild thumping of her heart would only calm once she sensed the metal ring resting safely beneath her clothing.
It had been over four years since Thorin had made her the promise – and while that was not so great an expanse of time, it was beginning to feel that way for the hobbit. She wondered if it was the same for Thorin, and that just as the ring seemed lighter upon her breast, perhaps the promise it represented had become lighter in his. Their correspondences had diminished – they exchanged letters maybe once or twice a month, but neither possessed much to write about other than the struggles of their individual duties, which did not often vary (or were too grim to speak of; the healer had no desire to regale the dwarf with gruesome stories of war), and Evie could sense that a change had come over the prince. He was a king now, and the tone of his letters matched this elevation. He was more distant, more emotionally removed. But what had she expected? Of course this adjustment would affect him… And she had changed as well. Gone was the cheery tone of her first letters, her stories of adventure… Living in Gondor and healing the injured rangers had darkened her life, and it was hard to feign her trademark merriment when she was watching men die – not in waves, but one by one in a slow, deadly tricking off of human life.
Even with their more stoic tone, Thorin's letters were all that kept her going. Any distraction from the nasty carnage of her healing duties was welcome, and one from her king most of all. She tried to imagine Ered Luin, its halls and its caverns stretching off into the quiet depths of the mountains… She dreamed of its vast expanses, full of silence and peace – at least not the shrieks of dying men as poison ripped through their veins and their failing bodies succumbed to the deadly toxins.
She had devised various cures for the poisons, but her treatments were never sure, never certain. Everything relied on how quickly the wounded were brought to her, where they had been injured, and how much poison snuck into their bodies before the deadly arrow had been removed. She created a temporary remedy, a potent salve which she gave the rangers to take with them and use on their comrades the moment they were pierced. It staved off the illness produced by the poison until she could tend to the victim personally and try her other methods; each case was different, and often more ghastly than the last. The Harad were learning the art of death with improving brutality and efficiency as their skirmishes with the rangers dragged on, much to the horror of the healer, who was met with corpses twisted by pain and the injured men who envied them.
Evangeline began to forget what it was to smile or to sing, and was pulled outside of herself by the extreme circumstances of the guerilla war she was fighting in. Day dragged into day, and sometimes she could not remember what it was she was fighting for. Yet in the back of her mind, or somewhere in the deepest recesses of her heart, she never quite forgot. As light as the ring might seem upon her chest, she never once removed it nor overlooked its meaning. It was a promise, her promise, and even in the midst of danger and chaos, she secretly put her faith and trust in the ardent hope of its fulfillment.
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Author's Note: Thank you so much for your patience! It has been a very rough few weeks, but I'm almost through! My thesis draft is due on Friday, so that has been my 24/7 lately, but I really wanted to sit down and write something tonight. So here we are! This is not as well edited as many of my other chapters, so please forgive any errors or a general lack of eloquence. It's been a while, so I really wanted to update!
I have most of the next chapter written (I did it a little while ago… before the thesis storm), so that should come soonish! I really like it, actually, and I think Evie's going on an interesting journey in finding out her own sense of what the word 'home' means to her. So please stick around! I promise I haven't forgotten about this in the least- I've just been very, very busy!
Thank you for all your well wishes for my thesis, and comments on my story! You keep me writing and you keep me smiling, even when things get rough. Xoxo!