Chapter Two: A Certain Foulness

It was just past midday when Bilbo saw the raven circling overhead. He had fallen asleep in his front garden, a steadily cooling cup of tea clutched between his legs and list of invitees discarded on the bench beside him. He was risking a great deal of social interactions just by sitting outside, but the draw from the sun and invitation from the fresh eastern breeze was too much for him to resist and he found himself going over his list of things to do for his upcoming party outside, taking small breaks to check the path to see if anyone was coming his way. He had kept his door open for such circumstances, just in case the need to dash inside should arise, although he had been fortunate thus far.

He tilted his gaze up, squinting in the afternoon sun, and watched as the bird dipped down and came to land on his shoulders. He lowered his eyes just in time to catch a flash of blue under its wing before it tucked them and began to shuffle down his arm, coming to stand on his now outstretched hand.

"Hello, old friend," Bilbo said, scratching the top of its head affectionately. It turned to him, bobbing up and down in a way that caused him to smile. It had been several months since his last letter, although he had hardly noticed their absence in all his planning, and he was eager to see what waited for him inside. "Did you bring me news?"

It held out outs leg, allowing Bilbo to take the little slip of paper - bone white with a blue border - and unfold it.

Thorin is dead.

He recognized her messy scrawl instantly, although he was distracted from that by the message the raven carried. He gripped the parchment in his hands, struggling to catch his breath for a moment.

The wind picked up for a moment, ruffling both the bird and him, and he was struck by the whiff of something rotten that passed over him for a brief moment.

He supposed that was that.

An inevitability.

Time was merciless, in that sense. It took all manner of things eventually.

One day, it would take him too.

Perhaps sooner than he would like. Bilbo had made peace with such realities, as all mortal beings must do, but he never anticipated the pain he would feel at the passing of one of his oldest friends. He tucked the letter in his pocket and stood up, feeling the aches and pains in his bones worse than ever as he forgot his plans for the day.

Instead, as he always did when his melancholy overtook him, he would return to his books. To the stories of youthful exuberance and poor decisions and to a time when his own misadventures took him half-way across the world and back again.

But first, he needed to write a letter.

Maren held her breath and pulled her bow string back, eyeing the large buck. It was meant to be her kill, her first of the day in fact, and the tips of her ears burned with embarrassment at how long it had taken her to find it. There was not a need, but she had given into the insurmountable pressure of Elrohir, and she found herself on a hunt that was for little more than getting out in the woods for a few days.

She shinnied up a tree, stupidly listening to Elrohir that it would make it easier to find a deer to kill.

It didn't.

In fact, all it did was make everything harder than it needed to be. For one thing, it greatly increased the risk of her losing balance and plummeting to the ground in a fumbling heap of indignity. It was good that no one was relying on her for the next meal. They would sooner starve to death.

Still, she had been searching for three days and she was starting to grow frustrated.

"Can you see it?" Elladan asked, leaning down from his perch on the branch just above her. He was treating this very seriously, as he always did, and she could tell from just his tone that he expected her to fire the killing shot. She lost track of all the years she had known him, lost track of all the ways the world had hardened him, but there was one thing that never changed. He was as grim as the day she met him, stone-faced and reserved where Elrohir was airy laughs and easy smiles. Even now, when they were supposed to be having fun, he hardly smiled.

"Yes," She said, trying to keep the touch of annoyance out of her voice. She still had eyes, last she checked, and was perfectly capable of seeing the soft brown of the buck's coat against the backdrop of warm reds, oranges, and yellows.

It was warm, unseasonably so in fact, and bordering on uncomfortably humid for so early in the morning. The back of her hunting leathers, so rarely used when not in Imladris and stiff from sitting in her dressing trunk for so long, stuck to her back from the moisture in the air. But there was an escape and if her arrow rang true, she could be back in the river by mid-afternoon and in the lake by nightfall. So she shifted in place on the tree and leaned forward ever so slightly as she pulled her bow string back all the way to just past her left ear.

She loosed the arrow and immediately lowered her right arm, pushing the limits of how far she could lean as she watched it sail through the trees and pass directly over the large brown eye she had been aiming for.

Elrohir grasped the back of her leathers and pulled her back, laughing as the buck dashed into the trees and out of sight.

Elladan scowled at them both and hopped down from his branch. He pulled his own bow out as he moved into the trees and followed after their target, unwilling in the least surprising way imaginable, to let it get the best of them. Elrohir continued to laugh as he wrapped his hands around the large branch they were perched on and swung down to the ground, adding just a little bit of flourish for good measure. She followed after him with much less flare and shoved her bow over her shoulders with just the tiniest amount of bitterness.

It was hardly a fair activity.

They were hunters, after all. Deadly in all aspects of life and proficient in everything grounded down to a point. She was a scholar of sorts – a student of book learning and map making and of whatever caught her interest for a decade or two. She never enjoyed a fruitless hunt. She enjoyed it even less when the afternoons slipped into days and those days slipped into weeks and she was no closer to actually achieving her goals.

"Did you mean to miss?" Elrohir asked, spotting her arrow lodged in a nearby tree. He yanked it out and inspected the tip. It was dulled at the tip, but still usable, so he wiped it on his jerkin and tucked it into the quiver on his back. It would serve more use through his bow than hers. He reached a steady hand out and brushed her cheek, touch light and lingering, before he pulled back. His hand dropped to his side.

"No, although I think Elladan might be kinder if I said I had."

"We all have our talents," Elrohir said, voice kind. When she first met them, Elladan and Elrohir blended together into one. So alike they were in voice and appearance, they blurred before she had the chance to distinguish them in full. But it was not a mistake she was libel to make again. She would never admit it out loud, of course, but she had favored Elrohir for almost as long as she had known them. "And yours have never lent themselves to a successful hunt."

They walked deeper into the underbrush, side by side.

"You are right. Which begs the question of why I was dragged out here in the first place."

He glanced at her, dark eyebrow raised.

"It does beg for an answer as well."

She threw her elbow sideways and laughed at the over the top sound he gave her in response. "He is more serious than usual," She noted, hoping that Elrohir would have noticed as well.

It was a quiet change, one that belied a deeper seeded hurt that had haunted him for years. She had witnessed the cycle several times before, but there was a distinct brutality to Elladan this time around that had started to worry her. Perhaps it was her own anxiety poking through. Still, she stopped stomping her way through the underbrush and turned to look up at Elrohir.

"He is," Elrohir agreed, pausing for a brief moment to gather his thoughts. "But so am I."

"In some ways. In others you have not changed from the moment I met you."

"Mare…"

"The deer crossed the river," Elladan said as way of greeting, stepping through the trees and interrupting his brother before he had the opportunity to speak. She had little doubt he heard their conversation – not that either of them had taken any great lengths to hide it – and made no indication otherwise. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared at his brother first, and then her second. She could feel his disappointment and, prickly though she may find him more often than not, she never cared to truly upset him.

And while they had talents that leaned towards the lethal, Marenya had gifts of her own.

"Allow me," She said, hoping to finally rid him of his scowl.

Elladan inclined his head ever so slightly and stepped to the side to let her take the lead. He waited for her to pass before he followed, giving her just a touch more space than Elrohir, who brought up the rear, would have. She ignored the weight of his judging gaze as she walked towards the river up ahead. It was still several hundred years away, but she could already hear the rushing water being redirected by the rocks and scraping over the rough gravel. It was fast moving and just a touch too deep to ford easily.

As they got closer, she began to feel the tiniest pinprick of cold water start to hit her face.

It was one of the numerous tributary rivers that surrounded Imladris, too small to support anything but a few fishers or two at a time, but just deep enough to cause smaller animals to search for a way around.

Maren dropped to her knees at the bank and shoved both her hands into the cool water.

She closed her eyes and listened. A rivers secrets usually flowed easily and without much prodding. But she would still give it the respect it deserved and waited for it to decide for itself what it wanted her to know. She flexed her fingers and let them move back and forth, mimicking the steady motion of the water, letting it lead here where it would.

Behind her, both Elladan and Elrohir lingered in the trees until she pulled her right hand out and pointed down the length of the river.

"It did not cross."

Elladan immediately sprinted in the direction she pointed, bow once again in his hand. Instead of following him, Elrohir moved to sit down next to her by the riverbed. He stuck his own hand in the water, scrunching up his face as he struggled to hear what she did. It always surprised, his deafness to the symphony of the water all around him, but then she remembered that he could hear and see parts of the world in ways she never would.

He could look up to the stars and there were times that they would look back.

"I do believe you have been redeemed."

To punctuate that point, there was a quick swish followed quickly by the sound of the deer slamming into the ground.

She pulled her other hand out of the water and collapsed back on the ground, the idea of returning to Imladris after several weeks instantly relaxing her muscles and lightening her mood. She tilted her head up towards the sun peeking through the trees, content to listen to the quaking leaves until Elladan returned with his prize.

"There is a raven," Elrohir said, shaking her shoulder to draw her attention away from her own thoughts and back to the present. She followed the long line of his arm, eyebrows scrunched together both at the interruption and the sight of the black bird flying over the gap in the trees. She caught sight of a flash of blue attached to its leg.

"It's from Erebor," She said, shaking the last of the lingering water droplets off her hands as she continued to watch the blank spot between the trees.

The raven swooped overhead three times before it flew out of sight.

"The Shire?"

Maren dropped her hand back into the water, finding comfort in the quick moving and ever changing flow as her heart began to race. She had been born on the water and, if the Valar called her to it, she would die there as well. But something sick settled in her stomach and as hard as she tried to ignore the feeling, she could not. There was a foreboding to it all and she could have sworn that, just at the moment she thought that, the water began to turn just a little bit colder.

She shook herself of those thoughts, chalking them up to her own tendency for the dramatic.

"It would seem." Elrohir stood up and held his hand out to her. "We should find Elladan."

"You do not sound hopeful for good tidings," She said, taking his hand. He pulled her into a standing position and began to follow after Elladan, trusting that she would follow while she continued talking. "Perhaps the King Under the Mountain is only ill."

"Or perhaps he is dead."

"Ro!"

She flicked the back of his head at his callousness. She didn't consider herself to be the sort of elf that held any sort of affection for dwarves, least of all the ones that came from the East. But there was a certain steadying presence that Thorin Oakenshield brought to that part of the world that would be sorely missed if Elrohir's suspicions were true.

Elladan had his back to them as he knelt beside the dead deer, elbow deep in his stomach as he field dressed it enough for travel.

"There was a raven," Elrohir said.

"I saw."

"We think it came from Erebor."

"It must carry grim tidings."

"Or not. The dwarves maintain close ties with a hobbit. Perhaps it is nothing more than a friendly letter."

"Ever the optimist," Elladan said, although the kindness of his words was somewhat lost as he pulled out a chunk of intestine and threw it into the trees. "The news from the East has been growing ever darker. I would not trust it to be any different now."

"And the wind smells foul."

"Well, if the wind smells foul then I suppose there is no need for discussion," She said, narrowing her eyes as another piece of intestine was tossed away. "Perhaps Aragorn…" She trailed off at the look Elladan gave her. "Honestly, Elladan, it has been nearly sixty years. How long do intend to hold a grudge?"

Elladan pulled a piece of gristle out with a little more force than necessary.

Even Elrohir, who tolerated his brother's moods better than anyone, rolled his eyes. "If it will make the journey back to Imladris more tolerable, I will embrace your optimism, Mare."

"Thank you."

But even as she said, the tips of her ears blushing ever so slightly at the look Elrohir gave her, three more ravens flew overhead. One could be a letter between friends – two even, if Maren wanted to embrace positive thoughts – but four could only mean one thing and whatever certain foulness there was to the wind was only likely to spread.