If this is to End in Fire: Hobbit Fan Fiction Skin-changer

Chapter 15- Of Three

For some reason this information came as no shock to Lupine and she knew it was true. All this time she and Eorne were not a pair at all. They were of three.

And then with a sudden, irrepressible emotion, Lupine leant forward and embraced her brother. His body was stiff and for the first time he seemed unsure. He tapped her back and when she withdrew she laughed at his expression.

“Can we speak somewhere quiet?” she asked.

“Carpenter will not awake.” replied Sipeon, gesturing to the old man in the chair, “Not until the hour exactly. Sit here.” He pointed to a position on the ground against the wall and the pair moved to the floor.

They rested their legs out flat before them and watched the man in the chair. Both skin-changers had bare, darkened feet though Sipeon’s legs appeared slender. There was further silence and then he asked,

“So where is our other?”

Lupine’s skin turned cold and the skin-changer beside her felt it.

“It is not good news.” he whispered and his guess was more than true.

Lupine shook her head and tears threatened at her eyelids.

“Will you tell me?” Sipeon asked.

There was so much she wanted to know from him. So many questions and she had no idea how he knew they were kin. But it was kin itself that seemed the priority. And so she told him. She told him from the moment that her and Eorne were found in the twisting tree and of their life in the Vales of Anduin. She told him of their journey in the Wilderness and of their capture by the orcs. She told him of the cruel deal that she kept with the beasts and that her brother would not be set free until she betrayed Thorin, the King Under the Mountain.

All the time Sipeon listened. He was as still as a snake and alert to every word.

“And so,” she finished, “I found myself in this town and at your window.”

“I have never met an orc.” said Sipeon, “But it is clear that I will loathe their very mention for the rest of my days.”

If any emotion could be labelled against her brother now, Lupine may have placed that of anger. However, she remained still quite uncertain of his thoughts and his mysterious manner would not open itself, even to his own sister.

“I have told you that Eorne and I take on forms of wolf and eagle-” began Lupine.

Sipeon nodded and finished the sentence for her,

“One of land and one of air, yes. Well I Lupine, I am of water-snake. The serpent of Long Lake and Esgaroth.” And with that he changed. His body slimmed to a single limb and his strength grew.

The snake that rose from the floor was as long as she was high. It was a dark and shining grey, with flickering traces of green slicing across its back and a sharp speed was about its head. It rose high beneath its sinister power, before gently returning to the wooden floor and disappearing almost from vision, in the dim light.

When Sipeon transformed to human shape once more, Lupine understood that all his features had been conserved and his conduct remained as slick and mysterious as the snake.

“And now I have a story to tell you.” he whispered, as if nothing so remarkable had happened.

“Of how you came to be here and how you know you are my kin?”

“What other story could it be that would mean so much to us both?” he replied, “Yet it starts with neither you nor I and instead, with this man here.” he gestured to the old figure in the chair, “Carpenter is his name and wood carving is his trade. It is of course in great demand in this town of Esgaroth, where the very ground that we stand upon is made of the trees that we cut. Carpenter is proud of his work and there is little room else in his thoughts for other matters. He is of a family where his father and his father’s father for many generations past, have been skilled in the craft and he had many a tool passed down to him that would aid his work. These tools however, were old and much used and affected his carpentry in such a way that he knew he must one day replace them.