How I Leave You

Naiad

There have been certain moments in my life I've kept track of.

My first transformation. How scared I was as I watched my blood stain the water red, and how I likely would have screamed, had it not been for the liquid filling my lungs. And then, when it was done and I could breathe again, how proud I felt that I had survived. How joyous my mother was that I carried her gold in my scales, just like herself and the women before us.

My first shipwreck. How I spent hours salvaging the hulk, eventually carrying so many objects in my arms that I feared my tail wouldn't be able to carry me home. But of course it did. It always does.

My first kill. He was a sailor drunk on his own cockiness. Leaned too far over the ship's railing and fell into the waters. Or maybe it was I who dragged him there. My memory gets a little murky.

My first love. His name was Rhäven, nobleman of Rhûn, and it would have delighted my mother so if I had married him. I did want to, for a while. Or at least I convinced myself that I did. I was so young. Could I even count 20 summers? It does not matter now. Not after everything that happened.

My first heartbreak. Rhäven got someone else pregnant. Poor girl. Had to raise that child all by herself. They never found his body. Not that much remained of it, anyway.

The day I left. It would be easy to say that I chose to go, but this would be a lie. If there is one thing I wish I could change, it's listening to my parents when they begged me to leave. I would get caught, they told me. Sentenced to death at the teeth of a shark for what I had done to the noble naiad I once thought I loved. So in the dead of night, I hugged them goodbye and told them I would be back to repent for my actions. I never saw them again.

The day they came. I had been with Gandalf and Galadriel for a few winters by then. I'd planned on going home within the turn of the decade. How was I to know there would be no home to return to? How was I to know that Azog and his spawns would stumble upon our kingdom on their way to fight at Erebor? That they took no prisoners? Left no survivors?

I went back once. It's many years ago now, but I still remember first laying eyes upon what I'd once considered my home. That I was convinced I was in the wrong place, because nothing was left for me to remember it by. The halls, the caves, the kingdom. All of it, gone. But worst of all was how empty of life it was. Only the fish came by to pay their condolences. No one else was left. No one except me.

As I open my eyes, I know that this will be another moment I'm going to carry with me for a long time.

For some reason, the first thing I see when I awake is Thorin asleep in an armchair in the corner of the room. His long hair hangs like waterfalls from his head, dripping down onto his shoulders and chest. He looks awful. Awfully beautiful.

There is no pain. The relief rushes through me as my hand instinctively seeks down my leg, feeling for any traces of poison still left. But no black veins are visible beneath my skin, and the wound on my calf no longer looks deadly.

"I thought we'd lost you."

With a start, I turn in the direction of Thorin's voice. Looming in the same armchair in the corner of the room, he hides in shadows only his icy eyes can shine through.

"Well, if you had, that would have been one less worry for you."

"Is that what you think you are to me?" he says, leaning forward in his chair. "A worry?"

"No," I reply, slinging one leg over the side of the table, and aiding the other with my hands. "I think you have made it abundantly clear that I am nothing to you." Carefully, I make my way onto the floor. My legs shake beneath me, but that's nothing I have not conquered before. "Excuse me."