Ashes ⇝Legolas

†7†

CHAPTER SEVEN
PASS OF CARADHRAS

Snow, snow and more snow.

It stretched for miles and miles ahead. Everywhere she looked, nothing stood out, masked in snow and whiteness as if covered by a pure carpet. Nesryn walked along with Pippin, pulling the shorter Hobbit with many difficulties as his steps faltered through deep snow.

She, however, didn't struggle against the snow that coated her face, nor at the wind that carried her hair back. Nesryn heard howling in her ears, like a lone wolf in danger it sounded alomst rhythmical; loud, then silent and then loud again.

A few times she would wipe at her eyes, in an instant the snow melted on her palm as if it provided heat no other then from very bones of her body. Nesryn had never felt so much warmness swarm her skin, such way the warm fought against the cold.

"Nesryn." She shook away those thoughts, her gaze falling onto a Hobbit that struggled.

"Yes, Pippin?"

"I'm cold." The hobbit said with a long sigh and Nesryn laughed silently, that carried away by loud hoots of the wind did not reach anyone else's ears but hers only.

She reached toward the tie of her cape around her neck that with a clip made of pure silver and jewels embedded in it's surface lost all shine given that she had been wearing it for more than three hundred years. Fumbling with a circular clip, she untied it and put it over hobbit's shoulders. "Have mine."

"Are you not cold?" Pippin looked up, into the eyes of a woman that twinkled with a barely visible orange spark.

Now, that he had mentioned in, Nesryn realised she indeed felt no cold, not single twinge or shiver on her pale skin. As if she was immune to it. "No." She answered quickly, not wanting to put hobbit's mind into thinking something was truly wrong with her, for she had thought so in many occasions other than that one. Nesryn had experienced it in many different places, that until the day she stepped foot into Erebor, made no sense at all. Then she had realised her only connection to her homeland was indeed fire, for she felt it burn in her veins and swirl like a wave in her mind.

Yet, her power remained hidden, unknown and she was desperate to seek its true origin.

"Is everything all right?" Pippin asked her, a slight shadow of worry crossing his features as without her help, he struggled greatly.

"Do not worry your mind with that." She offered him an answer sternly, her gaze fixated on a far away spot that shimmered between all the snow.

"But..."

"No." Nesryn cut him mid thought, for she wished nothing more but to think in solitude of her own being, to uncover what secret lay hidden in the depth of her mind. She helped the hobbit walk across a slightly deeper cover of snow, and then as her walk slowed down, let him leave with still thoughts of the conversation they had.

Nesryn fell in step with Legolas, both their paces quick enough to cut through as the Elf, unlike shorter hobbit had little to no trouble with walking.

Nesryn had never felt like an intruder, not like she had been feeling during the last few hours they have spent walking. She did not want to let anyone know of it, for it was yet a miserable look to carry when greater things were at work. She pushed the thoughts away, pushed the hopelessness, the desperate need of knowledge and just barely started to hope nobody would see her struggling, for she always acted like that. O, how wrong she was.

"Have you ever looked upon Edenon, Legolas?" She spoke quietly, masking any traces of uncertainty that threatened to break through. The Elf looked at her with surprise, blinking away the fast melting snow as his light feathered boots barely left any trace behind him.