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Roan goes out among Men for many reasons; because she longs to feel the beat of their feet as they walk the earth, their spirits as bright as stars and as fleeting as the mayflies, because she likes the feeling of their mingled breaths as they teem in the wintry air, damp and earthy against her cheeks--because her mother always encourages her to try something, anything, new.
For whatever reason, Roan goes as often as she can, the nearest town a few sparse wing-beats away, over and past the mighty range of mountains that surround the Vale, their jagged teeth tipped in a white so sharp it stings the eyes, blue and violet and cold, past the fiery-bright treetops where they grow, kissing against the purple-richness of the mountain slopes.
She is always certain to land where the fog still rides the lowland forests, as thick as wolf-cream, even in the bright dawning of the morn, where the shadows form the bleakest and her own dark twin is mammoth and indistinct.
It is there that she amends her form, tucking away flame-bright armor and ivory teeth, folding wings iced with luminous gold and webbed with deep, violent orange, beneath impossibly thin, soft skin.
She shrinks, immeasurably small, her fingers suddenly long and pale and her nails gentle, rosy crescents. Her limbs are delicate and short, and she rides so close to the ground that the sky, her sky, is mammoth above, the ground titan beneath her thin, flat feet with their tiny, curling toes.
She steps, one and two, her balance so small, low in the curve of her hips, resting in the apex of her new, two legs. Her hair is the only thing that could possibly betray her--the red of autumn touching the oak leaves, spun with gold and curling down around her collar.
She pulls it back with tiny, fumbling fingers, slips into the clothing that are as thin as spidersilk in her grasp and just as weak; strange leggings that are woven with knots, that tie around her hips and tuck around her toes, a tunic and belt, soft boots and a heavy cloak. A shroud over her shoulders made of wolf skin--canind hair coarse and bristling, trapping her fire inside, next to her skin.
Weight--weight is an oddity to calculate for, something that rests on her skin with pressure--how much does it weight? As much as a feather? A fly? She knows not, and it is not something that she can account for, not when she can tear the tops off of mountains, should she so choose.
These coverings, these scraps of cloth that slide over flesh and tie around joints, are farce--she doesn’t need them.
Roan adorns herself only to keep whatever measure of anonymity she can attain, out among Men.
Still, she is careful with her disguise, aware of the thousands of tiny stitches each article holds, hidden in seams and tucked from sight.
These are the things that she keeps--hidden among the ring of trees that circle the large clearing.
Roan swallows, small tongue in her small mouth behind blunt, flat teeth--and shifts carefully in her adornments, and walks as a Man in the world of Men.
*
Roan is born in the heart of a mountain, where riches beyond imagination greet her in shinning hills of silver and gold, dotted with gems as large as a mortal’s skull. Crystal towers rim the ceiling and floor and walls, shifting columns of prismic light casting bright shadows through the heavy air.
Her mother is there to greet her, snout warm in the cool of the cave as she noses along Roan’s back and wet, leathery wings, tongue and teeth pulling the remains of the egg sack off of Roan’s small, soft scales as they begin to harden in the air.
Roan’s birth is a joyous occasion to her mother.
Roan is the only egg her mother has lain in over 900 years.
And it is there, at the very moment where the viscera around her face and eyes is pulled away, and bright amber eyes blink open for the first time, that her mother whispers her newborn hatchling’s name into the air of the cave.
It is a quiet murmuring, private and soft as it drifts in the space before settling into scale. Something to be kept close to the heart, beneath blood and bone. Something special, just for them.
For names of the Kind were kept close, shared only in the strictest of confidences, given mother to child. They held power, great Power, and most often were never used outside of enclave. Another, more common name, was chosen later, to be shared freely and without consequence, without fear of censure or slavery to the caller.
And her mother loves.
(Roan only knows these things from the stories her mother tells her, late at night as they curl among the riches of her mother’s hoard, the metal warm against armored underbellies and her mother’s wings a canopy of deep purple and green, blues and midnight violets draped over Roan’s head as they lay nose to nose, their shared breaths heating the scaly cave of her mother’s body.
Roan is almost too large to fit in the curve of her mother’s belly, growing by the day into the fearsome teeth and razor-tipped claws she had been born with. But for now, she is just the right size to sleep in the embrace of her mother’s mighty hold, tails twined and claws folded into fists to keep from doing harm.)
Their mountain home is far from the rocky peaks that ring the Vale, past all of the other crags and cliffs--it is a lonely claw reaching for the heavens.
It is there that they spend their resting-times and there that they leave each day to go down into the Vale, the hilly-valley where the Learning-circle sits, along with the Healing Falls and the Throne.
These are the places where every young-one learns from the elder-most of their kind--history and philosophy and art, where they go to gain assistance healing their hurts, and where the Council of Five convenes and works.
Families and clans reside in the mountains themselves, each of the houses claiming individual peaks for their spouses and younglings, burrowing new tunnels when necessary to make room for additions.
Those with wings and limbs claim the highest rises, those without wings the shorter, and those with neither wing nor limbs reside in the lowest, often under the earth where their long bodies can better grip the ground.
Roan and her mother are of the first class of their people, both with wings and limbs, both endowed with the will to breath the living flame.
Her mother is a Queen above the rest, able to breed and fly and call the soul-fire, both smart and cunning; truly a class of Maiar above all others.
In her youth, she had walked the world of Men and had come to know its wonders.
And it is from her that Roan comes into her love of Man.
*
As her mother tells the tale, the Kind once descended from the heavens, beings of pure, unbridled flame. It was they that had first given fire to man, and as such, had been damned for it. They were forced to be torn between two masters, equally jealous and loving in turns; the earth and the sky.
For forever, they would guard the realms of both.
For forever, they would give birth to their own fathers and mothers, until their penance was done and they were free to choose a world in which to dwell forevermore.
The Kind were creatures of magic, beings of the living, breathing flame, and skin-shifters one and all.
And one day, they would know the freedom that had long been denied them, the freedom to choose their own fates.
The freedom to shape their own destinies.
*
The Kind was sparse, numbered, because females were few, were rare even in the prime of the Kind’s time on the earth, and that time had long passed.
There were, perhaps, only five hundred of the Kind left, and most were old.
Ancient, even by their people’s long reckoning.
Out of that number, perhaps a hundred were females.
Out of that, perhaps thirty had wings and could call the living flame. Queens or in the making there-in.
But it didn’t matter if they were Queens or not--all that mattered was their wombs, and the potential they carried, tucked behind their armored bellies, secreted away, deep within their bodies. The most precious of treasures.
Any female was a priceless treasure to the Kind, and one and all, wings or limbs or neither, were precious.
With such small numbers, it came to be that the Vale had more than enough room for everyone with space to breathe, riding the fear of land-quarrels. (The Kind being well known for their short-tempers and easily wounded pride.)
There had not been a war in all the time that Roan had been alive. Not between Kind and not between the Kind and the World waiting just outside the walls of their last haven on Middle Earth.
*
Roan is, relatively, young.
Past childhood, past obvious youth, just a claws-length away from coming into her maturity--when her body would be ready and willing to be bred.
Not that she has any plans of catching a drake and making a home, no.
She wants neither her own hoard nor her own hatchlings, not like the few of her scale-mates, those hatched within fifty years of her; those flighty, flashy females who would take it upon themselves to mate as soon as a reasonable drake came along to stick his sex-spine in.
No, Roan has bigger plans for her life than motherhood and mate-dom, and her mother understands. Supports her whole-heartedly.
Supports her, in her thirst for knowledge and her quest to quench all of her curiosity about the world in which she lives.
Understands that Roan wants more for her eternity than a clutch of eggs and diamonds, gems and jewels and precious metals--useless things that, while shine, mesmerizing and beautiful, are ultimately worthless save for bragging.
And so, Roan goes, after schooling and the occasional meal, out into the world beyond the Vale.
*
Out of the mountains, past the slopes and lowlands, the forests and lakes, there sat a town of Man.
It was a small town, with little wooden buildings with thin thatch roofs and a small marketplace. It was the center of a small ring of towns, Men and their females living off of the land and on the very brink of what they knew as civilization.
Few outsiders ventured there, but those that did were met with wary eyes, quiet kindness, and respect.
Such manners were due to the fact that Dragons, that strange name that Men noted of Roan’s people, had long walked among them, watching and learning and adapting mannerisms. Not often, not many, but enough that the Men told their children and their children’s children to walk softly around strangers with odd smiles and odd eyes, stilted walks and old clothes.
(Theirs was a peace borne of long standing and practiced inattention of all things irregular. The Men did not report to their lords or armies of the monsters in their midst--the Kind provided the deterant to any raiding mauraders and cutthroats. )
The people there know Roan, greet her with careful smiles and fresh wares, and in return she brings small golden coins, small bobbles and jewels that the mortals never wear and cannot trade with (though Roan doesn’t know this until later) for a hot meal that is bland and has green things dotted about.
Each time she learned something new, whether it was how to calm a pony or clean a bar, hem a woman’s skirt or shoe a horse.
And it was wonderful.
*
Until it stopped being enough.
*
Roan learns blade-work like she once learned how to fly; by running straight downhill and leaping.
Though her mother is absent from behind her--no shove comes when Roan hesitates for too long. No laughter sounds when Roan crashes into a tree or trips over a boulder.
Also, Roan’s tactic appears to work better with wings.
Still, it was enough to get her human feet beneath her and a blade in her hand.
It was different, working with a blade.
Roan was used to claws and fangs and tail.
But it was not so different than using her wings--treat them kindly, learn their reach, and improvise from there.
It was in her training, fumbling (to be more precise) that J’on found her.
And his bones were utterly still beneath his skin.
It was a skill that she had yet to master in her thin, white Man-skin, and she had been fascinated.
And Roan remembers how she had stopped, staring wide-eyed, her hand loose around the leather grip she had fashioned for her sword. (Though to call it such was loose. It was a mere length of bone that she had picked from the depths of one of her mother’s piles of riches. It was the only thing she had yet found that she failed crush in her grip without thought.)
J’on, decked in battered, well-worn leather armor, rested with his hands lax at his sides against an old tree, smiling faintly at her, his teeth hidden behind his human lips.
And J’on, besides being an old drake that worked with Roan’s mother at the Healing Springs, was practically legend in the fact that he was more oft to spend time out of the Vale than within, more comforted with the skin of Man than Kind.
Mostly, he was seen dodging at the heels of Smaug, a male who most called the Inquirer.
Smaug, who seemed to be best pleased learning about the darkness of Man’s mind in the great cities of the South and West, far beyond the borders of Kind-land.
Still, Roan had grown up knowing J’on, Smaug his mated-shadow, and had spent many a day dodging between J’on’s stocky legs and chasing Smaug’s tail (when they could be found Vale-side) as the lithe drake lounged near the hot-springs, scathingly tearing into the lives of the patients who visited, down to the very minuteness of their sins.
J’on, ever kind and with the patient of someone thrice his age, most often merely brushing Smaug’s words aside with a snort and a shake of square golden head.
When younger, exhausted from a day of play, sleepy-eyed and indolently sprawled between Smaug’s great fore-legs, her head tucked into the hollow of Smaug’s chest, Roan had liked to compare her scales to Smaug’s, flexing out her tiny ivory claws in the girth of his own hand.
Smaug was so dark a black that he looked to bleed crimson red in the light of the sun and, though Roan was rather auburn, with more copper and gold shinning through, the thought that she could be so striking and graceful had enthralled her.
And so to his dark and large, was J’on light and compact--being rather small for a drake--with a set of low legs and narrow shoulders.
Not to say that J’on wasn’t handsome; his dusty golden scales were tipped with silver and his eyes were as blue as the sky in his truest form.
He was a Healer, like Roan’s mother, but he had once been a warrior, though he carried no wings.
J’on had fought in the last great war, and while he wasn’t as old as her mother, he nonetheless bore the scars of battle--thick, twisted scales in-grown and dark, covering his shoulder and one of his knees.
Smaug, for all his vanity and looks, seemed not to care a wit about the fact that his chosen mate was considered by most homely.
“Imbeciles,” Smaug had only snorted with derision, peering at her with a great, darkly-gleaming eye when Roan had thought to asked.
But he was like to say such about everyone.
“J’on,” Roan had greeted, dipping her head respectfully.
But J’on had waved her away; his hand darkly tanned and his eyes glittering.
“Lady,” he had said, as though she was some Mannish female to need such words.
Roan had stared at him reproachfully, but J’on had kept his small smile.
“You look as though you could use some help, may I?” and he held out a hand. Small and strong and tanned.
Roan could not have know it, not then--how the simple motion of giving him her blade would change her life. Forever.
*
For all his quiet demeanor and kindness, J’on had been ruthless in pushing Roan to perfection.
Again and again and again, drilling the moves over and over and over, until it was as natural as breathing. It took time--weeks, months, unto a new year, but her body slowly learned. It twisted more easily, her joints stretching and loosening in strange new ways, her skin settling as though it were really a new coat of scales.
J’on wasn’t often with her, true, for he still followed his mate out into the world of Men--but even in days where his gaze rested not on the slowly spotting landscape of her shoulders, the growing coarseness of her bare feet and her hands, Roan had still felt his hand, shifting her knees just a hair wider, her arms a minute higher.
She remembers how she had pushed herself, harder and harder, struggling to prove to J’on that she could be strong and mighty and that she was not a waste of his valuable time. As she tried to make him proud.
And it was beautiful, watching her work come to fruition in such obvious ways, as she gained the grace on the ground that she had in the sky.
Beautiful, and glorious.
*
Roan had few age-mates, and those that she had she cared not a wit about one way or another. True, it was impossible to be so close in age without knowing one another, but that did not mean that Roan chose to spend her time with them.
No, most were too slow, too heavy on the ground for her to find patience within herself to deal with. It didn’t help that Roan was only one of three in near-age that could fly.
But there was one, a female a few sparse decades older, who Roan took to befriending. She was flightless, yes, but she had scales as dark as the mountains and just as deep an amethyst.
She was beautiful, though extraordinarily stubborn and particularly volatile, and though at first she had scorned Roan for being younger and…rather unordinary and especially unorthodox, she warmed soon enough.
Her name was Miriel.
*
The Kind weren’t well known for their craftsmanship, and it was true; Roan had never seen one of the Kind raise either hammer or plow or light a forge.
But some were still skilled.
Miriel herself could make the finest of jewelry, tiny trinkets to wrap around legs and chains to adorn horns. They were small, earthy things, most made of wood and yak twine that she had harvested from one of the many heads of cattle that grazed at the foot of the mountains. Rarely were the things made of metal, for her clan had long ago spoiled away most of their wealth, and Miriel’s only comfort was that of the male that was courting her even as she cradled their first child in her belly, the egg not yet ready to be lain.
And Roan’s mother could sing, could make the mountains themselves sing with her, and she had the most beautiful voice, envied by many for its clarity and deep, ringing tone.
And J’on, for all Smaug’s bemoaning at anything approaching staid and ordinary, was renowned for hunting.
In these things the Kind were like every other creature, some more fitted for such than others, some scorning tradition, some good. Some bad.
And it was crime itself that only the most terrible, the most foul, gained mention in the World of Men.
And ruined the world for the rest.
*
It started as an itch between Roan’s shoulders, right where her wings joined into her shoulder-bones. It was irritating, but not enough that she couldn’t ignore it as she did when she slipped her scales, once ever hundred years or so.
But it got worse, and worse, until she found her mind drifting, up, up, and away, into the sky, past the Vale, the mountains, the little town of Men, into the real heart of the mortal world, where there were cities and crowds and people, little and big and all sizes in-between, where she could really try her hand at deception, at turning away the eyes, until she was just a face in the mighty crowds that clogged the countryside.
It was a thought that sent shivers through her chest and ruffs, trembling up her spines and crests, through her tail, until she was positively writhing with the want to fly.
Roan’s mother, of course, noticed.
Of course she did. She was Roan’s mother.
*
But then J’on, kind, great J’on, was slain, cut down in his prime, slaughtered like he was nothing more than a common animal.
And all of Roan’s plans were laid to waste.
*
And J’on was so--had been so kind, if not being rather intimidating, and oft-times could be--could have been found with Smaug.
It hadn’t mattered that Smaug was the younger blood-sib of the Leader of the Council of Five, Myair the Grey, a massive drake who ruled most of the Kind. (Whose intelligence was second to none and who Roan off-suspected of being her sire, if only for the fact that she and he were the only ones in the Vale who carried the distinct collar ruffs that flared and curled with bone-horns and vivid webbed membranes.)
It hadn’t mattered that Smaug was just as smart as his blood-sib, though he scorned his place in the governance of the Kind, preferring rather to run his experiments and study his sciences, or to pester J’on out of the Vale and into the world of Men, to amend themselves and get up to Stars knew what.
And while Roan was barely out of shell in comparison to most, she wasn’t--hadn’t been--blind--she could see--had seen, as clear as any that while Smaug could be a great, giant ass of a sex-spine riddled drake, he loved J’on like nothing else, more than the sky and more than flying, more than the living flame itself.
But then J’on was killed, felled by Man, and the madness that had always been held at bay in the blood of the great drakes came roaring from Smaug like blistering hatred, pure wrath and crazed frenzy. Fearsome and monstrous and murderous, thirsting for vengeance and the flesh of mortal-kind.
It had happened so fast--quicker than could be imagined--Smaug, a great, dark shadow--the wave of malevolence and grief and tearing, clotting hatred that sickened in the throat and roared from the belly in licks of blue fire, washing over the softly swaying yellow grass and ripping the limbs from the sparse trees--the wind, moaning and hot with the breath of Kind-fire--and Smaug, so terrible and great, his claws slashes of hematite, dripping ruby-bright blood as he fought, killed, tearing into any Kind foolish enough to stand between him and utter ruin of their Home.
And the fire, washing over the land, so bright and hot that it brought no pain--only ash and death and the thunder of Kind as their bodies fell beneath the torrent, shaking the ground as their spirits fled their scales and their hearts crumbled to darkness and cinders.
Roan remembers, her mother’s scream like lightening, her claws so long and her teeth so bright as she tore into Smaug, rending flesh as she fought beside Smaug’s brother, Myair--remembers how they strove to push Smaug from the Vale, to preserve what little they could--Roan remembers, then, how Myair had driven her mother back to lock his massive claws with his brother’s, and Roan remembers the sight--Myair, coated in the remains of their people, and Smaug, grey with charcoal, his eyes rolling with madness.
And then--then Smaug was gone.
And the Vale was ablaze.
*
The weeks and months and years after Smaug’s flight were spent putting out the fires he had left behind and tilling the ashes therein, so that the grass could grow again with time, fixing the meat-herds and the cave-ins. Treating with the mortals.
It was tireless work because Smaug, while thin, was--had been enormous, and he had had lungs the size of some drake’s heads.
Roan was too busy doing her part to visit her towns or amend herself, too busy to think about leaving off on her own, helping her mother apply salves until her tongue was numb and her teeth tingled every time she breathed, treating scorched scales and worse burns than any she had ever seen before.
And Stars, had the fire been as hot as any felt before? It must have been.
The Kind were hardy, essentially flame-retardant, with scale as hard as most diamonds, and to see their inner-workings shinning through, angry, red muscles striated and long, peeking through clusters of outer scales, was more than disturbing.
Heavens, Smaug, why?
Roan wondered helplessly in a spare second of space, lapping fresh, cool water from the stream, tasting ash and kingsfoil and blood.
But that was all she had had time to think on the matter before another of the Kind called her back to labor, working tirelessly to help till the earth and spread fresh seeds. Recasting the stones of their homes and lives.
It wasn’t until the first month was over, the burns mended enough that they needed no daily application of herbs, the fires finally banked and the smoke washed away, that Roan even had time to sleep, let alone think anymore.
And by then, it was too late for her to leave.
*
It took the help of everyone left alive to re-grow what had been lost to the rage of Smaug, and Roan contented herself with the reassurance of ‘soon, I’ll go soon.’
It was a lie.
She wouldn’t leave the Vale for another 50 years.
And how could she have left, when their people were so…so desolated? Smaug had killed many and wounded even more.
Their numbers, once small, had dwindled ever more--all that remained were the old and the broken and the youngest of the young, those too feeble or small to have left their caves.
Only three of Roan’s age-mates had survived. Miriel had been scarred, had lost her egg, could not see from her left eye--
You are lucky, Roan told herself, when she forced herself still under her mother’s ministrations. You are luckier than most, she had reminded herself, fighting the urge to scream as her mother’s tongue had raked like knives down Roan’s fore-arms, tending the ruined mess of muscle and scale that remained from Roan’s run-in with Smaug’s flame.
It is worth this, and more, Roan reminded herself, whenever her eyes caught sight of the pale, knotted flesh that grew, the thick, uneven scales over that--the jagged scars like water, twisting and writhing over her forelegs.
She pretended that her throat wasn’t a vice when she told herself these things, that she didn’t shut her eyes from the sight of her marred legs and curl her head, wounded and slow, beneath her wings.
Pretended that it didn’t matter that J’on…that J’on was dead and that Smaug was disgraced and that Miriel was broken and that she…she would forever be ugly.
Pretended.
*
It was summer when J’on returned to the Vale, on stumbling legs, missing an arm and with a new scar stretching out across his neck, his golden hair dusted more heavily with silver and his fleshy face lined with age.
But his eyes, his eyes were J’on.
He came as a Man, with Mannish weapons and manners, with only a dream of a life he couldn’t remember to guide him home.
To Smaug…
Who wasn’t there.
*
“You insist on seeing this through,” came the low observation, and Roan froze for a moment before continuing to pack, the bit of velum she had marked with her list crumpled off to the side. Her throat was so tight that she could hardly breathe--from sorrow and excitement and rage, her jaw tight enough to break a yak’s thigh-bone.
She was in one of the smaller tunnels off of her mother’s hoard, a single torch to guide the way and now wedged into a crack in the cave wall.
It was a rarely visited offshoot of the main-catch, lined with trunks, each one wooden and old and inlaid with curling, meandering carvings that told a story of wealth and love. Each chest was filled with cloth or armor or both, articles wrapped in oilcloth and dotted with chips of richly fragrant cedar; dresses of the finest crushed velvet, corsets enameled with gold, mail so thin and fine that it tinkled like thousands of bells. Leather leggings and knitted socks, miscellaneous shirts of soft cotton, some trimmed with stiff, opaque lace.
It was from there that Roan had first found what she wore when she ventured from the Vale, and from there that she was packing her bag.
In the shadows, her mother stood watching her, and Roan stared at her unexpectedly small form before turning away her eyes.
It hadn’t been a question, and her mother hadn’t wanted an answer.
Roan’s hands flew through the motions of folding, of packing away. Her hands shook, her muscles moving grotesquely under her pale, alien skin--her arms mortally weak though they were stronger than they had ever been before, when she had worn her Mannish skin with pride.
She wore a simple pair of leggings, hardily braided beneath a set of leather trousers, a rough-hewn, thick tunic over a long, soft shirt--overly large, laced against her collar, the long sleeve rolled up over her elbows.
Socks and boots she didn’t want to bother with--her soles were as hard as stone--but she packed them all the same for the sake of appearance, if nothing else. In her bag there went another shirt, tunic, and leggings, for she didn’t know how long she would be gone, out in the World of Man.
Roan had no real need for armor, so she took none. She would travel light--as light as she could, in her Mannish skin.
Behind her, her mother murmured her name, softly, and stepped closer, her hands sliding up over Roan’s shoulder.
Her mother embraced her from behind, tucking Roan’s head beneath her chin.
Roan closed her eyes, a soft, keening noise eking from her lips, and felt her hands tremble.
Her mother smelled like smoke and phosphorous, warm and comforting and so familiar that Roan wanted to turn, to have her mother hold her and tell her that she need not go.
But at the same time, Roan wanted to tear herself away, to grab her bag and run, as fast and as far as she could.
This was her chance for freedom, and here she was, wishing to cling to her mother?
She was pathetic.
Roan pulled herself away, a shift of her shoulder dislodging her mother’s long, pale, Mannish fingers, and turned, words catching in her throat, sticking between her teeth.
“Mother, I--” she choked out, searching for the words. None came, and her mother cut her off.
In the torchlight, her mother was a tall woman with skin as bright as opals and a dark fall of hair that curled over her chest. She was striking, with sharp cheekbones and eyes as bright as the sky, deep and blue and somehow still as impossibly green as grass, all at once.
Roan had never seen her as such, and it made her feel homely as anything, though it warmed her somewhere deep inside that her mother was as beautiful in one skin as she was in another.
Her mother pressed her forehead to Roan’s, her hands framing Roan’s cheeks.
“Hush, hush,” her mother whispered, comforting and soft across the bridge of Roan’s cheeks, as gentle as the spring wind. Her hands were so strong, so warm, and it took everything that Roan had to pull away.
“Mother, I cannot abandon this, not him,” she professed, tongue ungraceful behind her lips. Her entire body ached with indecision, with apprehension, her limbs jittering and ungainly as she tried to explain, to herself, to her mother--
There was no need, as her mother smiled somberly at her, a finger tracing the ridge of Roan’s cheek.
“I know, and I am proud of you,” her mother shook her lightly, once, by the shoulders, staring into Roan’s eyes.
There was the weight of the ages in her mother’s gaze, impossibly tyrannous and reaching. It was humbling, as though standing before the face of the Heavens, and Roan swallowed dryly.
“Your conviction is…admirable,” her mother’s words seemed torn, though by what, Roan didn’t--
Her mother’s face hardened, and she was a mountain before Roan, untouchable and weighty with might, as she stated, as cold as ice, “But I will not let you go alone.”
Roan felt the world freeze, and she was a mouse before a hawk, and she began to speak, to protest, and was silenced by a single, stony look.
“You will meet a Maia, an Istari, who goes by the name of Gandalf,” her mother explained, and her voice was geas and mage--a mother and a Queen and a master of magic and time--and it was no mere suggestion.
It was an order, and Roan was a subject before her queen, unable to speak. Her mother continued. “It is with him that you will travel forth to find the one you seek…and bring him home.”
Her mother leaned in then and whispered a kiss against Roan’s mouth, loving and tender and full of sorrow and bitter with the taste of soul-fire and enchantment, then pulled away. She sunk into the shadows, her shape distorting, un-resolving into something larger, wider, something with scales and eyes like fire.
There was a rumble in the dark, echoing through the stone, and came a voice like the earth cracking, deafening, as Roan’s tongue was thick with the unfamiliar, cloying taste of being bound and subject to the will of one of the last great powers in Middle Earth.
And it was thunderous.
“Now go.”