"The things we love destroy us every time, lad. Remember that."
Fairies are one of the oldest race of beings in Arda -once they called Numenór home- but Arethusa watched as the sea claimed the island from the helm of a ship as the survivors fled to...
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THE breaking of branches and thumping of small feet were the only thing Arethusa could make out above the shouts of the company. They closed ranks, trapping Bilbo and the fairy in the center of the circle. The raucous shouts and breaking branches grew louder, then there was the voice. "Thieves! Fire! Murder!" At the appearance of the first rabbit, Arethusa pushed her way between Bofur and Nori. The brown wizard had ridden far and hard from his dwellings.
"Radagast! Radagast the Brown. Ah. What on earth are you doing here?" For the moment, he ignored Gandalf and stooped to his knees at the sight of Arethusa. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and embraced the old wizard. Many of her tricks of healing had been learned from living with Radagast for many years near the Greenwood.
The brown wizard stood and almost shyly the fairy returned to the group, already sensing that the two wizards would prefer to speak alone. "I was looking for you, Gandalf. Something's wrong. Something's terribly wrong." Arethusa furrowed her brows, she knew from her travels that dark things had long been brewing but nothing had come to the surface over the many years.
"Yes?" The grey wizard asked.
Radagast grew flustered with himself, "Oh, just give me a minute. Um, oh, I had a thought, and now I've lost it. It was, it was right there, on the tip of my tongue." He huffed and snapped his fingers once. "Oh, it's not a thought at all; it's a silly old..." he poked out his tongue and Gandalf lifted a phasmid, dropping the bug back into Radagast's hands, "stick insect!" The dwarves had not been pleased with the wizard's show, each looked disconcerted and mildly disgusted. Gandalf and Radagast each trailed off a few paces to speak in private.
Arethusa looked on curiously, trying to hear what the two wizards were discussing but yet she heard nothing. Bilbo looked over at her with a slight smile, his blade now strapped to his hip, like a true little warrior. She opened her mouth to speak but the resounding howl ended all conversation in the group. "Was that a wolf? Are there -are there wolves out there?" The fear in the hobbit's voice was palpable, he had been raised with stories of wolves from the Long Winter, hobbits were told to fear the creatures but Arethusa knew that those howls did not belong to wolves, but to something much worse.
"Wolves? No, that is not a wolf." Bofur looked frightened himself, the fairy withdrew her new blade and it gleamed in the light. She turned, giving all the dwarves a sidelong glance when a warg appeared from behind a nearby crag in the rock and barreled down the embankment, knocking her to the ground with its teeth bared in her face. Arethusa thrust her blade upwards into the beast's belly and from above she saw Thorin bring his sword down on its neck. Bofur and Fili pushed the warg off of the fairy and helped her to her feet.
A second appeared, Kili had released an arrow hitting it between the eyes yet it got back up only for Dwalin to deliver a fatal blow. "Warg-Scouts! Which means an Orc pack is not far behind." Thorin's voice was tight, the fairy snatched her blade from the animal's stomach and sheathed it once more at her side. Her ankle was throbbing in pain after being crushed under the warg.
