A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Third Entry - The River's Edge

But the pleading accomplished nothing more than Gandalf’s silence to further elaborate on the topic, and at last he suggested we cross the river and refresh ourselves and our clothes before setting out, considering the abominable several days we had just survived. Everyone agreed, and stomped forth through the thin trees toward the edge of the ford. I took off my shoes and stepped in cautiously—I had never learned to swim, and the current was a strong presence at our legs, and then our chests.

We were only a quarter of the way across when the water began lifting my feet, and I sliding sideways, downriver, unable to cross any further. The water was up to my mid-chest already. When they heard me splashing the dwarves Bifur and Bofur, who were closest, waded back to me. Bofur stood downstream with his back to me, Bifur upstream with his hands clenched in the back of my tunic. When I tried to keep from sliding into Bofur he shook off my breathless apologies.

“No, you hop right up and sit on my shoulders,” he said.

“But, I’ll be fine if I have something to hold onto,” I said, unsure.

“And look, there, Bilbo’s got up on Dori’s shoulders already,” he pointed out, and I caved.

“All right.” The current pushed me into Bofur’s back and Bifur helped me climb up to sit on his shoulders. I swayed, the combination of our height and the water surrounding us ruining my balance.

“Hold tight,” Bofur said cheerily, patting my knee.

“To what?” I demanded, casting about as though I expected a handle to appear.

Bofur gave it a moment’s thought. “That’s a good question,” he said at last, not offering a solution.

We made our way across eventually, and when I patted Bofur’s shoulder he crouched and let me down in the shallows. I splashed onto the rocks, pulled my shoes out of my dress—tunic—and threw them onto the bank. I glanced over my shoulder, saw the dwarves disrobing without any further hesitation, and immediately spun back to face the trees. I sat myself down on a mound of moss and kept my back decidedly turned on the jovial dwarves and their entertainments.

“So Mabyn,” Bofur called out at one point. “How is your realm different from ours?”

I thought about it. I knew that this world wasn’t real but I was having a hard time remembering the real one. “There are too many people,” I said at last. “Our land is smaller than yours, and I suspect it is older as well. We have no large castles or halls anymore because there is no room.”

“No room?” Nori asked, astonished. “Where do you all live?”

“In individual dwellings, for small families usually. The king may live in a large home, but there are very few castles—I suppose I shouldn’t say they’re all gone. That’s one of the reasons I so love this place, your world.” I felt myself growing distant as I considered it further. “There is ever so much green, stretching on and on, and it is so easy to tell who is likely to harm you and who isn’t because your enemies can confront you directly about why they don’t like you.”

“Well there’s no other way to go about having an enemy,” Dwalin retorted.

“I’m afraid in my world there is,” I said, and reached beneath my hair to find the buttons holding Bofur’s hood to his cloak. I undid them, pulled the hood low over my eyes, and twisted up the ends until I was effectively blindfolded. Turning to face them once again, I picked my way down toward a boulder near the water’s edge by memory. “There are so many people you see, we can’t afford to offend each other because there is no space to run or fight. If two families engage in a feud either both families are entirely obliterated ending it, and anyone who tries to come in between them, or they sit and hate each other while pretending not to.”