A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Ten - Travels and Minor Troubles

“Well I’m just trying to answer what you’ve asked me—!”

“You are not you’re just trying to exasperate me with your unhelpfulness. I’m a lady; didn’t your mother ever teach you to treat ladies with respect?”

“Oh you’re a lady?” he shot back, all in good humor. “Could have fooled me, what with those fancy elven trousers you’ve got on.”

“Fine then. If I’m not a lady I can do this.” I reeled my arm back and socked him in the shoulder, enough to sting and make him careen sideways in astonishment. “Tell me what you know I’m asking you or I’ll hit you again.”

“I think they’re getting on well,” Freda conversationally said to Bofur. “I think.”

“They’re both smiling at least.”

“Always a good sign.”

So Gloni returned to walk at my side, making a show of uncertainty as to whether or not I’d try to beat him again, and commenced a long and detailed instruction on a variety of bows, from longbows to shortbows to recurves and a wide swath of others. I’d had no idea—and I told him thus—that the same weapon could be so varied and complicated.

“So a bow is clearly not just a bow?” I clarified, just to screw with him, at the end of his long explication.

He rolled his eyes at me from behind his beard. “Don’t make me explain it to you again, lass. I may not survive to the end of it.”

“Psh. I may not. For such a young person you’re so very long-winded.”

We were quiet for a moment as we sat beside each other nibbling at our lunch. It had been several hours since the start of our conversation. “May I try your bow?” I asked eventually, and Gloni twisted to stare at me. I pretended not to notice that he glanced first at his father and then at mine before nodding and stringing it for me. He’d had it out just moments before to show me something.

“Can you draw it?”

I dusted off my hands and stood up. “Probably not.” Gingerly I accepted the bow from him, taking a peek at the grass to make sure there were no rocks I could drop it on by accident, and stepped back a few feet, adjusting my grip and touching the string as if I knew what I was doing. I curled my fingers around the string as I’d seen him doing, and gave a mighty tug.

Nothing happened. I yanked again, straining. The others were starting to chuckle. “Is this string even flexible?” I demanded, giving another heave. Still nothing. I needed to do more push-ups.

One more time I decided. I solidified my grips, wrapping my whole hand around the string, and took a wider stance as if that would help me.

When I heaved I lost my grip on the bow and the wood snapped back into my face, across my left cheek and eye. I staggered, slapping my left hand to the bruise, yowling as Gloni swiftly took back his bow before I dropped it.

I knew as the others rolled in their laughter like dough on a board that I’d never live this one down.

One truly magnificent bruise later—it was easily the length of my hand, and as dark as the dirt I turned up when I kicked grass clods over—I walked merrily along at Gimli’s side, asking him about dwarven lore, which I was surprised to find that Gimli was rather fond of. He told me ardently of how the dwarves were crafted from the love of Aulë, son of Ilúvatar, who originally was furious with his son and nearly forced him to destroy what he had wrought. But Ilúvatar then saw the devastation the ruination of the dwarves would cause Aulë, and allowed him to stay his hand, and drew true life into the forms he had created, allowing them to truly live.