A/N: Hey everyone, this story is probably going to be a bit on the longer side, and is a WIP. I will try to update as frequently and faithfully as I can – I never do WIPs because I am so lax in discipline I’m afraid I’ll never finish! So, here goes my first effort...someone hit me with a frying pan if you know what’s good for you!

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                               The Long Road Home

                                           or

A Firsthand Account of the Fell Times by Estella Bolger-Brandybuck

It all had happened so quickly.

I woke up and I looked outside my window, barely able to see past the grime that caked the glass from the outside, and all I saw was a desolate, barren wasteland. In place of the lush green grass there was sickly-looking straw-like growth spreading until the eye could no longer see. The trees were hacked and hewn, burned into nothingness, lifeless stumps stuck into the hard and lifeless ground. Flowers were wilted, their once beautiful petals fallen, curling into little heaps at the feet of their sagging discolored stems. The sky was veiled, the sun hidden away, leaving all I could see with nothing but a dull sallow light. A constant blanket hung above, littering the land with shadows that crept like snakes and slithered down the roads. The air was still and rotten, smelling of burning and decay. And all the world seemed nothing more but a gloomy palette of browns and greys.

Everything dead, dead and dying, dead and dying and dust

That’s all that was to be left of everything it seemed.

Dust.

When I sat up and got out of my bed my entire home was quiet. It had been rather quiet since my brother was arrested – well, at least to me it was quiet. My family had taken in refugees, random poor families and hobbits turned homeless in this barbarian ravage of our lands. They were camped out in the parlor, or asleep in huddled masses in different guest rooms gone to disarray. I had not the heart to turn them away. Not after what my brother had done.

He was a rebel.

And how could I too not stand up to this injustice? How could I not stand beside him, in some disconnected way, here as I listened to my heart and not propriety, and opened my home to those who looked for one?

I looked into the mirror across my room. Once it had been lovely and large, and clean like the rest of my home. Once my room had smelled like lavender, and the great room like Da’s pipeweed.

But not anymore.

My home had been raided. The ruffians had been sent to search for valuables. They came and wrecked our home because of my rebel brother. They wrecked it, and all the memories and happiness and warmth living in the aged walls of my ancestry.

They must have forced him to reveal his identity. I try not to imagine how. But I do not regret his actions, for he was brave and he was right. And if I could have gone back, I would have joined him and his band. My fate would be none the worse, and my heart a little lighter. Treasures were stolen, heirlooms plundered, precious things dismantled. They took everything when they came, and anything they’d left us was broken, old, or worthless.

They tried to take me.

But I took a fork and I stabbed his foot – right through to the very floor. I can still remember that howl of pain he gave, but what happened afterwards I do not. I was running to the secret chamber where my parents where hidden, but he caught me before, and pulled me too close to bear. He whispered what he would do to me in my ear. I can still feel his hot, disgusting breath down my neck. I can still feel his grimy, brown hands on my body.

But before he had dragged me out I stabbed him. He wacked me across my face in his agony-driven rage and I hit my head onto something that was on the ground. And all went very, very dark, and for a moment I thought I was dying. For a moment, I didn’t care.

When I awoke I realized what had happened. My home lay in ruin, my possessions where gone, and the only dress with which I now was left was the one I was wearing, and on it where stains of blood – blood from that awful ruffian, blood from when I stabbed him. And blood from myself.

The blood is still there, as I still wear the dress. But now it is brown, brown and dried and old.

And I never cried about it. Not once. I would not give them the satisfaction. But mother thinks I cry, (though she does not know the reason), because sometimes when I come out from my room my eyes are all red and watery.

But what she doesn’t know is I only look that way because when I glance into my mirror, now broken, with shards of its wrecked glass strewn all over my dirty floor, I see my eyes, and they stare back at me. They stare back at me brown and big, and it reminds me of that day, and I try to rub it away, rub them away. I scrub and scrub until they are so sore I can hardly open them, and that my skin burns when water from my eye trickles down it. I never told her what happened. And I never will.

So I let her think I cry.

My hole now seemed just as barren as the scene out my window. No more trees, no more grass, no more sky. I long for the sun, but it is scared away, hiding someplace far and distant and I cannot blame it for running, for disappearing... as I often wish to do the very same thing.

I stare at my reflection in the mirror and remember a time when I would disdain the call for complete perfection the world seemed to lay upon my heart. The properness that demanded protocol and manners. I look at my matted, snarly hair and fair complexion smudged with grease and filth. I look at my dress, as it hangs in pathetic shreds and tatters off my body, and I wonder, which state is worse – filth or mandatory cleanliness, for I am miserable in both. And I wonder too, in someplace in the back of my mind, if I will ever be happy.

The cracked lines of the broken glass streak down the mirror, and my image is sliced in half. Part of the glass is missing and covers the ground, shattered at my feet from the raid, so while I look, half of my reflection is incomplete, missing like my soul.

Missing like my life.

I think of how foolish I had been. There was a time when I known not what hunger felt like, and I hadn’t ever guessed how I would be if there were not new clothes every day, or cleanliness. I am angry at myself for being so blind. I used to be so happy – so stupid – we all were.

I recall once when I was rich, a friend of mine had laughed at a younger hobbit lass because she’d wore the same dress two days in a row, she called her unsanitary. I think about that a lot, and I don’t think it will ever leave my mind. I did not do anything to stop her. It is something I will be ashamed of as long as I should live. If she was still alive, I would have apologized to her.

I left my room and tread as quietly as I could down my hallway. I pass rooms with sleeping children in them, and I tip-toe away, hoping that perhaps I can save them from this dismal reality for maybe a few more minutes, a few precious moments while they can escape in the world of their dreams.

As I reach the kitchen I see my mother and I smile at her, but she gives me a sad look, a look she often wears during these times, and went back to the food cooking over the hearth.

Among the people in my home, some sit in corners, some lay sprawled on the floor, some weep and some simply stare in some manner of which I understand – they stare in disbelief.

Disbelief of everything.

It is a dark sight.

Like so many of them I wonder how this had happened, how all of us had been so naive and ignorant to the threats around us.

We were unprepared, we were helpless.

Though sometimes I think I am the only one who wonders this, while everyone else just mourns over the loss of their homes and dreads the coming day. I think they still do not see that we had been wrong to ignore the world, that we could have stopped this. I think that somewhere out there, there is some good still, because I see it every day in the eyes of the little lads and bairns, the ones whom I would least expect to be able to except ‘move on’.

Though I think they all just feel that the shadow that has fallen upon us is all encompassing, and it shall never end. But I think them wrong – though perhaps it is I who is wrong. Perhaps it is my imagination, my endless colorful imagination acting up again. Mother always said to me that my imagination would cause nothing but trouble. I think now maybe she was right.

I can be sure of nothing anymore.

But above all this morning, I hear a wail, long and clear, the cry of a child. No one seems to care or pay witness, but merely continue their doings – whatever they are. The sob does not cease and I resolve to search out its proprietor. After a moment of looking through all the dirt-covered raiment, saddened eyes and tired, cold bodies I find a little hobbit lass, huddled in the corner. She could not be older than five or six at the most. In an instant before she even knew I was there, I bend to my knees and wrapped my arm around her.

"There, there, little one. Do not cry. Shh..." I try and sooth her, but the moment I speak she jumps out of my embrace and plasters herself against the wall, looking up at me with big and frightened eyes. Brown eyes. For a moment I just stare at her, I am not sure what my expression looked like, but it must not have been kind, for she began to whimper sadly. "I will not hurt you," I say calmly. "I promise. I want to help. Are you hurt?"

After a minute her sobs subsided and she sniffed and nodded in the negative.

"Where are your parents?" At this prompt, her face crumpled into itself and she began to cry again. I reach out and pull her nearer and this time she does not struggle away but latches onto me and holds so tight I think that I might burst, but I squeeze her back and she cries into my knotted hair and dirty dress. "Shh, dear, shh."

"I don’t know where...where...where dey are!" She wails.

"It’s alright, Estella will watch over you until we find them." I assure her warmly as I place her back onto the floor. "Where have you seen them last?" I ask.

It takes her a minute to answer me, as she snuffs, and when she does her voice is shaky and scared, "A’...a’...at my howse Miss.‘stella. Big mean Mens come and wreck it and we ran and ran til my feet hurt, til we got here...and they said...Lily you run to the Bolgers and we were gettin chased and they ran a different way...so I runs and I came here, and I miss them!" With that she burst into a new fit of tears and I held her close to console her. And with that little snippet of knowledge I already know her parents are no more. Obviously distracted the ruffians in order to save their daughter. Eventually I convince Lily to eat, and we go to my table, and I spoon her out what is supposed to be soup – made of what I cannot say, but that is no matter – and she eats it greedily.

I kiss her head, "We will find them, I promise." I whisper to her, although I do not know whether I am lying or not.

Empty promises. Empty hearts.

Empty.

I leave her to her meal. So young, it is so tragic. I muse to myself whether or not I will have to live the remainder of my life this way. Every day mingled with grief, death, heartbreak. Every second thought of hunger and pain, disease and fright.

Why did world come crashing down?

I lean against the counter in the kitchen and gaze out unto the ruined landscape. I long to go outside and breath the air, no matter how rank it is with the stench of the Men. I have been cooped up inside for what feels like ages, for it is dangerous to walk outside. Very dangerous.

But I felt like a caged bird, always looking, always seeing, always knowing what is outside, and longing to flap my wings. I stare to the dreary scenery, and apart from how forlorn it looks, I still yearn to feel air not stagnant from the heat of my home upon my face.

I want to look out across the fields that had once draped the countryside and to see if somewhere, someplace in the distance I can spot hope, and run and run like the little lass, until my feet hurt, until I get there or die in the attempt. And suddenly I cannot take it any longer, I cannot stand to be locked in this little home. I cannot stand to be trapped inside the cage that the Shire has become.

It is not the Shire anymore. This is not my home. This is not where I grew up, and the brown, grubby water that flows thick past the banks is not the same Brandywine I had cried at when my brother and his friends tried to teach me to swim. The fields of dry wheat and broken haggard crops are sick imitations of the plants that used to grow as high as a troll they say. The homes my friends had once lived in are bleak and shut to the outside, windows boarded up and doors locked tightly. Ugly black buildings that spurt smoke that matches their hideous color appear in greater numbers every day. The sky that was once blue and great is now clouded, a dull curtain that has dropped and blocked us out of all time and trust. Ashes ride on the wind – not only ashes of burnt homes and villages – but ashes of hope, ashes of dreams, ashes of the future that was so quickly destroyed. Ashes and dust. No. No, this is not my Shire anymore. This is not my home.

Ashes and dust is all that is to remain.

I felt like I needed to scream. Let me out! Let me out! Let me out of this cage!

But then again, what could I do in the end? Though it pains me to look upon the ghost and grave of my former happy home, to see the phantoms of once happy hobbits walk about in a strange haze and stiff fear. It hurts me to wake up every morning to clouds and shadow, and to look into my broken mirror and be reminded that my life is missing, and to stare into my brown eyes and remember the day it all began.

I can feel my breath quicken and I clench my fists as I gaze outside to the bleak and horrible scene. I look to the spread of hobbits taking refuge in my home, and suddenly I realize that not only have the ruffians wrecked my home, but they have ruined countless lives for the stretch of generations. They have created caverns in hearts too deep and dark to fill, they have stolen away lives of husbands, wives... children.

And it hits me hard, though I had known it all before, as if it never actually dawned on me, that my pain could be magnified a thousand times and even then not be equal to those that have lost more and can do less. Those that have not the strength nor heart to bear the horror any longer.

And suddenly I become angry. Angry for the people who have lost their lives, as it burned to ashes and dried to dust, blowing away, and unable to catch it. Angry for those who had never gotten to say goodbye to their loved ones stolen too early for them. I feel hatred for the Men that killed the parents of the lads and lasses too small to understand it all, just thinking that soon it will all wash away, like a nightmare soon be forgotten. But in reality it will never fade, never leave those that live – it will haunt them like a specter, only to be more horrifying the darker it becomes.

I have never felt hate before. I never knew true hatred – but with the knowledge of this black and vile feeling, this burning in the pit of my stomach, I know that I, too, have been touched by this darkness they have brought upon us, infected by their cruelty and disgrace.

Even if my people do not understand that we could have stopped all this, I feel pity and empathy. I feel it more so because of those who cannot – will not – ever understand, and who face this new catastrophe alone, alone with their confused and small knowledge, unable to see past the wall in front of them. I feel empathy and hurt, because like most of them, I too have lost some dear to me.

Even now I cannot bear to recall it, the day my brother left. I had never seen him so determined, he came to me in a fit of frenzy. He was so smart, so sure, so right, and I disregarded his points, like the fool I had been. I can remember it so clearly, as if it just had happened.

‘Estella, I must leave, if I do not do something now, if I cannot gather help, this will be the end of us.’

‘But must you? Everything will calm, you’ll see. Just leave it, things will take care of themselves, just as they always do.’

‘Not this time.’

‘And what is it that makes you so sure?’

‘They said they were fleeing from danger, into danger. Dire danger and peril, and if they did not succeed it was likely it will come to the ruin of all.’

‘Who said this? What are you talking about?’

‘Merry! Merry and Pippin, and Frodo... that’s why they left, don’t you see! To stop this! This is the beginning... it came clever and disguised and soon all will be covered in its shadow. Do you not see what is happening? I do not know exactly what our friends had left to do, but I fear now what it was has not rightly been done. And I do not wish to think of what that means for them. But I know since I was left behind, since I was trusted with their secret, that I must do something. Try and prevent this all from becoming what it will. But I cannot do it alone. You may think me crazy, but I can feel it deep in my bones, like some weird warning, if you will. If they are missing, it is my job to warn those whom I can convince. It is my responsibility, even if I cannot succeed – I must try.’

‘What... Freddy...what do you mean, what evil?’

‘Everyday it grows the greater. Men do not come to the Shire out of fair travel and sport... you have not seen what is already happening in other farthings. In Hobbiton, the mill was torn down, houses burned, trees toppled. I saw it with my own eyes. The Men are becoming grander in number, and started attempting to control those there, like some wicked... slave drivers! Up in Tuckborough they have caused mischief, I’ve gotten wind that fighting has erupted, the Thain has had some killed. It’s not much more than they deserve.’

‘I... wait... you cannot leave!’

‘No, I cannot delay.’ His eyes where sad but strong. ‘Not any longer. Stay safe Estella, and watch around you. Be careful whatever you do or say. Do not come looking for me once I’ve gone, you must deny all contact with me. Say that I have left to Bree if you must. Hopefully if I can try something now, I might stop this all – although hope is thin. Goodbye.’

And then he was gone. And he was right – so right.

It is afternoon now, or so says the old and half-smashed-in grandfather clock that once stood proud and tall in the great room. Twelve rings chime, each one seemingly more strained than the last, and I sigh. The day has not gotten brighter with the coming of afternoon, but darker, and a murky blackish light seeps into the windows like a sickly spell, and then everything darkens as if a great storm cloud is hanging above us. Candles flicker on their perches and the dull murmur of the peoples crowding my home can be heard like a miserable song above the hollowness that surrounds them.

I retreat back to my room, with its one small round window, veiled in dust and the spidery dry remnants of vines and leaves. I look across to my torn yard and think of my parents and their solemn faces when I told them what my brother had done.

I blow out the candle I carried in here.

Waste not.

That is what I heard an elderly hobbitess say once, and now I truly come to realize what it means.

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TBC