At the Heart of the Mountain

I spent Saturday walking the wilds of Rhovanion. There, I struck upon the Celduin river flowing southward, and I hiked upstream until I reached the ruins of Dale and the great gaping mouth of Erebor. No fumes could I espy escaping the ancient archway; so, taking heart, I entered the halls of Thráin.

Deep I crept into the living rock, and the air grew ever hotter as I descended. Then, through the darkness, I descried a reddish glow coming from a great stone archway before me; this led onto a high balcony.

There it was that I saw him: the great wyrm Smaug, lying below, asleep upon his mountain of stolen gold and jewels. I held my breath, but the monster slept on.

Daring fate ever further, I set up my easel and sketched the barrel-vaulted hall beneath me. The rainbow colours of the hoard and the thin light shimmering upon the dragon’s scales beguiled me, and even as I finished my work, I felt a desire to find my way down to the hoard and finger the yellow gold. But then I noticed the creature’s eye, which had been closed; it was now fixed upon me.

And I fled, saving only my canvas; I left behind all else that I had brought with me into the ruins of this cursed realm. But I knew that I had been lucky to return at all to the sunlit lands.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>