
It was the same as every morning. As the dew slid down blades of grass, the mist of a cold evening dissipating under the assault of the sun, King Robb was the first to rise. Donned in his armor and a thick cloak of wolf fur, he scouted the grasslands, foreign to him, in search of something elusive. It wasn’t food the Young Wolf searched for, but something of far greater value.
Hope.
Alas, he found mystery. For in a sudden moment, his maple stallion halted without his command. Grey Wind, the absurdly large direwolf at his side, sneered and bore its teeth. Something was moving amongst the trees. But why couldn’t he see them?
Drawing his sword, the icy sound of metal leaving a sheath piercing the morning tranquility, he waited. Eyes sharper than arrowheads waiting - watching.
With ease she navigated herself through these woods. They were not dense like the woodlands she had spent millenia’s wandering throughout; always there was a rock to be upturned, a new seed sprouting, a tree whispering to her whilst she rested in thought. But here…. Hazel eyes flicked to the North where a Gale sent new scents downwind.
Here: The place she did not know, the trees did not speak and the leaves seemed dull.
This was not home.
Tauriel saw the wolf long before she saw the man who rode quite loudly upon his horse. She flowed through the trees with the grace of water flowing past rocks; no blade unbent. no leaf crunched, not even a twig snapped as she left no trace of her existence behind.
Crouching low to the tree she settled upon, she watched the wolf who noticed her the moment she noticed it. What she thought for a Warg, she realized was still only a wolf… a rather enormous wolf.
Tauriel froze. As still as stone she looked to the man who drew his sword, he sat upon his horse like the Horse Lords of Rohan. He even seemed to have that same aura radiating from him, the bond between man and beast that was so rare to find.
“Do you always draw your sword so loudly?” Tauriel spoke, keeping taunt against the tree, well out of sight wishing to not provoke rider nor Wolf.
Mortals were like flowers in Tauriel’s mind. Some as beautiful and dangerous as a rose: barbed with thorns to pierce and...
He was in awe - for lack of a better word. For that very moment he caught a glimpse of her features, a gift given to him...