Chapter Text
Nile tilts his head to the sky, stopping in his long run across the middle earth. His sides are lathered in sweat. His fur, bag, and weapons are the only things clothing him. He is, without a doubt, too late now. He feels it thousands of miles away, outside the Shire.
He pulls his bag from his back when he finds a river and plunges in quickly, washing the coating of travel from himself before dressing and walking, dark and proud, through the shire. He makes it to the home of Bungo and Belladonna Baggins and knows immediately that the pair of loving creatures he left his unofficial son with are both gone.
There’s a fusty one trying to sell their things. Nile makes his way up the aisle between two seated crowds of hobbits. A twinge of grief for two people he never spoke to runs through his heart. They may not have known the nomadic shaman, but he definitely knew them. He wouldn’t have left his little sparrow with them otherwise.
These interlopers (many of which he recognizes) turn in their fragile little chairs and push themselves back from him because he is a scary creature. Big and broad, all black and fully grown, this is the minotaur they tell their faunts about to keep them abed.
He is nightmare incarnate, to these gentle creatures. Yet, he would never raise a hand to them. Many of them will laugh later on at the dressing down he gives Lobelia Sackville-Baggins when he demands she put everything back the way it was.
When he leaves, a great lock has been added to the round green door, and the scratch on it has been taken note of and concealed. No other exit opens, and the only key to Bungo’s beloved gift is around the neck of the great beast as he picks up his run again, headed to where his child is at, nearly dead.
Someone hurt him. Now they’ll pay.