Bird sat in a pine on the edge of devastation. All about her were stumps and ashes, and the shroud of snow failed to conceal the corruption of a murdered land. At first the changer had thought she had overshot her destination, and arrived in Thangorodrim itself. but then she had seen the few signs of sleeping life, the dead stalks and seedheads of flowers, a preserved clump of nutbushes, naked of leaves but still quick and waiting for spring. a small seep whose banks were preserved from the ash heaps around them to keep some source of fresh water. The orcs would never have been so careless in destruction.
And she had seen the low, crudely made smoke holes in a bank on the other side of the burnt, muddy fields. Signs of life underground. She had found the halfling prisoners at last.
Bird had thought she would make a triumphant entrance, swooping down on Child and Rose with cries of hope and welcome. But she was so tired, so tired and cold. As the slow realization came that this was the use that Morgoth had put the hobbits to, a feeling of despair had come over the her. Had He destroyed the spirits of the hobbits as he had destroyed the beauty of Dorthonian? And where were the prisoners? In the early rays of dawn there was no sign of movement in any direction.
Then she heard the snort of a pony, off in the remaining stand of trees behind her. Bird followed the sound to a meadow, far away from the prisoner's smials. A shaggy, but well tended beast was looking expectantly off through the woods, stretched to the length of his hempen tether.
"Expecting someone, are you?" Bird said to the pony, who looked mildly curious at being addressed by a black and white crow, but then turned his attention to the more-welcomed company he was anticipating.
Bird flew down onto the back of the pony, who shivered his skin at the feel of claws on her back, then decided that it felt good. The warmth of the pony radiated up through Bird's feet and body like a living furnace. The skin-changer clung to this small piece of life, the first she had found since leaving the Lonely Star. And others would come. The pony knew it. Bird settled down on the pony's back like a hen onto her nest, and fell into exhausted sleep.
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