The Forrest lay denser them most, with the path giving way to the wide trunks or boughs of fallen trees; which over the years had been worn smooth, like winding ledges which rose and twisted above the Forrest floor, gradual descending to turn a watchful traveller far from their desired path.
In places the sun all but vanished from the sky over head, replaced by the thick blanket of eaves which turned the Forrest to night.
The air was soaked in the humid stench of decaying fauna, for Mirkwood was not a welcoming Forrest where the breeze would shift the falling leaves while one sits or walks daydreaming, with their gaze lifted to the warm sun.
It was dark, foreboding, unforgiving in its rest of unease. Ancient, beyond the measure of mortal man’s thoughts or memories. Stick to the path or you will never be seen again! A warning not to be taken lightly by any whom would dare to cross into its threshold. For the elves whom dwelt there, were not so welcoming as to give aid to any whom intruded with unheeded thought or careless action. And the Forrest had a way of claiming the lost for good.
It was said; it started long ago, after the elves had passed through upon their great journey from Cuivienen into the far west. And thereafter had become the home, the dwelling of the wood elves. The Nandor; descendants of the Telri elve, Lenwe, when a grey elve; a Sindarin, Oropher had established the woodland realm proper….
It had once been known as Greenwood the Great, but that had changed with the third age of the sun! When the shadow of the Dark Lord Sauron fell upon it, and men began to call it Mirkwood, or Taur-nu-Fuin; The Forrest of great Fear….
It became a haunted place inhabited by many dark and savage things. Sauron established himself at the hill-fortress of Dol Guldur, an old Elven fortress that Oropher had control of, on Amon Lanc within its southern region, and drove Thranduil and his people ever northward, so that by the end of the Third Age they were a diminished and wary people, who had entrenched themselves within the Mountains of Mirkwood. It was there that Sauron embarked upon his ultimate quest… to release the dark Valar Melkor for the binds that bound him until the end of days to the eternal abyss….
Long had it been since any had ventured so close to the hill of dark sorcery…Dol Guldor… For hundreds of years Sauron, his loyal apprentice had delved within the shadows of magic to release him. They did not question his increasing power as he had fled Dol Gulor after the attack from the white council… For in their bid to banish Sauron they, the White Council, had been oblivious to the darkness that hid within the fortress and the ever darkening Forrest around it. For from its shadows, its humid decaying fauna shrouded in the webs of Ungoliants descendants, the darkness had stirred and Melkor whom all had thought gone from Middle Earth forever…could once again see, and roam bound to the shadows of the hill of sorcery…
And yet now the 'dark Valar' watched from within the looming shadows, as the small creature, a halfling, childlike in stature and shape began to settle herself within a small forsaken hut upon the rise to Dol Guldor...
He waited, watching as she worked, could she not feel the cold stifling darkness of dread? Could she not smell the stench of fear which lingered in the creeping mist about the hut; as she brushed away the forsaken webs of Spiders long departed... Who was she to not be afraid? Afraid of the very ground on which she stood, or the air she breathed within his cursed domain...
Could she not feel him, his eyes as they bore deep into her soul; Or was her innocence so pure it was naive to fear or dread...
Melkor's lips curved creasing at the corners into a devious smile... perhaps she would be the one. The one to finally free him. The purest soul to unlock his binds.
He watched her busily work through the afternoon and into the dusk of night, stepping closer as the shadows of darkness stirred waking to descend slowly down the hill and shroud the small hut in darkness...
And as he came to stand before the small huts closed door he lulled the redness from his eyes, and shrouded his face beneath a cowl of cloaked mist before raising his hand, to tap lightly upon worn wooden door...
