Morning Mist and Silver Sun by StarSpray

Friend of Beasts

Written for the 2019 Back to Middle-earth Month Bingo, for the prompt "animal guide" on the Setting as Character card, and the prompt "I don't know exactly what a prayer is" on the Late Great Mary Oliver card.

Beren collapsed gracelessly beneath a tree, curling up in his cloak and dreaming of bread and cheese, or even of wild roots and berries. He had been unable to find anything edible that day, and his own stores had run out long ago. Worse, it was growing dark, and he did not know this part of Dorthonion well enough to find a place to rest that would be well hidden from the orcs on patrol.

His head jerked up at a rustling in the brush. As he tensed, a deer emerged. It stopped and stared at him, and he at her, for what felt like a year and a day. Finally, she moved, stepping forward and leaning down to nudge at his shoulder. Beren exhaled slowly, and reached up with trembling fingers to pet her smooth neck once, then twice. Then she stepped away, regarding him with soft dark eyes for a moment more. Another nudge to his shoulder, and she turned away, walking carefully and near-silently back to the honeysuckle thicket from which she had emerged. Beren watched her disappear into it, and then blinked when she appeared again, looking at him almost expectantly.

It was like an answer to a prayer he had not spoken. He got to his feet and stumbled after the doe. She led him through thick honeysuckle laden with flowers, and through flowering blackberry brambles, until they came to a clear stream bubbling up from a spring, and by the spring a great tree that he could climb and yet find a place high out of the reach of orcs to sleep in. High in its branches a nightingale trilled.

The deer nudged his arm again, and he reached up to pet her head, scratching behind her ears without thinking, as he had pet his father's hounds once upon a time. "Thank you," he whispered hoarsely.

The spring water was the sweetest he had drunk in weeks, and he slept that night in the branches of the tree more soundly than he had since his father had died, beneath clear skies filled with stars.