On the footsteps of the Crows

The Monotony of Silence

Probably the dwarves had hoped that the young Ezyel was lazy enough to doze for much longer than their quiet rearranging of the space they had used for camping, thinking they could use the first light of dawn to quickly disappear and leave her behind.

However, they had not calculated that Ezyel was used to moving early in the morning, so when half of the dwarves were still waking up from their sleep, she was already ready and had already rolled up her blankets and was dispersing the ashes of the fire she had lit the night before, leaving the dwarves to do the same while Thorin, who ironically had been one of the last to understand what was happening, looked at her with a sneer from Gandalf and the hobbit had disappeared a few minutes ago.

'Where did the thief go?' Dwalin asked, as Ezyel had learned from the King's orders, while with his usual booming baritone voice he went a little to the right and a little to the left. 'I saw him going into the bushes,' Ezyel threw out without even turning around from kicking the pieces of ash and stamping on them to make sure they didn't catch fire. Dwalin was about to say 'ah, thanks...' before remembering Thorin's order and letting the gratitude fade into a meaningless mumble, and from the panicked voice of the hobbit, he realized he must have found him, and with a smile, he went back to straighten up the place.

'What's the matter, Master Baggins?' Gandalf asked at some point during their journey, since it was quite usual to spend time in the saddle looking at the sky, writing on a support on the saddle like Balin, who was actually the only one doing it, or chatting with the companion next to him. 'Nothing,' Bilbo quickly replied with a grimace that suggested the opposite, while Ezyel remained more detached from the overall situation and hiding a half smile. 'Don't pout, thief,' Dwalin grumbled, raising his voice a bit as he was a line behind the column, getting only a more sullen Bilbo and a confused Gandalf while Dwalin opened his arms with the reins in one hand. 'Where was I knocking? On a tree? And then we're both males, what does it matter?' trying to minimize what had happened while others had become more interested, and the wizard chuckled to himself imagining the scene.

However, while on one hand the dwarves were already bonded and Bilbo was slowly settling in among them, Ezyel was still an unknown person who had to be kept at a distance, in the oppressive silence no one spoke to her, and she still had a minimum of pride not to even speak first and thus appear as a person who absolutely needed to commune with others, even if preferring chat and company, it was not at all an exaggeration to define that undeclared exile almost a torture for the young human, forced to continue her journey in those conditions.

And so the days passed: two, four, five!

A torture without seeming to end, treated as if she did not exist and without anyone speaking to her except for the occasional kindness that Gandalf gave her by helping her with the fire or even Bilbo while he took care of the horses, and silently she could observe Thorin's company capturing the subtle, sometimes not so subtle, bonds that existed between them.

On the other hand, she had to admit that Thorin himself was quite taciturn, constantly irritated by the presence of Bilbo or Ezyel and rarely allowing himself to smile or laugh with the other dwarves, although he seemed to appreciate their cheerfulness and songs. Well, if there was something that Ezyel quickly learned, it was the dwarves' passion for singing songs full of the history of their ancestors to keep them alive in memory, with low tones of recollection that often lasted at least a couple of hours because they also commemorated all the names of the characters and their dynasties, and dynasties had other generations of stories, and other generations of stories meant new songs!

Yet silence was her companion, even though someone occasionally glanced at her to see if she had given up or was still stubbornly staying in line in the caravan, but the days continued relentlessly in that insidious and malicious way, so much so that Ezyel often found herself imagining home again and the voices of her family chattering practically all hours, someone even at night, passing the time in the silence of the ride to have a constant muscle ache at sunset when they stopped.

Normally she would have turned back already and gladly said goodbye to that life of hardship, but gritting her teeth she sang the provisions, her own, well aware that they would never be shared with her if she gave in to despair and hoarded food even before preparing for the mountain pass.

She couldn't believe it when she heard from the others, who were proceeding with their noses in the map and compass to make sure of the direction, that they actually had enough supplies because Thorin intended to push straight beyond the mountain range: madness.

Especially since the group itself was exhausted from the constant jostling of saddles on ponies that in turn needed more days of rest, loaded like mules, the poor animals did their best to carry the heavy armaments of their masters, their supplies and possessions and above all the massive build of the dwarves.

"In my opinion, it's not a good idea," Ezyel dared to say, while the others seemed so interested in continuing to ignore her. "I'm afraid our travelling companion..." Gandalf began, weighing his words very carefully for what would follow. "Might not be entirely wrong." Then he hurried to contextualize his explanation. "We really need a glimmer of civilization, good wine, and a warm hearth away from the turmoil of the night patrols." Even the other dwarves grumbled some agreement without the courage to speak seriously, being used to a military routine when the Dwarves City of Erebor still stood, they had gradually lost the rigidity of attention for a more comfortable life in the settlements of other civilizations, and this had notoriously weakened the spirits of many brave warriors.

Thorin knew this, but decided to ignore both the wizard, who became quite annoyed, and Ezyel as usual. "There would actually be a place..." Gandalf proposed, but a glare from the King Under the Mountain made him immediately desist, while leaving the human wondering what they were referring to.