Calm The Fire

22

When morning came, the bright sunlight shone through the trees. The fractured light caused rays of warm sun to shine down on the sleeping forms. Eventually the sudden light became too much and each one of them groaned quietly and sat up. Bilbo was one of the first to wake up. He stretched and clicked his neck and winced when doing so. Blinking and rubbing his eyes, he looked around as everyone looked as dismal as himself.

The nights sleep had been broken up, a few people had got woken up for the sake of guard duty. He was fortunate enough to not have this. Though that didn't mean he didn't wake up now and again because of the uncomfortable ground. He thought by now he'd become used to the uncomfortable grounds which he'd found himself sleeping on. But no, not used to it. Bilbo looked up as Gandalf walked past trying to encourage everyone to get up. It was a hard task to do. He either received narrow eyed looks or grumbles. Despite not being comfortable no one really wished to move.

"Oh, come on," Gandalf said exasperated. He leaned against his staff and watched the unhappy group in front of him. "If you're all going to act like this each morning, we'll never get to the Lonely Mountain." Which was true. If they all decided to mope and whine about having to get up, and how cold it was, or how little they've slept, or the fact that they were commencing journeying without a breakfast, they really wouldn't get to Erebor in the allotted time they had.

"He's right, get up, come on." The voice of reason came from Thorin, who if possible looked worse than he did yesterday. His injuries had slowly set in and the shallow bruising had turned to various colours of purples and greys. Even as he moved he winced slightly, clearly he was still in pain. Thorin stood up and nudged whoever decided to refuse to move with the tip of his boots. Kíli and Fíli were two of the group who got nudged. The brothers both sat up bleary eyed and looked to him confused.

It took another several moments for everyone to be fully awake, or at least as awake as they could ever be. Standing and trying to rid themselves of sleep and aches, they looked to Gandalf. "We have a lot of ground to cover." He said, he wanted to firmly remind everyone of this. Maybe if he kept reminding them they wouldn't all be unenthusiastic when it came to actually setting out in the mornings. "We only stop when we need to." His words just received agreeing nods, no one saw fit to retort to this. "Right!" He said with a smile, pushing away from his staff he turned and commenced walking. "Off we go then." The others set off after him, as they passed a few destroyed the remnants of their camp, they didn't need to leave any hints that they had even been here.

Much like before, many years ago, Náriel and Thorin were seemingly inseparable. It was something which seemingly amused Fíli and Kíli, "So," Náriel found an arm suddenly around her shoulders when they had stopped for a break. She looked to the owner, raising an eyebrow at Kíli, she looked to the side as Fíli stood on her other side.

"What is it?" She asked while looking up at the sky. The day had started off so bright and sunny, but slowly the sky had started to cloud over. Thick grey clouds appeared to be rolling in from the west. A storm was coming from somewhere, if not a storm, then just a lot of rain was heading their way.

"We've been thinking," Fíli said while putting a hand to his chin and nodding slowly in thought.

"You have to be careful with that, I hear it can hurt." Náriel smirked, Fíli frowned at her words whereas Kíli let out a short laugh. "What is it?" She repeated her earlier question. The pausing and dragging out of this moment, was starting to get annoying quite fast. She didn't want to spend her first break of the day being bothered by the brothers. For five hours they'd all trekked, it was almost noon and they were only resting for a few moments before setting off for another few hours before stopping for lunch. She was tired, and aching, and found a niggling pain setting in the back of her head.