A Ruby's Shine (Thorin Oakenshield X OC)

99. New Problem

I sighed as I soaked a cloth, laying it on top of the sick man's head. He was one of the few who tried hunting before I came along and, with their meager clothing, he didn't handle the cold temperatures this close to the mountain well and came down with quite the cold, several of them had. They didn't really have a choice, they need the food, they need to survive, so many of them have fallen ill or taken injury to try to bring back food but they have lived off the lake their whole lives, all they have ever had is crops and fish, so hunting is a new problem to them. Without bows and arrows, there is little they actually can hunt. I would offer my bow but it's a bit small for humans, so I hunt as much as I can.

The traps have been doing well, and I hunt in the afternoons until sunset now in an attempt to get them some food. The days are blurring together, the weather is getting colder and the skies are more overcast now than they are not. Snow fall has come and gone several times and this is only the beginning of this northern winter.

I do not know how I am going to be able to help these people survive till spring, but I kept such worried thoughts to myself. I checked the man's temperature as he stared at me with glazed and fevered eyes. I feared for this one, his fever was much too high and, while I have tried using actually snow to lower it, his condition seems to only be getting worse, not better. I gave my cloak to some cold children and told them to keep it, my clothes from Erebor keep me warm enough, though they are now covered in mud and snow, even some blood from kills, they are still much better than anything I could ask for and in much better condition than what all of these people were wearing.

I sighed as I slowly dripped water from a water skin into the fevered man's mouth before pulling the torn old blanket higher around him and standing, moving on around a few of the other sick or injured. The cries of babies, the low murmur of the people talking and the children trying to help or huddling together and talking in low murmurs were all that could be heard. We have been lucky the last... how long has it been? I have lost track. But, in the last few days the winds have been low, keeping the cold from being blown into the buildings we have taken up residence in.

I stepped carefully around the sick and injured, picking up some more firewood and carefully placing it onto the fire, throwing on some thing brush I have been collecting when I got for firewood to keep the fire burning to the new wood. This wood wasn't the best but I showed the others how to light wet wood, it not as easy but it can be done and it is all we have. I glanced at the pile of firewood and sighed, seeing we are running low.

I exited the building and went along the outside wall towards the nearby trees. They may be dead and destroyed by Smaug, but I and the other's discovered that life still lives under the charred look, trees can survive a lot. I chopped off some other branches with my sword, tying my rope to them and dragging them into the city, the cold and starving of Laketown watched me as I dropped the branches on the ground of the small connecting courtyard of the buildings that are in use.

I pulled out my sword and cut the wood up into even sticks before picking them up and scrapping them along a sharp rock to uncover the actual burnable wood underneath. I continued to scrape off the charred and ashen parts of the wood before tying up the bundle in my rope and throwing it over my shoulder, walking into the building hold the sick and the injured and placing down the freshly cut wood on the pile, leaning against the wall for a second to summon the energy to continue on. These people need all the help they can get and, while I can tell I have helped make things marginally better than they were... Things still do not look good for the people of Escaroth.

If we do not receive aid soon... I fear what may become of the people of Laketown, I am doing all I can, but it is not enough. I felt a hand pat me on the shoulder, making me open my eyes and look up to see a grateful look on Bard's face.