Special update: Arriving in Esgaroth
Traveling with Mirkwood Elves is nowhere near as fun as traveling with Northern Rangers or with the sons of Lord Elrond.
It hasn't helped that the day after we left the halls of King Thranduil, we ran into a goblin-pack staking out the end of the forest road. Luckily, it was a small pack and we took them by surprise, so we dealt with or chased them all away without much trouble.
Well, without much trouble except for my promptly falling over one of their bodies as we started to move onwards.
And as you can guess, my tripping didn't just end with my ankle being slightly sore for a couple hours. No, my luck and clumsiness meant it was more seriously wounded.
"We should go back," Stoic said. "You need healing."
"I'll never get to Laketown to warn my Sister if I go back!" I protested. "I don't think it's broken, so as long as we go slowly and carefully, and I keep it wrapped tightly, I should get on."
The Mirkwood elves looked at me like they'd never seen someone refuse healing before. Elladan and Elrohir, who hadn't left just yet, remembered the cut on my arm, and were more used to my stubbornness.
"It will not heal as quickly if you insist on walking on it," Elladan tried to reason with me. "At least let me take a look."
"My mother's hurt her ankle twice, each time worse than this," I said. "I doubt it will last more than the day."
But as stubborn as I was, elves are older and thus have more capacity for wills of steel, and so I acquiesced to Elladan taking a look at my ankle.
"It is not broken," he said. "But I still think walking on it will only make it worse."
"If I soak the wrappings at night," I said, "It's growing cold enough that come morning, they will be chilled enough to reduce any swelling."
The Mirkwood elves looked unconvinced. "Well?" I asked. "How do you deal with ankles that are in pain due to twisting in strange directions?"
"We take them to a healer," Surly said. "Which is where you ought to go."
"Yes, and I suppose I ought to stay indoors all winter, and reach Laketown in the spring, only to find it's been razed by dragonfire."
"Dragonfire?" Stoic asks.
"Why would the dragon go after Laketown?" Elrohir asked. "It's dwarrows who are going to challenge him, if he's still alive."
"Not that I've ever met a dragon, but the tales say they're clever and conniving," I said. "If the dragon is alive, he may well find out the dwarrows journeyed through Laketown. He may well think that Laketown deserves to burn for helping a company of dwarrows get to his mountain."
"So you're not simply planning to visit your sister after all," Elladan said.
"And once again my habit for attempting to appear mysterious returns to cause me grief," I muttered. "You're correct. I have the ulterior motive of trying to convince her to leave the city. Forgive me for worrying about my family's safety in secret."
This was apparently enough to convince all four elves that I should be allowed to continue on to laketown, although not before Surly fashioned me a walking stick of sorts, "to avoid putting all your weight on that leg."
We travelled slowly, my ankle a little more painful thanI'd expected. Some days were better than others, but even with my Silvan companions more sympathetic to my motivation, travel was still quiet, and I still did not learn their names. Elladan and Elrohir left to travel southwards fairly quickly, admonishing me that if I did convince my sister to leave, we should head to Lothlorien and they'd vouch for our trustworthiness.
"I kept all sorts of secrets from you, and you still think me trustworthy?" I said.
This got them laughing as they departed.
This left me travelling with two elves who didn't wish to speak with me much, busy looking out for any other goblins or orcs that might be skulking about along the river.
But finally, and with much careful walking, we made it to Laketown.
And it seemed the dwarrows hadn't left yet. I'd have thanked the Valar for my luck, but the way I found out they were still there is that my blade's original owner recognised his missing knife.
"Hey!" I heard an angry voice behind me, and turned to see a blond dwarf striding towards me, all righteous indignation. "That blade is mine!"
I suppose it didn't help that I was flanked by two elves from Mirkwood; he probably thought they'd given it to me after confiscating it from him.
"My apologies," I said, hurriedly unfastening the blade so that I could offer it back to its owner. "I took it off the corpse of a goblin in the Misty Mountains. I am glad to have found its rightful owner, so that I might return it."
"You... didn't get it from them?" he asked, looking up at Surly and Stoic and frowning slightly.
I shook my head. "This blade served me well against two bands of goblins, but I am glad to return it to you now." I held it out in both hands, offering.
He sighed and shook his head. "You know what, keep it," he said. "If you've been wandering in the wilds fighting goblins and your elf companions haven't seen fit to properly outfit you for such travels, you have need of such a blade more than I. I have many blades."
I tried not to let my surprise show. I'd wholly expected him to snatch the blade from my hands, but now he was allowing me to have it?
"That is a generous gift," I said. "I am honoured you have judged me as worthy of it, Master...?"
"Fili," he said, and smiled. "At your service."
And somehow that led to my being dragged along by Fili (who I rather quickly realised was Thorin Oakenshield's sister-son) to meet some of the rest of his company.
Some of the rest of his company included, it turned out, the members of the company I'd tried to talk to while drunk on Dorwinion wine.
"Aren't you the odd one from Midsummer's eve?"
And it turned out my behatted friend remembered me.
"Ah," I said, "I should apologise for that. It turns out the wine they were serving was stronger than I'm used to."
He laughed, while most everyone else in the room just looked confused.
"So what brought you this far over the Misty Mountains?" My dwarf friend - as much as I could call him friend - asked.
"Well, I have a sister who lives here in Esgaroth and it was come visit her here or else try to head south to Gondor or Rohan for the winter. I haven't seen her in longer than I'd like, so I travelled this way."
"If you were in Rivendell when we were, and then you came here, you could have told us you were headed here and come with us!" One of the dwarrows, a young looking one with dark hair and eyes, said.
"I might have," I said, "but I got a little too much wine on Midsummer's eve and woke cursed with an awful headache well after you lot had left."
"Aye, wine'll do that to you," my hatted dwarf said. "But surely you didn't travel alone?"
I shook my head. "I went with Elrond's twin sons. They decided to pay a visit to their sister who's in Lothlorien. We separated paths just on the east side of Mirkwood."
"And you were escorted here by the Mirkwood Captain of the Guard and the Keeper of the Keys."
"Oh, is that who they were? I just called them Surly and Stoic."
This drew a laugh from the gathered dwarrows.
I continued, "not very good traveling company, if you ask me. I think they're supposed to confirm that I do have a sister who lives here, their king didn't quite seem to believe me."
"Their king didn't seem to believe we were just starving in the forest," the dark haired youngling spoke up.
"His forest is sick," I said. "Perhaps it's affected him."
There was an awkward pause after that, before the behatted dwarf's brother spoke up, in a calm and quiet voice. "You said something on Midsummer's eve about us saving your life?"
"I did? Oh good, at least part of what I was trying to say got out, then!" I said. "Yes, I um... wandered away from my family once when I was a child, and into your camp. You three took me in for the night." I nodded at the two brothers and their cousin.
"I knew it, Bom!" The dwarf with the hat said. "I told you this must be that wee child we looked after in Rohan!"
"I thought you were someone from a caravan we'd travelled with," the redhead said. "The wandering child in Rohan was nearly twenty years ago, you don't look old enough."
"I'm older than I look," I said. "Yes, I was the lonely wandering child whose mother was horribly offensive and assumed you'd demand payment. In any case, there was an orc scout in the area that my family had killed, and I don't think I'd have survived the night if it weren't for you, and I never did get to thank you properly."
"Aye, consider us properly thanked," my hat-wearing friend said. "Bofur, at your service."
And THAT somehow led to my not getting to my sister's house at all, staying up late getting to know some dwarrows until Thorin Oakenshield came back from wherever he'd been and giving me an odd disapproving look as he ordered my new friends to their rooms.
I tried not to think about the fact that my new friends were going to be trying to reclaim a dragon-infested mountain in the near future.
===
So this went on an unannounced hiatus. Basically, the day after I wrote the last update, I had to deal with an ankle that was super painfully sore for a few days, and then once I thought it was getting better, it got sore again. I'm still working on getting back into the habit of walking regularly, and I was feeling a bit of writer's block with the story part of this, so I decided I'd just hold off on updating until I got to Laketown.
So in thanks for your patience, have a super-long update.
I made it to Laketown yesterday, but didn't actually think to do the math until today, so.
I've officially caught up to Thorin and Company again. (901 miles into my journey. Even if it was slower than I hoped initially, that's still an accomplishment!)
NOTE: I don't know if Thranduil actually is affected by the evil pervading Mirkwood other than being kind of stressed about it, but it's a headcanon I've seen in a few places so I thought I'd throw it out there.