FiKi Week 2026 - Day 3 - After Stone Giants
Any other sensible party would have just caught a flight. A smarter group might have simply driven across.
But no. “Do you want them to know we’re coming?!” asked Thorin, and the mad glint in his eyes stopped anyone arguing.
So instead, they were hiking. Having left the last homely home, (the Rivendell hostel – aged buildings, new-fangled vegan food and a truly bizarre love of its owners for everything Art Noveau), they basically bought up the entire contents of a tiny mountaineering shop next door, and up the trail they went.
“It will be a shortcut,” Thorin said. “Three days tops,” he insisted.
Truthfully, Fili didn’t mind nearly as much as he made it appear. Kili and him grew up in the Blue Mountains, raised traversing their ridges and peaks with their mother, who was keen on an outdoors-y type of upbringing, instead of the reliable-wifi-and-constantly-getting-into-trouble kind that the boys would have preferred. It was kind of nice to have Kili at his side again, expertly tying off ropes, wordlessly getting the fire started and instinctively picking out exactly the same paths that Fili’s own feet would have picked out.
The same could not be said for the rest of their party: lawyers, accountants, doctors, chefs, house decorators and bare-knuckle-fighters among them were getting much more adventure than they signed up for.
And that was before the weather broke down all around them, on day five.
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