A Burden

"Their pace has quickened. They must have caught our scent. Hurry!" Aragorn shouted from what seemed like a million miles away. Raina looked up to see his ear pressed to the rock in the earth to hear the vibrations of the orcs. Raina could hear that they had started running faster without having to listen through the ground, but she wished she couldn’t. She wished she couldn’t hear a lot of the things she could. The sound of three arrows whistling through the air replayed in her head again and again…

But it was nice to hear the occasional speech, Raina thought. Three days now all she had heard was the thumping of feet and the ragged breaths of herself and the Dwarf.

She took in a deep breath and pushed herself even faster forward to try to get to where Aragorn and Legolas were running. Unfortunately, they had picked their pace up as well. Beside her, Gimli was puffing for breath and clutching his stomach.

“Gimli! Raina!” Legolas called back. “Come on!”

I can’t! she wanted to yell back to him, but it took too much energy. Instead, Gimli called back.

“She’s tryin’! I’m a-waiting with her!”

Raina smiled. Everyone knew full well that the Dwarf couldn’t run as fast as the others, but his pride came before admitting that to everyone. It also happened to be that everyone else was at least partly Elf.

Her sides hurt and it felt hard to breathe, but that was nothing compared to how Raina had felt the first days they had started running. About halfway through the day she threw up everything she had in her stomach, and had been constantly dry heaving the rest of that day. Yesterday she had stomach cramps bad enough that she started crying, but she ignored the tears and kept following. She couldn’t let any of the other know how bad she felt in case they wouldn’t leave her and insist on taking their time. She sighed, wishing she had never come. She would be going crazy, but at least then Merry and Pippin might have been saved by now.

"Three day's and night's pursuit… no food, no rest, and no sign of our quarry but what bare rock can tell,” Gimli grumbled, catching up to Raina. She let out a snort but didn’t waste any more breath on commenting.

Looking up into the sun, all Raina could see was miles and miles of plains ahead of them. In the distance, a small trail of dust rose into the air, which is where Raina knew the orcs and Hobbits were. At least two more days away, she thought with a mental sigh.

But at least this part was downhill. The earth blocked the sun coming in from the side, and all Raina had to do was keep herself from falling. If only she could just roll down the hill, like she did as a child, she thought to herself with a smile. But the more she thought about it, the more the idea appealed to her. As she caught up to Aragorn, who was having more trouble with keeping his balance than she and Legolas were, she noticed that there were no stones sticking up from the earth.

She sat down when she caught up to Legolas, who stopped and peered down at her curiously. Turning on her side with a giggle, she let herself tumbled down the rest of the hill. The grass was soft and although she ended up with a million sticks on her and her hair looking like a mess, she had fun.

She sat at the bottom of the valley while she waited for the others to come down to her. From where she was she could clearly hear Aragorn and Legolas laughing. After a few moments, a hand was stuck in her face as Aragorn came up behind her. She took the Man’s hand and he helped her up with a chuckle.

“You look absolutely amazing, my Lady,” he commented. She threw her head back and laughed.

“As do the rest of you gentlemen,” she retorted, referring to the sweat beading down their faces and the way they smelled.

And with that, they began running. Again.