Her bottom lip is chapped.
It's not something that anyone would even notice. Except possibly another elf. Not that she would ever let one get close enough to actually see the hair-line split. But she rolls her tongue over it, disliking the way it scratches the underside. She gnaws on it gently, inconspicuously, anxiously anticipating the next orders.
Her toes are starting to go numb. She hates going after the spiders because her troops can't hide in the tree line. The maze of webbing makes it impossible to drop down. Instead they blend to the bark, quiet and frozen in a statuesque mold.
She glances toward Legolas whose eyes peer out at the haphazard scene beyond. Barbaric dwarves attempting to ward off mangy spiders. It's complete anarchy.
Legolas' eyebrows scrunch as if he can't decide which he wants dead more.
"Do we have orders, Legolas?" she murmurs to him, letting her voice drift on the breeze and waft toward him.
"Kill the spiders. The dwarves we take as prisoners."
There's a pause, something she's pretty sure is just because Legolas loves show, and then it's a silent explosion of elves and arrows and spider blood.
Her muscles and bones work in seamless synchronization, stretching when she draws her arrow and contracting with the release. It hits the spider with a solid thwack, eliciting a wretched scream that causes it's legs to crumple and it's face to drop to the mud.
To her left, a yelp. She whips her head around, her reddish strands of hair whizzing past her face.
He lies there, in the mud, the dwarf, looking utterly helpless, and she feels a twinge of pity for him. He clearly thinks his death is imminent.
Her arms draw back. Another arrow, another kill. She sends them flying, each resounding muted thuds as they hit the soft flesh.
She glances back toward the dwarf, briefly acknowledging how young he looks. "A dagger!" he shouts at her, eyes crazy and maniacal. Or maybe that's just her prejudice peeking through. "A dagger, quickly! Give me your dagger."
She raises her eyes upward two feet where a rather large and admittedly ugly spider threatens his life. "You think I would give you a weapon, Dwarf?" And ripping the dagger from her belt, she hits the spider in its creepy ass face.
Having more than two eyes is unnatural.
And later, when the last of the spiders have fled, and they're rounding up the dwarves, she, from a distance, watches him.
Realizes she finds him kind of intriguing. His eyes are so full of life.
She doesn't like the pressured prejudice against the dwarves; it's always seemed so irrational and blind. Like they just needed an excuse to despise the other's blood because they were just too different.
She stares at him. He really isn't all that unattractive. Compared to an elf, he's far more rugged. But she likes that. It gives him character.
But she wonders if she's wrong to think these things.