Author's Note: Well, Nori and Ranka wouldn't leave me alone, insisting that I finish their story before I write anything else. Well, there will be at least one more chapter before the end, but here's the next installment. I hope it's alright.
And, a word of advice: Never Watch Nostalgia Critic Videos While Writing Hobbit Fanfiction.
Nori drifted awake with an unpleasant feeling that something very important and not very nice had happened. He clambered to his feet and winced as he remembered exactly why he liked to avoid spending the night on the hard ground.
He felt stiff and sore, and not particularly inclined to be optimistic. And then he remembered his conversation with Ranka, and felt, if possible, even worse.
What a mess. What a tangled, impossible mess.
He looked around and saw that Ranka was still asleep, still wrapped tightly in her blanket and her breath coming deep and even.
Nori spent a few industrious minutes making sure that all his possessions were tucked away neatly in his pack, and then, almost as an afterthought, looked through Ranka's bag in case she was carrying anything of interest that he could...borrow.
A tinderbox, a few round, flat stones, and what turned out to be a sling. Probably how she'd caught the rabbits, Nori thought.
Still, from a thief's point of view, it was disappointing. He left Ranka's things be, and, as he had no intention of going through her pockets, set off through the forest, humming a repetitive tune softly to himself as he went.
Maybe he would go South, Nori decided. Yes, why not? Go South, and leave Ranka to whatever unfortunate fate was in store for her.
Yes...
Nori stopped, and then folded his arms across his chest, glowering around at the world in general. This wasn't fair.
This wasn't supposed to happen to dwarves like Nori.
"No," he said, apparently addressing a nearby sapling "No, I'm not going to go back. I know how all the stories and songs about heroes go. Heroes join mad quests, and they die. They die in very painful ways, usually. I'm going to live. I'm not going back."
He waited a few moments, as if expecting the sapling to answer him, then sighed. He really hated doing this sort of thing, but there were some things you just couldn't do, and to stroll off into the sunset while Ranka got herself killed...
Well, he just hoped that word of this never got around, because if it did, he would probably end up being teased about it quite a bit. You spend years building up nice, sturdy walls of indifference and self-interest, and then they all get knocked down.
By the time Nori got back to the camp, Ranka was finally awake and coaxing a fire to life. Her hair was tousled and unbraided, and she looked as stiff and sore as Nori felt, but she seemed to be in a good mood.
"Hello," she said, pleasantly "Decided not to leave?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Nori sniffed, with as much dignity as he could muster "I had to go and um..."
"Pass water?" supplied Ranka, readily.
"Yes," Nori said, grateful that she hadn't asked why he had taken his pack with him to answer the call of nature.
"Well, now you're back, you can help me catch some breakfast," said Ranka, holding up her sling "And, if you like, you can cook it for me."
Within an hour, and after quite a bit of companionable bickering over which way was North and which wasn't, they'd left the forest, and were wandering through a landscape of rolling green hills, dotted here and there with large boulders.
"I've never really seen the attraction of so many hills," Nori remarked, pausing to lean against a handy rock and catch his breath "Mountains - fine. But these don't give you a sense of awe, and they're far from beautiful. You just scramble up them and then down, and then up the next one."
"You can't mine them, either, by the look of it," said Ranka, looking critically at the ground beneath her boots.
Nori sighed and shouldered Ranka's sheathed sword, which they had agreed to take turns carrying. Dwarves were very strong, of course, but the wretched thing was even heavier than it looked, and after carrying it for half an hour, Nori was seriously beginning to consider surreptitiously leaving it behind somewhere while Ranka wasn't looking.
He began the tedious march up to the top of the next rise, and Ranka fell in beside him, matching his step.
Nori noticed for the first time that her blue tunic was covered with carefully stitched patterns, which he couldn't quite make out.
"What're those?" he asked, with mild interest.
"They're...sayings, I suppose," said Ranka, smoothing out the fabric so that Nori could see that the patterns were, in fact, runes "Things that I need to remember, see?"
"Such as?" Nori said, willing to seize on any topic of conversation that might alleviate the boredom of the journey.
"Well...such as The Four Ms," Ranka said, grinning widely.
There was a slight pause at that point.
"Sorry?"
"You haven't heard of The Four Ms? I mine in my mine and what's mine is mine?"
Nori ran this through in his head a few times, and then nodded, slowly.
"You're from a mining family, then?"
"Yes," Ranka said, simply, looking away from Nori as they reached the top of the hill and began to stumble down the next slope "Every miner knows Mining Rhyme."
"I mine in my mine and what's mine is mine," Nori said, trying it out "No, it doesn't quite work. How about: What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, and you'll never get it back..."
Ranka laughed, and reached for her sword, gesturing for Nori to pass it to her. When he did, she slung it across her back (staggering sideways slightly as she did so), and then gestured to the hilly landscape.
They could see, far off in the distance, a smudge of smoke and a cluster of small cottages that were all that could be seen of a village.
"What about what's theirs?" she asked.
"Oh, that'll be mine, too," said Nori, grinning "Eventually."
"But, of course."
They kept on walking, but occasionally one of them would ask the other a question, or even just begin to laugh, and neither of them found the journey particularly boring.