~Chapter 8~
"Wake up…. Need to…. wake up" You mumble aloud. You try to move your arms, but they are lead weights. Next you try your legs, same result of nothing. You can move your head a little only to find it still pounding away. Opening your eyes, you see purple? Someone pulled your scarf over your head. Your arms are too tired still so you fall back asleep.
You bolt upright, wide awake and gasping silently. You are covered in cold sweat and are shaking where you sit. It is dark the only light cast by the stars. Everyone is asleep around you, every single dwarf snoring loudly. They had made camp in a small clearing with a small waterfall close by. You breathe deeply calming yourself before standing and making your way out of camp to the river. You strip down and wade into the river. The cold water sent chills up your spin and caused your feathers to stand on end. You relax and allow your feathers to be showing but not your wings. You dive under the water enjoying the stillness. You stand in above your hips rubbing your feathers and washing off the dirt and crusted blood from the cliff fight. You start to whistle Over The Rainbow aloud to yourself as you wash. You stand stock still, the feeling of being watched floods over you. You slowly wade deeper into the water and kneel in the water with just your face above the water. Your owl-like eyes scan the shore for movement. "Come out now, I know you're there." You say into the darkness. Kili and Fili come out from behind the trees. "We didn't see you when we woke up back at camp." Confesses Fili. "We heard your whistling and we wanted to be sure you were okay." Chips in Kili. You smile lightly and sigh. "You guys scared me. It's not nice to sneak up on someone who's swimming. I'm fine boys. You can go back; I'll be there in a moment" You say as you slowly make your way to shore. Once Fili and Kili leave you quickly get out and get dressed. Before you pull your shirt you ruffle all your feathers and give your wings a good stretch before you hide them and your feathers again.
During the march through the wood you walk between Kili and Fili. "Fili how long was I asleep?" you ask. You could tell the company was no were near were the rocks were the eagles dropped you all off. Fili and Kili exchanged look before one of them answered, "Icarus, you were out for 3 days. You woke up on the 3rd night. Gandalf insisted that it was normal for you. But never stopped worrying."
"You would talk in your sleep a lot. In a language we've never heard of, Gandalf didn't even know what you were saying. Dwalin said it was something called German? A tough not spoken in Middle Earth." Kili explained as we walked through the trees. You walked silently, staring at the ground.
"3 days…" you muttered to yourself. You fell back and walked along for a while deep in thought. '3 whole days. Damn I used a lot more than I thought. Okay well, I've used more before but not all at once like that. And the dreams are getting worse. More vivid, and it's getting harder to wake up from them. I'm glad Dwalin only told them what the language was called.' You speed up and catch up with everyone.
That night you woke again, suddenly wide awake and shaking. Getting up silently you made your way from the camp to a moon lit clearing nearby. You tried to calm yourself, but frustrated tears slipped silently from your eyes and down your cheeks. Gently you started punching a tree near you. Not angry punches, more like training hits. Punch right, punch right, now left hand and left again. Wide right side hit, front right, right, left, left, and high left heal strike. You repeated this pattern for a few hours, striking the tree again and again. You heard the dwarves start to wake, so you returned before they got worried.
This nightly workout after your nightmares became a habit. Sometimes you would do it against a tree, but some nights your knuckles were too bruised to so you air punched instead. Tonight was different, the dream you had was more terrifying then normal. Every little sound in the forest made you jump and flinch. You felt exposed and vulnerable on the forest floor. You went over to the nearest tree and climbed up to the first branch. Feeling much better you lay out on the branch and watched the fired coals from above. You drifted off into a dreamless sleep. Only to be woken up a few hours later by Dwalin waking up Thorin who was asleep under the tree you were in. "Thorin, he's gone. We can't find him and Gandalf doesn't know either." Dwalin says in a hushed voice.
Thorin gets up worried. "What do you mean you can't find him." He demands.
"Fili and Kili have circled the camp multiple times and there is no sign of him and his bed roll is stone cold. He's been up for a few hours." Responds Dwalin. You watch silently from your tree branch as the whole company searches around camp, calling your name. You slowly drifted back to sleep on your branch. "Icarus!" Shouted Kili jarring you awake from your sleep. "Thorin, everyone he's up here!" He shouted to rest of the company.
"Pipe down Kili…. Or you'll give be a head ache." You mumbled down to him. You sat up on your branch letting your eyes wake up before you slowly climb down from your perch. As soon as your feet were on the ground you were hug tackled by the brothers. All three of you fell back on to the ground from the impact of the hug. "Shi- boys come on get off me. I'm fine." You say trying to get back on your feet.
"Laddie, why were you in a tree?" asks Bofur concerned.
You get back to your feet and stretch your arms. "I couldn't fall asleep on the ground, so I tried laying in the tree. And I was fast asleep almost instantly." You helped everyone pack up and start the walk for the day. As you walk with the company Thorin picks up your pace and walks with you. You two walk in comfortable silence for a while. "How long were you up in that tree, Icarus?" He asks out of the blue. "Hm? Oh, a few hours I guess. I didn't feel like a long time." You respond as you rub the back of your neck nervously. "But I was the best few hours sleep I've gotten sense…. sense the battle." You almost said sense restarting his heart. You space out thinking about what happened. You feel a hand on your shoulder shaking you out of your thoughts. Blinking you focus and look at Thorin "Hm? Sorry I spaced out a little." You say and wave it off. "I'm fine. I'm fine." Thorin looks at you with worry in his eyes. "Icarus you are not 'Fine' I can see the bags under your eyes. You need sleep." Retorts Thorin. You sigh heavily, you know he's right. You node in response as the company comes to a stop for the night.
After dinner you try to help clean up but Thorin tells you to just sit there and rest. Everyone is chattering happily around the fire. You notice Balin writing in his small note book. His job is to record the journey and keep track of our progress. "Hey Balin you wouldn't happen to know that date today would you? I know you're keeping track in your little book." You ask him across the fire. "Yes I do know. It's October 24th today. About a month to Durin's day. Why do you ask? Something important coming up for you?" You smile at him and chuckle nervously. "Yah I guess it's pretty special to me. But it's nothing for you guys to get worked up about." Fili sits next to me and nudges me in the ribs. "None sense, if it's importin to you it's importin to us." He says cheerily. Everyone's attention now on us now and the others node in agreement. "So tell us, what is so special?" probes Bofur sitting on my other side. The dwarves keep bugging you about it till you tell them. "Okay, fine," You say giving in. "It's my birthday in a few days. On the 28th, in 4 days, so I guess that's special." You start working on your little knot bracelet again, but stop feeling all eyes on your still. You look around and see bewilderment on the faces of the dwarves and Bilbo. "You know birthdays are no small matter laddie." Says Balin "especially the first birthday of your One." Dwalin added. You smiled nervously and rubbed the back of your neck "Don't get worked up about it. It's fine." But the dwarves insisted on celebrating it when the time comes. They began to talk quietly to each other about the day. "Wait, Icarus. If you don't mind me asking how old are you turning?" questions Kili. You refuse to say. You are much older than any dwarf here. And normal humans only like to be about 80 years old in this world. If I told them I was turning 400 in a few days they would ask too many questions. "How about this. Sense it's still 4 days away we can play a little guessing game till then. All of you try to guess my age, you get only one guess. You may ask me 1 question each night to help you guess correctly. If one of you guesses correctly I will sing a song of that winner's choice. And if I no one wins then I'll get to sing a song of my choice on the day of. Sound fair?" you ask the company. They all agree to the game. BomBur asks the question of the night. "How many languages do you speak?" Some of the others groaned thinking it was a waste of a question. "Well BomBur I know 4 languages. Common speech, Elvish, German, and Khuzdul both Iglishmek and ancient dwarvish. And I was learning bits of ancient Elvish before the quest. I have had a lot of time on my hands." You respond with a smile as you continue to work on your bracelet. Ori pipes up, "What is German? I've never heard of it before." You sigh and put away your little project. You sit upright and address everyone with your response. "I was not born or raised here in Middle Earth. I'm from a place not found on any of your maps. It was called Deutschland, or Germany in the conman tongue. The language is only spoken in that region of lands. It sounds something like this‚ 'Ich heiße Ikarus, es ist schön, Sie zu treffen.' That translates to ‚'My name is Icarus, it is nice to meet you.' The language is very angry or gruff sounding. It reminds me much of the dwarvish speech. Very hard sibyls not many soft words." You sit around the fire explaining your language to the dwarves. No one understands any of it but they are still all listing closely. After a while of talking everyone settles down for the night. You dreams of unpleasant things again. Small cages and registrants on your arms and legs. You wake up almost as soon as it got to its worst. You get up and walk past Thorins sleeping spot into a clearing near by. You begin to do your roteine against one of the trees. After a few rounds you slump your shoulders and sit down under the tree. You hug your knees close to your chest trying to become as small as possible. You hear Thorin come out from behind a tree and kneel down in front of you. "Sorry if I woke you." You mumble through your arms and hair. He study's your bruised knuckles as you pull your shirt tighter around yourself. "Do you do this every night, my jewel?" He asks softly as he takes my hands in his own. You don't respond but he already knows the answer. "Let me help." He says as he pulls you to your feet and leading you back to his bed roll at camp. You pull your roll next to his and lay down next to the dwarven king. He covers the both of you with his furs and pulls you close to him. You wouldn't normally be alright with being this touchy feel but you were tired. You allowed yourself to be pulled into his warmth and safe arms. You start to purr softly as he runs his hands through your hair. You fall asleep soon after.