The next few days and nights were uneventful. Every morning started the same: they woke, ate, packed, and started travelling again. Lunch was always short, they had to keep moving, and dinner was always very slow arriving. The weather was always the same: hot, sunny, and long. Today was different. The sun was hidden behind a thick veil of clouds and the rain was unyielding. Everyone was soaked through and the ponies, and Alesdair, kept getting caught up in the mud.

Everyone was tucked away in their cloaks, except Camellia. She figured that she was going to get wet anyway why should she dig out her cloak? She didn't mind her wet hair sticking to her moistened face or how her light clothes clung to her body. They have been travelling together long enough to have already formed their opinions of her, she didn't mind them seeing her clothes stick a bit too close to her body.

Even when the rain stopped, the air still hung thickly with water. When the clouds had cleared and the sun came out, everyone wished for the rain again. Being dangled over a fire would have been better than travelling through this humidity. A look of irritation occupied Camellia's face. Now was the worst time to be damp. Searching through her bag, she found a piece of fabric tied in a circle. She used it to tie her hair up and out of her face. It was messy and was probably knotted, but she didn't care, she was cooling down.

When the sun had gone done, the temperature dropped considerably. It didn't take long for the dwarves to make a fire and start in on dinner. The youngest brothers were asked to watch the ponies, but they didn't have eyes as sharp as they thought.

"What's the matter?" Bilbo asked as he held two bowls.

"We're supposed to be looking out for the ponies."

"Only, we've encountered a slight problem."

"We had 16."

"Now there's 14." The three of them looked around, searching for evidence of what happened to the ponies. Some trees were uprooted. All the dirt was agitated. Something strong had rummaged through the forest and taken the dwarves' ponies. They ended up crouching behind an uprooted tree so they could look through a small clearing in the trees.

Trolls

Fili and Kili had convinced Bilbo to go forward and free the ponies while they snuck off back to camp to alert the rest.

"Trolls! Trolls have the ponies!" Kili shouted as they re-entered camp. All eyes landed on the brothers.

"We've sent the burglar in," Fili said after his brother.

"Alone? Are you insane?!" Thorin yelled at them. All thirteen dwarves began toward the trolls' camp in a hurry. Halfway there, Dwalin called out.

"Where's the lassie?" They looked behind, but saw no one. No one had seen her after sunset.

"She'll be fine. Let's save our burglar," Thorin muttered as he pushed through the forest.

No one had gone in with any plan and all of them had ended up the same: about to become troll food. Everyone was afraid. They couldn't escape and hearing the trolls talk about how they're going to eat their capture was not helping their rising fears.

"Did you hear that?" The troll rotating the turner over the fire said as he looked into the forest.

"It's just the wind." There was no wind that night, but the trolls were more than just slow in their movements.

"Wait! You are making a terrible mistake. I meant with the, uh, with the seasoning." The trolls looked toward Bilbo.

"What about the seasonings," one of the trolls turned away from the fire to ask the hobbit.

"Have you smelt them? You're going to need something stronger than sage before you plate this lot up."

"What do you know about cooking dwarves?"

"Shud up! Let the, uh, flerurberhobbit talk."

"The secret to cooking dwarf is…" Bilbo hesitated. He didn't know anything about cooking dwarfs. It never crossed his mind before. He was stumbling over his words and the trolls were getting impatient. "to skin them first!" Naturally, the dwarves protested. The trolls began to argue.

"What a load of wubbish! I like them better with their skins on!" Bombur was plucked off the ground by the troll in the back. He dangled the copper haired dwarf over his head.

"Nice and crunchy." Something flew out from the trees and hit against one of the trolls. It was deflected.

"What was that?" the trolls turned toward the forest.

"Not that one! He's…infected! He's got worms, in his…tubes!" Bombur was thrown back into the pile. "In fact, they all do. They're infested with parasites. It's a terrible business, I wouldn't risk it, I really wouldn't."

"Did he say parasites?" Bifur asked.

"We don't have parasites!" Kili shouted, offended. "You have parasites!" Grumbles came from all the dwarves. Bilbo was seconds away from shaking his head in disbelief. Thorin understood before too long and he kicked his nephew to get him to shut his mouth. The dwarves were silent for a moment.

"I've got parasites as big as my arm!" Bifur exclaimed.

"Mine are the biggest parasites! I've got huge parasites!" Kili shouted again. Grumbles erupted again.

"We're riddled!"

"Yes we are," Dori agreed.

"What would you have us do then?" The troll asked Bilbo. Suddenly, a mass jumped out and landed on top of one of their heads. Camellia was standing with her bow pointed down. Her arrow pierced through the troll's eye. She jumped down before he could grab her. Arrows can't do much damage against the hard skin of the trolls, but the longer she could distract them, the better the chance there was for her dwarven friends. She was a lot quicker than the trolls and a bunch smarter too. She had run them into the spit over the fire, knocking it to the ground and saving the dwarves from the fire's heat.

She had blinded two of them and was still avoiding capture when Gandalf appeared and broke a boulder in the east allowing the sun to reach the trolls. They were turned to stone. It vaguely reminded Camellia of the story of Medusa that her mother told her when she was a little girl. She was knocked out of her memories when she heard the strugglings of the dwarves as they tried to get out of the bags. She pulled out a small dagger and helped removed her friends from the canvas sacks.

The night was gone. Their chance for rest had been depleted when the trolls had taken their ponies. Today's travels were going to be long.

"Where did you go, if I may ask?" Thorin asked Gandalf

"Looking ahead."

"What brought you back?"

"Looking behind." Gandalf was still as witty as ever. The troop headed toward the troll hoard. It smelt ranched. Camellia used most of her strength to not vomit as she let her curiosity lead her deeper into the cave. Of all the treasures that she had seen, none of this was meant to be in the possession of trolls. As she reached the back of the cave, the dwarves began to exit. She was about to turn and leave as well, but something caught her eye. A piece of metal stuck out of the dirt and dust by the back wall. She dug it out. It was a sword, nearly half her height. This weapon seemed familiar to her, but she couldn't recall it. As she pulled it from its sheath, she noticed a familiar writing on the blade. Before she could read it, she heard a ruffling in the forest. She left the troll hoard.

"What's that?" Fili asked when Camellia returned to the group.

"Just some old sword I found."

"It's nearly half your height. You won't be able to use it in battle."

"Something of this craftsmanship should never be used as a weapon." She tied the sword to her bags on her horse.

"Why are you going to keep something you can't use?" Kili piped up. She turned back toward them.

"I don't know. It's pretty, I guess."

"You keep things because you think they are pretty?" Fili asked.

"Well, you don't have much of a purpose, but I keep you two around."

"You're the one who joined us," Kili said, slightly offended.

"You think we're pretty?" Fili asked. Camellia smirked and shook her head. She couldn't believe him. She held her smirk and turned away. Just as she had, there was a rustling in the bushes. A wooden sleigh with a homely looking man rushed toward them. He had some moss growing in his hair and a dishevelled look on his face.

"Radagast!" Gandalf exclaimed.

"You didn't answer me," Fili said, refocusing Camellia's attention.

"Yes, Fili, you're very pretty. You're also very good at ruining insults."

"These are Rhosgobel rabbits! I'd like to see them try," Camellia heard Radagast the Brown said to Gandalf before he disappeared back into the woods. "What was that about?" She started to question before she saw Alesdair walking off in the corner of her eye. "Alesdair! Stop!" She shouted after him, but the stag continued up the hill and out of sight. Camellia sighed.

It wasn't long afterwards until Camellia found out why her beloved companion had walked off. The company had to try their best to avoid the orcs that have found them early that morning. They thought they were in the clear as Radagast chased away the wargs, but one had found the dwarves scent. Kili was the one that had to make the first move, but fear gripped at his arms and fingers as he pulled back the bow string that when the arrow fired, it missed his intended target. Camellia saw his plight and reacted immediately, but she wasn't quick enough. The warg had given off a yelp of pain before Camellia was able to shoot her own arrow into its head. The rest of the orcs were redirected their way. The orcs on top of the warg was still very much alive and had employed an attack before the warg had fallen off the small hill. He was dead before too long as well.

If it wasn't for Gandalf finding a hole, the dwarven company surely would have been dead meat. As soon as all of the company had entered the mysterious cave, arrows fell from the outside world, along with a dead orc. Curious, Thorin ripped out the arrow from the orcs head. He wanted to know who had attacked the orcs.

"Elves!" Thorin exclaimed. He threw down the arrow and stormed off. Camellia had a feeling that she knew where she was, but she hoped she was severely wrong.

"I cannot see where the pathway leads," Dwalin shouted as he stared down the back hallway of the cave. "Do we follow it, or no?"

"Follow it, of course!" Bofur answered as he went to join Dwalin. Everyone followed Bofur. The pathway was narrow, even for the small female amongst them. The sun shone through a crack in the top of the crevice they were in, but they were so far down that the sun's light didn't make much of a difference as they travelled through the damp cave.

The journey was long and rather difficult. The path was very uneven. Eventually, their little crevice widened out and opened up to a high view on a riverside city. It was beautiful.

"The valley of Imladris," Gandalf said. "The common tongue, it's known by another name."

"Rivendell," Bilbo muttered.

They were in Rivendell.