Being Close

Treebeard said goodbye. He assured us that he would always keep an eye on the camp, yet Gimli insisted on a watch and Legolas volunteered again. This elf was truly unbreakable! I envied him a bit, but on the other hand I remembered our conversation about his immortality and I had to admit that I appreciated my mortal life more than I thought.

This time we could not light a fire - that would have angered the trees. Treebeard had made that point crystal clear. And so I curled up under a clammy blanket in my equally clammy clothes and hoped for the best.

The forest floor was surprisingly soft from the many winters when the leaves had glided off the trees and stayed on it, but still sleep would not come. The questions continued to wriggle through my brain like tapeworms and the cold, which up to this point I had done a good job of keeping at bay through anxiety and the adrenaline that came with it, broke through. It was as if the illness had just been waiting for me to come to rest. Cold shivers ran down my spine as I tried to breathe in and out evenly. I wasn't just cold, I was shivering. The half-dried clothes didn't make it any better, and by the time Gimli started snoring, I sat up.

No.

I wouldn't close a damn eye.

My hands were as cold as ice and my nose was running. True, I had torn a patch of cloth from one of my traveling shirts, but even that was beginning to reach its limits. I needed to distract myself. Somehow.

"I was wondering how long it would take," Legolas said as I stood next to him. He had positioned himself a good ten meters from the camp, his eyes wandering watchfully over the tree trunks. How he was going to see anything in the absolute darkness that surrounded us was beyond me. But he was an elf. That explained a lot. "I guess I've become predictable then," I said, pulling the wet cloak tighter around me. My fingers were stiff as hell, but I tried hard not to let on in front of Legolas. I didn't want him to notice how miserable I was.

"You should be sleeping, Aspen."

"I know."

"Then why don't you?"

With a shrug of my shoulders, I settled down on a log that lay on the ground next to Legolas. My legs were shaky, and I knew it was no longer due to the fright the orc had given me. "My brain won't rest." That was only half the truth, but at least it wasn't a lie. In my condition, I wasn't sure the elf would buy one.

"What troubles you?"

I ran my hand over my forehead. Was it me imagining it, or was it hotter than usual? Fever in Middle Earth, that wasn't good. Resolutely, I pushed the thought aside and tried to focus on Legolas' question. "The orcs... Gimli hinted at it earlier: they should have attacked me. But they didn't."

"What about the one who followed you into the forest?"

"He had a short fuse."

"I beg your pardon?"

Sighing, I searched for an alternative phrase. My head felt like it was swimming, so it took me longer than usual. "He acted in affect."

The elf, who had not taken his gaze from his surroundings until now, looked at me. "You are still speaking in riddles."

"It... it's been a busy day," I tried to justify myself. Damn it, I had to pull myself together. "He just stormed off. I don't think the leaders of the horde agreed with that."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because they tried to stop him," I replied. That fact had just come back to me and I wanted it stated before it was again lost in the fog of my brain.

"I suspected that."

I no longer had the strength to turn my head, so while staring in Gimli's direction, I asked, "What?"

"You know, it's not just something to do with the pieces of stone, it's something to do with you."

With that, he had voiced what I had been dreading. "You can't know that."

"Not for certain, no." He was still looking at me. "Orcs are unruly creatures, they only see you as meat."

"You mean as a little snack between meals?", I asked. An attempt to lighten the mood with a little joke. Too late I realized that I had slipped into my native language and Legolas could not know the word snack. This hadn't happened to me in a long time, but I hadn't felt this bad in ages.

He frowned. My eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness, so I could make out the elf's movements, at least vaguely. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," I lied, and I could see he didn't believe me. So I followed up with, "Even if it was: What would that change about our plan? We have to get to Esgaroth. Before then, we don't know enough to draw conclusions."

"You are right," said the elf. "But so far it has been a quest into the dark - without haste or hurry. Now, when we are being pursued…"

"...we must hurry."

"Aye." He eyed me with his typical piercing gaze. "You're shaking, Aspen."

"I'm not."

"Why are you lying?"

I bit my lip. "It's not that bad. It's the cold. I have the chills."

"You have what?"

"It...is a side effect of the illness. It will stop, sooner or later."

And there it was, the concern on the elf's face that I had been as afraid of as the sentence he had uttered earlier. "You need a healer."

"I told you, it's not that bad," I countered through clenched teeth, breathing away another chill. "You just don't know enough about human diseases."

He shook his head once, briefly, then held out his hand. Unexpectedly. His fingers touched my forehead before I could turn away. "You're burning up. Human diseases aside... you're in need of a healer."

"Yeah, maybe I need one," I hissed. "But we won't find one here. And I forgot the package of paracetamol." I would have liked to slap myself for that. Why hadn't I packed it? I should have expected to get sick on the trip, even though I otherwise had a fairly robust health.

"The what?"

"It's medicine from my world. I've been saving it for really critical moments."

"What does this... medicine do?"

"It lowers fevers and relieves pain, among other things. But I already said, it's not as bad as wasting the pills on it, had I taken them."

Again the elf's brows furrowed, he didn't seem convinced. "You can't sit here and freeze," he finally said. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

I thought for a moment. "What really would help me is a fire. But that's out."

"Dry clothes?"

"That might be a start."

Legolas nodded. "Come."

He hurried to his travel pack and pulled out a tunic from it, handing it to me immediately after. "Here. Put it on."

"All right, all right," I muttered. And after he had turned away, I hastily slipped out of my wet clothes and put on his dry ones. How he had managed to keep them in that condition while everything in my luggage was soaked to the max was a mystery to me. But I was grateful. Still, I wouldn't get warm just from the dry clothes. Not as long as the chills lasted.

"Now sleep," the elf said when he had turned back to me.

"I don't know if I can," I admitted as I slowly lowered myself onto the blanket Legolas had pulled from his pack alongside the tunic. It, too, was completely dry.

"Then take some of your... medicine," he said.

"I don't have it with me, you know that."

He looked at me skeptically. I almost could have sworn he was on the verge of rolling his eyes. He didn't believe me? "You're more stubborn than a hobbit," he muttered so low I barely understood.

"I heard that."

"Fair enough."

"And taken it as a compliment."

I heard a smile in his voice when he replied, "Sleep now, Aspen."

I granted him the favor. Curled into a ball, I concentrated on my breathing. Legolas was right: I needed rest. A cold was not usually life-threatening - if you were in a warm bed and there wasn't the latent danger of it turning into pneumonia after all.

The elf had sat down in a distance next to me, probably to make sure that I would not get up again. So I had no choice but to actually rest. However, although after a few minutes I felt the fatigue trying to settle over me like the silence of the forest before, the chills kept pulling me out of dreams I had just begun. Legolas seemed to notice this as well.

He stood up, but instead of going back to his lookout post, he dropped down onto the camp beside me in one fluid motion. "What are you doing?", I asked through chattering teeth. "I'm trying to sleep, seriously."

"I can see it's not working," he replied, "You need warmth."

"We can't light a fire."

"I know that." Without saying another word, he lay down next to me and pulled me into a hug from behind. I was so surprised that I didn't object, yet I sensed that he was as uncomfortable as I was. Stiffly I lay there and even forgot to chatter my teeth. Only the uncontrollable contracting of my muscles continued relentlessly until the warmth of the elf finally reached me.

After a good ten minutes, I had calmed down enough to relax.

After five more, I slowly slipped away into the land of dreams. While half asleep I mumbled, "You're like a heater."

"What's that?"

"Something like a stove."

I felt his breath tickle on the back of my neck. "You'll have to teach me more about your world eventually."

"If it doesn't bore you."

"How could it?" he said with a smirk I could hear along with the curiosity in his voice. For a moment we both remained silent, surrounded by the quiet of the forest, broken only by Gimli's bloodcurdling snores, then I whispered, "Thanks."