Zigil had done a lot of stupid shit in her life, that she couldn't deny. What she was doing now however probably took the cake. Or was at least a strong contender for second place.

Sure, her father had been quite clear in his refusal of her even leaving the grounds around Ered Luin, and he had also been quite clear in his thirty underlined repeats of "No, you cannot come with us, it's too dangerous, you're too young", and whatever else he had added after that, but he hadn't truly expected her to listen, had he? Zig had always done whatever she set her mind to, ever since she was old enough to comprehend what "No" meant and choose to ignore it.

Except for that, she had complied to a degree this time, that couldn't be denied. She had indeed stayed in Ered Luin, just for not quite as long as her father had hoped she would.

From the moment he had left, Zig had not a single doubt that he had warned every single dwarf in a ten-mile radius to watch out for her antics. She saw it in the way the guards glanced at her every time she walked anywhere near the front gate, the way her aunt Dis somehow always needed her to help with one chore or another exactly as she was ready to head out. For Thorin Oakenshield was a king, and in a classic kingly manner had the gotten used to the fact that no dwarf in Ered Luin ever really disobeyed his wishes.

Well, nobody except for Zig, who had the excuse that first things first, she was not a dwarf, and second, she had the full right (given to her by herself, which most definitely made it legit) to disobey authority on occasion. And now was precisely an occasion of this type, but such occasions required careful preparation, and she was well aware that to pull off this kind of stunt, she'd have to get everybody off their toes first. Which meant doing for once exactly what they expected her to do…more or less.

Her first attempt at leaving Ered Luin was shabby, a test of where to step and who to avoid. It was never meant to work, but Bavar and Havar, the dwarf brothers guarding the gate that night, did not need to know that, and she left them to think they had proudly defended their honor at the night's watch as they escorted her back to her aunt. She almost felt bad for the disappointment they'd have to face eventually, but it's not like she had a bunch of other options available.

Aunt Dis had, as by the laws of the Valar, given her the kind of lecture that would make even the toughest of warriors go sit in the corner and think about their actions, and then proceeded to keep an eye on her the same way Zig assumed her grandfather Thror had kept an eye on the Arkenstone. But she had played her part masterfully, if she could say so herself. She had pouted and sulked for over a week, then waited another two to pretend she was slowly getting over it, watched as the tension slowly started leaving Dis, as the wall patrols paid less and less attention. And on a warm evening a month and a half after the start of the quest for Erebor, Zig had made her move.

The minutes moved painfully slow as she had laid fully dressed for the road under her blanket, tracking the time by the ray of moonlight moving across the wall of her room. Her pack was digging uncomfortably into her back and her fingers drummed against the hilt of the knife tucked into her belt in anticipation, but she knew she had to wait. Wait until the heavy clouds that had started their descend earlier fully hid the moon and the world sunk completely into the shadows, leaving it to the things that hid in nooks and crannies and dark, dusty corners.

Dwarves, for all the time they spend underground, had not been blessed by Mahal with particularly good night vision. Relatively inconvenient maybe, but a welcome error in design to aid Zig in her escapade, given that her own eyes had the interesting habit of working in near complete darkness.

Finally, the pool of moonlight faded from the wall, leaving everything around in the muted shades of grey that the world took up before a storm. Zig took a breath and tossed her blanket aside, letting her bare feet touch the floor without a sound. Summer had not yet given way to the cooler winds of autumn, so her boots were packed neatly in her bag, waiting for a time when she didn't need to worry about being quiet.

Putting a note for her aunt on her bedside table made her hesitate for a second. She remembered how Dis had looked sending off her sons and her brother, the haunted space behind her eyes that had seemingly filled up with memories of blood and death and dragonfire, the slight tremble in her voice as she had told them to take care of each other. Zig knew that she was putting yet another worry on her shoulders, leaving her in a house that might soon fill with ghosts. But she also knew the way her stomach had twisted watching them leave, the feeling in her gut that something terrible was lurking just below the horizon and waiting to swallow them whole.

"I will keep them safe, don't you worry aunt Dis."

Her father had said that she was too young, too inexperienced, that she wouldn't be able to protect herself on a journey such as this. And Zig knew that he was right, to a degree – she had never been strong enough to pick up an axe or a hammer, or to win over her cousins in a fair sparring match. But she had learned to be witty, and crafty, and quick on her feet instead, until she did not need to rise a sword in order to win a fight. So as she left her room and grabbed onto her window frame, pulling herself up on the roof in one swift move, her hesitation turned into something that burned bright and hot in her chest. Erebor was not her kingdom and this was not her quest, not by birthright and not by blood, but it was her family that was throwing themselves into danger. And she would be there to keep them safe when that danger bit at their heels.

She might have believed herself a little bit more if she hadn't proceeded to almost slip off the roof in a particularly unheroic manner, the only thing saving her being the chimney she had gripped onto for dear life. Up to here with the mighty savior mentality, Zig thought as she allowed herself a sigh of relief, slowly letting go of the cool stone to balance along the ledge of the roof and swing over to the next one. She had done it plenty of times before, mostly when she didn't feel like traversing the busy streets of the mountain settlement or wanted to feel the wind in her hair away from the constant chatter of the street. Tonight everything was quiet, safe for the distant echo of thunder from the clouds gathered above. Zig took a last look at the settlement as she stepped on the roof of one of the watchtowers, the few windows that candlelight still twinkled in and the warmth they promised, so tempting compared to the long road ahead of her. She tried her best to burn them into her memory like a beacon, a promise of what she would return to.

She would do this. She could do this.

The Great East road, a couple of weeks later

The leaves crunched beneath Zigil's boots as she walked on what she assumed was the right path through the small forest she had found herself in an hour ago, quietly humming to herself from time to time. Even though she could move silently if she wished to, the repetitive sounds helped ground her, preventing her from getting lost in the cacophony of noises that she otherwise caught with every twitch of her ears. While she had gotten relatively used to the constant forest chatter during the last few weeks of travel, the birds were insisting on being particularly loud that night, as if simply to see how long it'd take for her eardrums to rupture.

When Zig had been a kid, her aunt Dis often joked that her ears had gotten pointy and wide like that just so she could hear trouble no matter how far away it was and go get into it. For all Zig knew, she might have just as well been right. Nobody knew what else in Mahal's name was up with them anyway. "Like an elf – the people back in Ered Luin said, sometimes in disapproval, sometimes in simple curiosity – but not quite." Unlike elves, Zig could easily rotate hers in all directions, catching even the smallest noise, which had been useful when eavesdropping on what the adults were discussing when she was a kid, but was not as useful now, given that there was enough noise around to rival the markets right before Durin's day. Even the shadows, which were by all known records supposed to be silent, had the habit of seemingly whispering between themselves when she was around. Zig mostly tried to ignore it. It was likely a trick of sound, nothing more, the same way she thought she had heard barking hounds outside where she had camped a few days ago. Echoes and lack of sleep, that was all there was to it.

A sudden cry from somewhere ahead snapped her out of her thoughts and her half-alert state, making her freeze in her spot and perk up her ears. The birds had stopped singing, she realized, and a cold shiver ran down her spine as she lowered herself closer to the ground. The sound had been muffled and distorted by the distance, but it had been undoubtedly human, and the notes of terror had been clear in it. Zig slowly crept forward, trying to keep herself behind trees and bushes as a small light appeared ahead. Her heart was beating so loud that she could feel it to the tips of her fingers, now gripping the knife on her belt, every instinct screaming at her to turn around and bolt, and she wanted to do so, more than she liked to admit. Whatever was ahead smelled wrong, of decay and carrion and something she couldn't quite place that made her skin crawl and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

But somebody was out there, and maybe they needed help, so she continued forward even as her knees shook and the smell turned into a stench that made it hard to breathe without gagging. The light between the trees became what she assumed was a fire, hidden behind a grey boulder at the very edge of the trees. Zig tried to take another step forward, only to freeze in her spot as the boulder suddenly shifted, a big, gnarly hand tossing something that looked like a sack of potatoes to the side. The movement revealed two other gray mounds on the other side of the fire for a moment, seemingly having crawled out from the darkest corners of somebody's nightmares.

"Trolls" Zig thought to herself as she kneeled in the bushes, still as a rabbit when a hawk circled above "Mountain trolls. Like the ones from Balin's stories. And Fili swore up and down they didn't exist anymore-"

Another yell interrupted her panic, far more discernable this time, a voice trying to sound confident while still laced with fear.

"In fact, they're all infected!" it said "I wouldn't risk it, I really wouldn't!"

That by itself was confusing enough to tear Zig out of her catatonic state, but what followed was what made her crawl out of the brush and stand behind a tree just a few steps from the line of the fire. Because she could swear with absolute certainty to every god in Arda that in the cacophony of wild protests against the previous statement, there was a clearly discernable Kili, yelling "I don't have parasites, you have parasites!" at the top of his lungs. So she peeked towards the fire, just enough to take a glance, praying that the light her eyes reflected wouldn't give her away.

And there they were indeed, the Company of warriors, tied up in bags and stacked atop one another like sacks of flour. Zig might have found the view slightly amusing if she wasn't scared to the bone, possibilities flashing through her head as she wondered what to do. The disembodied voice she had heard earlier belonged to what she assumed was the hobbit that her father had grumbled something about before leaving, now standing in between the three trolls and trying to convince them the dwarves were not worth eating. He had been doing fine up to now with keeping the trolls busy, but it seemed they had gotten either too bored of his explanations or too hungry to care, as the one closest to Zig (Bill? She was almost certain the others had called him Bill, what kind of name for a troll was that-) reached towards the hobbit with a growled "Enough!"

Zig didn't have a particularly wide time gap for a well thought out reaction, so she did the first thing that came to her mind in the very moment the troll reached forward – she jumped out from behind the tree and hurled her knife full force at his eye.

The good news were that said act of heroism distracted him enough to get his attention off the hobbit. The bad news? The knife spun around mid-flight, landing handle first and causing a minimal amount of damage to Bill before falling somewhere in the grass around, leaving Zig weaponless, out of ideas and smack in front of a now particularly annoyed troll.

There was no witty hobbit to get her out of this one, so she could only brace herself as Bill got up and reached towards her with a growl. A clash never came however. Instead, a loud crack echoed in the clearing, followed by the crash of stones and a voice that sounded as if it was coming from all directions.

"The dawn will take you all!"

And took them it did, as trolls apparently had the bad habit of turning to stone in sunlight. Zig couldn't say she felt particularly sorry for them, even as she watched them freeze forever where they were standing. From stone they come and to stone they return. Poetic justice, one could say-

"Zigil!"

Well, now she felt a little sorry for herself. Zig took a deep breath and turned round to face the angry hurricane of a dwarf that was walking towards her through the clearing.

"Hi dad."