Blisters and sore feet made up most of the third day. Sigfread lectured her about needing to be able to make decisions quickly after she took her time deciding on which path in Evendim to take. She ended up picking the path leading over the hills. Something was mentioned about needing to be able to climb mountains often and this was the practice she needed.
Her legs burned with pain from climbing as they reached the top. The short break wasn’t really enough time to recover, she thought, and soon they were continuing upwards. At one point, it was time to leave her horse behind. They reached a point in the path where she could not lead the beast around the ruins, and the horse was not going to make the jump down. With a quick work of straps, she had converted her saddle bags to carry and they continued.
Sigfread soon stopped them again, before pointing out the ruined city of Annuminas. She couldn’t help but stare at the white stone ruins that were completely unlike the buildings in Bree. The lake had flooded the city, of course, but the sight of it left her in awe.
“Let’s go.” Sigfread said moments after she was starting to take it all in.
He did it again when they stopped to look over the land towards Deadman’s Dike and towards the northern mountains. She wanted to stay for a moment longer and look towards the land to truly understand what she was looking at and the compare to the maps she studied for weeks. Her angry thoughts about the ranger stopped when they got to the High King’s Crossing. Her feet were littered with blisters from hiking the hills. When they were given a tent to stay in, Lieta sat down, ignoring the stares from the others of Sigfread’s kin.
The next couple of days were filled with lessons from the other rangers that wanted to help teach her things. Sigfread had gone off to help his kin elsewhere, leaving her to fend for herself. So she spent the first day tying knots with rope. It was one of the better lessons at the camp as she knew they were still a bit uneasy about her being around them.
The knot lessons also gave her feet a chance to go without her boots on. The stone was cold against her feet, but she wasn’t going to complain. She needed to clean her socks anyways as they were still grimy from the rivers in the Shire.
As the blisters stopped hurting, she went on to learn a few more things to help with surviving in the wild. Traps, more campfire practice, and more work with ropes kept her busy. Sigfread was away on some other business with some of his kin. She didn’t bother ask. It was Ranger stuff and she wasn’t going to try and understand it.
After a few days of rest and lessons, Sigfread said it was time to go and that they had a bit of a detour to make. She didn’t think there was much out here to change their path north and it was a bit of an odd change of direction because they were getting closer to the lands near Deadman’s Dike. The air was getting cooler and the closer they got, the more she felt sorrow. What she saw in front of her was unexpected. Behind the remains of a white stone wall were four headstones. It was a sight that perfected the dreary feeling overcoming her.
