"I can't move."
Daphne didn't know how long she'd been awake, but she was certain she'd awakened before she had that thought. The world's spinning, and thumping pain in her head, led her to believe the amount of time it took for her thoughts to become remotely intelligible was wholly justified.
Her eyes opened slowly. She blinked. She closed her eyes again, briefly, before opening them again.
"A cage?"
It was unlike any cage she'd seen. It was tall. Tall enough for a slightly taller than average man. But it was not wide enough to move around. It was such a tight fit, in fact, that she had been standing despite being entirely unconscious. It was hanging on a thick wooden beam above the ground and, of course, it was locked.
The stench of blood caused her to gag. Nobody had bothered cleaning the blood from her clothes and skin before shoving her into this small cage. Her elbows scraped against the hard metal as she lifted her arms to touch her head and face. There was hardly even room for that.
As she brought her arms down, she looked among the faces on the ground.
Frantic. Panicking. Begging with her eyes.
No one she saw cared. The only emotion she saw was fear of her situation...the fear that they would be in that very situation themselves if they did not keep in line.
Her body shook, causing the cage to creak and squeak annoyingly. She did not notice. She couldn't hear over her own frantic gasps of breath, and the pounding of her heartbeat in her head.
She was going to die here. All her strength and determination was for naught. To rot in this cage. No one would stop this. No one would save her. No one, save those who kept her in this cage, would even know the manner of her passing.
And in the end...Middle Earth would not miss her presence, nor mourn her loss.
