Welcome to Gaia! ::

The men ate their breakfast - the same wafers that Shoneah and Eron had been munching - and then they prepared to head out for a day of hunting.

"Eron, would you like someone to stay with you?" Sabor asked him as the others started to leave. "I don't mind staying back, I'm not the best hunter anyways."

"You walk too heavy," Talmon chuckled at the physician. "Scare the game away."

Sabor nodded. "Very well. If any animals come, there are some blades by the wall there you can use. There shouldn't be any, we chose this cave because of its impossibility to access even for animals, but just in case."

He pointed towards a pile of bags near another wall. "Food. Water is in the river outside. Just be sure not to fall in, or you won't be getting out. It's flooded after last night's storm and we won't be around to help you out."

"Sabor!" Jabek called from outside the cave.

The physician chuckled softly. "Coming!" he called back. Turning back to Eron one more time, he grinned. "See you later. We may not be back until dark. Feel free to start a fire if it gets cold or dark before we're back."

And with one final wave, he was gone.

For her part, Shoneah enjoyed the day, and when she, along with the men, returned to the cave that evening, she was carrying a few animals, too. The group was all laughing together as they returned to the cave, and when they arrived they entered one at a time.

"Eron!" Shoneah grinned when she saw him. She was tired from the activities of the day, but it was a good, familiar feeling, and she was in a very good mood for the first time since they'd ended up in this world. "Good to see you again! How was your day?"

Shoneah grinned broadly. "It was good. It's been a while since I've been in a hunting party, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed it."

"Thanks to Silverbirch's tracking skills, we were able to catch more than we usually would," Talmon spoke up as they brought the dead animals to the back of the cave. "We caught all the animals we needed. We'll let them drain overnight, skin them all tomorrow and prepare them for transport, and then head home the day after."

"In the meantime we'll all be busy," Sabor added.

"Which is a good thing," Goren said quietly as he unstrung his bow. "Sabor, get the draining trough ready, will you?"

Sabor sighed softly. "Yes, yes."

Sabor knelt next to the scaffold where the animals would be hung and put both hands on the floor. There was a gentle quaking of the ground as a trough appeared, going from beneath the scaffold, along the edge of the cave wall, and outside towards the river, and once the trough was finished, the quaking stopped and Sabor stood once more.

"Alright, let's get these animals hung," Talmon grinned as he brought his over first.

One by one, the men brought their animals to be hung upside down and the throats slit to bleed them out, and Shoneah came after them with the animals she'd trapped. Hers were easy to tell apart from the others: her animals were the only ones that were already cut open, as she had removed and eaten their hearts, just as she had done with the dragon and raccoon that she'd killed on her first night there.

Once that was finished, Azok prepared dinner for them all, and after a hearty meal, they prepared to go to sleep.

The following day, all of them worked hard to skin the animals, and they finished before nightfall; and when morning once more came, they packed up several sledges of meat and skins, cleaned up the cave, and headed out to return to the village of the Earth Elves.

It was a long and demanding trip, several times requiring that they carry the sledges rather than pull them, and finally, as the day was again drawing to a close, another ravine came into view. This one was much wider than the one in which they'd spent the past few days, wide enough that there were fields on either side of a river that flowed through the center of it, and the ground, rather than rock, was a rich, fertile soil. There were no houses in sight, but in the walls of the ravine there were openings for doors and windows.

"Your people live in the rock itself?" Shoneah asked the elves in surprise. She spoke in the language of the Earth Elves, which had become custom in the past few days. Uri spoke no Common Tongue (as the elves called English), and since both she and Eron could speak the native tongue here, she had personally felt it only polite to do so.

Tal smiled widely. "Yes. We have been here for hundreds of years, our people. Sabor helped to make these homes himself."

"Which, of course, by now you're aware that we do have to be wary of earth tremors," Tal smiled at Eron.

There had been several more earthquakes since the first day the group had been together, though none of them had been serious.

As they trudged tiredly towards the town (if such it could be called), several women could be seen working in the fields. All of them blended, just as the men had blended into the cave walls: brown skin, brown hair, and brown leather clothing.

Just when Shoneah was beginning to wonder if there was any colour in this country, a child wearing brightly dyed clothes ran out of one of the doorways towards the women in the field.

"Mama! Mama!" she called excitedly. "Papa's home!"

Uri grunted. "Go figure, back after being gone two weeks and she runs for her mother instead of me."

But despite his gruff tone, he was chuckling, and there was a glow in his eyes that had not been there during their time in the cave.

But it seemed the child had gotten the attention of all the women, as well - all of them turned to look, and then they all dropped their tools and came to greet their husbands.

The men dropped the sledge ropes and took their wives in their arms and hugged them tightly. A few other children also came out of doorways and ran to greet them, and it seemed that for the moment, Shoneah and Eron were unnoticed.

Shoneah was quiet as she watched the families reunite. That was what she also wanted, though she had no hopes of seeing her family again any time soon.

The women of course first asked the men how they were and how the hunt had gone, and it wasn't until the men turned to take up the sledges again that the women noticed Shoneah and Eron standing there awkwardly.

"Oh!" said Uri's wife, blinking in surprise. "You brought ..."

"Travelers in need of our help," Sabor supplied, putting his arm around his wife's shoulders. "They are from another world and they're looking for a way home. We're going to let them rest here and give them supplies, and then they're off to Caras Galadhon to look for someone to help them."

His wife looked at him disapprovingly. "Give them ... ?"

"Trade them," Jabek corrected Sabor. "For a box of dragon scales." He introduced the two of them, then explained about the dragon Shoneah had killed, and the women all looked impressed.

"Well, welcome to our home," said Jabek's wife to the two of them. "My name is Adlanniel. Come, let's see if we can't get you settled before the feast tonight."