"It had - go up parts."

"Yeah." Sigh. "I'll think of something."

"I can not sleep four days."

"That's cool. I need to sleep every night, if we're moving at this pace during the day."

"I can carry you. I need sleep and food at people but four days I can."

"I guess if we have to, but it's kind of weird."

"Weird?"

" - I don't have three examples I like. Eating a few more kittens and risking a few more fights is better than being carried the whole way."

"Okay."

He tries to pick up the pace but even at his absolute best is a fair bit slower than her.

She keeps watch at night again. She has to wake him after just three hours about another one of the apparently nocturnal monsters.

He's in a worse mood about it than the previous night. "Fine. Great. Guess we'll keep moving."

"Maybe you sleep again after it is far?"

"That'd be nice."

She puts him down after they've gotten a good distance away from the thing.

He falls asleep again very quickly.

No more monsters that night, but the night after there are three.

He eats a lot of kittens the day after. He looks visibly less healthy than when he arrived. He's walking slower, too.

"Still weird to carry you there?"

Sigh. "Is it not, for Quendi?"

"I don't have words. When - Tyelcormo was -" She hovers her hand a couple feet off the ground. "I carried him." Shrug. "Now -" She holds her hand quite a bit higher, taller than herself. "Now I don't but -"

"Kid. You start out a baby, then you're a kid, then you're an adult. It's not weird to carry babies. It's weird to carry adults - kind of because you carry babies? It's not a way adults interact with each other, it's a way they interact with babies. Interact - talking is a kind of interacting, fighting is a kind of interacting..." He rubs his eyes. "Anyway in England you don't really carry grown healthy adults just because they're very slow, and also there are - expectations about how men and women interact.

Dumb ones."

"I was an adult when Tyelcormo's -" Gesture. "- person he come from was a baby! And you don't look like an adult."

"I'm done with school, I work, I support myself, I'm a legal adult." As of three weeks ago, but whatever.

Sigh.