Some of the soldiers gave chase, but not nearly as many as Finn had expected. She assumed that the confusion of setting up their camp made their reactions slow enough that Finn was able to break further and further away from them, even after her magic had run out, and she was carrying Adi with only her own physical strength.

“We’re getting too far away,” Adi gasped, slapping Finn on the shoulder, once Finn slowed down to a panting slow jog. “My father!” she exclaimed. “We can’t leave him!”

“We need to shake them off first,” Finn said, short of breath. “If we hang around while they’re still looking for us, we’re just going to be caught.”

Adi groaned and Finn felt her tuck her face into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, her arms squeezing tight around her neck. Adi was a warm weight on her back, her skin soft and warm in the cool evening air, but Finn pushed thoughts about her body and skin away viciously. She needed to focus. She could be a gross hormonal mess after they were both out of danger.

Finn was slowing down, her endurance flagging. She let herself slow down into a more sustainable pace, focusing on lifting her burning thighs high enough to clear the crunching underbrush of the forest and listening for the sounds of the human soldiers crashing through the forest behind her. She was slowing down, but they were even slower. Finn was still increasing their lead, but she wouldn’t be able to do so forever. Once the other humans back at the camp got their shit together, they would surely put together a more organized hunt for them. They needed somewhere to hide out. They didn’t have any kind of equipment or provisions needed to survive a long chase, they didn't even have clothes on their backs to protect them from the elements. Finn knew they wouldn’t outlast the human soldiers, so they would need to outsmart them.

Like a godsend, just as Finn was thinking that, they came across a deep ravine that she had to carefully pause at the top of. A small stream that Finn had been carefully stepping around for the past half hour emptied over a steep rocky outcropping to spill maybe twenty feet down into a sandy basin in the hillside before continuing down with ferocity. Thinking this might be their hiding spot, Finn carefully picked her way down around the waterfall, circling back toward the water crashing down from above. Sure enough, there was a shallow cave just behind the water, hidden by hanging vines and the sheets of water falling from above.

“We should hide out here,” Finn said as she carefully let Adi down from her back. Her arms ached as they slowly unlocked from where they had been clutching Adi’s legs. She pulled back some of the long green vines of ivy to show Adi the space behind the waterfall. It was just barely big enough for the two of them to sit with their backs against the slick moss covered rock wall with their feet in the shallow water. “Hopefully they’ll go around the ravine and pass right by us.”

Adi had her arms clutched over her chest and her knees tucked together. She looked anxious, her eyes ringed with red and her mouth tight and narrow. Her shoulders were up around her ears and she glanced nervously all around her, like she expected someone to jump out of the woods at any moment and grab her.

“Come on,” Finn said as gently as she could manage, reaching out a hand to beckon Adi in under the vines.

Shuffling, Adi came forward and took Finn’s hand in her own, her fingers trembling. She allowed herself to be ushered into the small hiding spot and crouched and then sat, unable to stand up behind the waterfall without sticking her head in the water. Finn followed her in and squatted beside her, trying to keep her muscles loose and her breathing deep. She knew from experience that if she went through the motions of being calm long enough, actual calm would eventually come.

“What happens if they find us?” Adi whispered after they had been sitting silently for a little while. Finn could hear the soldiers’ loud passing through the forest, but she wasn’t sure if Adi could. Finn had heard other people say that elves had better hearing than most, but she didn’t know if that was actually true or just a stereotype based on the size of their ears. She had never bothered to find out for herself.

“We’ll have to run or fight, or both,” Finn responded quietly.

Adi stiffened beside her. When Finn cast a glance in her direction, she was grimacing.

“We’ll get through this,” Finn tried to reassure her.

Adi gave her a despairing look and then tucked her face into her knees.

Both of them stayed silent as the soldiers came closer. As Finn had hoped, they reached the rocky bluff and went around it with no backward glance toward their hiding spot. Finn held her breath when they passed closest, but it was unnecessary. The men were obviously not hunters. They were talking and grumbling among each other and stomping through dead leaves and brambles with no care to hide their approach.

Finn doubted the second wave of soldiers would be so incompetent. Once someone with half an idea of how to organize a search started giving orders, the hunters would be in the lead, and then Finn and Adi would have a harder time. Still, whatever lead they could get, whatever time they could steal to rest and build up their lead, would help.

“What are we going to do?” Adi spoke into her knees once the sound of the soldiers was almost completely gone. Her voice sounded thick with despair.

Finn suspected that the question was rhetorical, but she answered it anyway. “Let them go as far as they want. Eventually, they’ll realize they’re not following any tracks anymore and they’ll double back. Once they pass us by again, we’ll need to get moving.”

Adi lifted her face from her knees and stared at Finn. Her eyes were a little wet around the edges making her eyelashes clump together, her thick brows were pulled low over her big dark eyes, her mouth turned down at the corners with a stern frown. Finn fidgeted under her intense gaze, turning to look out at the sheeting water in front of them instead.

“Who are you?” Adi asked. “Who are you really? You’re not afraid of these men at all.”

Finn grimaced. She spent so much time around Ruven, she forgot not everybody was used to fighting like their lives depended on it every other Tuesday. Adi was right to be suspicious. What were the chances that someone like her just happened to be walking by when they got attacked.

“I’m a knight, sort of,” Finn grunted.

“A knight,” Adi replied flatly.

“Yeah,” Finn replied, hoping that would be enough.

“Whose knight?” Adi asked pointedly.

Finn panicked briefly. Did she tell the truth, at least partially, and say she was a royal guard? No, if she did that, Adi would question why she came to the aid of kobolds at all. Finn briefly ran through the names of nobles in the area that she knew of, but she definitely didn’t know enough about them to convincingly lie about being their knight.

“No one’s,” Finn said with some hesitation, coming up with the lie on the spot. Luckily, her hesitation sounded more like the subject was sensitive than that it was fake as hell.

Adi’s face folded into an empathetic expression. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Finn rubbed a rough hand over her face. She felt like such a jerk lying to this girl, but she needed Adi to trust her if she was going to get her out of the mess they were in alive. After Adi was safe, she could tell her the truth, maybe. Possibly.

“I had to leave on, uh, bad terms. I don’t especially want to talk about it,” Finn mumbled, hoping that Adi would read whatever she wanted to into that vague statement.

Adi gave Finn another sympathetic look and shuffled closer to her. It was cold and damp behind the little waterfall, the spray of spring water covering the both of them in a fine mist, clinging to the small hairs on their arms and legs. Adi looked especially pretty with the mist clinging to her thick dark hair, but Finn tried not to look at her too much. She might have been used to violence and being treated like crap, but Adi obviously wasn’t. It was disrespectful to eye her up during such a stressful moment. Finn was well aware of that.

They had to wait a long time in silence for the men to double back. What little sunlight was left had receded completely by then, to be replaced by the faint light of the sliver of moon left in the sky and the spatter of stars around it. Finn knew for a fact that, being an elf, her eyesight in the dark was much better than a human’s. When the men went back by the waterfall, they were stumbling and struggling to navigate all the obstacles on the forest floor in the dim light. They swung far to the north of Finn and Adi’s hiding spot. Finn was able to make out their stumbling steps, but not the words they were snapping back and forth at each other.

“Okay. We need to go,” Finn said, once the sounds of the men had faded and been covered almost completely by the soft sound of the tinkling falls.

Adi was trembling when she slowly exited from beneath the falls and finally stood at her full height. Finn wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or from fear. She took her hand, Adi’s fingers short and blunt, her nails chewed down to the nail bed. Her hand was overall smaller than Finn’s long narrow one and fit nicely in her palm. Finn tried not to think about it.

For a short while, Finn tried to lead Adi away along the narrow bed of small rocks that edged the creek, but she was stumbling almost as badly as the human soldiers had been in the dark forest.

"Do kobolds, uh," Finn stumbled over her words, worried that she would give offense where she didn't mean any. Kobolds lived in caves, didn't they? It didn't make sense for them to have trouble seeing in the dark, but Finn had certainly heard of stranger things. "Do kobolds have bad night vision?" she asked with a wince at her own blunt delivery.

"No," Adi sighed, pressing her free hand to a small young tree to keep her balance. "It's just-" she broke off with a sound of frustration.

Finn followed her line of sight down to Adi's shapely legs, only to see that her knees were nearly knocking together, they were shaking so bad. So, it was shock probably, or the adrenaline wearing off.

“I think I’ll have to carry you again,” Finn said after a moment of thought.

Adi’s head popped up with a distraught expression.

“Aren’t you tired?” she asked. “I’m slowing you down. Maybe,” she started to say, then hesitated. "Maybe I can stay here and hide under the waterfall, and you can go get help. You're a lot faster than me. If they haven't taken us too far, there should be a fae settlement nearby."

Finn didn’t need to hear the rest. Adi likely knew that leaving her behind in the forest was as good as consigning her to her fate. She was prioritizing her father and community's safety over her own, which was awfully altruistic of her, but Finn wasn't having it.

Crouching down like she had before, she said, “Get on,” in as firm a tone as she could. Adi hesitated for a long moment, but when Finn gave her an impatient look over her shoulder, she climbed on.

Adi’s skin was cold and damp where it was pressed against Finn’s, a stark departure from the warmth she had given off not so long ago. She was shivering all over, her soft breasts and stomach pressed tight against Finn's back. Finn swallowed back any and all inappropriate thoughts that rose to the surface and stood slowly in deference to her burning thighs and shoulders, and began to traverse the forest floor at a significantly faster pace than most humans would be able to sustain.

Finn stayed near or in the creek, hoping that it would hide their tracks and mask their scent from any hunting dogs that might be coming after them. She wasn’t running like she had initially, instead trying to keep a steady but sustainable pace. She hoped to travel as far from the human camp as she could manage that night, and then hopefully scavenge for clothes and food and weapons in the morning. Once they were better equipped, they could circle back to find the caravan of human soldiers and try to locate Adi’s father. For now, they needed to focus on getting away and then on staying alive.

Adi’s skin warmed against her back as they traveled, the two of them sharing body heat where they were pressed together. Finn enjoyed the source of warmth at her back despite herself. Finn was all skin and bones, with no body fat to protect against the cold. She had long ago mastered herself enough to stop any shivering or indication of discomfort under her father’s ruthless oversight, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel the cold. Traveling with Adi pressed to her back was more than pleasing, it was comforting.

They traveled for a long time, following the creek until it eventually let out into a wide river that Finn was sure they couldn’t cross under their own power. Finn then turned north, toward what she assumed was the general direction that the human caravan had been traveling, and moved that way along the edges of the river.

“How far are we going?” Adi asked halfway through the night, looking with concern to the wide river. The river looked deceivingly calm on the surface, but Finn assumed that only meant that it was deep and fast beneath. Here and there you could see small islands with a few trees clinging desperately to the surface, obviously having survived many changes of the water level.

“As far as we can,” Finn responded a little breathlessly. She knew her body was built for endurance, but carrying someone her own size so far and for so long was taking its toll.

Adi squeezed her arms tighter around Finn’s shoulders, but otherwise didn’t say anything. Her thick hair tickled Finn’s face when she tucked her head down against Finn’s neck.

When the first pale streaks of blue started to light the eastern sky, Finn collapsed on her side at the rocky edge of the river, inelegantly dumping Adi’s nearly sleeping body beside her. Finn hadn’t realized she had fallen asleep. Maybe at a later date, she would find it flattering that Adi trusted her enough to sleep on her back.

“Are you okay? I'm so sorry! I can't believe I fell asleep! How long have you been walking?” Adi panicked, sitting up and patting Finn all over her arm and side like she wasn’t sure what to do.

Finn groaned and rolled over onto her back. Oak trees waved their leaves in the sky above her, and the river made quiet gurgling sounds to her right. The ground was rocky, and a particularly sharp rock was digging into her shoulder blade, but she couldn’t be fucked to move off of it.

“Almost morning,” Finn gasped, once she had her breath back. “I just need a rest,” Finn mumbled.

Adi was leaning over her, her big empathetic eyes shining with concern, her thick eyebrows tipped up with the same. She had a kind face, Finn thought distantly, before closing her eyes and passing out like a champ.