"So, how much further?" Harriet puffed sometime in the middle of the afternoon.
"To where?" Guffin asked nonchalantly over their shoulder.
"Anywhere," the mage grumbled. "I know Green Laurel is a ways. What about Slab Town? Wasn't that rock the halfway point?"
"That was the lunch spot," the goblin-beast explained. "There's two more rocks before the rock that is Slab Town, and at this rate it's going to be about one rock a day."
Harriet said a very bad word that Guffin hadn't quite heard used like that before, but happily filed away to bring out later.
"We could set up camp for the night while it's still light enough to see," they suggested politely to the exhausted elf.
"It does take a good while to set up a tent without magic," she agreed, puffing to a stop with as much cheer as could be mustered. "Unless you're some kind of expert.
"I wouldn't use the tent out here. Tents are for flat land."
Guffin didn't stop so much as change direction, climbing smoothly up a stately forest oak with the same calm speed as they had taken on the road. Harriet watched in some despair as they climbed a proper house-height into the tree, slung their bag over one of the highest branches that would presumably be able to handle the weight, and kept going a branch or two higher even so.
"It won't help much with the mountain lions," the goblin called down, "but they're not usually this far into the hills this early in the season. Trees absolutely do help avoid bears, tigers, skunks, and any stray deer. Come on up, I saved you a branch!"
"I will take my chances with the tent!" Harriet called up, not even risking her dignity with such an ascent. Best case would be tree bugs and bits of things... worst case would be a humiliating fall.
"Your loss!" Guffin shrugged. "Just toss up any food you have on you. Best to keep that out of reach."
The two companions set out making their own camps nearly vertically to each other. Harriet gave her best shot at removing the small packet of snacks to a higher location, which mostly involved tossing a scarf wrapped around her secret treats up at the tree, and burning just a little mana to make sure it stayed put. Guffin pulled a quilt out of the formidable giant bag, a roll of strong twine, several carabiner clips, a very raggedy plushie that might have once been a rabbit, and a puffy green thing that was presumably a winter coat; swiftly constructing a hammock-bed with this stack in half the time it took to have Harriet even begin to be poking around with tent poles.
By the time the sun was down, Harriet had at least a valiant impression of a tent, and was watching the fireflies play in the rising mist, thinking that maybe this place wasn't quite aligned with the same purgatory as a barbarian afterlife. Guffin was fast asleep and snoring gently, head resting on the coat wadded into a heap, arms wrapped around the plushie, and one bare green-grey foot to the wind, toes splayed.
The last lights faded, and even the fireflies began to blink out and not return. The forest chattered almost deafeningly with bugs, and unknown small things, distant howling, the wind, and Guffin's snores.
"Good night," Harriet whispered to the forest, and zipped herself into the lopsided canvas structure.