How can hobbits stand running around with bare feet?

this is the next part in the story right after the ground dissapears from beneath her feet.


A second later my feet connected with a hard rigid surface. Stairs? I felt an arm around my waist as I slipped and stumbled down a short set of stairs. The hand Cristiano had been pulling me along with moved to hold my hand tightly as he guided me slowly down the steps.
"You can open your eyes now," he laughed.
I opened one and then the other. He was right. A dark rain cloud had passed in front of the sun and a chill swept over me. My eyelids were starting to hurt from being squeezed shut so tightly. Something popped under my left foot and pain swelled in my ankle. I had twisted it somehow. I looked down and saw the three-inch heel of my stiletto laying on the step above where I had stopped.
"Shoot!" I said, pouting. Cristiano laughed. I bent over to pick it up but he pulled me back and said, "There’s no time for that we need to hurry!"
I still wasn’t sure why we were running but I trusted him and wobbled down the rest of the steps.
We reached the bottom of the stairs and he let go of my waist and started pumping his legs faster again. I tried to keep up but it’s difficult to run when one of your legs is longer than the other. I stopped abruptly and bent down to fiddle with the buckle on the side of my heel.
"What are you doing?" he asked in a shaky voice.
"I’m sorry but I can’t run like this." I slipped one shoe off and moved to unbuckle the other when the door at the top of the steps swung open. The other shoe slipped right off and Cristiano tugged on the hand he held. Quite forcefully, I might add. A split second before I turned to follow him again two men in dark suits and black rimmed sunglasses stumbled out onto the top of the concrete steps.
"RUN!" Cristiano shouted. I ran. Because that’s all could figure out how to do I was so struck with fear. I couldn’t believe I was leaving my $85 black stilettos in the middle of a parking lot. One of the mystery men was bald and big. Not fat, but muscular. The other weirdo was tall and gangly with dark hair slicked back into a short ponytail. His glasses were circular and he reminded me a lot of Ringo Star.
We crossed the small parking lot and climbed up a short grassy hill with a white sidewalk running through the top of it into a cluster of Cedars and Douglas Firs. We followed the sidewalk past some cream and olive colored apartments on the left. The trees thinned out significantly and to the right I could see the top of the huge Safeway store down the hill. Its entrances faced us and we zipped past the right side of the store, steam rising out of steel chimneys where the bakery and Chinese Express were. I knew what was ahead.
"I know where to go!" I said sprinting ahead of him. The cold cement scraped beneath my bare feet and twigs and rocks slid and stabbed. Cristiano still held my wrist and tried to keep. Ignoring the immense pain in my feet I raced against the pounding footfalls sounding only yards away. They were gaining on us. The sidewalk ended at the base of a thin driveway that ran between two long strips of garages then curved around the end of the left strip. Above the garages were more olive and cream colored apartments. The black pavement was dusty and small pebbles dug into my feet.
A car rounded the corner from the left and it was heading straight at us. I darted to the right, Cristiano following close behind, into the garage. The car passed us and turned into the left garage and stopped. It hadn’t been going very fast in the first place. It was a silver-green Toyota Camery. Cristiano dropped my wrist and a second later the two thugs emerged from the darkly lit, tree-lined sidewalk and onto the black pavement.
"GO, GO, GO!" I shrieked my voice shrill with panic. I heard a grunting noise push past Cristiano’s lips as he staggered into a full on run for life. I followed behind but caught up once again and easily passed him, making sure he stayed within five feet of me at all times. At the end of the short drive were some white cement stairs. Scattered all about the stairs were dark wood chips. As if my feet weren’t scraped up enough already, now I would have to spend a lifetime pulling splinters out of them. Cristiano, noticing me slow down as we reached the stairs, swooped me up from behind and carried me up the stairs. His warm embrace was so reassuring to feel at time of total distress such as running for your life from the iron giant and his evil accomplice, Ringo Star. His strong muscles rippled around my body and I remembered back to last night, as he held me in mid air, kissing me sweetly. A smile bloomed across my face, but was instantly washed away by the sound of gunshots. A scream bubbled in my throat and exploded from me like a bomb.
"Stop!" I heard from behind us. Cristiano didn’t dare stop as he kept climbing the stairs to get to the top where it would hopefully be safe. "Don’t go any further!" Yeah right. I would much rather live to see another day with all my body members in tact (except my feet that was an inescapable fact I realized as I looked at them flopping in the air, covered in black and swelling with pain) than be kidnapped by two scary men with guns so they could do who knows what to me.
We reached the top of the stairs. To the left was the patio of one of the olive apartments where a man was standing shaking a huge blue tarp.
"Turn right!" I shouted, pointing a finger at a gap in wooden picket fence. Beyond the fence was a line of stepping stones that led through a small garden of tiny purple-leafed bushes. Cristiano set me down gently on my feet as he stepped out into the parking lot of the library. It wasn’t tremendously huge, nor was it strikingly small. About the size of a fast-food parking lot. I didn’t even think to use the sidewalk I was so intent on saving our skins. Picking up speed, I dashed across the almost empty parking lot to the door of the library and thrust it open. The smooth tile on the floor of the first entrance felt like heaven to my battered, frozen toes. The carpet inside the actual library was about a hundred times better! Finally, something soft to step on. I let out an unexpected sigh and scampered across the floor toward the Adult Fiction section on the right. I examined myself to see how much damage had been done. My $30 black, gray and white argyle sweater had a gash on the right sleeve that I could easily slip my hand through. I mush have snagged it on a tree branch or something. The bottoms of my gray khakis were all worn and laced with mud and black dust. The seams on both legs had been ripped open, probably from the way they dragged and how they kept getting pulled under my heels as I ran. Now for the major disaster…my feet. I leaned against a bookcase and lifted my right foot and held my ankle with both hands, staring down at the worst mess I’ve seen all day. My pedicure was completely ruined, that goes without saying. The ends of my toenails were rigid and black. My toes were black as well, but also had fine white lines oozing with a thick red liquid. Blood. Same for the rest of my foot and the left foot as well. My feet were so numb now I couldn’t even feel the pain, which I guess was a good thing. I wondered how Cristiano had held up. Then it hit me. Where had he gone? I had basically shut the rest of the world out the second my feet had hit that warm carpet. Did anyone come in behind me? Where were the two creepers in suits? They could very well have been watching me right then and I peered over the tops of the books to the section to left of mine. Empty.
It was that a cold hand rested on my shoulder, striking my heart dead with fear. I couldn’t even tell if it was beating anymore. I don’t even think I was breathing. I didn’t want to turn around, but something deep inside me urged to. I turned and faced the figure that had now dropped the cold hand that gripped my heart with fear and a gasp blew past my lips and drums pounded inside my ears. No, that would be heart kicking in again.