The resemblance between Dis and her brother was remarkable. In fact, Reese had been able easily see traces of Fili and Kili in her as well. Her blue eyes were closer to Fili's shade than Thorin's, and Reese had noticed a definite similarity between Dis and Kili's full bottom lip. She was undeniably Thorin's sister, though, and Reese had felt extremely intimidated, even from a distance, as she watched the proud dwarrowdam walk by.

Reese had no desire to make herself known to Dis, not even as a friendly stranger. She was curious about the female dwarf, and she had felt drawn to her simply because it would make her feel closer to Kili. What purpose would it serve beyond satisfying a selfish desire for closeness with him? Reese could only imagine how intrusive such behaviour would be for Kili and his entire family.

Reese had quickly turned her face away as Dis suddenly glanced in her direction, scowling as she noticed the dwarf speaking to the Futurians. Watching from the corner of her eye, Reese hadn't been able to help smiling as the scowl made Dis look even more like her often grumpy older brother. Reese had wondered how Kili and Fili had turned out to be so good natured. Maybe their father had been of the more jolly type. Reese then reminded herself that she didn't truly know Dis and that she had no idea what sort of mother she was.

Reese had winced, however, as Dis crossly barked out something in Khuzdul to the dwarf conversing with Adam, and the dwarf had quickly ended the conversation to rejoin the procession.

Reese, Adam, and Borgia had exchanged a knowing look, eyebrows raised, as they stood together watching the procession pass. "Did you notice the resemblance?" Adam had murmured. Reese and Borgia nodded as their eyes followed Dis as she moved away from them.

"I wonder how she'd react if she knew her grandchild was being carried by a woman within a hundred meters of her?" Reese had asked quietly. They'd all laughed. Reese brought her hand to her stomach, feeling the familiar longing for a woman who knew what Reese could expect in her pregnancy carrying a half dwarf. However, she wasn't sure she would have gotten what she craved from the proud intimidating dwarrowdam who'd just passed.

"It would be so easy," Reese had murmured absently, drawing the other two out of their shared reverie.

"What?" Adam asked. Borgia looked at her questioningly.

"To just follow them, go to Erebor, just show up on their doorstep," she finished.

"What's stopping you?" Adam asked.

Reese had gazed after the dwarves disappearing into the distance. They'd talked before about her going to Kili, and she'd always said she wasn't ready, which annoyed Adam greatly. She surprised them with a different answer this time as she stood with her arms crossed, staring blankly after the caravan but not seeing it anymore as she thought about her decision.

"Because it would be thoughtless and self centered. He wouldn't get a say about if he wanted me, if I just showed up, and he's too kind and honorable to turn me away. He needs for once to get a chance to decide for himself what he wants without everything revolving around me. At the very least he deserves that."

Adam and Borgia had stared at her silently but didn't comment or argue. "So what's the plan?" Adam asked.

Reese had shaken her head. Everyone was constantly asking her what her plan was, even people who didn't know she was pregnant, sometimes just asking when she was going to contact Kili, as though it was to be assumed.

Contacting him was the right thing to do, she realized. She'd considered that it might be more selfish of her to contact him in case he didn't want to hear from her, only to tell him that the woman who had dumped him was now carrying his child, resulting in his being permanently connected to someone he may wish never to see again. But she knew that it would be more selfish not to tell him, that if he ever found out his heart would be broken by not being told. One thing Reese was sure of, possibly one of the only things she was confident of in life, was the goodness of Kili's heart and how much he would want to be involve in his child's life.

"Figure out the right time, I guess," she'd said, shrugging. Adam and Borgia didn't pursue the topic further. They'd gotten back into their wagon and had continued towards Bree, away from the dwarven caravan.

Back in Adelaide, Reese was drawn from her memories of that day by the cat's licking her skin. This was something he liked to do, probably because he liked the salt. Because of his rough tongue, it wasn't very pleasant, but Reese didn't mind letting him do it. He seemed to enjoy it so much, and it made her feel as though she was being taken care of.

She drew the line at armpits though. She'd been woken many times by the cat's licking her armpits, and she'd put a stop to that quickly by wearing long sleeves to bed.

Reese roused herself from the bed and straightened her clothes. The only thing that could get her out of bed these days was hunger, and she was famished. She let herself into the corridor, the cat trotting down the hall in front of her. Whenever the distance stretched longer than three meters between them, he flopped down onto the floor as though wishing to be petted, only to jump up and trot ahead again as soon as Reese caught up with him. "You're such a goofball," Reese muttered affectionately, only receiving a loud croaking meow in return.

When they reached the dining hall the cat strolled happily to the kitchen where he knew he'd be well fed by whoever was cooking that night, so long as they didn't try to pet him. Everyone had been bitten by him at least once if they caught him in one of his moods, which could change in a moment.

She saw Michelle, Sarah, and Janine sitting together, and they waved her over. She grinned at them and sat down. Julie joined them as soon as she saw Reese sit, leaving her brood to be watched over by Adam at a nearby table.

"So?" Janine asked in a low voice. "How was your appointment?" She spoke quietly. As Reese hadn't announced her pregnancy yet, only a handful of people knew.

"It was good. Everything is good," she said. It was hard for her to get words out as she shovelled food into her mouth, unable to stave off her hunger any longer. This pregnancy was so different from the others when she'd hardly been able to eat at all.

"Anymore thought on when you'll tell Kili? Or how you'll get word to him?" Sarah asked. Reese took a moment to think while she swallowed a particularly large mouthful. She was starting to feel like a broken record, having the same conversation over and over again, but she didn't mind. Her friends had been completely supportive, and she knew she needed to let them help her. She needed all of the help she could get, and she had finally realized that shutting people out only made her life worse when people just wanted to love her.

"I don't want to tell him anything if I don't have reason to." Reese could feel her friends gazing steadily at her uncomprehendingly. She worried her lip with her teeth before continuing, "What I mean is that since the elves told us that, as far as they knew, no one has ever conceived a half human half dwarf before, I'm reluctant to consider telling Kili anything … unnecessarily." The last word was uttered quietly, and her hand came to rest on her abdomen protectively at the thought of losing her baby to miscarriage. She knew the risks of miscarrying, even in a normal pregnancy, and she lived in constant fear of losing this child, doing everything she could within reason to be careful and stay safe, even though she knew nothing could be done to prevent a miscarriage in most cases.

"So you are going to then?" Julie asked with a slightly harsh tone.

Reese grimaced uncomfortably at the question, ignoring the tone. Despite Julie's dislike of dwarves, she'd made her annoyance with Reese clear regarding her ambivalence about contacting Kili. According to Julie, families stayed together no matter what. And Reese and Kili were now a family.

"What are you afraid of?" Janine asked, before Reese could answer Julie. Janine's question really was the more important one at present.

Reese groaned as she dropped her head into her hands, her worries flooding her mind now that she'd been asked. "A million things. The usual, that he might have someone else, that he might not want me."

"But didn't you tell me you're his One? That dwarves only love once?" Sarah asked.

"Ya, but, I think it's possible to love someone and to never want to see them again if they hurt you enough."

"Do you think you hurt him that horribly? It's not like you cheated on him or something. I mean, people break up, it happens," Sarah countered.

"I definitely didn't treat him well in the beginning, and the way I left, without saying a word ..." Reese sat, thinking back over her days with Kili before she'd abandoned him, the love in his eyes whenever he looked at her, his terror at being separated from her even for two days when she went to Rivendell. She nodded her head. "It wouldn't be honest if I said that I didn't think I actually may have hurt him that much. I think I hurt him deeply, and I don't know if he'll ever be able to fully forgive me for it. My only hope is that he's still so sweet and trusting and kind that he will be able to move past it."

Reese felt a pang of guilt at hoping that Kili's trusting, almost naive, nature would be what made him take her back. She'd been frustrated at times with how naively he saw some things, like his belief that nothing bad could happen to them. Now she hoped that this nativity ran deeply enough that he could forgive her. She'd have to examine her thoughts on this because it felt dishonest and hypocritical, and she wasn't sure she wanted to live that way. Regardless, she had to give him a chance, hoping he'd give her one too.

"Have you considered that you're making it worse by taking so long to tell him?" Julie asked.

Reese nodded again, biting her lip as she steeled herself to utter her greatest fear. "But what if he decides he doesn't want me but he takes the baby back to Erebor without me?"

The group sat in stunned silence for a moment before Sarah broke it. "I don't think he'd get away with that."

Reese didn't respond at first. Then she shrugged and said, "This is Middle Earth. We have no power here. Isn't that why we cloister ourselves in this castle. Who would stop him? The police?"

"He won't do that." Reese stared at Michelle , surprised after her friend confidently made this declaration. This was the first time Michelle had spoken. Reese hadn't expected to hear from her dearest friend, who rarely spoke up during these discussions, saving her thoughts for when she and Reese were alone.

Reese asked, "How do you know?"

Michelle's reached for her hand and and squeezed it reassuringly. "He's too good. He's a good, gentle, kind person, a selfless person, who would never be capable of doing that to someone, no matter how hurt or angry or broken he was."

Reese stared at her friend and felt calmer, even if only a bit. Smiling, Reese reached up to tuck her bangs behind her ears again, annoyed as they refused to stay, falling back into her eyes. She really needed to get a barrette for it.

"Reese, darling," Janine purred, "your hair is growing so quickly with the pregnancy. Why don't you come by my room tonight for a cut?" Janine had become the resident hairstylist. It wasn't something she'd done before, but her work in the fashion industry as a seamstress seemed to make her a natural at cutting hair.

"Oh, that's okay," Reese said, trying to sound nonchalant. "I'm growing it out."

Out of everything they'd discussed since she'd sat down at the table, this piece of news was comically the one that everyone found the most stunning. She glanced around the table in surprise at the four women who were staring at her open mouthed.

"You're growing your hair out?" Sarah repeated slowly, clearly not believing her words. "But you love your short hair. It's part of you, part of who you are."

Reese dropped her eyes to the table, uncomfortable with how vulnerable she suddenly felt, how even admitting that she hoped for a future with Kili made her feel insecure and scared. "Well, you know," she said, nervously tracing her finger over a crack in the wood of the table's surface, "I thought I might, because, well, you know, Gloin said that women in Erebor … well, I thought I should grow mine, you know ... just in case."

She risked a glance up at her friends and was surprised to see them smiling at her. She laughed nervously before asking them, "That's okay, right? I'm not giving up who I am if I do that, right?"

Reese was relieved when they all shook their heads and Sarah said, "No, I think it means you've changed even more than we all realized."

Her friends all smiled at her warmly, even Julie, and Reese felt her eyes prickle with happy tears. She didn't know what she'd done to deserve such love from these women. She noticed she wasn't the only one moved by the moment as Janine sniffed audibly. Reese reached over and hugged her friend close before changing the topic.

"So! I'm going to Bree in a few days. What does everyone want me to bring back?"