A/N: When last we left Sona she was about to embark on another adventure... only this time by choice!

Marisol: He certainly will be... something. ;) So glad you are enjoying the journey!

dearreader: Ahhhhh I'm super jelly! I miss DL!

LonanunielDurin: Glad you're able to bear the slow burn. As for who Galadriel was talking about... well, you shall see. All will be revealed in time.

And welcome to Rosmund Chadwick - thank you for all the reviews! So glad you're enjoying the story. :-)

I don't know where I'm goin'

But I sure know where I've been

Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday

An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time

Here I go again, here I go again

-Whitesnake

"Well I found myself alone," Sona sang to herself as she trotted up the switchbacks leading out of the Valley of Imladris.

"…hoping someone would miss me."

Arwen had pointed the way the Dwarves had gone, and with only an hour's head start Sona was confident she and Sasha could catch them before nightfall. Despite the fact that she pretty much hadn't slept the night before.

Worth it.

The next lyric to her song came to her, and she sang it between puffs of breath.

"Thinking about my home and the last man to kiss me…"

Well, they hadn't kissed, not even in the dream, and he wasn't a man technically in the Middle Earth sense, but the lyric worked and so…

Sasha, who up to that point had been bounding along excitedly next to Sona stiffened, and Sona barely grasped her collar in time and pulled her next to her to heel. She silenced the dog with a look and finger to her lips.

What had the lab heard? Surely orcs would not come this close to Rivendell. But then she remembered what had driven them to Rivendell's very doors, and Gandalf had said the dwarves were being hunted.

Straining her ears to hear what Sasha had picked up on, she edged toward the next switchback, ready to run at the first indication of danger.

"…on your guard, we're about to step over the Edge of the Wild."

Thorin!

"Balin, you know these paths, lead on."

A grin split Sona's face, and Sasha was tugging against her collar, setting Sona's bangles jangling against each other. The dog was more than eager to re-join their companions. How they'd caught up with the dwarves so quickly, Sona didn't know, and she didn't care. She let go of Sasha and pushed herself to her feet and rounded the switchback behind the dog, all smiles…

…And nearly walked directly into two dozen axes and swords pointed her way. The dwarves all immediately relaxed as soon as they realized it was her, but…

Why are they all staring at me? And now they're looking at Thorin, and oh crap…

That's when it clicked.

Just because she had decided to continue on with them for the time being it did not necessarily follow that Thorin had decided to allow her to come. He'd made it very clear at the start of the journey that she was not a part of his Company, and that she'd only traveled under the protection of Gandalf.

Granted, a lot had happened over the course of the last several weeks, and she thought that perhaps they'd developed a sort of tentative friendship.

But that didn't change the fact that he still hadn't explicitly said she could come along. And even when they'd briefly discussed it in Rivendell he'd said he thought she would still be coming along because she was traveling with Gandalf, and the wizard wasn't there so…

She stood there, nervously worrying her lower lip, gazing between the double columns of dwarves leading up to their leader.

Om Namah Shivaya

Thorin looked directly back at her, eyes hooded and his face an unreadable mask for the first time in what felt like forever to Sona.

Om Namah Shivaya

She swallowed thickly. He wasn't saying anything. Why wasn't he saying anything? He just kept staring at her with his brilliant blue eyes, and she felt caught, unable to move.

Om Namah Shiv—

"Lose someone, Thief?" One corner of his mouth tugged upward before he glanced back toward Imladris. She swallowed hard, beginning to think this had been a big mistake. She should have never—

"Wizard's late, but knows the way." Then he turned around and was walking back up the path behind Balin as if nothing of consequence had happened.

"Well in that case," Dwalin clapped her on the shoulder, welcoming her return, "we can go faster than the snail's pace he was keeping us at."

Fíli and Kíli were ecstatic she was back. Well, Fíli seemed more excited to have Sasha back, and based on how she was leaping up on him and licking his face as if she hadn't seen him in days instead of hours, it seemed the dog was happy to be reunited with him too.

The other dwarves all seemed happy enough to see her too—some more than others, though all were quite welcoming. Bofur had immediately demanded a song, so she'd taught him "The Song That Never Ends"* much to nearly everyone's horror (most especially Dori for some reason).

They'd finally paused for a quick lunch (apparently Thorin had rousted them and gotten them out of Rivendell before they'd had a chance for a proper breakfast). And of course Sona hadn't eaten since lunch the day prior, so she was definitely ready to stop for a bit.

As she tore into the fruit and nut filled honey bar Arwen had thoughtfully packed her, Dwalin sat down beside her, quite obviously chewing on a thick piece of deer jerky. He eyed her elven cloak and frowned.

"What happened to the one I gave you?"

"Oh!" Sona stuck the fruit bar in her mouth and turned to dig in her bag. "I know it's here somewhere." Though it sounded more like "Ah whoa ihh here homwhere." Finding it rolled up and tucked around David's urn near the top, she pulled it out, and handed it back to the dwarf.

His frown deepened and Sona had to stifle a laugh. It seemed Uncle Cranky-pants didn't like the idea of her in an elf made cloak.

Swallowing the bite of fruit bar, she gave him a wry smile. "Oh come on, don't be like that. I'd feel forever guilty if I had a cloak and you didn't. Besides," she nudged him with her shoulder, "I don't need another one of you guys to start calling me thief."

And she suddenly realized that no… no she didn't want that at all. She didn't want anyone but Thorin to call her thief. And that thought frightened her.

Dwalin grumbled something about wet kittens and pretentious elves under his breath, but took the cloak back regardless.

They ate in companionable silence for a few moments, Sona munching on her fruit bar, and Dwalin gnawing on his dried meat. The sun was high overhead, and the vista before them was stunning. Waving fields over rolling hills, with sharp mountains ringed in clouds behind them.

"I suppose those are the Misty Mountains?" Sona said around a mouthful of food.

Dwalin grunted his "yes" grunt and did not seem at all surprised that she'd deduced their direction of travel.

As for Sona, well, all she could think of was a certain fellowship climbing through there majestically. Well, the soundtrack in the background was majestic in any case. She found that very few people got to have the adjective majestic applied to them anymore.

She gave Thorin a sidelong glance.

He sat apart, as always, sharpening Orcrist and clearly impatient to be back on the road.

Sona sighed. It seemed that whatever progress they'd made in Rivendell on their friendship had disappeared just as soon as they were traveling again. But then, he was isolating himself from everyone… just like he'd done before, so she tried not to take it too personally.

Still, she had questions about things.

"Dwalin?"

"Hmm?" He continued to gnaw on his jerky.

"If it's not taboo to talk about… what's the dwarf stance on widows and widowers?" Sona swallowed the last of her fruit bar, and began licking her fingers clean of the sticky honey residue. "Because you all seem to have no qualms about taking to me about just about everything… but one mention of David or anything he gave me, and you all clam up and treat me like I've got some horrible disease or something, or… no, that's not quite right, what I mean is..."

She looked at Dwalin to find him frozen in the act of chewing, panic in his eyes as he looked for a way to escape the situation.

"That. What you're doing right now." She waved both her hands up and down in his direction. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. What is the deal? Would you please tell me so that I can at least stop causing awkwardness and stuff? Because if I don't know your beliefs, how can I respect them?"

Dwalin cast a glance toward Thorin, and Sona whipped her head over to see his response, but was too slow, because Dwalin began speaking:

"What you have to understand, lass, is dwarves only ever have a One."

A/N

*This is the song that never ends. It just goes on and on my friends. Some people started singing it not knowing what it was, and they'll continue singing it forever just because this is the song that never ends. It just goes on and on my friends…

I REGRET NOTHING