She's falling, Billana thinks in panic. She's falling and the world seems to slow as she realises that she doesn't want to die, she doesn't want to lose the new friends that she has come to care about so deeply. She shifts, forcing the change to happen as quickly as possible, feeling her wet clothes as they cling and twist around her shrinking body. Her wings tangle in soaked linen and she claws her way free. She chitters angrily as she finally emerges, her wings beating frantically at the air and her sensitive ears twisting to catch the echoes of her angry mutters. Not far below, almost too close, her wet clothes and heavy pack hit the ground with a muffled thump, her little sword clattering off stones and her bow makes a sickening crunch as a dislodged rock lands on it.
She lingers, squeaking and listening as she maps out her location. Bat eyes aren't very strong, but she doesn't need them to be in order to understand where she is. She is deep in a chasm in the mountain and from the sound map her mind is creating Billana is quickly realising that she was lucky to make the change at all. There are several protrusions of rock further up which would have killed her had she been caught on them.
Billana now has two choices. She can fly up to the rest of the Company and join them, or she can go down to her belongings and find an alternative route out of the mountain. Both have drawbacks. If she joins the Company as she is Billana will be left with no belongings; no clothes, no supplies, no weapons. She could survive just fine in animal form, but the longer she wears a form the more like that animal she becomes. She has come too close to that once; she doesn't want to repeat it. On the other hand, if she finds her way out alone, she might never meet up with the Company on the other side. They might come out somewhere else, or they may not escape at all.
They might escape and give her up for dead, though she doesn't want to believe that of any of them and especially Fili and Kili.
One thing that she does know is that there is no form she could take that would allow her to move her belongings back up the rock face. The largest bird she can become is a raven and even if she empties her pack of everything except her clothing, her sword and the miruvor it will still be too heavy. As a dog or badger she could carry everything she would need provided she repacked carefully, though she doubts the dark sight of any animal would be much good in the deep of the mountain.
Ultimately, she decides that it might be better to find her way out with some of her belongings. Once she is free of the mountain she will be able to contact the local wildlife and see if they know anything about the dwarves. If that fails she can hide her pack and venture back inside to see if she can discover the fate of her friends.
Billana lands near her belongings, chittering softly to find a soft place to land and tilting her head in confusion when she finds the shapes of broken arrows scattered around the echoes of a lake. What reason could the goblins have had to come this deep and then abandon a body of water? She pushes the question aside, it won't ever be answered and she has much larger problems at any rate. She doesn't bother dressing when she changes back to herself, though it is cold and damp the clothes will simply be a hinderance when it comes time to shift form again. If the goblins have been here, that means that there almost has to be a way out and that those passages will be of ample size for a skinny hobbit. She would still rather take animal form and get on with it rather than find that part of the tunnel has collapsed, and she will have to repack and shift in the middle of a narrow passage.
Her wet clothes are immediately discarded. She has a spare set rolled tightly at the bottom of her pack and while it would be nice to have more in case of emergency, she can only carry so much and isn't interested in soaking what she already has. She halves her food supplies, if it comes to it she can hunt as a fox or even a bat, though the changes are draining in themselves. She replaces them with the half-full water skin and her sword. She considers the miruvor for a moment, it will be an extra weight after all, then takes a quick sip. The exhaustion that had been eating at her as a result of her fall and change seems to vanish and the pain of her bruises lessens. She puts that in the pack as well, now understanding why the twins insisted she keep it close.
Her bow, when she finds it, is crushed and useless. Tears fill her eyes and her gut twists as she holds it tightly. As foolish as she knows that it is to be upset over such a thing, her bow was one of the first gifts that the twins had given her as a tween. It had seen her through any number of difficult months in the Shire and she knows it will be difficult to replace. She places it to one side gently, grabs her still damp coat and wraps it around the tiny bedroll she had been given and replaces it under the straps. The blankets are of elf make, remarkably warm, thin, light and quick drying.
Finally happy with her work she fiddles with the straps so that she can slide one over her head and shoulders, wriggling until it fits around her waist where she tightens it as much as she can. The other she fits around her neck, leaving it loose enough to take between her teeth. It won't be comfortable in the slightest, but it will stop the pack from shifting around too much. Then she closes her eyes and touches her magic.
When she opens them again, she sees the world around her in washed out greys, grainy even to her badger eyes. Still, she can see well enough, certainly more clearly in badger form than as a hobbit, and the size allows her to carry her pack, if a little clumsily. She shakes herself, fur uncomfortably damp in places from the pack, then snuffles around carefully for any clues about a way out. The goblin scent, when she finally finds it, is so old as to be almost gone, noticeable only because of the odd arrow, broken blade or scrap of cloth. She follows the trail they leave for a time, pausing only when the effects of the miruvor wear off to take a quick nap as exhaustion begins to gnaw at her again.
She doesn't rest for long, too concerned about finding a way out and discovering what has happened to her friends. She sets off again, glad of thick fur in the chill of the mountain. Hours pass, it almost feels like days, and gradually the sense of other animals begins to nudge at her mind. Bats, she realises, a large colony of them and she picks up her pace. For there to be bats there has to be an entrance to their cave somewhere.
-You will have to use the door the crawlers use- they tell her when she is finally able to make contact. -They stay by it day and night with metal that bites and flies-
-Not if you hurry - another adds. -Others came through the caves and killed the ones by the door. If you're quick you could be out before the new ones come-
She thanks the bats as she feels hope explode inside her. It can only have been the Company and she trots as fast as she can through the tunnels, now able to smell the fresher air ahead.
Her passageway is rough-hewn, a natural break inside the mountain that connects to a smoother passage that was cut through at some time in the distant past. It is where they join that she finds the remains, little more than a skeleton. The legs are bound by the rusted remains of a chain and its arms are stretched forward. One arm, she notes, is missing a hand and it is not the work of scavengers. The bones of the forearm have been shorn through well above the wrist. The way that the skull is placed, eyes facing the narrow opening, tells her that this creature was on its front when it passed, reaching for the exit. She wonders if it realised how close it had come to escape before its strength gave out and Billana makes a small noise of distress.
The bones should be buried, she thinks, but there is no time and no place to do so. Nor will she be able to come back for them, this place is too dangerous. She offers up a quick prayer to Vána, and the dwarves Mahal since the remains are too small to have belonged to elf, Man or goblin, then she shuffles by sadly.
Sunlight, the deep orange of sunset, is visible through the door that the dwarves have left open and she hurries towards it, their scents thick in her nose and, if she concentrates, she can pick out all the little bits that make up Fili, Kili and Balin. They, at least, are alright and she tries to move faster, growing increasingly frustrated with the pack and her short legs.
When she bursts outside the first thing she does is take several lungs full of cool, clean air and enjoy the evening sun on her fur. The she shudders and pauses to think. She could change back now, take the time to dress and track the others down, but she would lose time and the ability to follow their scent. Or she could become a hound and follow on far fleeter feet than she has now. She dislikes changing form so many times, though she has the magical reserves shifting depletes them almost as quickly as healing does. She is surprised to find that her worry is not that the dwarves will all know what she can do and that it means she will lose her advantage if she needs to get away. Her worry is, in fact, that if she hesitates for much longer she will lose them, and any future home, entirely. She never wants to run. She never wants to lose them.
So she decides to shift again.
She does so carefully, mindful of the pack and the fact that it doesn't sit as well on the slender form of one of Farmer Maggot's hounds as it does the bulk of a badger. The change means that she can move more quickly, as annoying as the bounce of the pack is and the way that it pulls her off balance, and she covers the distance more rapidly than she had hoped.
Their voices reach her before she sees them.
"We have to go back!" She hears Kili first.
"It is unlikely she survived the fall," Thorin replies. "And even if she did every goblin in that mountain is between us and her. They will be on us in moments and we are no good to her dead."
"There has to be some way," Fili insists. "Something we can do to tell her where we are or where to meet us, she'll find a way out."
"Not without giving away our location to every one of the enemies on our heels," Thorin disagrees.
She whines, picking up the pace until she is flat out running, coming around a clump of bushes to find the Company gathered with Gandalf. Fili and Kili have their backs to her, standing defiantly in front of Throin. The rest are muttering between themselves, seemingly ignorant of her presence, while Gandalf leans heavily on his staff with his head bowed. She whines again, a little bit louder and moves further forward so that she can press between her friends. The princes pause in their angry demands to look down.
"Billana?" Kili breathes, then laughs in delight when she barks and wags her tail. She almost jumps up to lick his face, not caring that it would be a forward display of affection, but the strap in her mouth prevents it. Fili is oddly silent, and when she turns to look at him, she can see tears in his eyes.
"I thought I asked you not to do that to me again, Kitten," he mutters, an odd note in his voice.
She wants to wrap her arms around him and apologise over and over, but she has no intention of turning back into herself just yet with so many eyes on her. So, instead, she does the next best thing, turning into the cat that both of them know so well and leaping into his arms, abandoning her pack on the ground so that she can rub her cheek against his in apology and reassurance.
"Would one of you like to explain what in Durin's name is going on?"
A.N: So, I think it would be fair to warn you all that at some point in the next few days I will go quiet. Christmas is coming, which means that my mummy fu has to be on point to organise everything as perfectly as possibly for my cherubs (although the youngest more resembles an orc at the moment.). I know I just had a break, and that I've been good with the daily updates, but it's that time of year my lovelies.