Chapter 161

In Search of Guidance

There are a few things the stories would always like you to believe: that when victory is finally achieved, all troubles are over, that people change for the better because of everything they've been through and that there are never any loose ends left untied.

They are so, so wrong.

I had already seen with my own eyes that not all the troubles ended after the war. Victory had not restored the dead to life. It stubbornly refused to rebuild homes and erase scars. In Erebor the food supplies were still a somewhat delicate business and were likely to continue to remain so for a few years at least.

People don't always change for the better. Some people don't change at all. Others find themselves in a worse place at the end than they were at the start. Of course, there are people who do change for the better, who come out better than they went in. Thráin is a shining example of this. Most of our Fellowship were the same. In some parts I might even apply that to myself, although my stilted interactions with Harry were telling me that character development was still lacking in one very important department.

I don't think either of us knew how to behave around the other anymore. With Helm and Freda it was simple. I had been a caregiver of some sort from the first. My role in their lives had increased, but the role I played had been consistently the same. That was no longer the case with Harry. Yes, I was his mother, but I suspected that I had now officially crossed a line, where I had been absent in his life more than I was present in it. Mary had warned me and I hadn't listened.

So here we were, each one of us a loose end in the life of the other.

I lay awake for hours that night, tossing and turning and grasping at straws. What I needed was guidance, but there was none to be had. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a book to reach for, even if only because that would give me the feeling that I was making headway in obtaining answers…

Duria

So what now?

Duria had lost count of the number of times she had thought that. She had also lost count of the times that she had realised that she didn't have an answer to that question, or at least not one that she liked.

It was one thing knowing that she was in the wrong, but quite another to go out and do something useful about it. She had treated both Peter and Flói unfairly – and in the case of Flói she had crossed so many lines that she had lost count of those too – but it was so much easier admitting to that here in the dark than it was in the light of day and to the faces of those she'd so intentionally hurt.

What has become of me?

The answer to that followed right on its heels: I don't know.

It was not an encouraging thought.

So she had come here, following in Thoren's footsteps at last, seeking counsel of the dead. I may have gone mad at least if I now believe that they have any insight to offer me. She stared up at the statues guarding the entrance to the reassembled tombs, but the stone faces had no words for her. Good likenesses though they were, in life neither of her parents had ever been so still. Well, her father had been, sometimes, when he was absolutely seething with rage.

That wasn't an encouraging thought either, so she had relocated to Jack's tomb, looking at the statue until she could do so without flinching. Not an easy feat, as her eyes kept disobeying her commands, either blurring or burning. There were even tears at some point, but alone in the dark there was none to see, so she could pretend they weren't there.

'I'm surprised to find you here.'

She leaped to her feet and turned around only to find that it was Thráin.

He danced out of reach of the punch she intuitively aimed at him. 'That was not the welcome I was expecting either,' he complained. 'Maker be good, Duria, I'm not an orc in case you were wondering.'

'I know you are not,' she said, almost instinctively. She gave him the quick onceover. 'You look… well.'

'I look like I have nourished myself on elf bread only for some time,' Thráin corrected. 'It's not wholesome, I tell you.'

As if she had any doubt about that. 'Elvish diets aren't good for our people.' Although he probably found that out the hard way.

Other than that, she meant her earlier observation; he did look well. Yes, he had more grey hair than he had when he set out, but on him it looked good. He had more scars too, but unlike Thoren he bore them like they were an old coat he'd grown comfortable with. There was such life in him still in a way Thoren no longer seemed capable of.

He ignored that. 'I didn't see you at the feast last night,' he observed.

No, because she had not been there. She had been here, sitting in the dark, thinking thoughts that belonged in such a place. Narvi had been wise enough to her ways to know that she needed the time to think, so beyond making sure she had food and water he had not bothered her. And thank Mahal that Cathy had enjoyed the festivities too much to notice Duria's absence. She would have never let her be otherwise.

And she had no need for worry; I am not going mad.

Not in that sense of the word at least.

'I was not well,' she told Thráin.

Maker only knew what he made of that. It seemed likely that he made nothing of it at all, because he sat down and helped himself to the last of her water. Typical. He was barely home and he was already getting on her nerves again.

'That was mine.'

'You weren't drinking it.'

That was almost a fair point.

He distracted her quickly enough. 'So, how have you been?'

'Well.' It was a lie, but she didn't think she could bear for him to know just how low she had fallen. At least not yet. Of course Cathy might well have got to him already, but for some reason she didn't think her sister would stoop so low. It was not in her nature.

'Hm.'

'What?' she demanded.

'Only I heard some odd tale from Flói,' he said.

Oh.

'About what happened yesterday, when you met Peter.'

As if she didn't realise that. 'I am not going mad,' she said, because it was important to say that. She had tasted of that cup and it was a flavour she did not particularly care to taste again.

'Didn't say you were.' Thráin shrugged. 'Only that it was a little odd.'

Sha sat down next to him, deflated. 'I was taken unawares. I mean, Cathy said that he looked like Jack, but I never imagined… Not like that.'

She saw him wince almost invisibly at the mention of Jack's name and realised that for him the grief was fresher than it was for her.

'Peter is not Jack, Duria,' Thráin said, which made her want to punch him on principle. She knew that. Rationally she knew that and she didn't have to be reminded. 'And if you spent more than a few minutes with him, you'd know that. Flói knows it too, in case you were wondering.'

She had known that too, on some level at least.

'What do you want me to say?'

'Nothing specific.' Thráin shrugged again. 'What happened to you, Duria? You have never let an opportunity slide to lecture me about everything and nothing. Why were you not there yesterday to tell me off for being so reckless and all the other things you so enthusiastically and regularly take me to task for?'

'You never listen,' she pointed out. There was no sense in wasting her breath on a lost cause. He had never listened when he was only Thráin, so it stood to reason he was not going to listen now that he was also Durin.

He had a reply to that. 'That has never stopped you before.'

It hadn't. 'I'm tired,' she said. Cathy had accused Thoren of being war weary, and he was. But she reckoned that there were a lot of folk, some of whom had not done any fighting, who were war weary too, just in different ways. And last night, alone with her thoughts, she realised that perhaps she was one of them.

'And mourning?'

When had he got so wise? 'Are you?' she asked. From the little she'd seen of him since his return – which wasn't more than a few glimpses – she couldn't have told. Then again, he had always hidden what was in his heart from the world beyond.

Her question was answered with a barely visible nod. 'Aye, I am.' He closed his eyes. 'I wonder sometimes, if…'

He didn't finish that sentence, but she heard him loud and clear. 'I don't reckon it would have made a difference.' She had thought about that one long and hard and come to the same conclusion every time. 'He would have gone out and not even you could have persuaded him otherwise.'

'I could have fought at his side.'

'And then you might have died.' She didn't want to think about the implications of that. 'We will never know what may have happened.'

'So why are you here in the dark, then?'

Durin's stinking… Oh, Mahal save her! Caught by her own words. That was not much like him at all. 'You have grown entirely too elvish in your ways!'

Thráin laughed in genuine mirth. 'I am sure the elf would love to hear it.'

She meant to ask which elf, but quickly thought better of it. There was only one he could mean, having travelled all the way to Mount Doom with him. It had to be Thranduil's son.

'It would cheer him mightily after his kin accused him of having grown dwarvish in his ways,' Thráin added.

Huh.

'So, what are you doing here, Duria?' If she had any hope that he would let this go, she was mistaken. 'Cause it seems to me that this,' he made an encompassing arm gesture, 'is handing Sauron his victory on a silver platter. Gift-wrapped too.'

She swivelled around to stare at him in disbelief. 'What?' How dare he make a mockery of this!

Wisely, he leaned back. Wiser still, he explained: 'If we live as though we have died with the fallen, then what victory have we achieved?'

She blinked at him.

So he explained some more: 'It is not enough to vanquish our foe; we have to vanquish all that he sought to do to us. So we must live, we must thrive and we must take from him all that he took from us.'

It was an insight into the workings of his mind that she had never been granted before. She saw him so much clearer now. The last missing pieces of the puzzle fell into place: 'That is why you must go to Khazad-dûm, is it not? To take back what was taken and to thrive there?'

He inclined his head and then got to his feet. 'Don't spend your days mourning, Duria. It is what Sauron would have wanted. And Mahal only knows what Jack would have made of this.'

He made sure to disappear as quickly as he had come before she could take his head off on principle.

It was even worse because he was right and worse still, because for the first time in their lives he actually sounded like the older and the sensible one, when that had always been her. And, the very worst thing of all, he sounded wise. Not in the way of wizards, which was more drivel than useful wisdom, nor in the way of the elves, which was so enigmatic no one but an elf could ever make heads or tails of it.

No, this was their people's wisdom and he delivered it with dignity and authority.

I don't know him as well as I thought. The only thing she could still take comfort in was that Cathy had been as wrong about him as she had been.

Much as it was her natural instinct to think twice – and then another time, just to be on the safe side – before following any request Thráin made of her, she couldn't really deny that he was right and that, to give credit where it was due, she had been exactly as foolish as Flói accused her of being.

The solution was something she would rather not do, but if she wallowed here any longer, she'd never find the courage to do so again, so it really was now or never. Her first order of business was to track down where her mannish relatives had been housed. Fortunately she ran into Kíli two streets away and asked.

'Jack's old place,' her cousin replied cheerfully. The cheer slipped almost right away when he saw how angry that made her, so he added: 'Well, it's got a man-sized bed, doesn't it?'

She pointed out the flaw in his reasoning: 'Many of our guest quarters have man-sized beds.'

'Not that man-sized. Have you seen him, Duria? He's easily as tall as Jack was and then some.' He gave her a scrutinising stare. 'And we all know that Jack stood taller than most men.'

As if she needed reminding. Yes, it was a good and practical solution. That didn't mean she had to like it, did she?

She said as much to Kíli and then marched off to do battle with her ghosts before he could summon up some witty retort that would make it quite hard for her to not give him a well-deserved wallop.

She knew the way by heart. She could have walked there in her sleep. Since Jack's death she had of course not been there. I wish he was housed elsewhere. But he wasn't and she had made up her mind to go and see him now.

If I do not do this today, I won't do it tomorrow. This much she knew.

It was therefore best that she did not give herself any time to think this through. For once she should strive to model her conduct on that of her younger sister, who breezed through life and conjured solutions and small talk out of thin air. Or at least she did before I forced her to take up my role.

Another thing to feel guilty about.

Guilt, as so often, translated into anger – though with whom she was angry she could not say – so she pounded on the door with unnecessary force. And then she did it again, just for good measure.

'All right, all right, hold your horses, I'm coming!'

The response was some time in coming, but when it did come it sounded rather annoyed. With not a little embarrassment Duria realised that she had not actually checked what the hour was. Just because Thráin was up didn't mean everyone else was. He was always awake before the sun rose. Peter might not be.

There were some muffled noises from within and a not so muffled curse when the occupant ran into a piece of furniture, but eventually the door was unlocked and she was face to face – or rather face to navel – with Jack's spitting image, albeit one that had his hair sticking out at odd angles and that was dressed in only a hastily put on robe.

It wasn't any easier the second time, but she stopped herself from flinching, so she counted that a win.

Peter stared at her rather bleary-eyed. 'Good… morning?'

'So it is.' Or so she rather hoped at least. 'May I come in?'

The request was met initially by an excessive amount of blinking, but then he nodded. 'Yeah, sure, come in.' He stepped aside, allowed her to pass and closed the door behind her. 'Sorry, I only just got up. Ehm, can I offer you something? Mary brought coffee the other day, so there is that and I'm sure I've seen a teabag somewhere…' He scratched behind his ear as if that would unlock the memory.

'I do not know what coffee is,' Duria was forced to admit.

Far from taking this as an insult, Peter's face lit up like a child's on Durin's Day. 'Well, then you simply have to try it,' he announced and set off for the kitchen. 'Ah, yes, there's coffee and there's water, so we've got the main components covered. Now a pan to heat the water, yes I've got that too. This is encouraging.'

It occurred to Duria that she had never yet met someone who could outtalk her. She rather thought she had found him now.

Peter poked his head out of the kitchen just as she perched awkwardly on the sofa she used to sit on without even thinking about it. 'I was going to ask if you like your coffee sweet, but then I remembered that you've never drunk it before, so that'd be a bit of a stupid question to ask, so I'm just going to plonk the sugar on the table and you can spoon in as much as you want, or don't want. Whatever you want.' He scratched the back of his head again. 'I think that sentence got away from me. Sorry about that.'

He disappeared again.

I do not know how to do this.

Some time passed while Peter prepared the mysterious brew known as coffee. On any other day Duria would be bursting with excitement and curiosity at the thought of something so new and outlandish, but right now she was only fighting the urge to get up and run out the door.

Eventually he came back in with two cups of a dark, steaming brew, one of which he handed to her. He clutched the other as though his life depended on it. 'It's probably very hot,' he warned when Duria brought her cup to her lips.

It was. And the taste was interesting. And quite strong. She rather thought she liked it, even though she probably burned her lips and tongue a little. 'It's good,' she told her host, which made him grin some more.

'So, what brings you here so early?' Peter asked when he too was sitting down.

It was now or never. 'I came here to apologise,' Duria said before she could lose her courage. 'I wronged you when we met and that was ill done.'

He waved her apology away. 'Nah, it's fine. Really,' he stressed when he noticed that Duria was about to object. 'I mean, I've been getting the stares a lot and I get it. I mean, I never met your brother, but if everyone keeps telling me I look like him, well, it must be true. So, no harm done and I'll just stay out of your way for a bit. How's that?'

She was shaking her head even before he was done, because she had come here to make this right. She had not come here to make a mess of this again. 'No, that is not right. My aunt, I think, was wiser in this.' As she was in quite a number of things. And so was Flói, loath though she was to admit to that. And she owed him an apology too. He would never let her live that down. 'For she looked on you and saw you. In doing so she judged you on your own merit. I looked on you and saw my brother. This was a mistake, for you are not him, alike though you are. So I should like to erase that encounter and start anew, if you are amenable.'

Peter contemplated this for barely a second – if that – before he put his cup down on the table and rose to his feet, rubbing his hands in what she thought was probably anticipation. Somewhat confused by this turn of events, she rose as well.

'In that case,' said Peter, holding out his right hand towards her, 'I am Peter Andrews and can I just say what a pleasure it is to meet you?'

Duria understood then. She gave herself a good mental kick in the behind, then reached out and took the proffered hand. 'And I am Duria, daughter of Thorin,' she returned as Peter shook the hand with as much vigour as he could muster. 'At your service.'

Peter grinned at her in delight and somewhere, deep down, a tiny fraction of her heart began to heal.

Beth

When the sun peeked in through the curtains Beth accepted that sleep wasn't going to happen for her that night. It wasn't that she hadn't tried. On the contrary, she had put her head down on the pillow with the kind of determination that would do a dwarf proud. Evidently, she was not a dwarf, because it had not worked.

By the time she worked that out it was quite a long way past midnight and although her body was exhausted, her mind kept spinning at the speed of light, her thoughts going round and round like clothes in a washing machine.

She couldn't put Harry out of her mind, Harry and all things associated with him. There was the reunion to analyse and dissect in its entirety, their conversations to be scrutinised in its smallest detail with special relevance assigned to tone of voice and body language. And once she had finished all of that she brought her own failings in motherhood out in a lengthy parade, lingering over each exhibit with the single-minded focus she always brought to her research projects. That last bit took up quite a bit of time.

And the conclusions of her research were not encouraging in the least.

Boromir was still asleep and had indeed been for most of the night. Part of her was not a little angry that he could sleep so easily when she was in such distress, but the more sensible part prevailed in the end, reminding her that there was nothing he could do to help her with this anyway and that it made far more sense if at least one of them was actually awake the next day.

She got out of bed and tip-toed over to first Helm and then Freda, both of whom were also still asleep. They had wrung every last bit of enjoyment out of last night's celebrations and were absolutely worn out after. But both of them were smiling in their sleep and that was good enough.

She left them to it.

She got dressed, wrote a little note, which she left on the kitchen table, and then went out. Where she was going was as of yet undecided, but so long as she stuck to the main roads, she probably wouldn't get lost. And if she did, there were enough people around who could presumably point her in the right direction again.

I wish I could run, she thought. The roads of Erebor weren't suitable for it, with so many people hurrying to and fro, many with equipment and tools in their hands. Others were dragging carts around, piled high with wares for selling or tools for repair works. I'd run into someone.

Then it occurred to her that she could always go outside and run around there. If she stayed within sight of the people clearing things up, she'd be fine. And there was at least one upside to the fact that the orcs had burned everything down; she'd see an orc coming from miles away. She'd be back inside the Mountain long before any potential pursuer caught her up.

Beth more or less remembered the way back to the Gate and her memory didn't let her down. Even at this early hour people were going in and out, some to the farming lands to the north and others to the place where apparently Dale had once been. She squinted and tried to see even a sign or some rubble that indicated that it had indeed been there.

There was nothing.

So she ran and in some ways that helped. At least it translated all her restless energy into something slightly more productive. Not that she thought she should do this for very long now that she was pregnant, so she'd keep it brief.

Too brief, all things considered, because when she arrived back at the Gates all her problems were still waiting for her and nothing had been solved. She still didn't know what to do about her Harry-shaped problem and as tempted as she was to put her foot down and demand that she took him back as soon as she could, on some level she also knew that if she did that, Harry would resent her for the rest of his life.

What do I do?

For once she almost wished she could talk to Mary and at least bounce some ideas off her even if she never ended up using any. So of course Mary had buggered off for the rest of the week and by the time she returned she would definitely expect Beth to have come up with a plan. Otherwise there would be Looks. And Opinions. Loud ones.

The restlessness returned with a vengeance.

How had Kate done any of this? How had she ever made those hard decisions at the end of her quest? True, they weren't the same sort of decisions, but they had the same weight. They determined the rest of her life. They determined what kind of life she was going to lead. Right now, Beth would have given an arm and a leg for some decent advice. Another dreamland chat with Kate would have been preferable and who knows, that might have happened if she had been able to fall asleep at all last night.

Beth was quite put out by her own failure in that department all of a sudden.

So in the absence of Kate herself, perhaps her son would do. Beth ran into Thráin only a few streets away from the Gates, coming up a staircase she was pretty sure she had to go down.

'Good morning, Beth,' he greeted her. 'Morning run?' he guessed.

Beth nodded. 'Just a short one. I didn't really care for the view.' Realising too late that he was more than capable of taking this the wrong way, she added: 'Like it is now, at least.'

He inclined his head in acknowledgement. 'You are up early,' he observed, rather than comment on her lack of tact.

Beth was not someone who liked to share everything with just everyone. Normally she would not have shared this even with Thráin. But the restlessness was urging her on and by now she was so desperate for some decent advice that she blurted it all out before she could think better of it. The words tumbled out of her mouth in a waterfall that apparently took Thráin completely by surprise. But he was silent and he listened.

He's a better friend than I probably deserve.

At last Beth had talked herself out. Her throat was dry and her eyes were burning, but she had said it all. At some point during the proceedings they had moved the one-way conversation to a low wall, so that they could sit down next to each other and, more to the point, that she could avoid looking Thráin in the eye as she made her way meticulously through all her failings as a mother.

That took a bit of time.

By the end of the whole thing she felt so embarrassed that she couldn't bear to look him in the eyes. Goodness knew what he made of her now.

Unsurprisingly Thráin needed a few moments to digest all of that. So Beth sat on her hands and stared at the floor to avoid looking at his face.

'You say it is guidance you require?' he asked at last. It wasn't a judgement – in some way Beth might almost have preferred that – but an honest question.

She nodded. 'More than anything.'

Her mouth dropped open in sheer astonishment when Thráin actually began to laugh. 'Maker be good, Beth, have you learned nothing?'

She invited him to explain himself.

He did, although the whole thing remained annoyingly funny to him. 'After everything we have seen and done, you would still seek some means that would give you knowledge? You would still base your decisions on what someone told you? I rather thought that you understood how to make up your own mind without help.'

Only because keeping to the book had turned out to be a bust. 'That doesn't mean all sources of knowledge should be disregarded. Not everything is like that bloody book, you know.'

'And thank Mahal for that.' Because if things had been a bit messy and unplanned at Beth's end, it had been far, far worse where Thráin was concerned. Then again, Mr I'll-just-put-on-the-bloody-One-Ring-to-distract-a-Nazgûl was hardly the innocent party in that. 'So, what is it that you are truly after?'

Well, a chat with your mum would be nice. If only she had known at the beginning of the quest how wrong she had been about Kate Andrews, she might have done a few things rather differently. I might have run screaming for the hills, for starters.

'I wish I knew.'

Thráin heard what she didn't say: 'It's my mother's writings you want, isn't it?'

'Now that you mention it…'

He grimaced. 'I've nothing against you reading her tale, if that's what you want.'

'But?' Because there was a definite but in this thing somewhere.

'I don't think it'll be of much use to you.'

Beth rather vehemently disagreed. 'It's not like the book, you know. I'm not looking for knowledge about the future.' It took her a while to learn sometimes, but that did not mean that she didn't learn. If anything, she was very glad that she had given the book away to Elvaethor. If she never saw it again, it would be too soon. 'I'm… trying to learn from the past, from your mother.'

Thráin knew well enough how much Beth had once looked down on Kate and all that she had done, so quite naturally he stared at her in unflattering disbelief. For once he couldn't think of a single thing to say.

Beth pre-empted him before he could: 'Yeah, I know, I know. I was wrong about that as well. People can change their minds, you know.'

'Yes, I know,' said the one who himself had changed his mind about quite a lot of things recently. He shook his head as though to shake away his confusion. 'I still cannot see how reading her account would solve this, Beth. The situations are nothing alike.'

Yes, she knew that, thank you very much. 'Not exactly,' she said.

With her it was not a matter of remaining in this world or going back to England. In some ways Beth had found that whole process easier, and easier still because she wasn't giving up her family in the process. But Kate had faced life-changing decisions when she first came to this world and getting a closer insight in her thought-processes might help Beth make hers. Kate had said it herself: that she hadn't written out all her thoughts in the letters she sent to her brother. However, Beth expected that she had been a little more expansive in her memoirs.

And now she couldn't wait to get her hands on that. Given that Thráin so far had not outright refused her made her cautiously optimistic.

So she pressed her point: 'But she had to make some pretty big decisions in the wake of her quest and in some ways our situations and experiences are eerily similar. I'd… like to know how she chose as she did, if that makes sense.'

Thráin did not seem at all convinced. 'You are not her, as you've so often reminded me.' He didn't say so, but on some level Beth sensed that she had gone down in his esteem because of this request.

Beth grimaced and forced out another admission she did not particularly like to make: 'Well, that's just another thing I was wrong about.' She took a deep breath. 'That's the problem, isn't it? Just when I think I am getting the hang of this whole Middle Earth business and somehow combining two very different worlds, I mess it up and I realise that I just don't know what to do or how to go about solving it. But then I realised that maybe I don't have to re-invent the wheel over and over again, because your mother has done it all before.' She avoided his eyes every inch of the way for the last admission: 'And she has done it quite a bit better than I gave her credit for.'

And some things she may have done better than Beth, although that was one admission too many. She'd said quite a lot of things she maybe didn't want to say and that she certainly wouldn't have said if she'd had any sleep last night. Or maybe it's the pregnancy hormones wreaking havoc. Always an easy scapegoat should she need one.

Thráin pondered this for a while. 'I don't think it will offer what you need,' he reiterated. 'But neither will we know for sure until you have tried it.' He rose to his feet. 'Come, walk with me and we shall fetch it.'

'You know where it is?' Words could not describe how quickly she jumped to her feet when he said that.

'Thoren has the original,' Thráin replied, setting off at a brisk pace in a direction that Beth was reasonably sure was not going to lead them to Thoren's place. 'But my uncle Ori has taken it upon himself to make copies. One of those is in his keeping. We shall go to him.'

For the merest fraction of a second Beth was annoyed that she was not going to get her hands on the original after all, but she bit down on that. She had already asked for something incredibly private. She'd be pushing her luck – and the last reserves of Thráin's patience with her – if she pushed this any further.

So she followed him, waited outside the library when he told her to, and hung around for about fifteen minutes in an empty corridor while he retrieved it. He was away for such a long time that she almost started to believe that he had ditched her, but then he returned with a very thick tome bound in leather.

Beth's heart skipped a beat in anticipation.

It wasn't just that she believed that this thing held the answers, but she was also writer, and a bit of a nosy one at that. Poking around in other people's documents always got her excited. So maybe I haven't entirely lost my touch after all.

It was an encouraging thought.

The old me is still knocking around in there somewhere.

Beth held out her hands and Thráin put the book in them. It was surprisingly heavy. I've got history in my hands. Oh, she couldn't have stopped herself from smiling even if she tried.

'You remind me increasingly of Duria,' Thráin observed. 'It can't be wholesome to be so… enthusiastic about a book.'

She had yet to meet this Duria, but from the sounds of her, Beth liked her already. 'I'm a writer,' she told Thráin, ignoring the fact that she had done no writing whatsoever in the past year. 'I'm supposed to react like this to new information.'

'It's not new to you.' Thráin shook his head, but it was amused exasperation this time, not bewildered judgement, so she'd take it. 'You've heard the tale many times now.'

'But I've never read it in her own words,' Beth reminded him. 'This is different.'

He didn't seem to see that. 'If you say so, I shall take your word for it. I know little of these things.'

It occurred to Beth that she had skipped an important part in this exchange. 'Thank you,' she told him, meaning every word. 'I mean it, this means a lot.'

For a moment it seemed as though he was fully intent on waving her thanks away, but then he changed his mind and inclined his head instead. 'You are welcome, Beth,' he said. 'Although I remain doubtful that it can be of use to you.'

Well, he said himself that he was not a scholar, so what did he know? 'We shall see,' Beth said, certain that she was right and he was wrong. 'We shall see.'

Next time: the epilogue. Decisions have to be made.

Thank you so much for reading. As always, reviews would make my day.

Until Friday!