Tauriel was taken aback to see a dwarf in the next town: she and Fíli had not seen any of his kin since the mountain. Few came to the southern reaches of Gondor, and those few they had avoided. Perhaps it had been long enough. She knew Fíli missed his mother - she knew too that he seemed to feel he could not go back, as if losing Kíli meant he was banned forever.

When Fíli went to the innkeeper to see about a room for the night, and more importantly a bath, she slid onto the bench across from the unfamiliar dwarf.

"Where do you hail from?" Tauriel asked.

They eyed her warily. Tauriel still could not tell the difference on site between male and female dwarves, but to dwarves it only mattered in very specific circumstances.

"Ered Luin," she said. "There is a settlement, beholden to the Lady Dís. If you do not come from there, do you have news of it?"

"I know the place," they said slowly.

"My companion seeks news," Tauriel said.

"What news of Lady Dís could the companion of an elf seek?" the dwarf asked, the corner of their mouth curling into a tiny sneer.

"He has been long from home," Tauriel continued, ignoring the sneer and gesturing behind her. The dwarf looked in spite of themselves, and squinted dubiously at Fíli.

"If he is your companion I believe it," they said finally.

Tauriel levelled an unimpressed look at them as Fíli turned and saw her chosen seat. He frowned at her, but she raised her eyebrows and jerked her head, indicating the spot beside her.

As Fíli sat beside her, widower's braid clearly visible, the other dwarf started, bowing their head and touching their heart as if in reflex. "Sorrow for your spouse," they said gruffly.

"Accepted," Fíli said, still eying Tauriel.

"But news of Lady Dís - we don't just tell anyone," they explained.

"My sister wishes only to know she is well," Fíli said. "She has a highly developed sense of familial obligation."

Tauriel kicked him in the ankle, and he grimaced and excused himself to fetch ale.

"Your friend is gold-touched," the dwarf said when Fíli was far enough away not to hear, touching their own hair. "It's lucky."

"I suggest you tell him that to his face," Tauriel said, thinking of Fíli's dreams. They were similar to hers, sometimes: battles and screaming and Kíli and Morwinyon dead a hundred ways. Other times they were dark, as if he was in an endless night without stars, with only silence for company. He was not sure, he told her, which ones were worse. "He could use a laugh."

The dwarf shook their head. "Elves always think about things like it's about them. He isn't lucky. He's lucky for other people."

"Perhaps do not tell him to his face," Tauriel said after a moment of consideration. "That might upset him."

The dwarf shook their head again. "Lady Dís settlement is no more. All who lived there went to Erebor and Dain." With a short, nervous look at Fíli's back, the dwarf added, "I would not take your brother back there, were I you."

"Thank you for the advice," Tauriel said, and the dwarf left after scattering a few coins on the table. She realized she had not caught their name.

"Tauriel," someone said, and she knew she dreamed even as she turned to see one of Thranduil's councilors.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Morwinyon has been somewhat out of sorts," he said, looking uncomfortable. "I know it is not your job, but she does seem to like you, and Legolas is away."

Not for the first time, Tauriel wondered why no one went to Thranduil with this. Also not for the first time, she pictured the reactions of everyone involved if that happened: Morwinyon awkwardly yearning and therefore standoffish, Thranduil awkwardly yearning and therefore standoffish. Tauriel would end up dealing with tears after the inevitable prideful stare-down. She knew for a fact their family dinners often consisted of both of the others speaking to Legolas, sometimes managing the whole meal without speaking to each other.

"I will visit her," she promised, and went to request an afternoon's leave from the Captain.

He looked at her for a long enough moment that she had to work not to shift uncomfortably. "Did the princess ask for you?"

"No," Tauriel said. "I don't believe she's been out of her rooms since her brother left."

The captain sighed. "The girl has her mother's face and her father's temperament, and there's her brother with the opposite. His sulks, at least, are short-lived."

"I would not call it sulking," Tauriel demurred, though really she wanted to decry the comparison to either parent, and the captain snorted.

"Whose?"

"Well," she temporized. "Morwinyon probably just needs some fresh air. Or exercise. Or a purpose."

He grinned. "Like someone else I could name. Go. Consider it blanket permission unless told otherwise, and keep in shape. I've no use for scouts who can't keep up."

She blinked at him.

He rolled his eyes. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to deal with him when the princess is making her displeasure known? Pray for a plague on spiders and content sindar, Tauriel. Anything outside of those is easily handled."

Tauriel considered the door in front of her. It was locked, but the tray outside was empty, which meant Morwinyon was eating. That was an excellent sign; she knew that the girl was sometimes not hungry through either will or melancholy (or will because of melancholy). Those were the worst times.

She knocked.

"I do not want counsel," Morwinyon snapped from within. "I do not want tutors, either. You may tell my father I sent you away or you may try to lecture me through the door, but I will not listen."

"Would you send a friend away as well?" Tauriel asked.

The door opened with a swiftness Tauriel could hardly credit, and she had a sudden armful of gangly-limbed not-quite-grown elf. Someday Morwinyon would grow into her long legs and bony arms, but this was not that day. Tauriel winced as an elbow knocked into her ribs.

"I would never send a friend away," the princess said into her shoulder. After a moment she drew back and collected herself. "I thought you were busy?"

"I have been granted leave," Tauriel said instead of answering directly, allowing Morwinyon to tow her into the suite by the hand. The room was a little chilly, as it always seemed to be, the fire unlit though there was wood stacked neatly near the fireplace. The bed, visible through a half-open door, was made but not to perfection and despite that it looked like it hadn't been slept in. The window seat on the other hand had a blanket slowly sliding from it to the floor, obviously thrown off in haste. The breeze that slipped in through the open window would have made Tauriel shiver if she had not been so on guard against any signs of Díscomfort already.

Morwinyon noticed anyway. "Oh, I'm sorry." She dropped Tauriel's hand to close the casement.

"You are not cold?"

"I've blankets aplenty, and the weather's not bad."

Tauriel shook her head at her and settled on the window seat. "What holds your attention here?" she did not add princess. Neither Morwinyon nor Legolas liked it when she called them by their titles.

"Outside." Morwinyon shrugged. "Usually I can see you and the other scouts leave – I have a good view of the bridge if I lean out. I watched Legolas ride out last month."

"You could have come down to bid him farewell," Tauriel said mildly.

Morwinyon ducked her head. "I bid him well the night before. He did not ask me to come in the morning."

"You did not ask me to come, and I am here. And I believe you welcome it."

"You are always welcome!" Morwinyon exclaimed, her eyes wide.

"I think you are always welcome, in your brother's case," Tauriel told her gently.

"You think so?" Tauriel would not have thought the girl's eyes could grow wider, but they had.

"I do," Tauriel said firmly. "And I know you would be welcome outside these rooms by others."

"Why bother?" Morwinyon muttered. Her face fell abruptly from wide, wondering eyes to half-lidded sullenness as she sank beside Tauriel on the seat and slumped back against the wall, one eye still on the window.

"Well," Tauriel began, inspiration growing slowly. "You could join the scout recruits for training."

Morwiyon stiffened, shooting a furtive side-eyed look at her. "That is not why," she began.

Tauriel waved that off. "I know that is not why we are friends. You have no need to be friends with a scout to learn the skills – you could request it at any time."

"He would never let me go anywhere."

That was probably true. Thranduil was particularly close-minded about his daughter's welfare; Tauriel had never quite figured out why he was less so about the son who so obviously had his ear and whose counsel he trusted, but she supposed parents were funny like that sometimes. Nevertheless.

"You never know. Maybe he will if he sees you can take care of yourself."

Morwinyon cast one last look at the window, long and longing. "I suppose it cannot hurt to try, can it?"

Should she have kept Morwinyon from trying? Tauriel wondered when she woke. Could she have? She supposed it would have been like keeping Kíli out of the fight at Erebor: unthinkable and near impossible. Neither of them would have dealt well with being confined.

"You could have warned me, before you asked after my mother," Fíli said. She rolled over to see him looking up at the stars.

"I was afraid you would try to talk me out of it," she admitted. "But now we know: she is in Erebor, and she is safe."

Fíli held his necklace in one hand, the other arm folded under his head, and did not answer. Tauriel had given it to him almost immediately after they had left the mountain.

"I suppose Morwinyon did say it was supposed to be given by her mother," Fíli had said, voice cracking on Morwinyon's name. "I take it I have your approval, then?"

She had hugged him, and they had held each other through the night.

Now he said, "I'm glad she's safe."

"Maybe one day we can return, and you can show her you are safe too," Tauriel said.

She counted the tiny smile she received in response a victory, and doubly so when he said, "Maybe."