"Lairë," Fili said as they approached Erebor, "maybe you should stay near the back."

"Of course," she replied. "Perhaps if we were to stack two of you on top of each other we may hide the fact that I am an elf."

Hofsa snorted.

"You could pass as a Dunedain maybe," Kili said. "If you hide your ears."

Lairë didn't stare down her nose at him, but the way she looked over his head conveyed the same feeling. "The day I pass as a Dunedain is the day Maglor deigns to show me his face again."

"I don't know who that is," Kili said.

Lairë opened her mouth, but Fili interrupted her. "We get the gist. I just need time to introduce you."

She sighed but fell back. She already looked better despite the pace they'd kept - her hair was still disgusting, but she'd started to look less like a walking skeleton and more like someone on a hard journey with short rations for a long period of time. She stood straight now, and she'd started exercising in the evenings. Fili was not convinced the one-handed pushups weren't her way of showing off, and though she hadn't asked for a weapon yet he was waiting for the request.

"Elves," Hofsa muttered.

Though they'd realized early on that Lairë was not averse to eating meat, everyone knew greens were good for the sick. Since Hofsa had been adamant about getting some into Lairë throughout the trip, Fili wasn't fooled, and anyway he'd known Hofsa was nicer than she wanted people to think.

Kili had asked why Lairë didn't care about meat, and she'd asked why she should, at which point he'd brought up Rivendell.

"Oh, Elrond," she'd said, and nothing else.

"Tauriel only eats meat when we can't get anything else," Fili said later to Kili, who shrugged.

"I thought Morwinyon just got used to the meat."

Lairë, whose hearing had not, it seemed, been much harmed by her incarceration, said, "Lembas is better and more efficient, but it is for travel. You should have seen the feasts in Lindon. Hunters we had aplenty, and even Elrond partook."

She shrugged. It wasn't as grotesque as it had been before, partly because the dress hid much of her. "Rivendell is a place of peace and calm, and Elrond works to keep it so. It would not do to interrupt it with the flurry of a hunt."

"Only with scouting patrols who harass dwarves," Fili said.

"Elrond never was an idiot," Lairë replied, and Fili couldn't for the life of him tell if she was teasing him.

Now they looked out over Dale and Erebor and the lake. Fili wondered if Smaug's remains would be visible in the water.

"We fought Smaug somewhere over there," Kili said, gesturing and seemingly to no one, though the group of dwarves looked. "Morwinyon blinded him, but we harried him plenty."

Fili heard Lairë murmur, "Good girl," under her breath.

"Shouldn't we have been stopped by now?" Kili asked.

Hofsa said, "Why? A group of dwarves and an unreasonably tall person?"

"I have a cousin taller," Lairë told her. She frowned. "And an uncle, I suppose."

"You might have to duck through some doorways," Hofsa said.

Lairë shrugged.

They finally met other people on the outskirts of Dale. Fili waved back to the calls of welcome from adults and children alike, though no one stopped or offered a formal greeting.

"Should we give notice to the Lord of Dale?" Fili asked Hofsa in an undertone.

"We are humble travellers, come home from-"

"Travelling?" Kili suggested.

Hofsa reached out and flicked his ear, and he laughed.

"Just be friendly and walk," Hofsa said. "We aren't going through the city proper."

"Even amongst friends must we practice caution," Lairë called. "So it was in the first war, too."

On that note, Fili should remember that Lairë could hear almost anything any of them said. Tauriel had been less disconcerting about it, but then again he trusted Tauriel more than almost anybody. It hadn't ever mattered that Tauriel could hear his otherwise private conversations.

"I have got to get her back to the Dunedain," Kili murmured, so quiet Fili barely heard him. He supposed Kili would know the limits of an elf's hearing. "She fought in the first war of the ring, she's Noldorin, she probably knew Elendil or something. Alia is going to lose her mind."

"She said she was Doriathrin."

"She did," Kili said cheerfully. "But, you know. Even amongst friends, we must practice caution. I'm told that's how it was in the first war."

Fili shoved him, and Kili snickered. The mood remained light until Fili actually reached the shadow of the mountain, where he faltered and looked up. There were guards at the doors on the other end: they watched warily, but they didn't level spears or pull down their visors.

"Don't be maudlin," Kili said, but he didn't sound cheerful either. Fili wondered if he felt the shade as he did, as if it reached for him.

"State your business," a guard called.

Something in him, something that sounded like Thorin, maybe, said, you know you're supposed to be here. You know what you're supposed to do.

"We come with glad tidings," Hofsa called back, stepping to the front with an awkward little bow to Fili as she passed.

The guards looked at him.

"I bring with me Fili, son of Dis, and Kili, son of the same," Hofsa continued even as she kept walking, dragging Fili and Kili and the rest as if they were on strings. Even Lairë kept pace.

The guards stiffened, hands tightening on spearhafts as they approached. Fili felt something else, something outside this time, as a breeze blew up, catching his braids and cloak and making them flutter.

He supposed if Morwinyon could talk to the land, as Kili said, it made sense different places would have different personalities. It made sense, he thought wryly, that the mountain was dramatic as anything.

As if in answer, the light changed. They were still in the mountain's shadow but somehow the reflections from the armor of those around him strengthened and focused, and it was brighter even if the sun hadn't moved.

Lairë snorted behind him, and the guards winced as if the light hurt their eyes. The mountain hummed contentedly, maybe just for Fili.

"Fili," one of the guards said, sounding less than enthused.

"Your Majesty," Hofsa corrected him.

"I've come home," Fili said.

Behind the guards, the doors swung open without a hand laid on them.