"…and that, lass, is how we met Bilbo Baggins." Balin concluded. The four of them had been sitting in Thorin's study for hours listening to the old dwarfs retelling of the time leading up to and during what appeared to be a very unexpected party.

"The poor creature! It sounds like you all but ruined his home!" as funny as their party sounded Serina felt bad for the hobbit, though she still wasn't really sure what a Hobbit was…

"Ah, yes maybe we were a bit forward but I'm sure he enjoyed it." No matter what Balin said she wouldn't believe it until Bilbo himself could tell her. She wanted to ask the dwarf to keep going but her eyes were getting heavy with sleepiness and she couldn't help but let out a yawn.

"I think it's time for some sleep Flower, I'll show you to your room, it's just down the hall from my own." Thorin said, laying a guiding hand on her back. She said her goodnights and gave the warrior and the storyteller one last hug before she let her father lead her down the quiet corridors and in through an impressive stone arch to a big hall. The walls were covered in intricate geometrical patterns that glittered with gold. Plush armchairs lined the walls as if 20 people might tire right there and need to sit down. There were statues of dwarfs, adorned with what looked like real jewelry. Runes curved around doorframes, there were 8 of them, telling stories she hoped to one day understand. All in all Serina thought it was one of the most beautiful rooms she had ever seen.

"These are your rooms" Thorin said as he led her to one of the doors furthest into the room.

"Mine are right over there," he pointed to the biggest door "if you ever need anything you just have to ask. Fili is opposite you with Kili to his right, Dis will have the one next to mine and Dwalin lives in the one just outside, should anything happen." All she could do was nod, it was a lot to take in and her head was spinning like crazy trying to cope with everything that had happened through the past month.

"Sleep well Flower" he said as he gave her on last kiss on her forehead before turning towards his own rooms.

"Night" Serina whispered.

Pushing the door open she entered an even more beautiful room than the one she'd just left. There were three more doors leading from it, one turned out to be a bathroom, another a small study and the last one, to her delight, a bedroom. The bed so big that it could probably fit ten or more dwarves. Unlacing her shoes she let herself fall upon its softness and fell asleep faster than her insomnia had ever let her do before.

…

Serina regretted not changing clothes before falling asleep… everything was itching and her jeans felt unusually coarse against her skin. She'd woken up from a faint knock on her bedroom door, the room was so dark she thought it was still in the middle of the night. Soon, however, she realized that it was the lack of windows and burnt out candles that caused the total darkness around her.

The knock came again and this time a thin sliver of light appeared as the door was opened.

"Your highness? I'm Mina, your father asked me to bring you some clothes and guide you to the dining room for lunch." A soft voice said. Lunch?

"Oh… you can come in, um I don't know how to get light in here though…."

"No problem your highness, all you have to do is turn this little wheel by the door or next to your bed." Mina said as the room slowly got brighter. And there she was, a plump dwarrowdam with fiery red hair and stormy grey eyes. She looked to be about 40-45 years of age and in her arms she carried what looked worrisomely much like a dress…

"Thanks and um… you can call me Serina," the woman stepped into the room with a nod.

"Serina, you look so much like your mother, you got her nose and that little beauty mark under your eye." Mina said as she walked up to the bed.

"Did you know her?"

"Not personally no but everyone knew what she looked like and how she was, she always talked to us commoners as if we were equals. A wonderful dwarrowdam, such a shame that we lost her, she would have been a magnificent queen of Erebor, as will you one day" she smiled "But now let's get you dressed." Serina's suspicion turned out to be true… it was a dress, oh how she hated them!

"Um… you know Mina I'd like to wear my own clothes today."

"You want to wear… those?.. But they're… trousers!" The look in Mina's eyes was nothing short but horrified as she stared at Serina's Black jeans and Iron Maiden hoodie.

"I know but I'm not very comfortable in dresses and everything is so new I just want to have something familiar, please?"

"I've never seen clothes like that before, if I might ask… Where have you been all these years? We thought you dead"

"I was far far away, I don't even know fully myself…"

"Hm okay, I'll let you wear that for now but you'll have to dress up for the celebration."

"Celebration?"

"Why of course, the rumor that you're back spread like wildfire, I suspect it was one of the guards. The entire mountain is going crazy and Dale isn't much better…"
"But I didn't give them my name or anything! How could they know?"

"My dear girl those eyes of yours are famous, even the dwarves who's never seen them know them! And with the sudden absence of the king through the past months' we all suspected that something was going on. The Kings counselor had to go out and confirm that it was, in fact, you so the rumors wouldn't get out of hand."

Quite honestly Serina had hoped that it would all remain a secret for a little while longer, just so that she could get used to everything, and it didn't help that she shy of people she didn't know, standing in front of a crowd or getting too much attention wasn't something she enjoyed.

Mina must have seen the panic growing in the young woman's eyes because she put a warm hand on her shoulder

"I do not think the king intends to throw out into all of that sweetheart, I'm sure you'll have some time to adjust, and you'll have friends and guards around you when you do have to go."

It was a small comfort but a comfort nonetheless.

…

The story of how the company had taken back the mountain continued as Serina, Thorin, Dwalin and Balin sat down to eat breakfast. She had a feeling this wasn't something that happened to often, all three of them sitting down to eat together.

"… and then of course there was the incident with the trolls, nasty business…" Balin said, sounding somewhat unsure of whether he should tell it or not.

"Trolls?" Serina questioned. Until that moment they had only talked about the nice green hills of the shire and the lush forests they had passed though on their way to Bree. Now, she thought, things were getting interesting.

"Ah, yes you see your cousins were supposed to look after the ponies that night but, as we probably should have known, they got distracted. All of a sudden Fili comes running out of the trees yelling about how trolls had taken the horses and that they set poor Bilbo to get them back."

"They sent him alone?!" She couldn't believe they would do something like that!
"Indeed they did, I can't say it was my proudest moment but Kili did stay behind to make sure he was okay." Thorin added before Balin continued

"I believe they thought he could do it quite easily, trolls aren't very smart and they're very slow while hobbits are quiet and reasonably smart. But in any way they, the trolls that is, did manage to get a hold of Bilbo"

"How many trolls are we talking about?"

"three, now that might not seem like many considering there were 13 of us but they are rather big! We fought them, of course, but when they threatened to rip our hobbit apart we simply had to put our weapons down and let ourselves get taken. They shoved some of us into bags and put the rest on a spit over the fire..."

"What?! wait are you telling me that some of you got roasted over a fire? And survived?.." Serina thought it sounded a little too good to be true…

"Ay I was one of em' lass!" Dwalin answered while ironically chewing a piece of roasted chicken.

"Yes you were, weren't you brother, if I remember correctly you started going quite red" Balin winked at warrior who only gave a sullen sound as an answer.

Serina giggled and bumped her shoulder to his giving him a dazzling smile

"Poor you" she said "now keep going I need to know what happens next!"

And so Balin told her about how Bilbo had tricked the three trolls into believing that he knew something about cocking dwarfs and thus delayed the eating long enough for Gandalf to save them.

"Okay so if I ever get taken by trolls I should just get them into the sun? easy peasy!" the princess laughed.

"You stay away from trolls lass! They're not to play with!"

"I know Dwalin I'm not stupid! All I'm saying is that if I were to end up in a situation where trolls are involved it might be easy enough to distract them until sunrise."

"But you're not going to end up in a situation like that" Thorin said looking at his daughter seriously.

"And how do you know that might I ask?" her look challenging her fathers.

"Because you're not going to be out there alone, especially anywhere where trolls could be, or anywhere else for that matter." Thorin meant it, he wasn't about to let her out of his sight and risk losing her again.

"Well I'm not gonna sit here for the rest of my life doing nothing! And I need to do things on my own every now and then, no one can live like that!" Serina was shocked that he would even suggest something like that.

"You're not going out there and that's that! It's a dangerous world Rina and I'm not going to have you get yourself killed!" this was ridiculous, she wasn't going to let anyone lock her up again!

"So you're saying that I'm not allowed to see the world? I'm just going to sit here and be a pretty little princess? If that's truly what you want then maybe you should go get yourself another daughter because I'm not doing it!" and with that she stood up and left the three older dwarves to stare after her in shock.

….

Serina couldn't believe she'd already managed to get in a fight with her father. She'd stomped out of the dining room like an angry child, slamming the door. Mostly she was angry at her father for suggesting she wasn't able to take care of herself but she was also mad that Dwalin and Balin had looked like they agreed with him completely! Last but definitely not least, she was angry at herself. Angry that she couldn't just have shut up, angry that she ran away and angry that she'd managed to get herself hopelessly lost in the endless corridors of the mountain. There had been plenty of other dwarves around, giving her weird and shocked looks, some even bowing to her but none approached her. Which she appreciated, she tried to look nice and gave nods in return but the fact that she wasn't happy was obvious even to the stupidest of dwarves.

Eventually she found herself on a small balcony looking out over Dale, Esgaroth bobbing on the water in the distance. An hour or so must have passed since she left the others because the sun was standing in the middle of the sky, indicating that midday had come.

In the end she decided that that was as good of a place to spend her day as any other and so she did.

…...

Meanwhile Thorin was starting to panic, he'd gone to Serina's rooms to apologize for his harsh words but she was not there upon his arrival. Balin advised that she would most probably appear when she had cooled down enough but the king was worried. She didn't know her way around the mountain and he had yet to inform the guards at the gate that she wasn't to leave on her own. The thought of her out in Dales streets all on her own didn't sit well with him, nor with Dwalin. The crime rate had increased with every years as more and more humans and dwarves settled in to the newly resurrected city.

Dwalin had taken some of his guards and was searching the city as well as the nature around it, while Thorin himself looked inside the mountain with the help of Balin and some of the guards who wasn't with Dwalin or otherwise occupied.

…

Serina had no idea anything was going on until she saw Dwalin's broad shouldered band of guards coming back from Dale, worry written all over his face. The hours had slowly gone by and the sun had disappeared behind her back, sure the thought that they would realize she wasn't in her room had crossed her mind but she didn't believe that it could have warrant such a big group of guards to go out looking. Curiosity eventually got the better of her and she decided it was time to find out what could possibly be going on, and if it had anything to do with her…

…

"We've looked through all of Dale, the path down there and the wooden areas around it all, if she was there we would have found her Thorin." Dwalin had spent the last 15 minutes trying to convince the king that looking outside the mountain was probably a waste of time, but then again Thorin was a Durin…

"Well then where is she?! If she IS out there we have to find her before she gets hurt!"

"And if she isn't? then we are wasting time, there are many places to hide in this mountain. Thorin I'm worried too but I also believe her smart enough to not just walk out into an unknown world totally unprepared." Balin reasoned.

"I agree with Balin" Dwalin confirmed, stroking his beard, deep in thoughts.

"Agree with what?" asked a familiar voice behind them

"That you wouldn't jus… BY MAHAL LASS WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?! DON'T YOU KNOW WE'VE BEEN LOOKING EVERYWHERE FOR YOU?!" Dwalin yelled pulling at his beard.

"Obviously not… then you would have found me, and to answer your question, yes I thought you might have realized I wasn't in my room… but when I saw you coming back with all of those guards I thought something terrible had happened."

"SOMETHING TERRIB... Something terrible did happen! THE PRINCESS WENT MISSING!" Serina couldn't help but smile while the old warrior paced around the room rubbing his hands over his face in frustration.

"Calm down old man! I'm not dead…" she laughed but when she looked at her father the laughter died in her throat.

"I thought you had run away…" he mumbled a mix of anger and relief in his voice.

"Run away? Do you seriously think that I would run away from you when we've finally been reunited after almost 14 years apart? I wouldn't do that to you or me, I'm sorry if I scared you okay? And by the way you're going to have to work much harder than that if you want me to run away dad, I'm not easily scared." To her relief he smiled as she gave him a wink and walked into his embrace.

"14? Closer to 30+ I'd say, your 38th birthday is coming up in a month or so, is it not?" Balin asked.

"38? I'm not that old! I'm turning 19 on June 23…" confusion settled on the princess face.

"No Flower, you were five when you went missing and it's been 33 years since then" Thorin looked won at the girl in his arms.

"But… But no! no I've been in that place for almost 14 years, I'm not stupid! And how the fuck can you look at me and say I look 38 YEARS OLD? How old dose that make you? 200?!" she stared at her father, not knowing if she should laugh or be angry at him, was this really the moment for such jokes?

"197 actually"

"This isn't funny!"

"Lass, you were human in that other world, were you not? That means you probably aged like one, dwarves have longer lifespans and mature a bit slower." Balin said, ever the voice of reason.

"But how would that explain you experiencing 33 years while it was 14 for me? are you saying time moved differently? That's absurd!"

"More absurd than falling into a lake and waking up in another world?" Balin was right, however weird it sounded, it wasn't weirder than everything else that had been going on through her life.

"So am I 18 or 37 then? how do we know? And if the answer is 37… then I missed, what… 19 years of my life?" no one could answer that.

"Why can't things ever be easy?.."

…..

Little over a week had passed since the whole "Thought you were gone" thing had happened and things were finally starting to fall into an everyday feel for the princess, though everything wasn't to her liking. Her insomnia was as bad as ever and sense of restlessness was creeping on to her, then of course there was the whole thing with her having to adapt to being a princess again…

"Mina I'm capable enough to clothe myself! We've been through this I don't want any dresses and you needn't be here EVERY morning!" Serina buried her face in her pillow and pulled the covers over her head in protest.

"It's my job! I can't just abandon it! you are a princess and you will dress like it, no matter if I have to force the dress over your head! This time I'm not giving up, all of your old clothes are dirty and I'm not washing them until you're in a proper dress! Which I can inform you, you wouldn't be able to get into without my help, now get up before I make you!"

"No" Serina was well aware that she sounded like a child but she didn't care in the slightest.

"Well then suit yourself!" The older dwarrowdam said as she slammed the door on her way out. Serina wasn't sure if she should be happy or worried that she had left… maybe she should lock the door, but then again Mina must have a key snice she always got inside without being let in.

Ten or maybe even fifteen minutes must have passed before she heard the door to her rooms open and two set of footsteps came closer and closer to her bedroom.

"I see what ye mean" said a gruff voice inside of her room. Dwalin?

"She won't get up because she doesn't want to wear a proper dress! Do something won't you?" Mina said, what an evil woman!

"What do ye want ME to do about it? Just pull 'er out?" he wondered, amusement obvious in his voice.

"Just go away Dwalin and take HER with you, I'm not putting it on!" the princess voice got muffled by her pillow and covers but was heard well enough.

"Be a good lass and do what the missus tells ye to do, or else I'ma have to get you out myself and I don't think you want that"

"NO! I don't want to wear it!"

"It can't be THAT bad!" at that Serina violently pulled the covers from her head, sat up and pointed towards the dress hanging on the armchair in the corner of her room.

"Look at it! It's a deathtrap! AND IT'S PINK! I can't wear PINK!" and with that she curled up into a little ball, covered herself up once more and hoped they would go away.

They didn't…

…

Two hours later, and about 1000 cusswords in every language spoken by the trio, later Serina was sitting in the dining room in a light blue dress, looking angry enough to kill whoever dared to go near her.

In the end Dwalin had been forced to lift her of the bed and physically force her out of her curled up state. After a long while of 'discussing' they finally came to the agreement that she would wear a dress, but she could pick it out herself and put it on BY HERSELF.

What she did didn't please Mina in the least but Dwalin found it quite entertaining. She'd taken a small knife and cut away the built-in corset form the inside. Leaving her with a much more casual dress. She put a belt around her waist and laced up her old shoes before defiantly walking past the maid and the warrior, leaving one laughing and one cussing as she made her way to the dining room, where her father had been waiting all that time insisting they'd eat together.

"You're going to give her a heart attack Rina, is she really that bad?" Thorin tried to reason with his daughter.

"She's not bad! It's the dresses and the fact that she has to come to my room every morning that bothers me! I'm very capable of dressing myself and what's wrong with pants and a shirt? And don't give me all that 'because you're a princess' bullshit!" she warned

"Language Rina!"

"Oh like you're any better!"

"Rina!"

"Thorin!" she mimicked his voice.

"Act your age!"

"We don't even know my age!"

"You know what I mean! I understand that it's hard for you" she didn't let him finish

"No you don't! You're not forced into specific clothes, no one is telling you to painfully change the natural shape of your body! No one is telling you how to wear your hair or what shoes are acceptable!" crossing her arms over her chest she sunk into further into her chair.

Thorin sighed "Is it truly that horrible?" as she sat there, right in front of him, he could see how tired she was. The bags under her eyes, her skin pale and lifeless told a story of a troubled girl.

"I hate it, I'm sorry for being such a pain in the ass I really am. But I can't help it, I wish I was different."

"I don't. I love you just the way you are, dress or trousers I don't care. Others might, but I don't so I guess we could get you fitted for something you like. I'm not saying you'll never have to wear a dress but for your everyday wear it couldn't hurt to be comfortable." Serina shone like a sun as she walked around the table, wrapping her arms around his neck.

"Thank you adad!" that was the first time she'd used the Khuzdul word for 'father' since they were reunited and it warmed his heart like nothing else.

"Anything for you my Flower"