Oren leads us to toward the tunnel he has been using this whole time – yet another of the damn things – and this ghost of a man seems to have completely forgotten every single one of his hurts in the last few minutes. He darts and clambers over the fallen stone and the shifting debris of the landslide, steadily upward, toward where a ledge would have been before the cliff face became a gentle incline. We follow him, but not all of us manage quite so easily.

Legolas helps me where he can, because curse him he is also suddenly bouncing around… full of the joys of spring, despite that he is still bleeding like a stuck spigot.

He is a hand at my elbow, a fist in my jerkin hauling me over a particularly challenging obstacle… he even slows imperceptibly when I need it. Bless his pointy ears he manages to do it without being seen, and so my pride is saved before this unknown assassin and ridiculous thief. Eru I am starting to feel all my years, throbbing and pulsing with each bruise and wound, ache and hurt. Still, I carry on, because I am sturdy if nothing else.

"We need to talk," I mutter at Legolas when we have a moment; a short moment where we will not be overheard. "About Ren."

"We do not," he bites back, studiously not looking at me. I see nothing but anger in his face, his rigid jawline, but we are still linked enough that I know he is hurt and confused on the inside. He glances at me out of the corner of his eye and softens, just a little bit. "The edain betray, Gimli. I am starting to think that they cannot help it."

"Not all of them," I mumble, but it is a half-hearted attempt. I am also starting to grow weary of my trust being broken, just as I begin to extend it.

"Enough for it to be a pattern, my friend," he replies, the icy anger creeping back into his tone. "I think we should steer clear of them from now onward. They are not like us."

Aye, because elves and dwarves are so similar, after all. He will avoid men entirely if he can get away with it – and he is very good at it – but I am not willing to sever myself from them. They are like butterflies; gaudy and bright and brief, a thousand kinds all beneath the sun. Some will spoil things, but the rest are worth it. I say nothing though, because the elfling is not in the mood to hear me. He feels betrayal keenly, because elves do not have it in them… not the elves that he knows, in any case, but it is also because he trusts so infrequently. Men have a habit of coming up wanting when it comes to the trust he places in them.

I sigh, but I say nothing else. We will speak of it later.

Oren leads us steadily upward, a leaf on the wind, climbing as though it is nothing. We follow doggedly, and finally he shows us a fracture in the rock face that is most certainly not a tunnel. It is barely a sliver of a cut. I pause – I am not even sure that I can fit through it – and Legolas blanches visibly. I take a deep breath that catches on whatever is wrong in my rib cage… even dwarves have their limits. I cannot climb the entire way up through the city through this.

"This… this is a tunnel?" I ask doubtfully, hoping in some way that he will realise his mistake and lead us to the real entrance.

"It opens up within," Oren tells us flatly, correctly interpreting our horrified faces. I do not think we are trying particularly hard to hide them. "It is narrow, but navigable."

Legolas hooks his fingers into my sleeve and drags me a short distance away. We leave Shutter staring at the jagged slip of stone as though his mind has temporarily broken. Oren peers at his blank face curiously, and we move away. I know what he is going to say before he says it.

"I am not going in there," he says honestly. "I cannot."

"And I am not daft enough to argue with you over it – I am not interested in you losing your mind; we do not have time for it," I shrug. "Is it your arm, or your ribs?" I ask, gesturing at where he has pulled his arm tight against himself again.

"Ribs and shoulder," he admits. "Yours?"

"Certainly my ribs, everything else bruised or bleeding but nothing immediately worrisome. Painful though."

"This will need binding," he gestures toward the horrendous slice across his midriff. Grimaces. "My cheek will scar."

I cannot help but grin. I know exactly what we are doing, but I cannot stop being Gimli.

"Perhaps you will look a bit more like an adult with a scar, since you cannot grow a beard."

He shoves me soundly in the shoulder, and I would complain at how much that hurts if he did not yelp as well. We both grimace, scowl peevishly at one another through sodden hair.

Legolas will not be coming with Shutter and I – he cannot, I am not fool enough to think that he can. I eye the entrance to the tunnel, and Legolas is slender enough to fit through this crevice far easier than Shutter or I could manage, but I will not make him. I cannot expect him to.

"You can climb over the city walls?" I ask, and he gives me a scornful look, offended by my doubt. I shake my head. "Fine. Of course you can; you have climbed thousands of walls far higher with an arrow in your back and twenty orcs hanging from your ankles. Certainly something was on fire. I have heard the stories all before." I pause and turn. "You! Dubious fellow in the mask!"

I click my fingers in Oren's direction and even Legolas grimaces at the way I am speaking to the assassin. Oren himself looks surprised; oddly unoffended at the way I am addressing him. If anything, I think perhaps I am a novelty to him. I wonder how many Khandish men have even met a dwarf before, and I am a particularly dwarvish dwarf when I wish to be.

"Where does this tunnel end?"

"Many places," he says softly. "The last bolt hole out of the tunnel will take you to the Hollows."

"This mountain is lousy with tunnels!" I huff in exasperation. "I have no idea how it is even standing!"

Oren says nothing, stares at me until I start to feel uncomfortable, so I turn my attention to Shutter instead. He is still grimacing toward the cut in the rock face that I am not entirely certain he will be able to fit through. I jab him in the ribs with my elbow, and it snaps him from wherever his mind has vanished into.

"By the stars and skies Gimli, must you constantly hit and jab me?!"

"You will survive this with your mind intact?" I ask him bluntly. He frowns instantly.

"Will you?" he counters, distracted by how annoying he finds me. "I will be fine… quite happy. Deliriously so. In fact I am quite looking forward to it."

We glare at one another, scowling for a long time, but I cannot help myself; I start to laugh. After a moment his face softens imperceptibly. He sighs, his eyes move heavenward for just a heartbeat, and then his hand moves in a gesture toward the tiny fracture in the rock. He offers that I go first.

I glance at Legolas for only a moment, but we say a lot in that moment. He looks worried, swiftly banished, but I know that he frets for me just the way I do for him. The fact that we are so accepting of this separation is heartening though; perhaps we are not so tangled together, perhaps there is hope that we can become how we once were – able to function independently.

I catch his eye and we tell each other to take care. He remains behind with Oren, and I have no idea this assassin's intentions but we have no time to discover it. I trust Legolas to make the right decision, I trust him to make his own way.

"Breakfast may well have to be lunch, my friend," I tell him, "I think I might be busy for breakfast." And he cannot help but smile. He remembers our promise. He tilts his head and there is something about the way he stands – bleeding and filthy and sodden – that makes him look guileless and young.

"Honey cakes and strawberries," he smiles, bright and golden green in the darkness. "They make as good a lunch as they do a breakfast."

I grin back, Shutter gives us both a look that says he thinks us so very, very strange. He sighs as though we are a thing that he tolerates, hooks his fingers in my sleeve and turns me toward the fracture in the stone… not even a tunnel, truly.

And so we go.

~{O}~

The passage through the cut in the rock takes its payment, and it is in a considerable amount of skin. There are moments when I panic, because I cannot move – I am trapped, stuck – but with a wriggle and a heave I move onto the next atrocious bottle-neck of unforgiving stone. It jabs where I am already raw and bruised, I have to fold and bend, and in places it is nothing more than pure force that gets my stout and clumsy carcass through.

I can hear Shutter behind me, trying so hard to keep his breathing steady, but he is panicking far more than I am. He is not a dwarf – I spent many years as a youngling getting stuck in places I should not have been in, just like this – and I do not think he can see. Twice he speaks my name, tight and rigid, and I answer with something neutral and calm, because he needs to know he is not on his own. I remember when I disliked him, I remember it fondly, because the idiot thief has definitely changed in my eyes this last night. I feel protective of him, the way I often feel toward these young men grown way too early, and I despair at this tendency of mine. They only lead me to heartache, but I cannot seem to stop myself.

The mountain presses upon us, on both sides and above and below. It steals the breath from our lungs, sends our hearts hammering, and if I feel this fear then I cannot imagine how it might be for the young adan following my steps not far behind. He does not love the stone as I do, he does not know each shadow and soft darkness, cannot hear the thrum of the mountain – safe and solid. To him, it is the weight of the entire world that hangs above his head, ready to collapse upon him.

I shove and push, twist and feel the rock scrape at my skin. Finally though, there is space. It opens, I can breathe, and I take the deepest lungful of air that I have ever taken. I give myself a beat, take a moment to gasp air that is stale and tinged with rock dust. It is pitch black in here, no light whatsoever, and when Shutter emerges from the worst of it he gasps and heaves as well, a presence in the darkness at my side.

"I should have followed the elf," he mutters to himself, but beneath his usual churlishness I hear fear. Genuine fear, but not the sort of fear that can be mastered. It is the fear of the dark, of being lost, of being so very small.

"You would be a child in his wake, Master Shutter. As amusing as it is to imagine."

We cannot see one another, but I can feel the tunnels twisting through the mountain as though they are written upon my mind. I know where they are, how to walk them, where they lead. It is natural, as though the mountain is happy that there is a son of Mahal here within its depths, and it sings to me. It shows me the paths proudly, they shine to me without any light at all. I had forgotten it… all of this time removed from the whisper of the mountain I had forgotten, but it returns to me as though it was never absent, never gone. It is as natural to me as breathing.

"Gimli," Shutter speaks tightly, quietly, as though he is afraid that the walls will slam down upon us. I can hear the gasp in his breathing, the jumping of his heart in the tone of his voice. He is very afraid, but he is trying to hide it.

"Laddie, we have had our moments, but do you trust me?"

He snorts, and it is dark enough for me to grin and know he does not see it.

"Do you trust a dwarf in a mountain?" I clarify. He is silent for a while.

"I have little choice in it," he sighs.

"You did not have to come here. You can leave back through that crevice – I will wait until you are out – but if we travel together then you need to decide."

"Would you leave the elf?"

"I have literally just left the elf…"

"You know what I mean, curse you! Briar is alone, and it matters not how I find her, only that I do. I think you will bring me safely though the mountain, and so I follow you. Whether I wish it or not matters not at all."

I nod, because that is all I really needed. I grab him by the wrist, guide his hand upward where he tangles his fingers into my jerkin, and I pat his hand briefly, although it is more than I really wish to give him. I know that he needs the comfort.

"We will find her, lad. Just follow me."

And I lead him through the mountain.

~{O}~

I will not say too much about the journey, because it is unpleasant and I am fairly certain that Shutter is on the brink of his mind snapping into pieces the entire way, but it is hardly the worst journey through tunnels that I have experienced. Not even the worst I have experienced in the last six months.

The one thing these tunnels have in their favour is that they do not meander the way that the roads through the city do; there is a slight element of them repeating back upon themselves in a snake-like movement, but that is because Mindolluin is – after all – a mountain. It would be too steep if it simply took us directly to where we were going, but even so, it is far more direct than the roads of the city. There are no gate houses to navigate, no busy streets. The circles of Minas Tirith take an absolute age to navigate because it is a city: people live here, and it is laid out so that it is difficult to rise up through the circles should it be invaded. I am endlessly glad that these tunnels were not found back during the war. It certainly would have changed things.

Despite that Shutter has his hand clawed in my clothing – pinching more than a bit of skin, I have to say – and despite that I am a knot of aches and pains and worry for my friends. Despite that I still feel the acid roil in my stomach that we have been betrayed, and that I am concerned for Aragorn as well… despite all of it I cannot help but enjoy myself a little bit. These are unknown tunnels – or at least unknown to me; an alarming number of other people seem to know they are here. I shall have to have them collapsed and sealed as soon as I have the chance, but for now I simply try to enjoy them.

"How well do you know this Ren fellow?" Shutter asks me, and I grunt. His voice echoes flatly the way that voices do in close quarters, surrounded by stone.

"I have known him only a few hours longer than I have known you," I tell him, "so barely at all."

"But still…" he muses, and this time the noise I make is more in agreement.

"But still." I agree. "Betrayal is something I have become woefully accustomed to of late, especially with men. You folk can be so noble and mighty, so selfless, and yet so mean and small."

"And the other races are so different?" he asks. It could be far more confrontational, I am insulting his very race after all, but there is nothing of it in his voice. I think he is simply trying to distract himself, and although I do not particularly wish to get to know Shutter, I do not think I have much choice in it. He will carry on talking whether I am part of the conversation or not. I wonder if this is how Legolas feels when I speak to fill the silences.

"I have met Maiar, who are mysterious and keep their own counsel. I have met Halflings who are childlike and innocent but braver than a thousand men. Elves – it depends on the type of elf: they are either wise and distant, or too wild to read a damned thing of their intentions. Dwarves, of course, are flawless in every way you can think of."

Shutter snorts a laugh, although I do not think he meant to. I smile because I know he cannot see it.

"You have lead an interesting life, I think," he says. "I have met no elves before now, but I have met a few dwarves. They were not like you."

"Legolas and I," I muse thoughtfully, pausing to run my hand over a particularly interesting face of stone. There is a curious mix of ore, deep inside, but it is not enough to distract me. It is merely interesting. "We are both different, set apart. I think it is why we work well together… it was the same when we were on the Quest, although it took us a while to see it. We were the only ones of our kind, alone within a group, and once we came to speak we realised we were different even again – different to those of our own kind. Those differences only grow with the months that pass."

"Briar and I were the same," he speaks lowly. I am surprised – I had not expected him to speak anything of himself – but I am silent and allow it. I am curious, I will admit it. "Her father was a good man. Not great, not the way of great men, but he was fair and he kept the second circle in line. For a princess of thieves she was as dirt poor as the rest of us, so we ran together much of the time. We would pickpocket on the higher circles, we knew every bolthole and alley well enough to run blind in the darkest night. We knew which of the guards were cruel and would beat us if they caught us, and which might turn a blind eye and let us pass... they were often those born poor as well. The city was sparsely populated before the war, but the second circle was far better off than it is now. More dangerous, most definitely, and far darker, but we could always turn a coin somehow. Now we are policed, now we have an army with little else to do but break our smuggling rings and find our stashes, rout out the guilds and dismantle structures of influence that have been in place for generations."

"You sound bitter," I observe, as neutrally as I can. I continue to heave my way upwards on a path that really is not meant for easy travelling; jagged and steep and treacherous.

"I suppose I am," he sighs, and I feel him shrug rather than see it. "It is difficult to watch, but I think our sons and daughters will be thankful for it. In any case, that is not what I speak of. Briar never wanted to fall into the position she has taken over. You know the herds of horses that are left to wander and breed, and are rounded up every year? We build vast paddocks for them on the Pelennor – vast and sturdy. It takes months to prepare for, and they bring the herds back toward the city in endless droves, into the pens. We brand them with the King's Tree, we take count of each head and treat injuries, and a few of the yearlings are selected for the stables or for stud. It is a huge event. Rohan bring horses to trade, so that we can send new blood out with the herds when they are released, and the city makes much money from it. She wanted to do that; to join the herdsmen that ride out in their hundreds every spring to find them, to guard the horses whilst they foaled until it is time to bring them back in the summer. That is what she wanted, and I would have gone with her. I would have followed her anywhere, because she never saw me as a lowborn thief – she never saw either of us that way. She said that when we were older, we would raise our families close by one another, and our children would be the best of friends just as we were."

"You never thought to marry her yourself?" I ask.

"No," he laughs. "Many have assumed such a thing, but a man and a woman can be friends. We were made to be the other half of one another, but not as man and wife."

"I do not think that any of us have lived the life we thought to," I admit to him. Our conversation halts for a long time, because the way has become extremely steep and difficult. It might have gone easier had Shutter been able to see, but the poor lad is doing this entirely in the dark. I have grown used to travelling with elves, because even in the absence of any light they can make do with the movement of air and the echoes of our steps. Shutter does well, far better than I expected, but although I can hear my own voice – flat and too loud in the silence – telling him where to place his feet, and what to expect, I can still hear the slightest gasp here and there. He is hating every second of this, but he continues.

"I am hoping," he says eventually, when we pause to catch our breath again. He sounds wistful for a moment, nothing of the sarcasm or biting mockery I have grown accustomed to. "I am hoping that it is not too late. The herdsmen have started to ride out again, just this last few weeks gone. It is the first time they have ridden in years. Perhaps we will ride with them next year, or the year after."

"Do not leave it too long, Master Shutter," I tell him. I reach out, and I grip his shoulder tightly. "If I have learned one thing recently, it is that there will always be one more thing – one more reason to stay, one more thing that must be done. Let others take some of the weight, because you only have one life. Each of us has our years numbered, and even the elves will be gone soon. Run with the horses, if that is what you wish. There are no more battles to fight."

He makes a strangled sort of noise, and I cannot help my snort of laughter.

"Except the one that happens right outside these tunnels," I clarify. "But it is hardly a war, and it will be over in short order. Do not fear."

This time I clap him upon the back a bit harder than I had probably meant to, and he cannot see me so he was not prepared. He staggers and I catch him, set him back upright, and I lead him onwards through the darkness.

~{O}~

When we come out of the tunnel it is almost blinding, although it is barely even dawn yet. The sun rises late in spring; it is weeks yet before we will be granted earlier sunrises and later evenings, but after what has felt like an age in absolute darkness it seems so bright. So open and huge and limitless. It is not the first time I have felt this strange passage between the worlds, but every time it is similar if not the same. I am starting to enjoy it.

The storm has passed, the sky turns the faintest grey to the east, and I can hear a few birds singing. It is not the tumult of the forest, because not many birds live in these heights, but some have made their homes here and they sing in the dawn. I can hear the pattering softness of trees that drip and run, I can hear water running across stone and into gulleys, cascading noisily from the edges of buildings onto paved pathways. Every sound I hear is wet and fresh and clear, every scent sharp and scrubbed by the storm, and Shutter lowers himself onto a very crooked – and possibly unsound – wall, his legs shaking with relief.

He turns his face to the sky. Allows a few drops of water to fall onto his face, his eyelids, and he smiles in what seems like the brightest night I have walked in for a long time. He breathes deeply, slowly, steadies himself.

"That was dreadful," he tells me factually.

"And that is why I did not join you," comes a voice from the air, and my legs almost crumple in surprise. My heart leaps into my throat, Shutter makes the oddest noise of fright, and of course my first reaction is anger.

"No!" I shout, then lower my voice carefully into a furious hiss. "No, you did not beat us here, I do not accept it. And how did you know where to come?!"

Legolas is sat on the low hanging branch of a sycamore, his legs swinging. I have dried off a little but he is still soaked, although he looks quite happy. I think it has done him well, to sit here for a while. He is glowing… well… it is not a glow; it has never been a glow. He simply seems to capture the starlight, to reflect it back. He is cast pale and silver in the darkness.

"How has your heart withstood years of this treatment?!" Shutter demands of me, his fist clenched against his chest and a furious scowl in my direction. I am unsure why this is suddenly my fault.

"It is little effort if you travel in a straight line," Legolas frowns, also unsure why we are cross with him. "And I had time to find the tunnel entrance once I knew it was here."

For a moment, just a moment, I consider pointing out that some of those walls are hundreds of feet in height, but I do not bother. Despite that I have seen him struggle to climb thirty feet up a crevice, I think it is different when he is surrounded by the air and the wind. And also when he is trying to win a race only he knows we are having. He can be such a child, sometimes.

"Did you make any effort to see what happens elsewhere in the city?" I ask him, "or were you simply intent upon getting here first."

"Gimli," he reprimands softly, but I can see a glint of mischief in his eye that has no business being there. He pushes himself from the branch and lands in the soft and wet grass without a single sound. "Of course I looked. The second is completely sealed off; there is fighting there but it is isolated, solitary pockets, controlled by Briar's men. I think they will be victorious, but they were getting ready to open the gates as I passed. The City Guard should be entering the circle in short order. We have missed most of the fighting."

"Aye," I tell him flatly. "What a bother. Not one of us has drawn a blade this evening, how very aggravating."

He makes a dismissive gesture that says I know what he means, which is a bit presumptuous of him, and he strides across the grass until he is in an open area. I take a moment to realise where we are. The Hollows – the final resting place of Kings, Queens and Stewards. The shadows of squat and ancient buildings that surround us, rising into the darkness, are actually tombs.

We sit here chatting away in a graveyard, and as soon as I have realised it almost every hair on my body stands upon end.

"We should not tarry here," I whisper.

"You did not even realise where we were until a moment ago," Legolas tuts at me over his shoulder.

I scowl at him until I am certain his head will catch fire if I do not break my gaze, because that is just like an elf. Here we are, surrounded by the ghosts and wights of men, and he might as well be strolling across the gardens. He cares nothing for such things, despite what we witnessed with our very eyes in the passages of the dead. He might not fear the spirits of men, but he knows full well that they exist.

I feel suddenly anxious and frightened, unreasonably so, and it frustrates and annoys me. I am a little mollified by the fact that Shutter also seems to be uncomfortable – his gaze casting about constantly, wide and untrusting – but Legolas has his face turned to the stars and is barely even paying attention. I am about to ask him – probably not very politely – if we should make ourselves comfortable, but as ever he knows me well enough to anticipate it. He replies to me before I have spoken.

"I am listening," he tells me. There is a hint of annoyance in his tone that I am sure I would deserve, had I actually spoken first. "It is a good distance, on the very edge of my senses. If you could be quieter, it would be appreciated."

I have been stood here in silence, I am unsure how I am being noisy. I open my mouth to demand exactly how I might silence my heartbeat, or the rush of my blood, but once again he silences me before I have spoken. Nothing more than a spread of his hand, but I am starting to feel the familiar itch in my hands that speak of an irresistible urge to throttle the pointy eared idiot. I glance at Shutter, still on his wall but somehow comfortable and relaxed now. The look he gives me is both amused and sympathetic.

I stand silently, I watch Legolas stand in the grass surrounded by the tombs of Kings, a sliver of moonlight catches him and he could be a statue for all I know. He does not move even slightly, frozen and captured in the stars. I scratch at my thigh in boredom, sit down upon a wall of my own. A long time passes.

"Any time you might wish to –"

"Gimli!" he snaps, twisting toward me in a movement I had not expected. I hold my hands up in apology, and he huffs again. Gestures toward the White Tower, barely visible. "That way," he bites.

"What do you hear?" Shutter asks, hauling himself to his feet. I think the inactivity has him stiffening to a stone, because I certainly am. Legolas frowns, a small furrow to his brow but I can see it, and his gaze does not move from the distance. He shrugs and shakes his head.

"I do not know," he admits. "If we were in the wood or even in the city I might hear it better, but up here the sounds twist away into the wind. There is a disturbance. It is all we have, and better than nothing at all."

"Well," I huff, clapping my hands to my thighs and standing up with a mighty popping and cracking of joints. "You are right; it is all we have, and we have nothing better to do. Are we set, lads?"

I look to Legolas, who would be ready for anything if his arm was hanging off, and then to Shutter who is surprisingly good at hiding his mind. We are an odd collection; a dwarf and an elf and a young thief, all of us hurt and exhausted and we do not even like each other all that well, but oddly, we are all ready. The dawn brings a breath of air and a new purpose, a new burst of energy we did not have before. The White Tower is worryingly close to Aragorn, and I know that Shutter worries for Briar. All three of us are anxious and edgy, a bit raw and exposed, but I think we are often our best when we are this way.

Shutter twists and stretches, popping and cracking in a way that makes me feel far better about the fact that I also crack and pop. He pulls his arm over the opposite shoulder, twists his neck and does something very alarming with his hip that makes a loud noise. He shakes his arms and pulls his shoulder back and forward, then grins brightly. I have seen the expression on his face a great many times, but this time it is different. This time it seems honest and real, and despite that he is quite frightened, there are some of us that live for these moments. Shutter is one of them.

"Lead on," he gestures grandly. And Legolas leads us through the damp dawn, silent but loud with birdsong.

~{O}~

Any other day I would think of this as a fine morning, brisk and crisp and beautiful, but we head toward uncertainty.

The Hollows are a fair distance away from anything of note, intentionally isolated to allow the respect this graveyard deserves, and so the three of us jog across lush green and storm sodden grass. We save our energy in a run that we can keep up for hours, should we need to, and I feel my muscles loosen and warm with the familiar movement. The rising sun picks out the faint wisps of retreating storm clouds, promising a fine day now that it has passed, and the few birds that make their homes in such heights start to trill and whistle their greeting to the morning. Sharp and clear, close and loud.

The hems of my trousers are heavy with rain gathered from the grass, the upper half of me begins to dry, and strangely I begin to feel quite fine. I still ache, I still feel each one of my hurts; I am hungry and thirsty and I am very aware of the last time I had any sleep, but I am accustomed to this. I have grown used to pushing past my weariness and ignoring the complaints of my body. I have a place inside me where I push it all deep – perhaps a glimmer of what the elves do – and instead I notice what is around me.

The scent of wet soil and dripping blossom, the beauty of a cherry tree laden white and pink in the grey dawning. I take a moment to appreciate a particular tree that is probably as old as this city itself – small and gnarled but its canopy vast – and how the White Tower rises against a brightening sky ahead of us. Small things – the zip of an insect and how ragwort and hawkweed grant a splash of the deepest colour in between primrose and daisy – and I catch the smallest breath of Legolas' enjoyment as well. It catches me like a spiderweb, there and then gone, and I realise how much our link has faded recently.

A few days ago I had thought it as strong as ever, just as iron clad as when the Shadow forced it upon us, but something has changed. I know not what, but in the few days since I used this link to hurt him in Aragorn's chambers it has started to noticeably weaken. I do not know if it is because I have misused this gift, or because it has signified the last moments of our need for it, but I feel the strangest pang of loss at the idea of us being connected no longer.

Legolas and I were always linked, always connected, but this has been the most literal sense of it. There is a difference between knowing someone, and knowing someone. I am grateful for what I have had, because no one has ever been granted such a gift before – I realise now what a fool I was to hate it in the first – but now? I am torn between gratitude that I am finally being separated from him, and also sadness.

We reach the outer edges of the Hollows, where things steadily change from a graveyard to a more habitable place for living people, and Legolas holds his hand up in a terribly complicated gesture. I recognise some of it, enough to understand, and I grab Shutter and yank him into a rhododendron bush. He muffles his yelp of surprise out of pure instinct, glares accusingly at me as he rolls off his hip and rubs it gingerly, but I have only eyes for the elfling.

He is held in a tight ball, crouched on one knee and with the other tucked tightly into his chest, and he stares sharply into the glimmering dawn before turning and meeting my eyes. He gestures with his chin, and I peer into the half-light.

My eyes widen, and I feel a gasp of air escape.

I say: "Eru."

Just as Legolas says: "By the stars."

Just as Shutter says: "By the almighty manhood of Aulë!"

And both Legolas and I shoot him some form of offended or horrified look.

He is unrepentant; meets our eyes and town-turns his mouth. I am not sure I blame him. The man that guards our approach is the largest man I have ever seen in my life. I have seen Cave Trolls smaller. He is bald headed and simply dressed, because I cannot imagine he can find clothes that fit him particularly easily. He wears no armour, not even leather, and that is a worrisome thing all by itself. He wields a staff and cudgel, his face is lumpish and scarred and Eru… one of his thighs is as broad around as my chest! He is utterly enormous, as though someone has dressed a northern bear, given him a weapon and put him exactly where we need to be.

I have no idea at all what we are meant to do with him. Perhaps I could chop him down like a tree. I look to Legolas.

A silence passes between us where we stare at one another. I gesture toward the mountain of a man with my shoulder as if to say: 'well get on with it then' but he shakes his head.

"Your turn," he says absolutely. "It is completely and utterly your turn. Hit him on the head with your axe."

"I would have to be sat on your shoulders to do it; cannot reach his head," I point out with a scowl.

We pause, all three of us wondering who might tackle this giant and how. Legolas and Shutter are best in quickness and speed, but I am also significantly shorter than either of them. I huff a breath, twist my head so it cracks, because I think this might fall to me and I am not happy about it at all.

"We could simply run around him," Shutter points out. "He does not look very fast."

"Neither does Gimli," Legolas points out, and I cannot help the offended noise I make. "He is surprisingly fleet of foot when he wishes to be. No, I do not want this man chasing behind us the whole way. I have already survived two landslides today, I have no wish to be in another. We will go together – a wolf pack can take down beasts of enormous size when they work as one."

"Yes," I sound out carefully, wag my finger between myself and Shutter. "But we dislike one another, and you have a habit of running off and doing as you wish. We are more akin to a band of cats than wolves. I am astounded one of us has not already wandered off or fallen asleep."

There is a moment of silence before Shutter snorts a laugh. I cannot help but grin as well, and Legolas' face softens into something amused and weary of me. He shakes his head, Shutter grips my shoulder tightly and I give in. I no longer hate him, and I am a bit cross about it.

"Well then," the thief takes a deep breath and stands, stretches, as though we do nothing more than take in the morning air. The enormous man sees him, freezes, and Shutter glances down at where we still crouch. "An odd wolf pack we may be, but cats are effective in their own way and we do nothing at all hiding in a bush. He is stood where we need to pass, and I have things I mean to do."

TBC

So, once again, Thirsty for More has made me feel guilty enough to post. You are very good at tugging at the heartstrings, my friend!

Not actually a huge amount happens here other than a wee bit of character development, but crikey the next chapter has a lot going on! I'm still writing it, nearly finished, but I really think you're going to love it.

I'd really love to hear what you think of this chapter, but this author's note is going to be a bit short I'm afraid. England has - for once - had a very early and fairly normal summer so far (at least, the way other countries consider it) No torrential rain, no sudden hailstorms, my bin has not been blown halfway across the town even once. I'm sat here sweating in places I didn't know had sweat glands (ankles... really?) and it's not even the first heatwave we've had this early in the year. I am - like my fellow countrymen - complaining incessantly about it.

Anyway, drop me a line and let me know what you think. This chapter is sort of the gateway into the final bit of the fic so we're all on the downhill slope together now. To the point where I've started wondering what the next one is going to be about!

Love to hear from you, and have a great weekend :)

MyselfOnly