Chapter 17:

I knew from everybody's expressions the next day that we were leaving soon.

Breakfast was a rather somber affair, since nobody would look me in the eye. They all knew how happy I was, and didn't want to break it to me that we were heading into Mirkwood.

Meanwhile, I pondered the rather annoying question of what to do with my horse. I decided to consult him myself, and after I was done eating, I slid outside and walked out to where Moonshadow was.

"I need a word!" I called out to him, and he cantered over.

Yes, Freya? he whinnied.

"What do you want to do?"

And you are referring to...?

"Whether you want to come into Mirkwood with us."

If I don't, I might not see you again. He sounded very upset. You could be killed by that horrible dragon, and poof! My one true rider, gone up smoke. Literally.

"So you want to come? You'd never get past the bit when we get captured by the elves!"

As soon as we're attacked by the spiders, I'm sure I could get away downriver to Laketown. I will wait there.

"The men of Laketown would capture you," I said despairingly. "I think. They're be very odd about it, I know that."

Fine. I will wait for you lot to exit Laketown, and then we will meet then. Okay? Clearly peeved, he galloped around the paddock he was in, and I walked away, nervous, but sort of pleased with the mini-plan we'd hammered out.

I sucked on my cheek as I slipped towards a quiet spot in the woods and reached deep into my newly recovered knapsack. It felt good to feel all of my different possessions in the bag, but I was intent upon my quest, and finally my fingers found what they were searching for.

I pulled out a well-thumbed book.

On its folded, battered cover, it read: The Hobbit.

I held it in my hand, weighing it. It, and all the other Lord of the Rings books, had been a birthday present years ago from Lily. I had read it, along with the other four books, only a couple of times and almost four years ago was the last time I had read them. Other than The Hobbit, they were quite difficult for me to read, and I couldn't remember a lot. The Hobbit was actually the easiest to remember.

I swallowed and flipped the pages as fast as I could until I reached the chapter where the Company left Beorn's. I couldn't resist a shiver as I saw just how close we were to reaching the Lonely Mountain.

Suddenly, I couldn't resist, and I skipped ahead to the Battle of the Five Armies. I combed the pages carefully, searching for the ones who died. I knew Thorin did, but was hoping (since I was in movie-verse) that Peter Jackson wouldn't kill him. It would probably be too much to hope, though. I couldn't resist a groan and a sob as I read that two other dwarves died – his nephews.

I slapped the book shut and threw it as far as I could. It landed in a creek a couple dozen metres away from my perch. I watched it from where I sat, watched it until I couldn't stand it, and then leapt up to rescue it. I dried it with a whispered spell and shoved it back into my bag, to the very bottom.

I straightened up, a new realisation having occurred to me. There was no way I was going to let those two die. And guess what? In the books or the movies, there had never been any Freya Macintosh, a human-dwarf hybrid witch. And that might be all the brothers needed to survive.

And so it was rather depressing when we got up the next day and started towards the nasty, overhanging wall of trees that was Mirkwood.

I clenched my jaw, and without realising I tightened my grip on Moonshadow's mane. I had consented not to have the rope bridle thing, because he found it itchy and I found it annoying to have him complain incessantly. Needless to say, he was very irritated that I kept clenching and unclenching my grip on his mane, and he kept snorting louder and louder.

Finally, he said, Freya! Stop! It's very annoying.

"Stop what?" I asked, startled.

Doing that thing to my neck! It's not helpful. Or comfortable.

"Sorry," I told him, loosening my grip.

I noticed that Bofur was looking at me strange, and I blushed. "He can talk!" I told him.

The dwarf just shrugged and said dubiously, "If you say so."

I fought the childish urge to stick my tongue out at him.

After we spent an entire day just trudging closer and closer to what was looking more and more like the Forbidden Forest (except more overhangy), we eventually reached the very edge of Mirkwood.

Gandalf informed us that we would be spending the night there, and we did, a rather uneventful and boring night. Except when it was my turn on watch (with Kili, of course), I couldn't help noticing the noises that came from those trees, and the eyes that were staring at us. More than once I jumped and grabbed Kili's arm, causing him to startle and draw his sword, almost skewering me on the last incident.

At last, he told me to stop. To distract myself, I pondered what to do. After a few moments, I remembered that I was entitled to ask about Kili's former – er – girlfriends. So I said, "Kili? You lost, and I won that first bet. So...you have to tell me about -"

"Fine," he cut me off. "There've only been three before -" He paused.

I swallowed and supplied, "Before now."

"Yes." He cleared his throat. "Before now. First there was a dwarven woman named Alithyk. She had long, blond hair, and a blond beard -"

"A beard?" I interjected.

"Yes. She was very nice, and we had -" he cleared his throat again, "A steady relationship for awhile. Then she and her family moved away, and that was the end of that."

I made a sympathetic noise, but he assured me that the relationship had been wearing down for ages before Alithyk had left.

"Then there was another dwarven woman named Piolína. She was pretty much the opposite of you, she wore dresses and skirts about all the time and refused to even touch weapons. We only had a relationship for a few weeks."

I sniggered, trying to think of Kili with a girl who refused to defend herself.

"Yeah, it didn't go too well," Kili chuckled. "And the last woman was named Tralique." He pronounced it "Trah-leek." "You remind me a lot of her. She was your sort of person, without a beard -"

"Again, really? Do your women really have beards?"

For the first time since I had met him, Kili fixed me with a rather cold stare. "Yes, they do. It is perfectly normal among my people for the women to grow beards. Not as long or as bushy or even as noticeable as a man's beard, but they can still be grown."

"Oh," I replied, quailing beneath his unnaturally frosty glare.

"Yeah, oh," replied the dwarf. He shook himself and continued. "Anyway, Tralique was a lot like you. She didn't have a beard like most of our women have, I'm not sure she had one at all. She took care of her own fighting, refused to do a lot of what she was told, which drove some people mad (though not me), and was one of the sweetest girls I've ever met."

"What happened to her?" I asked, pretending to be oblivious to the fact that he had just paid me several compliments all at once.

Kili sighed. "I don't honestly know," he admitted. "One day she was there, next she was gone." His hand played up towards his throat. "I'm not sure she was serious about me, though," he murmured, more to himself than me.

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, she never said goodbye. And...she was real mad at me last I saw her." I made a sympathetic noise, but he distracted me by saying, "What about you?"

I spent the next five minutes explaining that I had never dated anybody and that I was a rather odd kid for most of my life, with an overprotective mother who refused to let me date even if a guy had actually wanted to date me. I had never even kissed anybody. I mean, how pathetic is that? Twenty-four (Earth years) and I hadn't even kissed a single guy.

He bit his lip. "Not a single boy?"

I shook my head, staring at my feet. I swallowed down a little lump in my throat.

"Then none of them must have known you," Kili told me softly. I glanced up at his face, and on it was the kindest and most honest face I had ever seen in my life.

Just then, Fili came over and told us that it was his turn. I settled into my little nest made out of a blanket, my cloak, and my knapsack and whispered a swift thank you to Kili. He didn't respond, only turned over and gave me that look again. Then I fell asleep.

Whoo! Moving into major changes from the orig soon. Brace thyselves...actually, we have quite a few more. But still, get pumped!