Chapter 19:

I was sitting on the ground, sullenly plucking at the pebbles on the path. Moonshadow had finally told me goodbye, and he was already on his way to Laketown. I was so pissed that he was leaving that I had considered begging him to stay (he was, after all, the only one treating me normally), but thought the better of it and gruffly hugged his neck. Then I had fastened my knapsack onto him. I didn't want to lose it when we met the elves. I was left with only my bow, my quiver, my dagger and two swords. And the necklace and the clothes I was wearing. He had nuzzled my hair, and then cantered away.

Suddenly, I heard – finally – the crunch of boots on the dirt. I glanced up to find, as I expected, a company of thirteen exhausted-looking dwarves plod up. As soon as they saw me, they all plunked down as if they'd been walking for days.

Which they had.

And, considering how fast I'd galloped off, they had been walking for almost eleven hours. We didn't usually walk that far in a day. At least, what we were ninety-nine percent sure was day. In this stupid forest it was hard to tell.

Kili sat (or rather, collapsed) beside me. "That was stupid," he said bluntly.

"What? Yelling at you, or running off, or attacking the tree?"

"No, yes, and yes," he replied. "You were the one who told me the trees seemed malevolent, Freya."

I sighed. "I know. I guess – number one, I had just woken up. Nobody gets me mad when I've just woken up. It's almost as stupid as running off. And if I'm embarrassed, that's even worse. Which brings us to number two: I was embarrassed from falling asleep on a horse, not to mention falling off. And number three, you told me what to do. I hate being told what to do. I forgot that I had told you that the trees seemed evil," – this last comment I directed at an overgrown, gnarly tree to my right – "and got angry. So, I'm sorry."

Falling silent, I hugged my knees and put my chin on them. I already sorely missed Moonshadow, to whom I never had to apologise. He already understood my mind and forgave me easily, just as I did for him.

"Hey," Kili said softly. "It's okay. This forest – it's doing something. I think it's like, fermenting and seasoning something to throw at us, to make us stray off the path. I don't know." He shook his head.

"It does appear to be making us act a little less sane than usual," I replied with a quiet chuckle.

"A little?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at me.

I replied with a grin. "You know me," I giggled. "I'm not sane even out of this forest!"

"That, I'll believe," he chortled.

After that we sat in companionable silence for a few moments. Then I noticed that Kili seemed to be having some sort of internal struggle. "What?" I asked him suspiciously.

He struggled for a moment more, then burst out, "What are pancakes?"

That surprised a laugh out of me. "You mean to tell me that you don't have pancakes here?"

"What are they?" he asked again.

"They're these round foods made out of, like, flour and stuff. It's like a cake, except it hasn't got frosting and it's shorter and thinner. It's not made in a pan, if that's what you're thinking. It's sort of made on a griddle, I think it's called, that goes over a stove."

Kili looked kind of lost, but he nodded anyway. "Do you like them?"

"Yeah. Especially with bits of chocolate in them..." I sighed. Suddenly I was struck by the memory of what I had thought Kili's eyes looked like when I'd first seen him. I'd thought that they were chocolatey. I blinked, staring at his eyes with a cocked head.

"What?" he asked nervously, gazing back at me.

I blushed. "It's just – your eyes -" Suddenly I noticed something. "Hang on. Where is everybody?"

Because the entire area of forest around us was deserted. I leaped to my feet and drew my swords even as Kili jackknifed to a standing position and stared around us.

Then I heard a horrible clicking noise. "Oh, no," I moaned. I turned very slowly and found myself face to face with the largest, ugliest spider I had ever seen in my life.

I did the natural thing. I opened my mouth and screamed. Very loudly, and very high-pitched.

Kili whipped around so fast, I thought his head was going to fall off. Fast as lightening, he stabbed into the creatures head and pulled the sword out with blood and some nasty grey stuff on it. The creature shuddered and keeled over.

I doubled over, hugging my stomach. "Gonna throw up," I groaned, realising that the nasty grey stuff was brains. How the ugliest, largest, most disgusting spider I had ever seen still managed to have a brain, I don't know.

"Hey." Kili's voice. "It's okay. You're gonna be fine. It's just a spider."

"Hate spiders," I mumbled. "Giant spider." With effort, I straightened up and swallowed down the bile that rose in my throat. "What now?" I asked.

Kili stared at me for a second and then replied, "Well, we need to figure out where everyone else went. But...clearly they left the path. That's sort of a problem, 'cos -"

"Because Gandalf told us not to, yes," I interrupted. "However, I think even Gandalf would recognise that these are special circumstances."

And so I crept towards the edge of the path and called softly, "Thorin? Fili? Some sort of dwarf? Maybe Bilbo?"

Nobody answered, and Kili exhaled heavily. "So now we -"

"Yes," I replied exasperatedly. "We have to follow them."

"That wasn't what I was going to say," he said patiently. "We have to figure out where they went."

"I know where they went," I said slowly and quietly, as if I was predicting somebody's death.

Kili frowned at me. "How can you possibly -"

I held up my hand, cutting him off. "Let's just say that I know, and I'll explain it later, m'kay?"

"Fine," he replied. I took a deep breath, steeling myself to leave the path, which was exactly what Gandalf had told me not to do. I berated myself as I remembered that Gandalf had also been counting on me to keep the others from straying off the path – so far the only dwarf that I had managed to keep from the lure of the forest was Kili, and he was about to leave it to find his kin.

I swallowed and shuddered. Suddenly, I heard another clicking noise. This time, I didn't hesitate. I whipped my swords about and spun, sweeping one in an uppercut along the spider's leg, severing half it off.

The spider keened as if mourning the loss of half its leg. Then with its remaining seven, it scuttled at me and I sliced off another leg. I kept on going until it was only twitching abdomen and head, and I was forcefully reminded of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with the black knight.

So, of course, I just had to double over laughing. Kili looked at me, leaning over a legless spider, cracking up, and I think he feared for my sanity. Then again, when doesn't he?

No more spiders came at me, giving me time to get my giggling under control. As I hiccuped back into a relatively calm state, Kili asked me, "So...random laughing fit. Why?"

I hesitated. I probably wasn't going to be able to explain that without explaining this, and then it would eventually lead us to the subject of how I got here.

"Later," I said. "We need to go find some stupid, foolish dwarves and a hobbit."

And so we set off into the woods. I sighed as I pushed a creeping vine out of the way. "We're never going to find the path again. You realise that, right?" I asked Kili.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Something tells me we won't be needing it, anyway."

I nodded. I jumped at every sound, expecting to hear the clicking noise that meant a spider. We had barely gone twenty feet, however, before I started actually hearing clicking.

"Kili?" I whispered, turning around to look at him.

"Hmm?"

"Do you feel like you're being watched?" Because I had just noticed the fact that my head was tingling, and that only happened when something was directly above me and about to drop. But when I looked up, nothing was there.

"What does being watched feel like?" he asked. "Is it that tickly feeling on the back of your neck?"

I nodded.

"Well then yes, a bit. Well, quite a big bit."

Just then, I heard the clicking noise and I screamed. Kili suddenly stabbed at something over my shoulder, and I yelped as he almost severed my arm from my body. Suddenly, he swore and pulled his sword back, just as I felt a sharp pain in my back.

"No," I gasped. I stared at Kili, and my face felt like it was made out of terror and betrayal. How could he have let it sting me?

"Freya, I'm so sorry," he said. "It stung you just as I stabbed it."

He caught me as I sagged and I winced as I saw Kili get stung. The spiders backed away as the two of us slowly slid to the ground. I swallowed as I gathered my last remaining mobility.

I gazed at Kili and suddenly lunged forward and pressed my lips against his. His tasted sweet, and for a second I felt giddy, realising how I wanted to stay like this for the rest of my life. Then my muscles failed and I fell backwards as I lost control of my limbs. I whispered as he stared at me, shocked, "I love you, Kili. And by the Valar I've wanted to do that this whole freaking quest."

I desperately tried to say more, because that sounded so incredibly stupid, but my jaw wasn't working. These moments were always just so awkward. My head flopped backwards and my eyes closed and despite all of my efforts, I could not move a centimetre.

Then everything sort of faded and I fell into unconsciousness.

There's the kiss. Ha. Sorries if it's not up to expectations, this was quite a chapter to write! Please review, as always.