Chapter 27:

I sighed as the river calmed down, pulling us out of rapids and into smooth, more gently-flowing waters. I appeared to be the only one happy about it, because now we weren't moving too fast.

I drifted next to Kili, but neither of us were paddling, so we fell a little behind. He looked less than comfortable, but assured me that he was fine and we would deal with it when we stopped. "We'll be at the Long Lake soon," he informed me. "As soon as the river begins to widen, we will know that we have almost reached our destination."

I sighed. "You know, we really need to talk."

"Yeah, we do," he replied. "You need to tell me about yourself, Frey. You said you were going to."

I hesitantly asked him, "Do you want to know about my past?"

I couldn't read his expression when he turned his gaze to the riverbank. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I nodded wordlessly. I had spent too long listening to Gandalf's advice to pretend that I had no past, practically.

"Then yes. I would very much like to know where you come from. I want to know why you are who you are."

I swallowed, and started to explain. "You know that I originally came from a world called Earth. Or, I thought I did. I lived there for twenty-four years without much interesting things happening, and then I died, and came here. Once I came here, Gandalf realised that I am a dwarf-human witch. I had, apparently, only been gone for three months. I didn't tell you that." Kili gasped and made to say something, but I pressed on. "Um, I don't remember anything about a life here. Nothing. According to Gandalf, this and the fact that I went to Earth to live for twenty-four years was because of a powerful spell – a mistake on my part. I had to die there to come back. But I think that I had to be around the same age there as I was here in order to come back. I don't know much else." I sighed, letting my fingers drag on the surface of the clear water. "I'm not sure that life really existed Kili. What if it was all a lie?"

"How do you tell the lies from the truth?" he asked. "What you've got to remember is that sometimes, often, the lies and the truth are like this." He held up two fingers, crossed. "Think of it this way. The truth is something that is real. Whether you believe it's real or not, it has no effect on it. It's still truth. The lies, however, have not been real and never will be. A real lie, as it were. The question is whether you believe it was real."

I smiled at him, grateful to the explanation. "That makes sense. In that case, I do believe it was real, which makes it the truth."

I went on to explain about Moonshadow in more detail than before, and to explain how my magic worked. Then I tried to explain a lot of things from home, like films and computers. I tried with minimal success to explain the internet to Kili, but when I started talking about Tumblr and Fanfiction and Pottermore, he started to get confused.

Finally, he managed to break in. "Freya. Three months, right?"

"Yeah, that's what Gandalf said," I replied, puzzled that he would bring this up now.

"Freya, d'you remember Tralique?"

"Yeah. She was the only girl you really liked, right?" I didn't add the "before me" part.

"Yes." He hesitated a moment, taking a deep breath. "Freya, she went missing three months ago. She looked exactly like you, and acted like you, but she never told me she had magic. She never even told me she was half-human. But I guessed. And then she disappeared. I thought she was gone forever, but – I guess not."

I clutched the sides of my barrel as my world swayed. Even if we hadn't been floating down a river, the result would have been the same. I knew that if I had been standing up, I would have pitched over and found myself sitting down hard on the ground. "I'm – I can't be her. I can't be a different person."

"But she wasn't different from you. She was you," Kili said earnestly.

I fought the impulse to yell at him. Our relationship had finally taken off, and now he was trying to connect me to his past? He was trying to make me into the girl he had once loved. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Kili – are you sure?"

"Yes." His voice was so full of certainty, I just couldn't not believe him.

"How can I have no memory of that? No memory of you? Why would I have chosen to experiment in stupid magic to get myself wrenched away from you? Why can I remember my Earth life if I can't remember my sixty-eight years here, before then? How -"

"I don't know, Freya," Kili interrupted, and I was relieved that he hadn't called me Tralique. "But I know that you're her, and she's you. You're the same person." He (with slight difficulty) put his hands on my face and forced me to look into his eyes. "I'm not asking you to be a new person. I'm not asking you to compete with her, your past self. I'm asking you to understand that we've met before, we've kissed before, we've had an entire life together before. So why do we have to start over?"

"Because I don't remember it," I whispered, and I felt a tear trickle down my face.

"That's okay," replied Kili, also in a whisper as he reached out with his thumb to brush away the salty liquid. "Because I do. And you don't have to be exactly who you were. You just have to be you, because that's the person I love. Freya Macintosh, from Earth." He laughed slightly. "You don't even have to change your name. I just want you to be you. Because I love you, just like I loved Tralique. But I think I love the new you more."

I swallowed and smiled at him. "I love you, too, Kili," I told him softly. "And I love you all the more for not asking me to be someone I don't think I am. Maybe I used to be, but I'm new now. And I love you for knowing that, and letting me be me."

He leaned forward, bringing my head towards his, and suddenly what had been a recounting of my past became an intense make-out session. And then it was spoiled by going over a bloody waterfall.

This is the same ridiculously cheesy conversation as the orig (seriously, I cringe when I read it), but I copied and pasted it because it is Important. So, yeah. Please review!