Middle-earth, and all who dwell within it, belongs to Tolkien. I am grateful to him for growing this beautiful garden in which our imaginations can play. Please review!

Betta glanced at Fili, who tipped his head toward the pub over her left shoulder. She glanced back and saw that at least a dozen dwarves had jumped from their seats and had hands the on handles of their knives and axes. They hadn't drawn them yet. This wasn't their fight. Yet.

Betta looked down at Fili's hand on her arm, the source of their troubles. She wasn't certain that she could lower her weapon unless he let go first.

Whether he realized the trouble or simply didn't think she was worth the fight, slowly, he released her arm, lifted his hand and took it away. He stepped back, and Betta lowered her knife; although, she had a good idea that he could have taken the knife from her, and probably broken her arm, with very little trouble if he had had a mind to risk it. She put it in its sheath that was strapped to her back, glad that her mistake hadn't bought more trouble than she could pay for.

Fili sat down again, but it took several moments longer before Kili lowered his sword. He stood, with the point pressed against her throat, staring hard at her. She held out her hands and waited patiently. He could kill her, or not, what did it matter? If the Dwarves of Durin couldn't help her, then there was no one left in Eriador, and she had come all this way for nothing.

Finally, Kili sheathed his sword, and Betta let out the breath that she had been holding.

"Sit," Fili ordered. "What do you want from us, then?" He drank his beer and didn't seem to care whether she sat down again or ran out of the pub. In fact, he seemed to prefer the latter.

Betta looked around. The other dwarves had gone back to their drink. One or two were snickering at her, thinking it had been a great joke that their kinsmen had played on a silly woman. She forced herself to sit down. Fili motioned for the box, and she very reluctantly handed it over again.

"My family came down from the ice lands of the North, no one knows how long ago, and settled in what is now called Lebennin. I do not know how old the box is, but my father said that he believes it was about this time that it was first mentioned in our history." Betta paused, looking up at the dwarves, expecting to find them uninterested, but they were both listening intently.

She went on. "When the wild men of Harad and the south began making raids on the coast, many of us and my family moved north and east and made a home under the peaks of Ered Nimrais, the White Mountains. We lived there for many years, until darkness came out of the east, from… the black land. There is great war in Gondor."

"There is always war among Men," Kili said.

"There is often war among Dwarves," his brother reminded him. He motioned for her to go on.

"Well, in this war, my uncles marched to battle and were killed on the hills of Ithilien. My brothers fell also, defending Osgiliath from an invasion of Orcs out of the North. Many families were looking to the White Tower for safety, but my father took me and my mother away in a wagon. We lived for a season with the horse lords of Rohan, but they were often raided by the hill people. Before the year was out, my father had died fighting alongside their warriors. My mother died that winter, of grief."

Betta paused in her story for a moment, thinking of times past. Fili and Kili both seemed sympathetic; at least, they weren't laughing at her, or yawning.

She went on, finishing her tale. "Before my father left, he gave me this box, and said that it is an heirloom of our family and contains clues to our past and a map to our future. There is treasure in this box, he used to say. Generations ago, a father had two sons. He gave to one, this box; to the other, the key, and said that when our family was in need, the two would come together and there would be treasure, so he said."

"Treasure?" Kili echoed, looking at the box with greater interest. Fili had been turning it over in his hands during her story and now he, too, looked more closely at it, running his thumb over the letters carved on the lid.

It wasn't a large box. It was six inches along, three inches tall and three deep, and it could sit easily on the palm of Betta's hand. The metal was old and of man-make; it had been corroded by time to a dark gray that was almost black, but the original silver could still be seen in the rivets and bands. The lid was stamped with runes, but what they once might have said was lost, and even their language could only be guessed at. On one side was a small hole where a key would fit, but the seam of the lid was all but invisible.

"You've lost the key…" Fili said thoughtfully.

"If there ever was one," Betta said. "Even if what my father said was true, that line of our family was long ago lost. He did not know the name of the father who first handed down the box, and there is no way to discover to whom the key has been given."

"What do you propose to pay us for opening this box?"

Betta hesitated. Early in her search, she had had plenty of money to pay Man or Dwarf who attempted to open the box, but after almost two years never staying anywhere long enough to fill her purse, she had limited resources. Certainly, she didn't have enough money to impress an important dwarf, which these two obviously were.

Two sets of eyes were on her now, waiting.

"Ten… crowns," she said weakly. The coins of Gondor bought bread and shelter well enough even in Eriador, but gold was the word that opened doors, and she had none.

"Ten crowns?" Kili laughed. "I haven't heard… you actually have these coins?"

She took one from her purse and held it up. He snatched it from her hand and stared at it in amazement. "I did not know these were still used anywhere in Middle Earth!"

"They use them in the south. You know that," Fili said quietly. He was looking intently at the box again, and behind his stern expression, wheels were turning; he raised his eyes to Betta. "What do you think is inside it?" he asked her.

She opened her mouth to protest, to repeat that she had no guess, but that would be a lie. She had her guesses. "I think… that whatever was in it turned to dust long ago," she said. "The box is sealed, but time has little care for locks and steel bands. What was put into it in the beginning, I think, was something written, on cloth or paper, regarding the early days of my family line. There is something else, something hard; you can hear it when you shake it next to your ear."

Fili held the box to his ear and shook. Sure enough, there was the faintest sound of a muffled clunk as something struck the inside of the box. Whatever it was had little space to move and was packed in tightly.

"I know that what I am offering is not the payment that you are used to dealing in, but it is a long walk from Anduin, and I travel lightly. If there is treasure, as my father believed, I will gladly pay your price out of that…"

Kili had been tossing her coin from hand to hand, flipping it between his fingers and performing tricks that might have amused a small child, but they did not amuse Betta. He grinned and shook his head, "So, we're to open this box for you for the price of ten bits of stamped silver – not pure silver, either, from the weight of it – and the promise of a share if any treasure comes of it? I think that if you have indeed walked from Anduin, and are not telling long tales, then you have made the journey for no reason. You'd be better off with a blacksmith."

He tossed the coin at her. She caught it and tucked it away. Whatever he might think of her money, the bartender had accepted it, and the innkeeper before him.

"I offer as much as I have," she said, "and the job is what it is."

"Whatever is in this box will lead you to treasure, you think?" Fili asked her.

"It is what my father believed."

He frowned. "This treasure won't just be lying around. It seldom is. You'll need to go hunting for it. There's an adventure in this box, as well."

"Probably," she agreed. "I haven't had reason to think far ahead. Probably there will be another long journey for me, more danger, possibly death. That's usually what goes along with this sort of thing, isn't it?"

"Usually." Fili drained his beer and set the mug on the table. "We'll take it," he said and stood up.

"We will?" Kili looked up at his brother.

"You will?" Betta echoed.