After ordering his brother to lie quietly for once, Fili ducked out of the shelter and stood upon the hillside for a moment while his body grew used to the sudden cold. He had wrapped himself up in as many layers as he could, but it was still a shock to feel the sharp, chill wind on his face. His breath was a white cloud before his lips that tangled its fingers in his braided beard and whiskers. It was a clear night and, although the waning moon had yet to rise above the line of hills, its glow could be seen like a halo behind the eastern ridge and the light of the twinkling stars reflected blue against the snow so that the shadows tremble like shivering ghosts between the hills.

But Fili did not believe in ghosts, and the thought of them did not trouble him as much as the memory of his brother's words and winks. Kili seldom stuck so stubbornly to a single joke; however trapped they were in the north with little entertainment, it was strange.

Fili looked up and saw Betta several yards away from him, perched in a snow bank and looking out toward the road. He followed the path that she had forced up the hill until he stood beside her. Once there, he saw that, although she looked toward the road, she did not seem to see it. Her gaze was distant and her brow furrowed in pensive and apprehensive thought. She did not look up when he approached.

"My brother has been wrapped in tight bandages," he said, "and he will undoubtedly be grumbling all night, but I must still order you inside to join him. It is too cold for you to sleep with me here."

"I will have my turn in the cold soon enough," she said, rubbing the feeling back into her legs before she stood.

She turned to leave, her eyes carefully lowered so that she did not look at him, but before she could go, Fili reached out his hand. He stopped just short of catching hold of her arm, remembering a moment long ago and far away when he had touched her for the first time and she had pulled a knife on him. She made no move toward her knife tonight, only waited patiently for him to speak.

Betta stared down at his hand, but when he said nothing, she looked up, finally, and met his gaze. She asked, "Was there some other order you wish to give?"

Fili searched her eyes, but they were stone, gray walls. He wished that he could better understand the thoughts hidden behind them. He had often wished that he knew her mind at least as well as he knew his brother's; it would still be better than he knew his own when he looked at her.

"Fili?" she said, interrupting his thoughts.

"No, no orders," he said quickly, taking back his hand and putting it safely behind his back where it would cause no mischief. "I must apologize for my brother's bad jokes. You heard him laugh as you went out, but be sure that he was not laughing at you."

She smiled. "I do not mind his jokes or his laughter. I have heard far worse from far worse men, and your brother does not mean what he says." Her smile quickly disappeared, as if she saw something change in his expression, and then she added, speaking slowly, "I think that you are the only one who believes that he is teasing me with his jokes."

"Even so, I do not want you to be made uncomfortable."

She had been frowning, but now she seemed troubled. "There was a time, not so long ago, when you would not have cared at all for my comfort," she reminded him.

"But that time is not now. Now, we are…"

"Friends. Yes, I know," she said, a little too sharply, and then she sighed and looked away from him. "But being friends with a dwarf is new to me, and I do not know what that word means among your folk."

It was Fili's turn to frown. "What it means to me," he said, "is that I would know what troubles my friend, and whether or not I might give her some little comfort in a dangerous land. What are your needs, and how might I satisfy them? I cannot always be guessing at an answer, but it is more than hunger and a hurt shoulder, I think."

"No," she said. She shook her head. "It is nothing more than that."

They stood in silence, and Fili wondered if there was something else he should say. There was clearly something that she expected him to say, or else why would she not have said good night and left him to his watch? Instead, she stood still, looking at the blue hills above and below them and at the darkened sky.

"I am tired of this land," she said suddenly. "I miss the green hills and the trees, the rivers running over stone. I miss being warm at night and letting my bare arms breathe the free air under the sun without all this cloth in between." As she spoke, she pulled angrily at the sleeve of her heavy coat and winced to move her injured arm. "I am tired of the cold and being bound up against it. I feel trapped by all this snow!"

She let out a deep and heartfelt sigh such as he had never heard from her, and then she glanced at him anxiously, confirming that she had let slip some secret feeling that she had meant to hide.

What the secret was, he could not guess, but he nodded just the same. "That, I understand," he said. "I miss seeing bare rock and stone without so much snow to cover it. It has been a long journey, in feeling if not in days, but though I cannot give you the green grass again, I will say that I think we are nearing the end of the journey and we will soon be on our way home."

"I do not think so," she said. She looked out toward the road again and passed her hand over her eyes. "I wish that I had your confidence, Fili, but I do not feel near the end of it. It seems to me that there is another longer and a darker road ahead of me, beyond the northern hills. I do not like it. It tastes of death. This quest was to be the end of all things, and if it is not, then I am too tired to go on walking."

Forgetting himself, Fili took her hand and pressed it in both of his. She looked at him in surprise. He did not like words of ill-omen, but told himself that it was only as she said: she was tired and too caught up in dark thoughts. He wished that he could comfort her but he was out of his depth.

He remembered his brother's words and took care to smile as he assured her, "There will be no more walking tonight. I will take my watch now, and satisfy for you the one need that I can. I give you gladly to your rest. If he is still awake – which I am certain that he is – then ask Kili to tell you some terrible joke about me, and that will cheer your thoughts."

Betta nodded and returned his smile, but he saw that it did not reach her eyes. She took her hand from his. "At least I may be thankful that I travel with dwarves," she said, speaking as if it were a line that she had long rehearsed, "for I know that your brother only teases and does not mean what he says. If I traveled with Men of my own race, I could not trust them and would long ago have been made more than uncomfortable by their words and looks, but we here are all friends, are we not?

"I hope that you have a safe watch," she said, and then left him to it.

Fili watched her walk down the hill and duck into the shelter. He frowned, puzzling over her last words which had felt so much like his brother's confession that he could not help but think that they came from the same source, but he did not understand what source that was.

He sat down in the snow and looked out at the hills, searching for danger in the dark shadows even though his senses told him that there was none out there tonight. Almost, he wished that something would attack and distract him from his confused and conflicted thoughts. He felt sure that something important had happened, that he had missed it and now it had gone beyond retrieving.