"Well, what do you think, then?" Kili asked, holding out the torch to get a better look at the water rushing through the cut channel at the back of the troll's cavern. "It looks clean, anyway."

Fili frowned thoughtfully. He crouched down and held out his hand just above the water. The air was cold, but all air was cold in this place. The stone floor around the channel was slick with ice, but that could mean anything as well. Streams underground, especially this far north, could be deadly cold to drink and to touch; there was no knowing where this water flowed from, the icy mountain tops or the fiery bowls of the earth full of poison gasses.

"We might find a bit of iron and a rod," he said. "Or dip a cloth and test the temperature that way. It cannot be very cold if it still runs and I do not see any ice where it emerges from the stone." Fili stood up. "I think that it is safe. Or, at least, that it is not cold enough to burn our hands if we were to attempt to fill our skins, but I would not recommend bathing in it."

"Even if it were as warm as the hot spring back home, I would not risk bathing under the pull of that current," Kili said. He looked at the small, black hole into which the speeding water disappeared. "I hate to think where I would be washed away…"

Fili nodded, taking off his glove. "Give me the mug, then." He held out his hand.

"You do not mean to drink it?"

"Honestly, brother!" Fili said, laughing. "How great a fool do you think I am? I will risk my hand to take the temperature, and if it is tolerable, then I will test it on my tongue, but I am not some dwarfling who would gulp down water from any unknown mountain stream."

Kili stood close by, ready to catch his brother should he lose his footing, and watched uneasily as Fili crouched down again and scooped up a mug full of the stream. He moved quickly and took as little of the water on his bare hand as he could. Probably a brief splash of even the iciest of waters would not do them great damage, but they were not in the position to take many risks.

"It is cold," Fili said, shaking the drops from his hand, "but not very cold." He dipped his fingers into the water in the mug and then frowned. "Indeed, it is not cold enough to freeze even if it were not a fast flowing stream," he said in amazement. "If it proves clean, it would be safe to drink straight from the source."

Kili took the mug and touched the water himself. "It must be channeled up from a hot spring somewhere beneath the mountain," he said. "Water this warm so far into the north is not natural."

"Nothing is natural in this place," Fili muttered, looking down at the cut edge and carvings that lined the stream's path.

"Have you told…?"

"We must yet test whether the water is potable," Fili said, interrupting him. "Even if it is not, we might at least wash some of our clothes. If only you had not broken our former host's cooking pot and fire pit, we might have boiled enough water for a bath." He smiled, but Kili was not smiling.

"You still have not told Betta about the carvings," he said.

"I have not had the time."

"You sat with her for two hours after I left you. I am glad that you two are no longer fighting, but what in Durin's name were you talking about if not that?"

"I told her more tales," Fili said, "and she told me a little of her childhood in Lebennin." He kicked a loose stone into the stream. "We were not always talking…"

Kili frowned, and then he stared. "Fili, you are not so great a fool that you would…"

"What? No!" Fili shook his head, offended. "She is not my wife, nor will she ever be, if Thorin has his way. We told tales, and we sat quietly. She slept while I watched over her and tended to the fire. I may have dozed a little, also…" he confessed. "Perhaps it was selfish of me to be lazy while you worked and cut wood, but Betta and I have had so little peace between us, and we shall have none again after we return to Ered Luin."

Kili smiled and shook his head. "I do not fault you for your two hours, but you have shirked your share of the work this day, and I will hear no complaints tonight if we have not enough wood to burn. I had my own project to work on while you were resting with our guide."

"What project?" Fili asked, but Kili only winked and put his finger to his nose to say that he would not tell.

"It is a gift for Betta, not for you," he said, and then he looked down at the mug in Fili's hand. "How shall we test the water, then?" he asked. "We do not have any of the tools that the old dwarves use down in the mines…"

.

When Betta woke again in the mid-afternoon, her legs were so stiff that she could hardly move, but with slow and careful stretches, and using the techniques that Fili had shown her – which he had learned over many years of strenuous training and the painful mornings after – she was able to loosen the protesting muscles and to even sit up with her legs folded under her. Her ankle was swollen and painful, and her shoulder ached when she used it, but she felt well enough to stand and to walk and had made it to the mouth of the cave before she met the dwarves returning from the stream.

She had just stepped out from behind the screen and onto the slick, cavern floor when Fili emerged suddenly out of the darkness. Startled, Betta's boots slipped and her legs were not strong enough to hold her balance. She would have fallen if he had not been quick enough to catch her around the waist.

"Thank you," she said, once she found her feet again.

"You are lucky," Fili told her. "I nearly caught hold of your arm." He meant her injured arm, of course, but Betta was not pleased to be reminded of her weakness. She removed his arm from around her waist.

"I will return to my cage," she muttered, turning to go back into the cave.

"Not yet," Kili said, coming up behind his brother with a torch and something else in his hand. "I have made you a gift, and it is better to test it out here than in the confines of a cave." He handed her a long, metal rod. "It is one of those from the troll's trivet, a bit rusted on the surface, but the iron is remarkably sound. My brother has tested it, and so I know that it will bear your weight faithfully."

Betta stared at the gift. It was one of the iron spear-shafts from the trivet, to be sure, but it had been bent into a curious shape, twisted at the top so that it curved first one way and then back again the other. The curve had been wrapped in thick wool and leather strips.

Kili grinned proudly at his handiwork; it had taken all his skill to bend the brittle ironwork with neither forge nor fire and only stones for tools. "We cannot always have you calling for help when you need to go somewhere," he said. "I think that a dwarf-made crutch will be of more use to you than one made out of dwarf."

Betta smiled at him and slipped the curved end of the crutch under her left arm. It was fitted exactly to her height and the cloth made a gentle pad for her shoulder. The tip had been smoothed a little, but the rough edges of the iron bit into the ground and would give her traction against the slick stone and icy floors of the cavern.

"If you do not wish to be called clever, Kili, then you must stop doing clever things. This is just what I need. I thank you."

Fili smiled to see her happy, but he said, "It was needed, but not just yet. You must still return to the cave and stay there. The sun is out, and we have a few more hours of daylight to use. My brother and I are going to go down into the valley. Not far! But far enough to see where we stand in these hills. You must stay inside with the fire to guard you until we return."

"Is it safe to go out?" she asked. "There may be more than one troll in these hills."

Fili nodded. "Whether it is safe or not, we must have a look around. There is wood and water in this cavern, but we cannot forever trust the troll's larder for our meat. I must know what the hunting is like, and how we might travel south from this place."

"We will only search a mile or so down into the valley," Kili assured her. "Fili wishes to see the hut that you found, and I would like to know whether there are other caves in these hills. If we are to travel, we cannot take our shelter with us."

"We will be back before the sun sets behind the hills, but you must wait here," Fili said sternly. "The cavern floor is treacherous, and there are many sharp stones and broken iron strewn about. The troll was not a good housekeeper." He glanced at his brother before he added, "But if you must wander, do not go down to the back of the cavern. There is a stream there where we gathered our water, but it is quick and cold and the stone has been slicked with ice. You have your own crutch now, but that is no reason to risk you falling into the water and being swept away."

Betta shivered, remembering her dream from the night before. "No, I have no wish to swim today," she agreed. She smiled at him. "It seems that you and your brother have an answer to every argument that I might make, and so I have no choice but to agree to stay and hide while you go exploring. Next time, I must think of a better way to distract a troll than jumping off a roof."

Fili nodded, satisfied that he had warned her away from the stream and any carvings that she might find there, but Kili was uneasy. He heard in Betta's voice that she was not satisfied to "stay and hide" as she called it, but Fili seemed to take her obedience for granted. Kili said nothing to either of them, however, and the two dwarves bid their guide farewell then set out for the open valley to have a look around.

Betta watched them leave the cavern, and then went back into the cave. Their water skin was full, and she reheated some of it in a mug for a drink. Sipping slowly, she counted to one hundred before she set the mug aside and stood up again. Although Fili had done his work well, and she had been effectively scared away from the stream and the bottom of the cavern, that did not mean that she would put off doing her own exploring. Kili's crutch would make the job easier, but she would have gone with or without it. A whole day she had been trapped in the small cave, and now she, too, wished to have a look about her.

.

Kili led the way out of the ice cave and onto the cliff that overlooked the troll's valley. The day was bright and the sun shone high overhead, still far above the western mountain ridge. Both dwarves blinked and shielded their eyes as they emerged from the darkness of the cavern.

"It is a very isolated place," Fili said. Though the valley below the cliff was wide and open, it spanned only a little more than a mile before being cut off on all sides by tall hills. There was no clear path out of it that they could see, and no sign of the road that they had left two days ago. With all the snow that had fallen the night before, they might search the valley from end to end and still not find a way out.

"The hut is this way," Kili said, pointing down the steep road that led up from the valley to the troll's home.

The dwarves slipped and skidded their way down the slick path. The angle of the road and the hard-blowing wind had sent most of last night's snow sliding down over the edge to the valley below, but what had stuck had been frozen by the cold and then thawed by the sun and was as slippery as water poured over ice.

"A sled would be of more use," Fili muttered, climbing out of a drift. He had lost his footing twenty feet from the bottom and had been sent tumbling down the rest of the way.

Kili soon joined him, sliding down the slope and crashing into his brother. They tumbled back into the snow drift in a heap. Kili laughed as he picked himself up. "You are a spoil-sport, Fili. Think what Betta will say when I describe for her how your arms flailed as you fell, and then you will smile."

"I think not," Fili said, but he was smiling. "That is the hut?" he asked.

"Unless another has been built since I last came down."

A dozen yards from the bottom of the road, the stone hut was nearly buried under snow and only the corners of the roof told that it was there. The dwarves had to dig for some time before they could clear enough of the white stuff away to have a look at the building.

"This would certainly not have sheltered us last night," Fili said. He surveyed the edges of the flat blocks that made up what was left of the structure. "There is too much wear from the weather to tell how it was cut, but look here." He passed his hand over a small recess along the surface of the door-post. "And here." He wiped away the snow that had been stuck to the outer wall. "I cannot tell. Is that carved?"

Kili frowned and peered close at the faint impression. "It may be," he said, "but it is too worn away to be certain. It may be the writing of Betta's ancestors, or merely the marks of time on an old stone. If I had thought to look yesterday, I might have examined the walls inside where the stone would be more protected, but it would take too long to shovel out all the snow that has gathered in there."

"If we cannot find means of travel, we may be trapped here for another day," Fili said, "and then we might have time enough to…"

"To find one more carving that you will hide from our guide?" Kili suggested.

Fili frowned at him, but Kili shook his head. "No, I will not be scowled into silence this time," he said. "We agreed to tell Betta what we had found in the cavern after we made a proper search. Well, now we have searched. You cannot deny that there is more than the boarder by the water to suggest that a tribe of Men once dwelt here."

"I do not deny it," Fili said. "But we do not know that it was Betta's folk."

"We are not looking for Betta's folk," Kili said angrily. "We are looking for sign of the folk that once dwelt in these hills. Whether they are the ancestors of our guide or the ancestors of Ankor or just an offshoot of the Lossoth who dwell in the west, it does not matter. She should be told."

"It was you who said that we should not get her hopes up," Fili reminded him.

"You have gone beyond caution, brother, now you would lie? Betta looks for answers, but it is not our place to decide which answers she deserves to hear."

"Kili, it is dangerous!"

"I agree. And I am certain that Betta would be glad to know that you are so eager to keep her safe, but she would not be glad to hear that you have been making choices for her." He saw that Fili was still stubborn and shook his head. "Brother, if we were to discover a secret way into Erebor, but thought that it was too dangerous to use, would you hide that information from Thorin? Do you think that he would thank you for your caution, then?"

Fili scowled. "That is not the same," he insisted.

"It is the same. This is Betta's quest, and she is not a dwarf woman. If she were, you might have standing to deny her this danger, but she is not and you do not. You have no duty to her family, and no duty to our race to keep her alive."

"I have a duty to myself," Fili said, "and to you. I cannot lead you farther north, but I cannot let her go on alone. And so, my only choice is to bring her back to Ered Luin with us. If we tell her about the carvings, she will not go."

"You do not know that. You have not given her the chance to choose between you and her quest."

Fili said nothing. He looked away and Kili's eyes widened with understanding. "That is the truth, then," he said. "That is the choice that you do not want her to make."

"She made the choice once to leave us behind…"

"And you are afraid that she will make the same choice again?"

"I do not wish her to walk into danger, that is all."

"But she…"

"That is all! And if you are my brother, you will not speak of it again. You will not tell her of the carvings we have found, or where the water in the stream comes from. Do not tell her anything. She is clever enough to put the clues together once she knows them, and I only hope that we can get her away from here before she does."

With that, Fili turned his back on his brother and set out into the valley looking for new caves or a passage through to the mountains. Kili hesitated, looking once more at the marks on the wall of the stone hut. They may have been carvings, or they may not, but the marks in the cavern were certainly made by men's hands. He hated to deceive his friend, but Fili was his brother and he would do as his brother asked, even if his heart told against it.

.

The sun was not yet touching the horizon when the brothers made their way back up the slippery slope to the troll's home. They had explored the valley and found a few caves, but no easy passage out in any direction. A few promising paths had proved to be filled in with snow and it would take them weeks to dig out even if they had not lost their shovels. Kili had once risked suggesting that the tunnels inside the cavern might lead through the mountain and out the other side - they might even lead back to the road, if both tunnel and road were cut by the same tribe – but Fili would not hear it.

They were both in sour moods by the time they reached the cavern. Fili did not stop to gather any wood from the pile that Kili had laid but walked straight to their cave, not noticing until he was past the screen that the glow from the fire was too dim. He looked around and his heart leapt into his throat. He ran out again into the cavern.

"She is gone!" he called, looking for his brother.

Kili dropped the wood in his arms and hurried forward. He pulled back the screen and looked inside. "Her crutch is missing, too," he said. "She must have gone to explore caves after we left. What do you think now about not telling her what we have found there?"

Fili said nothing. He looked out into the darkness of the cavern and his heart sank into his stomach. Betta was no fool. If she found the marks on her own, then she would realize that the dwarves had hidden them from her. She would know that Fili had lied.

Gosh, that was a thrilling chapter to write! Poor Fili, just trying to do the right thing and only repeating the same mistakes that Betta has already made. And Poor Kili, always stuck being the voice of reason.

I cannot tell you enough how important all your lovely comments are to the direction of this story (and to my own mental well-being). You all see things that I may have missed, and if something strikes your fancy, bring it up! You may find it mentioned in a later chapter ;) If you see any mistakes or inconsistencies, bring them up! I cannot improve my skills without your support.

Thank you all so much, and Blessed Be.

-Paint