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!

Fili stood at the edge of a steep cliff overlooking a barren land. He looked down, down, far down but the bottom of the cliff was shrouded in mist; he could not see the end of it. As far as he could see, the hills and vales were blasted by fire, charred to ash and dust, and in the distance was a lonely mountain, The Lonely Mountain. Hadn't he been here before? Hadn't he dreamed of this place before, and a burnt-out cabin in the woods?

A sudden gust of wind blew in from the east, tearing at his hair and striking him in the chest with such force that he stumbled back from the edge of the cliff. He looked around in confusion, searching for his brother. If he were here, then surely Kili must be here with him. Neither brother ever went far without the other, and Kili would not have missed a chance to see The Mountain.

"Kili!" he shouted. The wind blew the echoes of his voice back at him, but as they faded, he heard a quiet voice behind him.

"He is not here."

He turned around and saw the last person that he would expect to see. Not Kili, not Thorin or even a ghost impersonating him, it was Betta standing at the edge of the cliff, balancing like an acrobat along the precarious line. It took him a moment to recognize her. Her hair hung loose about her shoulders, long and black and blowing in the wind. She wore not the usual travel clothes that were the only clothes he had ever seen her in, but a dress of dwarvish-make with long sleeves and a heavy skirt. Almost, he thought that it could not be here because of the dress alone.

He shook his head. Of course it was Betta. Who else would be here in his dreams? "Come down from there," he ordered her. "It is not safe."

She laughed. "No, it is not safe," she agreed, "but where else should I go?" She lifted her skirts and spun around, revealing bare ankles and bare feet that stood far too close to the precipice.

"Come here, come down," he told her. "I will help you," he said, reaching out his hand, but he made no move to get closer to her. He was afraid of the cliff; there was something strange in the air around it that warned him away, but the same wind that had battered him and thrust him back from the edge did not seem to touch her. She stood still finally and looked at him, a curious expression on her face.

"I thought you were looking for your brother," she said. "He has gone on ahead, and you will be late if you do not follow him. Aren't you cold?"

Fili frowned at her and looked around. Sure enough, there was a road at his feet winding around the hill and down towards The Mountain. "You will come with us," he said, but she shook her head.

"Not yet," she said. She looked at him sadly. "Not yet, though it may seem as if I have gone on before you. I must take the longer road, but I will meet you there before the end. Now, go and find your brother. He waits for you."

"But where…?"

Before he could ask his question, she had turned her back to him. She spread her arms wide into the wind and leaped over the edge of the cliff.

.

"No, wait!" Fili sat up suddenly, his body covered in a cold sweat, his arms and legs aching and his fingers throbbing with pain. He stared around him, but there was neither road nor cliff, and he was alone. The cave was comfortably warm and the blanket covering his body was rough wool, but no worse than he was used to. Frowning and still feeling his heart pounding in his chest, he lay back again telling himself that it had only been a dream.

His head was foggy from the smoke of the fire beside him, and he realized slowly that he was naked under the blanket. Where were his clothes? He turned his head and saw them spread out on the other side of the cave where the heat from the fire would dry them.

And then memory returned to him. He recalled the troll and the ice cave and the pearl that he had left near the cliff outside. He remembered the avalanche crashing down upon him, the boulders of ice battering his body, and the feeling of being smothered under a mountain of freezing snow. He remembered hearing his brother's voice shouting his name into the darkness. Where was Kili? Had he, too, been caught up in that maelstrom of ice and snow?

A cold hand gripped his heart, and Fili sat up again with a groan. He forced his aching limbs to move, leaning up against the stone wall of the cave as he hauled himself to his feet. The blanket fell from his body, and the direct heat of the flames made him feel as if his skin were being pricked by a thousand blunt needles. He very nearly ran naked out of the cave, so afraid was he for his brother's life, but he was the elder brother and had more sense than that. It would be cold in the cavern, and there may be the need to dig through fallen snow. Fili reached for his clothes, but his hands were stubborn and refused to move as he directed them. Before he could convince his numb fingers could catch hold of shirt or trousers, he heard a sound from outside the cave.

The screen moved aside and Betta entered. She carried a bundle of cloth under one arm and a stack of wet wood in the other. So overburdened was she that it took a moment for her to notice him at the back of the cave; he used that moment to snatch the blanket up from the floor and wrap it around his waist.

The movement caught her eye, and Betta looked up. For a moment, they stared at each other. Fili felt relief flood through him though, until that moment, his concern had been for his brother only and not for their guide. He searched her eyes for some sign of grief, some terrible hint that Kili had not survived; slowly, she began to smile, but when he continued to stare so hard at her without speaking, her smile disappeared and she looked away. She lowered her gaze to his chest, and he was reminded that he had not had time to dress before her arrival.

"I am sorry… I, ah…" Fili's cheeks flushed red with embarrassment, and he tightened his grip on the blanket. He was suddenly very sympathetic toward his brother who had sat bare-chested before their guide so many nights ago. He regretted teasing Kili now that it was his turn to be stared at, but Betta was no more staring now than she had been that night. She was indifferent to Fili's state of dress – or undress – and only relieved to see him alive.

"You're awake!" she cried as a bright smile lit her face. She laughed and set down her burden near the wall. "Kili was afraid that you were… But I told him that you could not be… No, you are too stubborn!" She stepped around the fire and up to him, throwing her arms around his neck before he had the chance to warn her back.

He was so glad to be alive, and to have proof that his brother lived also, that he caught her in his arms, laughing as easily at their luck as she did. He still felt weak and cold in his bones, and his fingers and toes were numb, yet tender, but he did not complain; he did not need to be told how close he had come to never feeling anything ever again.

"You were buried," she said. Her warm cheek pressed against his bare shoulders though she was his equal in height. "I thought this time you would not wake up," she whispered.

Fili was weak and trembling from the effort of standing upright, and he leant more of his weight on her than he liked to admit. He could feel her body shaking, and so he held her close and combed his fingers through her hair. Most of the braids that he had tied four nights ago were gone, but his fingers found one thin strand, carefully fastened, and the small bead that he had given her. This journey had given him a new perspective on dream omens, and he still saw before his eyes her body leaping from the precipice. He was glad to hold her now.

In spite of his relief, he was still very painfully aware that the only thing that held the blanket around his naked waist was their two bodies pressed together. He was more than a little surprised that Betta did not seem to notice.

"I am glad to be alive and awake," he said, "and even more glad that you and my brother are both safe. But If I may…" He gently eased her back and freed one of his arms so that he could hold together the edges of the blanket.

Betta frowned when he pushed her away, and she looked down to see what he so urgently needed his hand to do. Seemingly for the first time, she realized that he was not dressed, and that she was standing beside a nearly naked dwarf; her left hand rested among the golden curls on his bare chest. Fili's cheeks – which had been flush since she entered the cave – now turned a bright crimson, and she laughed and shook her head.

"Now I know that you are fully recovered," she said. "If you have enough strength to be embarrassed, and your blood is flowing warm enough to turn your cheeks so red, then certainly you will live." She laughed, but kindly and released her hold on him, politely averting her eyes so as to do no more damage to his virtue.

Fili, however, was still looking at her and up close he could see her pale cheeks and the dark circles under her eyes; many long hours of anxious watching and waiting were written on her face. He wondered how long he had been asleep.

"Where is Kili?" he asked. She offered her arm, and he was glad for her support as he lowered himself down again to sit against the wall. He tied the blanket securely around his hips, but was grateful when she handed him his long shirt from the pile of clothes.

"He is in the cavern," she said, nodding to the dark outside their cave, "digging our woodpile out from the snow. I helped him as long as he would let me, but he did not like for you to be left alone." A shadow fell over her face and she frowned. "I am surprised that he left your side at all," she said quietly.

"He knows that we need wood more than we need another injured dwarf," Fili said.

Betta shook her head, and the shadow passed. She smiled at him and filled their mug with water, setting it near the fire to warm before turning back to the bundle of cloth that she had been carrying when she first entered the cave. "Wood we have," she said. "It is dry wood that is scarce. The snow buried both our wood and our food, but not so deep that we could not get them out again." She unwrapped the cloth and lifted out a brick of meat, frozen solid.

"Kili was wise to stack what he cut inside the cavern," Fili said. His stomach grumbled at him, eager to be filled.

Betta put the frozen meat aside on a flat stone, but from the same corner she brought out another stone that bore a slab of meat that was mostly thawed. Taking out her knife, she began to cut thin strips from the edges where the flesh was soft.

"I would call it wise if he suspected that the roof would collapse," she said. "He told me that he only looked for a place the troll had not defiled. That it happened to be inside the cavern, I would call luck, not wisdom."

Fili frowned and did not understand the sharpness of her words. If he had not known better, he would have guessed that his brother and Betta had quarreled while he was unconscious. But they had been good friends almost since their first meeting. What could have caused them to fight now?

"How long have I been asleep?" he asked her.

She shrugged. "What is time in this place?" she said. "When last I asked, Kili guessed that it was nearly noon, so I would guess that it is now a few hours after." She skewered the strips of meat on one of the iron rods and set it over the fire to cook. She handed him the mug. "Kili says that when you wake, you are to drink as much warm water as you can, and to eat as much food also."

She sighed and looked at the meat, smoking as it cooked. The water and fat that dripped from it hissed as it fell upon the hot coals. "I do not know whether this is at all healthy," she said, shaking her head at the half-frozen lumps of flesh, "but there is nothing else."

She looked up and saw that Fili was frowning at her. Quickly, she put on her cheerful face again, the tight-lipped smile that did not reach her eyes. "It does not matter," she said. "You are awake and we are all well. Your clothes are dry. I will leave you to get dressed."

She stood up to go, but before she could leave the cave, Fili spoke up. "I did not reach the pearl," he said.

She hesitated in the doorway. "No? That is too bad. We cannot get it now, but I am glad that you were not lost under the snow as well." Her words were soft, but her eyes were not. He could see the anger there.

"You would rather I had found it."

"Of course," she said. "I would rather you had found it and brought it back to the cavern safely before the cave collapsed. But if you are asking me to choose between one or the other…" She smiled her tight-lipped smile and shrugged, turning to leave again.

"Which one would you choose?" he persisted. She looked back, and her smile was gone. He regretted asking the question at all, afraid to hear the answer.

"I am glad that you are safe," Betta said. "I…"

Before she could say more, they both heard loud bootsteps outside the screen. Kili arrived, pushing into the cave with snow still clinging to his beard; he dropped an armload of wood onto the floor.

"That is cold work without a spade," he muttered. He saw Betta about to leave and frowned, but then he looked into the cave and saw his brother sitting upright and awake. Kili stopped short and stared, just as Betta had stared when she first entered. "Well," he said, "you are awake at last." He crossed his arms. "That is good. I was beginning to wonder if we would have to haul you around on a sleigh like a block of ice."

He frowned but could not hold his grim look for long. Fili smiled, and almost immediately a wide grin broke across Kili's face and he cried out. "Fili!" and rushed across the cave, throwing his arms around his brother.

"Careful now, I am still a bit sore!" Fili said, laughing.

"You stubborn, thick-headed, idiot dwarf! Never do that to me again!" Kili shouted, punching his brother gently – but not too gently – on the shoulder.

"You spoil all my fun, Kili," Fili said. "Here, I had planned to look out for the next avalanche and have myself buried once more!"

Over his brother's shoulder, Fili watched Betta duck out of the cave. Her face was sad, and he felt even more certain that there had been some conflict between her and his brother, some argument over how to care for the unconscious dwarf between them, perhaps? Nor was the pearl forgotten in all the joyful laughter between brothers, but Fili did not blame Betta for her hesitation; he knew that she was torn in her heart between him and her quest. If he had put her on the spot and demanded that she make a sudden choice, whose fault was it really if she chose against him?

.

Not long after, the meat was cooked and Fili was dressed. The brothers sat down to eat beside the fire, but Betta had not returned.

"Where has our guide gone now?" Fili wondered aloud. He had many questions to ask her and did not trust the safety of the cavern any longer.

"Undoubtedly, to stare at that blasted tunnel again," Kili muttered between mouthfuls.

"What?"

Kili realized his mistake and shook his head. "I did not mean that," he said quickly, but his brother stared at him until he stammered out an reply. "It is only that… while you were sleeping… after you had warmed and I knew that you would live, of course, I sent her to look for some cloth in the troll's hoard here in the cavern. She was gone so long that I was forced to leave you in order to look for her. I found her standing outside that damned tunnel, staring into it as if she'd seen a ghost. The torch had nearly burned out in her hand, but when I questioned her, she spoke as if it were nothing."

"She neglected her task to look into the tunnel?" Fili asked. That did not sound like their guide to him.

Again, Kili shook his head. "Well, no," he said. "She had found the cloth, what little of it was any use to us, but on her way back to the cave, she had been… distracted. More than once I have caught her looking that way, and when I spoke of your waking and what we would do then, all that she would say was that when you were recovered we must get on with our search of the tunnel."

Kili sighed and glanced toward the mouth of the cave. "I suppose I grew too angry with her. I was anxious for you, and she seemed not to care. I said things that I should not have said."

"What did you say?" Fili asked, searching his brother's face.

Kili coughed uncomfortably and admitted, "I may have told her that she seems to have more love for her quest than for you." He looked up and added quickly, "Not that I would say so now. That was little more than an hour after we had dug you out and brought you back to the cave. In the time since then, I have had the chance to see her tending you and sitting by your side. Fili, I have seen the way she looks at you when she thinks no one is watching, and I no longer doubt her love. I hope that my words will not cause you to doubt. I spoke only out of fear and anger."

Fili sighed and nodded. "It is no more than I expected," he said. "And I doubt her no more than I ever have, but you must apologize, Kili. Tell her that you spoke out of fear for your brother, and I think she will readily forgive you. We will have need of all our wits if we are to get out of this place. There will be enemies enough down below, hunger and cold and whatever foul creatures yet survive in these caves. We do not need to bring our enemies with us within our own company."

Kili nodded, but he saw his brother look warily at the thin screen the blocked the mouth of the cave, and when Fili next spoke, his voice was low and he used the secret dwarf language. "I am worried about her, too," he admitted. "I would rather have kept her out of that tunnel and taken her far from this place, but it seems that I have been overruled by the mountain."

He looked down at his hands and pressed his numb fingertips together. The sensation was slowly coming back to his frostbitten limbs, but the cold had not left his heart. "We cannot leave," he said. "We must go down deeper into the very place that I do not wish to go. This is no longer a simple treasure hunt, Kili, nor even an investigation into her family's past. I do not know what affect this place will have on her."

"If you no longer trust her…" Kili began, but his brother cut him off.

"No!" he said. "No, it is not that. Only, she is changed since we have been here. I am not afraid that she will harm us, or willfully allow us to be harmed, but her eye is on the quest ahead and she does not look around." He sighed and spoke once more in the common tongue. "We must be wary, you and I, and keep both our eyes open. I do not know whether we will all make it home from this adventure."

Kili opened his mouth to protest, but he found no words to say. His brother was right. Their only route of escape was cut off, and it was a fool's hope to think that they might accidentally stumble upon a way out of an unfamiliar mountain. The brothers sat in silence for some time, thinking of home and of their uncle who by now must certainly be wondering what was keeping his wayward nephews. Fili cut more meat and hung the skewer to cook. Kili sat for a long while lost in thought before he looked up again.

"Brother, about the pearl…"

Fili flinched at the word and shook his head. "Do not speak of it!" he said. "I have told her already that I could not reach it. She took the news better than I would have thought. If she has moved on, then let us also move on and forget the thing. Anyway, it is lost under the snow. Let it stay there. We have no way to find it now."

Kili nodded, though the dark sea-jewel was buried deep in his pocket and not under the avalanche as Fili believed. The thing had been a point of contention far too often on their quest, and if Fili and Betta had settled their arguments about it, then Kili had no desire to dredge them up again.

"I will go apologize to our guide and bring her back," he said, standing. "She needs to eat, and we must decide where to go from here."

Gosh, you guys are all so wonderful! Over 100 Followers, and we're soon to get our 300th Review! When I started out, I had hoped to write something original and it seems that I have succeeded. Thank you!

Never33: Since I can't PM my thanks to you personally... Thank you! Your compliments mean more than I can tell. :)

Michelle: I am a true, frostbitten-blue Minnesotan, so I know a lot about snow, but I did research the mechanics of an avalanche and found Youtube video recordings of the sounds they make. I'm glad that my story helps you forget the bad days, I know that writing it and reading everyone's generous reviews helps me to forget mine.

-Paint