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 woke slowly, trapped in darkness, suffocated and bound by an unseen force upon her body. Still half in sleep, she fought the panic that tightened her chest and pounded in her heart until she remembered where she was and came back to herself.

She was awake and still sitting upright in the dark tunnel beneath the low mountain on the outskirts of Angmar. Her nostrils were pinched with the smell of smoke and stone, the metallic scent of sweating rocks and the sour stink of the old blanket that covered her. It was that weight that had bound her arms, though her dark dreams had made it seem more terrible; that, and the presence of Fili's arm still wrapped around her shoulders had restrained her. She could smell Fili, too, the thick, musty scent of sweating dwarf mingled with the leather and damp fur of his coat.

There was another scent, too, but for some time Betta could not place it. It reminded her of a small, wooden box that her mother had owned. Not the great cedar chest, the hope box, that had been passed down from daughter to daughter on each wedding day, but a smaller box where Elwen had kept a little jewelry and the small, silver mirror that would eventually come to Betta. It was made of a soft, southern wood and had been acquired long ago when Gondor was still a great nation whose boarders stretched far south and east and trade was done with the Haradrim and the Easterlings.

Sandalwood, Elwen had called it when Betta asked, but she could not think why Fili would be carrying a scent like that. The fastens on his coat and cloak that she had seen were all metal. Kili's bow had been wooden, and some of the handles on Fili's knives. Perhaps the beads in his hair were carved wood? She had not had a chance to examine them closely…

She turned her head and felt Fili's whiskers tickling her cheek. She smiled and knew that she could not very well search through is hair in the dark while he slept. Wherever the scent had come from must remain a mystery, but it soothed her fears and lightened the weight of the impenetrable darkness though her neck was still sore and her back complained of sitting on the cold, hard floor all night.

With her sight stolen from her and her other senses growing strong, she could hear clearly the synchronized breathing of the two brothers, and the distant white noise of the rushing falls to her left. At first, the noise was so steady and so far away that she did not recognized it, but once she knew what she heard, she could not cease to hear it. It became a loud and constant echo in her left ear. Betta turned her head again, trying to balance out the sound; it was not the noise that she was used to hearing from water. The subtle change in rhythm and cadence reminded her of speech, a speech spoken through a thick and muffling wall.

Her shoulders were tense and her neck ached; the impenetrable shadows bore down on her again and not even Fili's presence could soothe her anxiety. They were both fast asleep, the two brothers, and she was awake and alone, but it must be nearly morning, she guessed and she hoped. One or the other of the dwarves must have failed in their watch.

She closed her eyes to shut out the darkness and turned her face to Fili's shoulder, searching again for the scent of sandalwood. The fur lining of his coat made a soft pillow for her cheek. If only they had been snuggled together inside a warm cabin, or even under the trees and open sky, she might have been able to fall asleep again, but not here. Not in this cold, hard hill of stone could she ever sleep easily. For all that the dwarves had tried to include her in their company, she was not one of them; she could not live underground.

The sound of the water droned on incessantly, like an insect buzzing in her ear; it seemed to grow louder the longer she tried to ignore it. Finally, she turned back to it and listened intently, eyes closed and ears open, and the certainty that there was a voice inside the sound of water struck her. She could not deny it, someone was speaking. Perhaps there was a low cliff under the falls that they had not seen, or one of the seemingly empty cracks in the wall led to a tunnel like their own. Whatever the reason, she knew what she heard: a voice, life in the darkness.

Following close on the realization that there was a voice came the desire to seek it out. It could be orcs, Betta reasoned as her hand sought the edge of the blanket that bound her, or another troll; really, there could be anything down there, and it was not safe to go wandering in the dark.

But as she looked down the tunnel toward the bend, she marveled that she could in fact see the bend. There was light! She frowned. Was it dawn already? She had to blink her eyes twice to convince herself that it was not only the night-blindness that tricked her. There was certainly a light beyond the bend. It had not yet reached their camp, and when Betta looked back at the dwarves, she saw only blackness.

If it were indeed morning, then it was Betta's turn to take the watch anyway. It would be her responsibility to investigate the voices and to see whether there was danger. Fili and Kili were tired and deserved their sleep. Whatever the noise was, if it came from the chasm, then it was below them and could not make its way up here.

She would look, Betta decided, and if there were trouble, she might wake the dwarves then, but if there were none, let them sleep. She would sit in the light of morning for a few minutes only and then return to the camp.

Her mind made up, Betta unwrapped herself from the blanket and from Fili's arm. If she needed any more proof that he had earned his rest, she had it then. He barely stirred when she moved him. He murmured in his sleep, protesting the loss of her weight and heat against his side, but he did not wake up and he did not try to hold onto her. Kili lay on the far side of the fire, but there was no sound from that quarter except for his steady snores. She had a clear path to the outer door, but even so, she felt carefully with her hands as she crawled toward the light. She remembered what Fili had said about tripping in the dark and the last thing she needed was another injury.

At the bend in the tunnel, she stood up and looked over her shoulder into the darkness. Fili and Kili were there, somewhere, but she could not see them and her fear would not let her go back. Nothing short of attacking orcs could have driven her back into those inky, black shadows.

She had left her crutch behind, and so she limped down the stairs and along the tunnel, putting her hand on the wall for support. The light was all around her now, soft and pale and a comfort to her anxious mind. The noise of the falls grew more urgent as she turned the final bend and looked out into the chasm.

The room was bright as daylight, though it was not sunlight that she saw. There were no golden rays of dawn shining through the narrow window. Betta walked slowly out from the tunnel, her twisted ankle forgotten. She stood upon the stone shelf, her face upturned and bathed in silver light, her eyes wide and staring all around.

It was not the sun but the moon that shone through the western window and poured his light upon the waters falling below. He was only a thin crescent, two nights past the New, and a single shining star twinkled alongside the white prow of his ship, keeping company with him while the waters of the chasm fell shimmering like diamond chips poured out of many hands. They might have been the very stars of the sky, pouring together from the stone, and Betta stared in wonder and delight at the brightness of the moon.

The light reflected off of the walls, just as the light of the setting sun had done, but now it reminded her not of fire but of the waves of the sea forever washing up and down the white sand of the southern shores. She felt as if she were underwater or standing in a blue-stone grotto beside Belegaer, far from the cold, hard lands of Angmar.

For a moment, Betta hesitated. She stood still near the mouth of the tunnel. Should she call to the dwarves and wake them? Should she show them this fair, silver sight or leave them to sleep and dream of gold? Neither brother shared her love of moon and stars, she knew. Kili humored her when she spoke of them, though Fili would probably pretend for her sake. For dwarves, this light would not be as breathtaking as the rivers of gold that dusk had shown to them. Let them sleep.

Betta stepped closer to the edge of the shelf. Looking up, she could see that in the cold, night air, little crystals of ice had formed around the mouths of the falls nearest to the window. When they grew too large, the force of the rushing water would break them free and send them falling down, dancing against the stone walls, adding a tinkling of laughter to the voices in the stream. And they were voices, she heard them now, speaking many at a time to each other and not to Betta; she did not know the language they used.

She stepped closer, her ears straining to understand, until she stood at the very end of the ledge and as if a door had opened beneath her feet, she heard suddenly the roar of the torrent below. Its thunder echoed up through the chasm, drowning out the laughter and conversation of the falls. In that deafening noise, strong and terrible, she heard the voice that had spoken to her in the tunnel, that had drawn her out and away from safety of sleep.

Betta had been to the seashore only twice in her life, but she knew immediately the voice of the sea. The sound of the waves had come to her through her mother's blood, the crashing of great whitecaps against the rocky cliffs of Belfalas, but over the years, the voice had been too quiet to hear, muffled as it had been when she sat with Fili at their camp. Standing at the edge of a great cliff, looking down into the tumultuous waters, it was a clear voice now, and she heard the words in the water; she knew there was a will and a purpose down there.

The waves below should have been shielded from the moonlight above, but Betta saw no shadow on the water. The pool was lit up as clearly as if the moon were full and shining down with no stone roof to block the light. The silver rays reflected like a mirror upon the pool and about the deep pothole which still lay black and terrible as before, but that gaping mouth was a small and unimportant thing. The moonlight lit in sharp relief upon the churning waters as they thrashed high into the air or crashed down again together.

The roiling waves, the roar of their fury, the dizzying lights that danced upon the walls, Betta was overwhelmed and sank to her knees. Almost she swooned, but her hands held tight to the edge of the shelf; a stone cut into her palm and she fought the vision that filled her eyes, but she did not look away, and there! A face on the water! Bright blue eyes looked up at her, an ancient face with a white, foam beard and a look weighed down by ancient thought and keen understanding. The voice was his, but she did not understand the words. There was too much noise; the waves were too loud.

And then in a flash, she understood. The waves were the voice; the vicious waters were the words. She listened, leaning forward and straining her ears, drawn down by a will that was not her own.

Let go.

"I will fall," she protested. "I cannot…"

Then your quest will fail. Let Go.

"I cannot!" The moonlight lifted and darkness seemed to spiral up from the black hole beneath the waters. In terror now, Betta fought to throw herself back from the edge, but she could not move; the eyes held her there, as still as frozen water.

Let go.

"I cannot!"

The darkness spooled around her, suffocating her, she could not move. The light in the water receded; the voice and face were gone and she was left in the dark as she had been when she first woke in the tunnel, but now she was alone, marooned on a barren cliff with no star to guide her home.

.

Fili woke with a start, his hand on his sword, but he did not know what had woken him. The tunnel was quiet and he could clearly see the outline of Kili's body sprawled out across the floor. He heard his brother's snores and shook his head. Of course Kili had overslept, he thought, and Fili himself had fallen asleep on his watch and failed to wake his brother.

He sighed and stretched out his stiff arms, only then realizing that Betta was no longer beside him. He sat up straight and looked around. The light was dim, but his eyes were sharp and used to looking in the dark. She was not anywhere around their camp. Her corner of the blanket that they had shared was thrown back over him, but her crutch and baggage were where she had left them the night before. Only the woman herself was missing.

"Kili, wake up!" Fili said, rising to his feet.

Kili sat up and reached for his sword. Still half-asleep, he looked around for enemies and was confused when he saw only the empty tunnel. "What? Why? Oh… It is morning already. Slept through the watch, did you, brother," he said, laughing up at him.

"So did you," Fili said, "but that does not matter. Where is Betta?"

Kili looked around with clearer eyes this time, and the smile fell from his face. "She could not have gotten past me in the dark," he said, "not without a light. She must have gone back into the chasm." He saw his brother's fear and added quickly, "Fili, I'm sure she only went out to greet the dawn – it may be the last that she will see for a long time."

Fili frowned; his brother's words were no comfort. "It is just that sort of wandering which will one day get her killed," he muttered and started down the tunnel toward the room of waterfalls. Kili's reasoning was sound, but Fili could not help but fear for Betta's safety. Too many times on their journey, she had wandered into danger, and he could not always be counting on luck to save her.

He stepped out onto the shelf over the chasm and looked around. The space was dimly lit by the diffused light of the rising sun. She still sailed low in the eastern skies and would not be seen through the western window for many hours, but there was light enough for Fili to see the body that lay a few feet from him, near to the edge of the cliff.

"Betta!"

She lay upon her side, sleeping soundly with her feet turned toward the tunnel and her head pillowed on her outstretched arm. Her hand hung over the brink. Fili hurried forward and pulled her back. Her hair and clothes were dry, but that was not the miracle that he marveled at as he drew her back from a deadly fall. "Betta, wake up!"

She did, but slowly. She looked up at him with sleep still heavy in her eyes. "Is it morning?" she asked, covering a yawn with her hand, and then she looked around and realized where she was. She looked down over the side of the cliff to the churning waters below. "Oh. Ah, yes."

"Ah, yes? That is all you have to say?" Fili demanded, but the water was too loud for conversation. He helped her to her feet and hurried her back into the tunnel where the noise was quieter and there was no danger of falling to their deaths. Kili waited there for them, still yawning and looking quite content after his extra-long sleep.

"Well, what was that all about?" he asked when they returned.

"What were you doing falling asleep out there?" Fili demanded of her. "The water is cold. You might have been soaked and caught your death! And the ledge! What if you had turned in your sleep and rolled right off the edge of the cliff?"

His hands held tight to her arms, and his face was lined with fear; she felt guilty for causing him distress, but smiled and shook her head. "I have not fallen out of a bed since I was a little girl," she assured him. "I would not have fallen here."

"Why did you leave our camp? What were you doing out there?"

She opened her mouth to answer him, but then she stopped and frowned as if she, too, did not know why. "The moonlight," she said suddenly, looking back toward the chasm. "I saw moonlight shining there. It came through the window, and the darkness in the tunnel was too deep. I went to look at it."

Fili stared at her, searching her face, but he saw no lie and indeed he could think of no reason why she would tell one. He sighed and relaxed his hold on her. "Next time, wake me," he told her. "I would have liked to see the moon." It was not quite lying; he would have preferred sleep to moonlight, but would have rather gone with her than let her go alone.

Fili accepted her explanation, but Kili had frowned at her words and went to the door of the tunnel to look out and up at the window.

Fili's fear was replaced by cool relief, and he laughed. "Well, it seems that it was my turn to fail in my watch, anyway, though my brother might have woken himself for his…" He gave Kili a very pointed look, but Kili was not paying attention to him.

"It is strange," he murmured thoughtfully.

"What is strange?"

Kili shook his head. "It is nothing. I must be wrong," he said. "I would not have thought that the moon last night could have been seen through that narrow window. It should not have been bright enough and was in the wrong place, but it has been some time since we have had a clear night sky. Perhaps I am wrong in my calculations."

Betta frowned and joined him in looking out the doorway, but she could not have said which way was north, let alone track the movement of sun and moon when buried so far underground. She looked at the falling waters. There were no ice crystals singing, though the air was no warmer now than it would have been last night. She struggled to catch hold of the fading threads of a forgotten dream. Why had she gone out onto the shelf, when she knew there was a danger? Why not stay in the doorway of the tunnel where she could see and still be safe? That would have been the wiser course.

"There was a voice," she said softly to herself, but Kili heard.

"What voice?"

She looked up from her thoughts and shook her head. "Last night, I thought I heard a voice in the chasm… but I do not know. I might have been mistaken.

"It would be a miracle to hear anything in that room," Kili agreed.

She looked toward the edge of the cliff and frowned. "The voice was in the water," she murmured.

Kili cast an uncomfortable look at his brother and saw that Fili had heard her as well. They could have agreed that her obsession with the quest was a form of madness, but hearing strange voices was beyond their knowledge.

"You were tired," Fili said, "and probably still half in dreams. I am sure that if I tried to hear it, I might believe that the crashing of the waves was like to a loud voice, shouting, but water does not speak and there is nowhere else in this chasm where anyone could shout and be heard from our camp… even from this shelf, I do not know if we would have heard you," he added, and his face was worried. He frowned for a moment, and then shook his head and smiled at her. "I am sure that you only imagined the thing."

"And I am sure that you are right," Betta agreed quickly, but she was not. Though the voice itself had faded from her memory, she remembered the words, and the piercing, bright eyes looking up at her. She remembered the old superstition that sailors and fishermen had held in Lebennin, that there was a Lord of the Sea who spoke through all waters, from rivers to rain to the wide Belegaer.

They had never told tales or spoken of it directly, but whenever a ship came narrowly to harbor, saved from foundering in a great storm, they would thank him. And if the nets came in very full from the sea, the old fishermen would say that they had been blessed by the Lord of Waters. Betta's grandmother even would sometimes shake her head when a strong breeze kicked up from the south and say that someone was "sneezing up a storm". Her grandmother was always right and, sure enough, within a day or two there would be a great storm blown up from the sea.

Betta had given little thought to the superstitions at the time – it was no different than her mother insisting that Eagles had voices, or Uncle Anborn telling tales of the White Men of Ered Nimrais, but now she was not so certain.

She gave no voice to her thoughts, however, and allowed the dwarves to lead her back to their camp where they sat in dim light around a burned out fire and waited for Fili to unwrap the cold meat that had been cooked the night before.

"Cold meat and cold water for breakfast," Kili muttered, accepting his share.

"It cannot be helped," Fili answered. "If we have not changed our minds, then we must attempt to cross the narrow bridge today, and see what lies beyond. We will need all our strength, even though it may only be a shallow cave and not a tunnel that we will find there. I will cross first and see whether it is safe."

Betta looked up, and Kili shook his head, but he did not argue with his brother. "If it proves to be only a cave," he said, "then I suppose we will have to go back and search one of the side roads that we passed along the way…"

"There are few options left to us," Fili agreed. "And none if we go back to the cavern."

"We will not go back," Betta said, with a firmness to her voice that startled both brothers.

"If the opening is not a tunnel…" Kili began, but she shook her head and would not hear him.

"It is a tunnel," she said with a fire in her eyes that put a cold chill into Fili's heart. "It is a tunnel, and it will lead us on to the answers that I seek. You have had a taste of seeming gold, does that not give you the strength to seek out the real thing? Think what treasures must lie here hidden where Men once dwelt. We will not turn back."

She had finished her meager meal and now stood up, taking their shard of bowl and the half-empty water skin. "I saw a place where the water falls near to the shelf. I will see what I can do to fill this full before we go on," she said, and then she left them.

Kili glanced at his brother and saw Fili staring after her with eyes wide and surprised. He knew what his brother felt. For a moment, when Betta had spoken and the fierce light was in her eyes, Kili had been reminded of their uncle. He had very nearly stood up with her and when she spoke of going on, he had bit his tongue to keep from answering her command.

"Imagine if she had been born a man," Kili said, more than a little inspired.

Fili glanced at him but was not encouraged by the thought. Betta was trouble enough to him as a woman, and if a spark of her mad flame were to kindle in Kili's heart, he would have more than his hands full dealing with that. Fili cringed to imagine what Betta could have been like, what she might have inspired others to do, if she had been born a young and impulsive dwarf.

But he did not speak his thoughts. He shook his head at his brother and asked, "How much rope do we have, Kili?"

Kili took the hint. "Not much," he said. "Only the coil that was left in Betta's pack and a few lengths that I found in the troll's hoard, but that is rotten and I would not trust it to bear more than the weight of our baggage."

"We must make do with what we have," Fili said. "I will cross alone and see what is there. If it is a tunnel, then I will explore a ways down before we bring her across. If it is safe, we will go on. If it is not… Or if I cannot make the crossing…" He frowned and his face was pale.

"I will do what I can to get her home," Kili said.

Fili nodded, but he was troubled to think what would happen to Betta if he were to die on her quest. Her love for him would only increase the pain of his passing, especially if she blamed herself for his death. He did not know whether her mind would take the strain, and if she were to break, how then would Kili get out of these caves. Could he find a way out alone or with only a madwoman for company?

Kili thought of that also, but worse for him was to wonder what would be the result if Betta were forced to choose between Fili's safety and the continuation of her quest. So far, she had shown her concern for his brother to be genuine, and he did not doubt that she loved Fili. But she held a very different sort of love for her quest; one that was, if less healthy, more strongly rooted in her heart. If both were equal in danger, where would her loyalties lie then?

Fili sighed and stood up. He picked up his sling and a bundle of wood. "Well, let us get it over with," he said, and the brothers followed Betta out into the chasm again.