When Katniss woke up the next day, she could tell that there was a different atmosphere among the company. This invisible tension hovering in the air was making the majority of the company members exchange odd looks every time she approached. Some of them seemed to be uncomfortable with her presence. Others were overly concerned about her wellbeing, offering to do small things for her, giving her extra food and being quite insisting that she should take someone to stand guard whenever she needed to do her business in the woods. To say that Katniss did not take well the company's sudden change when dealing with her was an understatement.

"I don't care if this place is full of mutts, wargs or worse! If anybody here dares to follow me, they will find one of my arrows stuck in their eye socket! Did I make myself clear?"

Katniss believed that she probably had made her point, as she was unable to spot anyone else but birds and squirrels when she went to care for her personal needs that morning.

However, one person that Katniss failed to spot that morning was Thorin. He was not even around when they were eating breakfast. She had asked his whereabouts to the company, but they all just seemed to give her a pitiful look and tell her that they did not know where their leader was.

Katniss thought that after telling him all those horrendous memories last night, Thorin would at least want to check on how she was faring. But that did not happen. For some weird reason, his absence and lack of interest made her feel a knot inside of her chest.

Katniss could bet that the king in exile had to be the reason behind the awkward way that the company was treating her. However, he only came back when the company was about to depart. Not wanting to wait to confront him about it any longer, she galloped her horse forward to the front of the company where Thorin was riding in silence alongside Dwalin and Balin.

"You!" she grunted at Thorin in an accusing tone. "What did you tell them?"

Thorin, who was not used to being confronted in such a manner, especially in front of his men, frowned at her.

"May I ask you what crimes I am being convicted of?" Thorin asked gritting his teeth as he tried to control his own temper.

"You told the things I told you last night to the company!"

"I did not do such a thing!"

"So why are they all treating me like I am a china doll? Come on, you must have told them something!"

"I gave you my word, Miss Everdeen. I would never betray the trust you placed upon me last night! It pains me that you are thinking so lowly of me…"

"If you did not tell them, then why are they treating me like I am suddenly frail?"

"Thorin is tellin' ye the truth, Lass," Dwalin decided to intervene. "It was wha' the hobbit said… abou' ye nae being of age…"

It took a few seconds for Katniss to comprehend what he was talking about.

"First of all, the hobbit has a name, it is Bilbo! I'm getting fed up of hearing you lot calling him 'the hobbit'. Secondly, I'm going to be eighteen tomorrow, so there is no need for all this fuss…"

"Eighteen!? Mahal forgive us aw! Ye er a wee bairn!"

"I am a what?" Katniss frowned her eyebrows and grunted at him.

"A child, Lass!"

"I am not a child! I have been providing for my family since I was eleven years old. I stopped being a child a long time ago, Mister Dwalin!"

Dwalin grunted at her but decided to remain quiet otherwise.

"Forgive my brother, Miss Katniss. But we are dwarves, and our people age at a different pace. We also might be under the impression that eighteen years of age might still be a bit too young, even for a daughter of man…"

Katniss stopped for a moment to wonder what her answer should be. Balin did have a point. In some ways, eighteen was still considered too young in Panen as well, if being able to apply to tessera and still having their name placed inside the reaping bowl was anything to judge it by. However, there were many rights that she would have legally acquired if she was still living at the Seams of District Twelve. Thus, she decided to focus on those instead of listing all the things that would only make her look more like a child in their eyes.

"Well, from tomorrow on, I would be able to legally get married without parental permission if that was something I wanted to do."

The three dwarves exchanged a meaningful look among themselves upon hearing that new piece of information. She got their surprise as a hint to carry on.

"My district allows marriage from anyone older than sixteen with parental permission, though I have heard that in other Districts they might be allowed to marry as young as fourteen years old. From tomorrow on, I could also apply for a room in a shared house if I wanted to leave my family home. I would also be allowed to drop my education in order to seek full-time employment if that was what I needed or wanted to do."

She then went quiet as she tried to think what she would do at Twelve if she was turning eighteen and home. Only then that she remembered. Twelve was no longer her home. It had been destroyed by the Capitol. That place no longer existed. She was not sure what District Thirteen policy for turning eighteen would be like. Though, whatever it was, she was almost certain that rules for the Mockingjay of the rebellion would be more likely to be different from normal civilians.

"Aw righ', Lass! It seems like for yer folk, ye might be an adult tomorrow. But tonigh', ye still a wee bairn!"

Katniss rolled her eyes and grunted in annoyance, making Thorin and Balin exchange smirks at her expense.

"Is it a common occurrence for your people to get married that young?" Balin asked, making Thorin change his body posture due to his eagerness to hear her answer. His slight change did not go unnoticed to the sons of Fundin, though Katniss was completely oblivious to it.

"I think it varies from couple to couple. My mother married when she was twenty years old, though my father was fifteen years older than she was. I know about a girl who married at sixteen, but it is not very common to get married before you are at least eighteen."

"Do your people have any special traditions when it comes to marriage?" Balin asked again.

"Yes, we have a few. There is obviously the official part of signing the marriage contract at the registry office. The bride always joins her husband's family, and she takes his name and address. For example, my mother was from a wealthy family, but she had to move to the Seams when she married my father. The bride might wear a white dress and they might have a meal with their close family and friends if they can afford it. But for us from District Twelve, the real marriage happens when the newly-wedded couple crosses the threshold of their new home and make their first fire together and then toast and share some bread."

Katniss remembered Peeta informing the entire Panen that they had done the Toasting ceremony in secrecy, and then she wondered if she would ever end up actually doing it. Then her eyes met Thorin's and she started to wonder if he had done a similar tradition with his own wife. For some reason, that thought made her feel a sharp pain as if someone had twisted a knife inside her chest. She tried to discreetly take a deep breath to calm herself down before she was able to ask the question that was itching to leave her mouth.

"How about your people? What are your marriage traditions?"

The three dwarves exchanged looks among themselves before Thorin decided to take the lead and answer her question.

"It appears that our people do share quite a few traditions, Miss Everdeen. It is also our costume for the bride to join her husband's family, the exception being when it is a marriage of a royal princess - in that case, her husband joins her family instead. That was the case of my sister Dis, that I know you recall. It is also our costume for the dwarrow man to light a fire as soon as he brings his newly wedded wife to his halls, though our first toast is done with wine, not bread."

She left a gasp of surprise to escape her lips after hearing that, and he paused for a moment to observe her reaction before he decided to carry on.

"There are two ways to bind a marital bond in dwarrow tradition: through a marriage contract or through having sexual relations. Only one is required for the couple to be considered married, but doing one does not annulate the need of doing the other."

"But how can you tell if a couple had done it or not? Can't people just fake it?" Katniss said with a slight blush on her cheeks as she remembered how Peeta lied for the entire Panen by telling at a national broadcast that she was pregnant.

"The newly wedded exchange hair beads and they braid each others' hair just after they consummate the marriage, so that cannot be contested."

"Your hair - I mean, your bead - must look very nice on your wife's hair, Thorin…" Katniss said in the middle of a blushing attack.

"Oh, I am not married, Katniss," Thorin said with sparkles in his eyes as he tried - and failed to hide a smile.

"Oh, that is good!" Katniss said, getting surprised by her own euphoric feeling after discovering that he was not married. "I mean, that is… good… that you can still… marry someone… I guess? I mean, just forget that I said anything, ok?"

Thorin nodded incapable of hiding his grim, whereas a blushing Katniss avoided making eye contact with him at all costs, as she tried to figure out why on Earth she was feeling so happy that Thorin was not married. She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she completely failed to notice the low whisper that Dwalin threw at his brother.

"I give it one yer."

"One year? At this pace, I don't think they will last to Durin's day…" Balin answered.

Thorin grunted as he tried to look cross with both brothers, but he failed to look grumpy for once in his life. Perhaps his feelings were not as unrequited as he feared they were.

When it was time for them to set camp that afternoon, Katniss had a bit of a fight with Thorin as he decided that she should stay and help out inside the camp instead of going on a hunt with Kíli and Fíli. Katniss crossed her arms, stomped away and rolled her eyes in annoyance at this new overprotective police of the dwarves.

"You should start behaving like an adult if you want to be treated like one!" Thorin groaned at Katniss, following her with his head.

But gritted her teeth in anger at his comment but decided not to engage in a fight this time. Instead, she started setting the snares, a task that lately had belonged mainly to Fíli, as having Katniss and Kíli hunting as archers tended to be a much more effective way to gather game. It annoyed her that her snares did not look nearly as good as the ones made by Thorin's nephews, and when they came back, that much would be obvious.

Nonetheless, she did it as quickly as she could and then moved on to help out in other small tasks around the camp. When she was trying to find dry wood for the fire, she spotted a huge cluster of small white flowers, which she promptly recognised as wild onions. She placed the firewoods on the side and quickly bent down on her knees and started to extract them from the ground.

"Why are you stopping to collect flowers, Lady Katniss? Is it a present for Uncle?" Kíli asked her with that usual glint on his eyes that Katniss was starting to associate with him being up to no good.

"Why would Thorin want flowers?" she frowned. "They are wild onions, Kíli," she said, pointing at the white bulb the size of her thumb at the flowers' root.

"Oh…" Kíli said, sounding a bit disappointed as he kneeled to help her with the job of gathering them.

"How was the hunt, anyway? What are we having tonight?" she said masking her frustration of not being allowed to join him that afternoon.

"We got four rabbits that are already being roasted!" he said with pride.

"These onions should roast nicely alongside it…"

"Uncle and Dwalin asked me to summon you back. I think it might be time for your sword lesson."

"They can wait a bit longer…" she grunted as she carried on with her task of removing the onions from the ground. Kíli opened his eyes wide open in surprise.

"You are deliberately willing to keep uncle waiting?"

Katniss shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm not your Uncle's biggest fan right now." They were almost halfway done on collecting all the onions available. Katniss bit her lip as she wondered whether she should ask him the question that was bothering her.

"Kíli, what were you and the others betting on last night?"

"Us? Betting? We would never dream of doing such a thing, my Lady!"

"Cut the crap, Kíli. I'm not an idiot. I know you were placing bets using your secret sign language last night, and my guess is that somehow I have something to do with it. I'm just not sure how or why."

"You are perceptive…"

"Come on Kíli, speak out"

"Aw right. You really are a younger female version of him, did you know that?"

Katniss crossed her arms and frowned her eyebrows at him, as she tried not to lose her temper as she waited for his answer.

"That wager was on whether Uncle would send you away or if he would welcome you to stay there."

"Is that it?"

"Aye. I give you my word."

"You are a funny bunch. What a pointless thing to be making a wager of…"

It was Kíli's turn to cross his eyebrow as he felt confused by her statement. Or at least, until he slowly understood why she could think that his Uncle public display of interest in her would be a pointless minor thing to them.

"You really don't know what that meant, do you?"

"What don't I know?" Katniss asked, squinting her eyes in puzzlement as she finished pulling the last onion root from the ground.

But before Kíli had a chance to elaborate his line of thought to their company's official heroine, Thorin appeared just from behind towering over them.

"Kíli! Katniss!" Thorin called them with his arms crossed and clear annoyance on his face. "Why are you taking so long?"

"Hey, Thorin. We were just about to head back to the camp." Katniss stood up and turned over to face him, carrying a flower bouquet of more than one hundred wild onions in her hand.

Thorin opened his eyes in shock when he noticed the flower bouquet on her hands. For a split second, he thought they could be a present for him, but then she turned them upside down and only then he recognised them for what they were.

"Then come quickly and don't waste our time. The possibility of an attack is real, and you still have a lot to learn before we can trust you with a real blade."

Despite still begrudging Thorin for not allowing her to go hunting that afternoon, Katniss nodded and followed him.

Dwalin still conducted their training but this time Thorin was present, observing it. It was clear that despite having started their training exactly at the same time, Katniss was already one or two levels ahead than their burglar. Even though that did not surprise him, he could not help the sense of pride that he felt for her. She had no trouble mastering the beginner's defensive arm movements and the basis of footwork.

Before the end of that session, he went to Katniss and asked her to train sword fighting with him. It was not a proper sparring session, more like an attacked-defence exercise using sticks instead of real swords. Thorin instructed her to block his advances using the movements that she had learned from Dwalin. Considering that was her first time doing that, she was doing astonishingly well. Even though there were still lots of issues with her posture and footwork that would need to be addressed, she did stand on her guard and somehow managed to block his blows. By the end of the session, she looked completely exhausted.

She went over to her shoulder bag to grab her futuristic transparent water bottle and downed it at one single go.

"So, do you want me to be escorted to refill this?" Katniss asked in a sarcastic tone of voice, which Thorin answered with a frown. There was obviously no need to escort her, as they were still at the water marshalls and therefore were surrounded by water. He was just turning around and to leave her without saying anything else, but she stopped him.

"Wait!" she said, getting hold of his arms. "Thorin, I'm sorry! I was just joking," he turned back to face her and she felt encouraged to carry on. "I'm sorry for accusing you of telling the others about my past this morning and I…," she stopped and took a deep breath as if it pained her to say that last bit "and I am sorry for being such a brat about your decision of not putting me on hunt duty today. I'm not used to being mollycoddled, that's all."

Thorin gave her a short nod in acknowledgement and acceptance of her apologies.

"I know that you have a natural ability with the bow. You and Kíli are by far the best archers we have. But that does not mean that others are unable to do that job. It is good for the group to rotate the tasks every now and then."

"Are you trying to tell me that your decision had nothing to do with my age?" she said in a way that showed that she did not believe that for a single minute.

"That weighed heavily on my decision, yes. You need to understand that dwarves age at a different pace than your race. And for us, there is usually a gap between ten to thirty years between a dwarf being considered of age and until they start to be treated as an adult, so forgive me and my kin for being a bit patronizing and overprotective."

"Thirty years!?" she repeated with her eyes opened wide in shock.

"Aye. Although that respect can be achieved much sooner depending on the dwarf's deeds and accomplishments. My guess is that if the others knew about the things you went through, many would be able to see you through a different light in this regard,"

"I think that talking about that with you last night was quite enough…" she said, stepping back uncomfortably.

"I understand. How are you faring?"

"I don't remember having any nightmares last night, so better than I would have hoped for…"

"You actually did seem to have another nightmare, but I helped you go back to sleep before you were fully awake…"

"Did you?"

"Aye," Thorin changed his body posture feeling amused by her surprise. "I've done that a couple of times."

"Thank you."

He nodded in acknowledgement and there was a deep silence between them, where they stared at each other. Katniss felt her heart race as she faced that deafening silence that was so common between them, that had almost become a routine now.

Bofur was walking in their direction to inform them that dinner was ready, but he decided to turn back once he noticed the tension between the duo. Oin did the same thing when he went to inform Thorin that he had just checked on the injured pony and it appeared to be doing better. Dori also went over to ask if they would want to have a rabbit leg, but then he frowned at Thorin, shook his head and also turned his back to them.

"We probably should join the others," Katniss said at last after a few minutes. He nodded and they walked back to the campfire side by side.

That evening Katniss went back to seating at her usual spot next to Bilbo and Gandalf instead of staying next to their leader. While they ate, Ori started asking her questions about how different things were in the future. After describing some of the technology that they were unfamiliar with such as vigilance cameras, guns and tv broadcasting, she decided to pass over some of the technology that she had with her. That meant that they all had a chance to try on her night-vision glasses, examine her purifier water bottle, be amazed by her head torch, feel mesmerized by her lighter, throw confused looks at her gas mask, poke and doubt that her communicator ever worked, though finding it very useful that it could inform the time and setting an alarm.

Bilbo, Oin and Ori were very interested in her family book about herbs, and they all asked if they could borrow it to have a read. Cinna's sketchbook, on the other hand, proved to be a bit scandalous, as some of the designs he made for her presented bare arms, back and sometimes even her legs would be on display. Even though Katniss usually wasn't much of a fan of showing off much of her skin if she had any saying on it, she felt an urge to defend her old friends' work.

"He also made me this armour, you know? This was his last creation," she said looking at Thorin, who immediately made the connection with the friend she was mourning over the previous night.

Once everyone had enough of examining her futuristic belongings, Bofur, Nori, Fíli and Kíli started to sing and play the notes of a dwarrow merry tune. After they were done, they somehow convinced Bilbo to sing and teach them a drinking song from the Shire. Katniss hadn't seen the hobbit look as happy as he was when talking about the Green Dragon pub and their apparently excellent ale. Katniss noticed that Thorin was still throwing glances in her direction, which she returned until she was interrupted by Fíli asking if she could present them with a song from her time as well.

Katniss did not know many merry tunes, but there was a very old one that her father taught her that seemed more appropriate for the company's mood. And so she sang it, making every single creature around, even the birds, to look at her speechless.