How I Leave You

The Awakening

It is a strange dream I am having.

In it, what looks to be a young woman clad in golden armor is bleeding out on a sheet of ice. Next to her, an elf is begging the gods to let the golden warrior stay. The wails reverberate through the icy mountaintops. But no one hears the cries. No one answers the pleas.

A room full of people are gathered in a room, with more of them trickling in by the minute. They're all watching something. They look concerned, but behind the worry, something else protrudes. Awe, perhaps.

They talk with each other in soft voices, looking to the middle of the room with an expectation that, at any moment now, something is going to happen.

What?

What might be an event as grand as this? What could keep their attention so ardently, as though they do not dare to move their eyes out of fear that, if they do, they'd miss it.

But it is my dream. All I have to do is find a way to--

"Gandalf," a familiar voice says. "Gandalf, look."

Bilbo is leaning over the figure in the middle of the room, the one every person there is so eager to observe. Who is it that is sleeping there? Why are they so eager for them to awake?

Small pangs of memories. The ice against my fingertips. The blade against my skin.

Thorin.

Thorin was dying. Did I manage to save him? Is it him lying on the bed around which everyone is gathered?

I push through the crowd, but it is as though they are not bodies, but instead statues cemented to the stone floors. They do not even budge. And no matter how loud I scream, not a sound leaves my throat.

My throat.

Instinctively, my hands seek it, but something holds them down, someone--

"Gandalf, she's awake."

When I open my eyes, it is the sight of Bilbo that greets me. His kind face has become absorbed by a smile so wide, it spreads from one large ear to the other.

Startled at the sudden awareness that we are not alone in the room, I sit up, looking around for the first time.

No, not for the first time. This is the room in my dream. Elves and dwarves alike stand gathered in clusters, watching me with pride and awe, greeting me with congratulations.

"Why, yes," the wizard says, his gentle eyes meeting my own. "It appears she is."

I try to speak, but only strange sounds leave my throat.

"Do not overexert yourself, lass," someone else says. Balin. "It will take a while to heal, ye ken?"

"It's alright, Ilwien," Bilbo reassures me.

He must be seeing the panic spread across my face. His words do not calm me, because it is not alright.

"Thorin?" I manage in a wheeze.

The name is rough against the inside of my throat. It hurts.

Bilbo and Balin look at each other. What? What does that look mean?

It means he is dead, doesn't it? It means that I was too late. That I couldn't--

"Do not worry about the dwarven king, my child," Gandalf says, chuckling. "Out of everyone here, he was the only one who never left your side."

"Where...?" I try, the word stabbing me all the way from my lungs.

"Right here, lass," Balin smiles, nodding towards the foot of the bed.