She dreams of Golden Hope

And it's peaceful in the deep

„He gives his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake."-Stopping by woods on a snowy evening, Robert Frost

She stood with her hand grasping the wooden railing of the barge and her body half-leaning out of the boat. Her eyes moved over the foggy landscape as she could faintly make out the silhouettes of ruins that stuck out of the deep water like phantom arms that grasped for a memory long passed. An icy wind blew across her and she closed her eyes as she experienced the biting sensation of her pupils being blown dry by the wind. The cold gales of the north that swept through eastern Middle Earth this season bit at her skin through the thin fabric of her late aunt's shirt and overcoat.

Time had ceased to matter during their wanderings through Mirkwood, almost as if time had stopped in itself while they had walked the labyrinthine paths of the sickened forest. It was almost as if they had been exempted from the natural progression of the world as long as they had been under the thick canopy of the Mirkwood trees. It had been a shock to her, after escaping the clutches of the Dark Wood, to look around her and perceive that winter was upon them and the sky looked heavy and bleak with the snow it wished to shed upon them. It had been golden and prosperous autumn when they had entered the wood elves' realm, with the trees golden and the temperatures gradually sinking. Winter had been thrust upon her like an avalanche, she hadn't expected it, it had taken her off guard.

She had her blue eyes fixed on the stony structures before her that glistened in the light with a glassy front from the ice covering that laid on top of it. Her fingers, unconsciously, raised themselves almost as if she wished to touch the stone, caress it, in hopes to ensure herself of the reality of the snow. Almost as if she was disbelieving that so much time had passed during their stay in Mirkwood, to test the realness of the ice. To acquaint herself with the world once more, so that all didn't seem so foreign and impossible to her.

"Watch out," she was roused from her contemplation by Bofur's accented voice crying out in alarm. Her form swayed to the side, as the barge was steered to the left sharply and she took a step back as the façade of the stone structure before her came at a breath's inch to her face.

"Do you wish to kill us, bargeman?" She heard Thorin ask in indignation and outrage.

She did not look at him, not even when she felt annoyance at his gruffness and his suspicion rise in her chest. She had not looked at him when she had awoken this morning and from the exhausted overcast on his grey-blue eyes she had realized that he had not slept the entire night, had not slept since they had been captured after their struggles with the spiders. It shouldn't have surprised her that the dwarf wouldn't have shut an eye during the duration of their stay in Thandruil's dungeons due to his suspicion and aversion to the elves. He was much too frightened that an elven guard would enter the cell at night to slit his throat during his sleep. He hadn't slept, even when Laurel had offered to keep watch one evening when she had perceived his exhaustion and he had gruffly dismissed her, tiredness rendering him volatile. He had not slept due to his stubbornness. And she had not looked at him, not directly anyway, since that night when she had overhead his confession and all she had thought she knew, all she had believed had disintegrated to ash around her. She hadn't looked at him because it would have caused her to understand what had laid behind his whispered words to her and she hadn't wanted to.

Not now. Not after everything.

Trying to steer her mind away from the memory that still burned in her mind like glowing ember, she recalled the occurrences of the day with exhaustion rendering her bones weary. She had been awoken by the familiar sound of her cousin calling her name and she had looked up, almost believing that she would be lying on her bed in Bag End and it would be one of those mornings where she had failed to wake before Bilbo and the herbal scent of tea that he had made them would waft through the halls of her home. Yet she did not wake to look into her cousin's smiling and teasing face but looking up at the mouldy and earthy ceiling of the elves' dungeons. She had looked to her side to see Bilbo standing at the swell of the prison door, the gates wide open behind him calling out her and Thorin's name and urging them to move. She had been so relieved at her escape and so thankful to Bilbo for enabling it to her, that she had completely forgotten that the last time she had looked into the beloved face of her friend, it had been twisted with vile cruelty and greed. She had forgotten that she had been so shocked by what the ring had done to him that, for the first time in their twenty-year long friendship, she had turned away from him and run. She had been so thankful to Bilbo that she had forgotten her worry over his well-being and her relief had rendered her incapable of allowing her mind to dwell on anything other than sweet escape. And then when the feeling was just about to retreat and she would have to face reality of how to escape Thandruil's heavily guarded halls, Bilbo had shown them the barrels and had released them from the elves' realm and her relief and euphoria had been renewed.