Bag End is crowded in the way it always becomes when destiny decides to press itself into a hobbit-hole.

The Company fills the room—boots by the door, voices low but layered, weapons set carefully aside. Gandalf leans against the mantle, staff in hand, watching us all as though weighing stone. Bilbo moves between us with forced cheer, cups and plates clinking, trying to pretend this is not the beginning of something dangerous.

I stand near the wall, arms crossed, listening more than I speak.

Then the door opens again.

Bofur’s voice carries first, bright and unrepentant. “We brought our Unna.”

My head lifts before my mind catches up.

She steps inside.

The room does not vanish. The sound does not fade. But something in me goes still all the same, like a struck bell holding its breath.

Ríkdâsha.

Older than I remember her, and yet not changed in the ways that matter. The years have settled into her with purpose—strength drawn tighter, presence sharpened. She moves with the same grounded certainty I recall from Erebor’s forges, when she was the only woman who stood beneath the Mountain’s weight and earned her place blow by blow.

Alive.

A tension I had carried without naming loosens in my chest, sharp enough to sting. I had never spoken the fear aloud, not even to myself—but I had wondered. Mines. Forges. Fire.

She had been there the day Erebor fell.

And she is here now.

I take her in the way I take in stone—slowly, without hurry. The copper-dark fall of her hair, the set of her shoulders, the calm weight she carries in herself. My gaze catches on the runes inked along the side of her face, worked into her skin with the same permanence as a chisel’s mark in rock. They are not ornamental. They are claimed. Chosen. I recognize that kind of marking. I have the same on my skull and my hands, in tattoos chosen in the way my body remembers battle. She wears her story openly, the way I do, and the resemblance settles deep. We are shaped by work, by endurance, by the quiet decision to stand where we are planted. Stone, meeting stone.

My gaze tracks the familiar things without permission: the way she stands, the balance in her stance, the way her hands rest as though they remember work even in stillness. The axe at her side is worn, cared for, held as an extension of herself.

A thought surfaces, unguarded and instinctive.

I would give her my cloak.

The next follows just as easily.

I would keep her warm. I would stand in front of her. I would braid her hair and place a bead there myself.

The realization of where my thoughts have gone hits hard.

This is not my way.

I do not imagine futures. I do not reach for things not offered. I have spent my life standing between danger and others, not wondering who might stand beside me.

She likely has not spared me a thought at all.

The Company shifts, voices rising and falling, plans beginning to form around the table. I remain where I am, silent, watchful, grounding myself in the weight of my boots against the floor.

Bofur glances over.

He sees it immediately.

His mouth quirks, and he drifts closer under the guise of reaching for a mug. “Careful there,” he murmurs, just loud enough for me to hear. “You’re staring like she’s about to vanish.”

I grunt, which is neither confirmation nor denial.

He grins anyway. “Didn’t think you’d be the type,” he adds lightly. “But then… neither did she.”

I say nothing. There is nothing safe to say.

Across the room, she speaks quietly with Bombur, her presence easy among kin. She does not look toward me. That, somehow, eases the tightness in my chest even as it deepens it.

She has come to reclaim Erebor.

So have we all.

But as I watch her stand there—whole, capable, unbowed by years of exile—I know one thing with sudden clarity:

If she walks this road beside us, I will see her safely home.

Whether she ever looks my way or not.

Stone remembers what it shelters.

And I will not forget her again.