Her mind doesn't follow the question well and something in her step falters as it tries to wrap itself around it. The distant crack and shift of the ice shelf resounds across the plain. There is a rolling tremor as it crashes and refreezes, but the ground remains stable beneath them.

Nothing is important about Middle-earth--it must be protected at all costs--it is the land of passing things--it is my home--it is not my home--my family is there--my family will all die there--power awaits me--it shall all be lost--darkness has gathered there--

The answers, a hundred strong, cascade alongside them in an impossible tangle, a cacophony of hushed whispers, one atop of the other until they are spent. She speaks none of them and all of them at once. She walks and the ice beneath them is sharper, more brittle, the ocean waves are louder as they crash against it.

"I am needed there," she says, once her mind has expended all other possible answers. She looks down, a reflexive motion, to her left hand and then, abruptly, she stops walking. The whole dream jars, the momentum of their walking disrupted, as she lifts her hand and stares at the gold ring wrapped around her finger. Her brow dips and, as she turns her hand over to stare at the sharp text engraved into the ring, she says: "I am bound to it."