"Adad! Adad! It's not fair!"
Kíli looked up from the duty rosters he was approving as two small, familiar figures swirled into his office. Before he could wonder who among the guard had let his children into the barracks, Iúleth, the youngest—she was not yet five—had thrown herself across his lap.
"Tell Eydís it's not fair!" she wailed.
Kíli dropped the papers and hauled his daughter more comfortably onto his lap.
"What's not fair, love?" he asked, ruffling her waves of unruly copper hair.
Eydís (who was elder by about five years) gave an elaborate sigh from where she stood looking up calmly at her father. "I was trying to explain to her why our brother gets two celebrations for his birthday." With her dark braids and that long-suffering expression on her face, she very much resembled her grandmother, after whom she had been named.
"Isn't fair!" Iúleth contributed then.
"I told her it's because Galadion's begetting day and birthday aren't on the same day, like ours are, but she won't listen." Eydís's tone was matter of fact, as if there was no denying the perfect reason of her argument, despite the fact that Kíli was certain she had no more idea than her younger sister what the difference between birth and begetting was.
"But why does he get two birthdays?" Iúleth insisted, fixing very serious hazel eyes on her father's face. "It's not fair."
Kíli had to resist the urge to smile. His eldest's had been an unusual birth, delayed so that Galadion had not been born exactly a year from conception, as was usual for babes of elven mothers. While the lad had celebrated his twelfth year by elvish standards (which reckoned from the date of conception) a fortnight ago, his eleventh birthday (by which the dwarves counted age) was tomorrow.
"No, it's not fair," he agreed, and Iúleth brightened at this admission. "But let me explain why we do it.
"Making a babe is like... Well. You know how your Grandmum makes her pottery."
Iúleth nodded; she was fascinated by watching her grandmother Dís at her potter's wheel.
Kíli went on, "She shapes the clay and then puts it in the kiln, where it stays for a long time until it grows hard and strong. And when it's done baking, then she takes it out again. Babes are like that."
Glancing up, Kíli saw that Eydís was equally interested now; as the second eldest, she took pride in being granted any information that seemed especially grown up, and no-one had ever explained babes to her before, except very vaguely.
"Your Nana has a little kiln inside her. She and I made Galadion and then popped him inside her kiln to grow."
Iúleth's eyes were round. "Nana has a kiln?"
"Of course. All mothers do."
"Could you grow a baby in Grandmum's big kiln, too?" Eydís asked, thoughtful.
"No. Only the kind inside mothers. Although Grandmum has one of those, too; that's where I came from. She's my nana, remember."
"Oh." Iúleth stared at him, as if she was trying to find some similarity between him and the vases and bowls Dís made in her pottery shop.
"What did you make Galadion out of?" Eydís asked.
Kíli laughed. "A little bit of stone—that's what dwarves are made of, you know—and a little bit of stardust, because that's what elves are made of."
Eydís regarded him with a hint of skepticism in her brown eyes. "How did you get the stardust?"
"We climbed to the top of the mountain and scooped it down with a special net I made just for that purpose."
"I see." Kíli was not certain she was entirely convinced, but she asked no more questions.
Kíli kissed Iúleth's head. "Now, Galadion was our first babe, so Nana and I weren't quite sure what we were doing yet. We actually"—here he lowered his voice—"forgot to take him out in time."
Both girls gasped, and Iúleth's eyes sharpened with concern at the thought that her elder brother had come near to being ruined.
"Oh, he was all right, of course," Kíli added lightly. "A little browned, perhaps, but no real harm done. But we don't want him to feel bad that we forgot him, so he gets an extra party to make him feel better."
Iúleth regarded him as if this explanation made much more sense than the one her sister had offered. "But you took me and Eydís out in time?" she asked.
"Oh yes, we'd perfected things by the time we made you two."
"Ah." She looked from her father back to her sister. "Poor Galad," she said then, with a definitive air. "He was burnt."
Hopping down from Kíli's lap, Iúleth ran out the office door again. Eydís followed her a few moments later, a thoughtful frown between her brows.
"Nana," Eydís said as she held another bundle of lavender stems for her mother to tie together with string, and Tauriel recognized the beginning of a question in her tone. "Nana, is it true you have a kiln inside you?"
"A kiln?" Tauriel repeated.
"Yes. For growing babes in."
"Oh. Yes, I suppose I do." She had never thought to explain the concept of a mother's womb thus, but it did seem an appropriately dwarvish metaphor. Now, who had her children been talking to on this subject? Their grandmother, perhaps?
"I told you it was true," little Iúleth put in then, looking up from the floor, where she sat trimming lengths of string with a scissors, and shooting her sister a vindicated look.
"And did you really forget to take Galadion out in time?" Eydís went on.
"What has your Adad been telling you?" This bizarre tale could only be Kíli's invention.
Iúleth explained, "He said Galadion gets two birthday parties so he won't feel bad because you baked him too long. Adad says he came out brown."
Tauriel had to try very hard not to laugh. Her two daughters watched her, Iúleth with complete confidence, while Eydís seemed looking for some sign from her mother regarding what to believe.
"It was something like that," Tauriel managed when she could trust her voice.
"And did you really make him out of stone and stardust?" Eydís prompted, her dark brows narrowed.
Tauriel smiled warmly; yes, Kíli would say that, too. He was the stone, and she the stars. "Yes, that's true. We made all of you that way."
"Oh." Eydís was clearly more willing to accept this story now that her mother had confirmed it. "And how did you get the stardust?"
"I combed it from my hair," Tauriel said, happy to corroborate this portion of Kíli's tale, at least.
To Tauriel's surprise, Eydís appeared disappointed by this statement. "Adad said you climbed to the top of Erebor and scooped it from the sky with a net," she murmured.
"That was the first time; you're right. But for you and your sister, there was still enough dust caught in my hair from standing with my head up among the stars that all I had to do was comb it loose."
"Oh. Of course." Eydís swept an awestruck glance over Tauriel's long, loose tresses, clearly considering how much stardust they must be able to hold.
Iúleth came to Tauriel's side and dropped her handful of string ties in her mother's lap. "Nana, you're not going to leave our new baby brother in too long, are you?" She cast a concerned look at her mother's rounded belly, which had begun to show the growth of yet another babe.
Tauriel laughed at last. "Oh no! I will take him from the kiln right on time."
"You've been telling our children the very strangest tales," Tauriel said that evening when, with their children safely abed, she and Kíli retired to their own room.
"Have I?" he returned innocently, looking up as he tugged off his boots.
"You said I have a kiln inside me and that we burned our first son by leaving him in too long."
He laughed. "I thought that was the easiest explanation. Or would you rather I'd given them the full details on how we've made four babes now?"
"Kíli!" Of course he wouldn't dare, and yet she could still imagine the sorts of things he might say.
He caught her about the waist and drew her down into bed with him. "For you, I'd even be willing to offer a personal demonstration."
"I do, in fact, remember. I was present all four times," she teased, though she readily helped him untangle the layers of her skirts as she settled over him.
"We've only done this four times? Heavens, I'm neglecting you."
"Kíli." He was kissing her in a most distracting manner, but she wanted to get an answer while she still could. "Why were they asking?"
He lay still as she unclasped his shirt. "They wanted to know why Galadion gets two separate celebrations."
"And you said we'd forgot him so that they'd not think it favoritism."
"Exactly. See, you'd have done the same." Kíli shifted to let her draw his shirt over his head.
"Perhaps." She slipped her hands over him. "Or perhaps not. I don't think I'd have said we burned him." She was teasing Kíli now, and his grin proved he knew it.
"Well, he is a little darker than the girls," he said. It was true; while Eydís had Kili's dark hair, both she and Iúleth shared Tauriel's own pale complexion.
"No darker than you," Tauriel reminded him, noting the contrast of her white hands against the warm tan of his skin.
"Maybe Mum left me in too long, as well. Have you asked her?"
Tauriel could not answer this question immediately, for Kíli grasped her by the shoulders and drew her down to kiss him.
When he finally left off nipping her lips, she said, "Perhaps I should ask her. And when she wonders where I got my crack-brained idea that she actually fired you in a kiln, I will tell her very seriously that that is what you told me. And I, of course, believed you, knowing nothing of dwarves myself."
"Nothing? I've been more remiss than I thought." Kíli slid his hands up under her skirt. "But I do know where to begin."
Author's note:
This is definitely a preview of happy things to come for Kíli and Tauriel in my longer fic series. But this story was just too cute for me to hold onto it until we get caught up in my main fic. If you'd like to hear the true story of Galadion's unusual birth (no, they didn't actually forget about him!) please check out my fic Spring After Winter and Sun on the Leaves. It's the story of how Tauriel and Kíli start a family and maybe just save Erebor, too.