Kili sat in his classroom, trying to read. But he could not. He could not understand the words on the page. He could not understand words that formed a sentence, forming a paragraph, and later a story. Well, as much of a story as history can be. He was a young dwarf of 20. (But rather old for sitting in a classroom.) Many other dwarrows his age were finishing up their studies and moving onto weapons training. He remembered the days when his older brother used to occupy the seat across the table from him. That was soon to be five years in the past, meaning Kili should soon join him in learning weapons. Unfortunately, Kili was behind. Way behind. His tutor, Balin, who was also his mother's third cousin, kept encouraging him to move on and read faster.
Though Balin never implied anything, Kili knew he compared him to his brother. Several times he had almost slipped up, but managed to save himself from accidently saying that Kili should be more like Fili. It was not as if Balin did not like Kili, though Kili often misinterpreted people's statements as such an implication.
The truth was, Klli wished he was more like his older brother. He also felt as if his uncle wished the same. The past five years Thorin had spent almost constantly with Fili. He was his weapons tutor, seeing as there was no other swordsman fit to train an heir to the throne of Durin. Thorin had always paid more attention to Fili, knowing that someday Fili would be king. Kili, however, would not and was honestly okay with it. This meant that he could do as he pleased without the pressure of acting royal. The two brothers had been close all their lives up until this point. After Fili began learning weapons, he no longer cared for playing. Kili couldn't say he cared much for playing anymore either, but at the time he had. He was devastated the first time that Fili had refused to play Smaug with him. (This is a highly complex game which involves children running around with play swords and stabbing an imaginary dragon, careful not to stay in a place for more than five seconds or else they would be incinerated by dragon-fire. Fathers loved this game because it instilled both a hatred and fear for the beast. Mothers loved it because it got the children running around and using all their pent-up energy while not breaking anything.)
As Kili thought about all that had happened those past five years, he found that he was staring out the window to the young dwarrows running around outside. They looked so carefree, like nothing could bring them down. Until they start school, He scoffed. He was suddenly aware of someone yelling his name.
"KILI!" Balin leaned in his line of sight as he loudly exclaimed his pupil's name. "Let's keep working laddie. We've got a lot of ground to cover."
Kili tried to pay attention to the rest of his lessons but found he was even more confused than he had been the day before. Which was saying quite a lot considering he had to reread the chapter today because he remembered none of what he had learned. The longer he tried to read, the more the words become just a jumble of letters thrown on a page, forming no intelligible paragraphs, as least not in his mind. He did not care much for the history of Middle Earth, to him it was all about dead people from another part of the world. (Sometimes Ered Luin would be mentioned and he would smile to himself, glad his town was important enough to make it into history books.) At long last Balin said he could be finished.
As Kili jumped off the stool, Balin sighed. I suppose I should tell Thorin and Dis about this. He closed the book, careful to mark the page, and left for his own home, seeking solitude concerning the best way to approach his king about why his nephew was falling behind.