Kíli, Tauriel discovered, did not like trees. That is, he liked them perfectly well when they were above him. But he did not like to be above them, as he was now, standing on a platform nestled in the highest branches of Tauriel's tree home, above the roof of the Greenwood.
As the tree swayed in the light breeze, and the platform with it, Kíli caught Tauriel's arm tightly. His palm was damp.
"We are quite safe," she assured him. "The talan is built to move with the tree, but it will not fall, even in far stronger winds than these."
He nodded uncertainly and sank down to sit on the low cushions in the center of the platform, drawing her with him.
"I still feel better down here," Kíli said as she settled next to him. He spread his hands on the smooth planks of the floor, as if grounding himself.
"Kíli, you've flown on the backs of eagles, and you liked that," Tauriel said, tucking an arm through his. "I should think my little tree should hardly trouble you after having been among the clouds." She spoke gently, not wanting to embarrass him.
He flashed her an uneasy grin. "I know, but those eagles plucked us from mid air after, I remind you, we fell out of some trees. I knew my mount would catch me if I tumbled off his back, so I wasn't worried."
Tauriel stared at him wonderingly, feeling once more the admiration of the sheltered guard captain peering through bars at the young dwarf who had lived with more enthusiasm and ready fearlessness than she had known in her own long youth.
Kíli chuckled appreciatively at her look. "Trees don't care about you after they've unseated you," he said teasingly. He tightened his arm over hers as their own tree rocked lightly.
"No, I suppose they don't," Tauriel conceded. "If you prefer, we can go back down to a lower talan. It will sway less."
Kíli shook his head. "No, I'll try it up here, since you like it." He shifted closer to her and tucked his arm around her waist. With his sleeves rolled on this warm summer's eve, she could feel the heat of his skin on her own through her light gown.
"I don't doubt your courage," Tauriel told him after a few moments. "How you can be comfortable with all those endless drops, unguarded by wall or rail, in Erebor, I don't know! They still unsettle me."
"Oh, those!" he returned, dismissive. "I can sort of feel the living stone through my soles; I know where it ends, and I won't step off. It's a sense we dwarves have." He gazed off over the sun-gilded treetops below them, and a breeze, too light to shift the tree, lifted his dark hair from his eyes. "But up here, I feel sort of...disconnected. Untethered, like a boat that might go drifting off in the wind without knowing or meaning to."
He shrugged against her. "They say when Durin ruled, and Khazad-dûm was in its glory, so many of my people were born and died without ever setting foot outside the mountain. It was even a point of pride to say you'd never seen the sky." He shook his head wonderingly. "I don't mind being above ground. In fact, I quite like it: the wind on your face, the sun on your back. It does make you feel so alive. But I'm still not sure I'm ready to live truly above the ground in a tree," he finished with a confessional glance at Tauriel's face.
As if to help make his point, at that moment the tree gave an especially wide sway, and Kíli stiffened somewhat beside her.
"Kíli, there's nothing you need to prove to me by remaining up here," she said.
"I know," he said lightly. "I want to see what you see up here among the leaves."
"Look." Tauriel pointed to the horizon, beyond the last dark swell of the forest. Rising against the sky was Erebor's lone peak, shining gold in the setting sun. "I used to gaze on your mountain and wonder what it would be like to stand on its shoulders, so close to the sky, or to wander other halls than my own. I was sorry to think its people had been driven out, in your grandfather's day. It looked truly lonely then."
"And yet if they hadn't left, you'd never have got me," Kíli mused. His father had been a dwarf from Ered Luin.
"No, indeed. Fate is quite wonderful and strange." Quite as wonderful and strange as the fact that the mate with whom she shared her treetop home was this dwarf, someone more comfortable with his feet on the ground, but ready to try what was new and different for the adventure of it. And for love of her.
Kíli drew her head toward him for a kiss, and then as Tauriel shifted to face him better, he pulled her down into the cushions atop him.
"Less chance of being knocked off this way," he said, grinning, before he kissed her again.
"I promise, I will not let you fall to your death." Pressed against him, Tauriel could feel his pulse hammering fast, but she no longer thought his discomfort at being in a tree was the cause. Kíli's hands moved over her back, seeking and then finding the laces to her gown.
"When I was a lad," he said as he worked the laces free, "Mum always told me not to climb trees. I used to think she was worried I'd fall. But maybe she said that because of the bewitching elf maids who live up here."
Tauriel laughed even as she returned his kiss. "I'm certain she thought of no such thing. You are surely the first dwarf to run any danger of bedding an elf in a tree."
"Oh, it's clearly less of a danger and more of a certainty at this point," he observed as she tugged his belt loose and slipped her hands up under his shirt.
"Then I'm afraid you're quite doomed," she agreed, and so he was.
"You know," Kíli said when she had finished with him, "I can't tell anymore if it's the tree moving or my head spinning."
"And that's better or worse?" Tauriel asked, trailing her fingertips over him.
"Oh, much better," he affirmed, contented. "If I fall off now, at least I'll die happy."
Author's note:
These honeymoon scenes can be enjoyed as a standalone fic collection, or as a companion to my stories So Comes Snow After Fire and Spring After Winter and Sun on the Leaves.
talan - "flet, platform in a tree"