Life always feels fragile. For instance when a baby is born, everyone tenderly holds and carefully watches the child because it is breakable. An old man, shriveled and elderly is treated with the same tenderness and carefulness because he too is subject to brittle bones. His are old and strained, while the child's aren't grown or hardened. It is the family's task to maintain the child's health, and stabilize the old man before he falls. Because when things are fragile they can break. And when things break there is sadness, heartbreak, wars, and loss. Not always but most of the time. The first time you noticed life's fragility was upon your return to Erebor. You'd never been their before but it was your ancestor's home and the kingdom of your husbands people. You had arrived for the funerals. How it came to be that those you found dear should all die in the Battle of the Five Armies, you will never know. You will only know they are gone. He is gone. His life that you felt so strongly, now completely gone. You had waited in lake town with a few of their kin who thought their quest might lead them through the town. How happy he had been to see you. His eyes did a double take and thought you to be an apparition. But when he reached out and touched your arm and found you to be real he had choked back a sob and pulled you into his arms. He cried into your hair, happy tears, because he thought he might never see you again. As he was buried along with his little brother and his uncle you tasted the worlds bitter ironic quick the fates were to tempt you with life and hope, while the man you loved most was taken so brutally away from you. You would not cry, you had already done your crying. If anyone was to cry it would be your mother in-law. You were staying with her when you broke your own news, the same day this tragic news was brought. That day the tears where for you and your circumstance, and the loss of your other half. Large hot tears and screams of anguish were rebuked into streams of crying and a bloody lip, by one word. As the tombs were sealed you felt your heart harden; no more would life be fragile to you. You were a creature of the stone, born and bred to live under mountains and know the worlds secrets found therein. Placing a hand over the growing swell of your stomach you felt a light nudge from the inside. For the last time your heart flashed under its stone encasements. How fragile a child is, but it must learn to fall and get back up and walk. The line of Durin would continue. Your heart turned itself to stone, and you ran a soothing hand over the area where the baby kicked. Your son would be king under the mountain, as his father was crowned Prince. Nothing would harm this child. Not while you still drew breath. Hearts are easily corrupted when left open to the worlds corruption and fragility. But you were no longer fragile, you were harder than graphite and would continue to harden as you watched others mourn the men you could never give up.