Summary: A prequel to The Thirteenth Dwarf, in which there is a lot of snow. (The fact that I live in New Jersey where it is snowing AGAIN might just possibly have provided some inspiration for this little story. I mean, it is at least possible. Because snow. Again. And my driveway is shrinking.) There are also turnips, just because.

Fili awoke to a muted gray morning, a chill in the air of his room seeping in through the crack where the window didn't quite meet its frame. Outside, the snow that had begun falling the previous evening had piled up and around the well in the yard, high enough that only an inch or two of stone lip peeked out the top.

Fili jumped out of bed, shivering a little as he hastily changed out of his nightclothes, and careened into the kitchen, where Thorin had just removed a batch of sausage from the fire. Kili was in the parlor tending to the fire, black hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, and a smudge of ashes on his cheek already. Fili suspected he did it on purpose, for certainly no one could get that dirty that quickly unless he was trying.

"It snowed!" Fili said, in lieu of good morning. "I'm going sledding. There won't be any lessons today. Mr. Balin doesn't come out in the snow."

Thorin was busy piling a plate with crusty black bread, fried eggs, and two links of sausage. He added a dollop of melted butter to the bread and slid it across the table to Fili. "Lessons or no, you still have your chores to do. You can go once you've finished."

Fili stared at him. Thorin stared back implacably, loading his own plate with the same food he'd given to Fili, only with more of it. "Once you've finished, I said."

Fili felt this was deeply unfair, though not unexpected. "It is the first snowfall of the year. Everyone will be meeting at the hill after breakfast!"

"Well then, everyone will have to get along without you for a little while. Oín said it's to snow all day, and you know he's rarely wrong about the weather. There will be plenty of time for sledding. You can go when you're finished, and not a moment before."

Fili sank back into his chair, feeling mutinous. He glanced into the other room at Kili, who was very carefully tending to the fire and paying no attention at all to Thorin and Fili. This was nothing but an act, of course; though people always ignored him, Kili paid attention to everything that went on anywhere around him. This only made sense, Fili supposed, since if anything went wrong, he was likely to be blamed.

Thorin bit into a link of sausage, a little bit of grease dribbling down his chin. He looked unbothered by the grease and by Fili's predicament, which was, Fili reflected, quite typical. Thorin never paid all that much attention to Fili unless it was to tell him to sit up straighter, force him to read another dull history book, or recite some old boring poem about the glorious line of Durin, yawn.

Kili never had to read dull history books or learn boring poems, Fili thought resentfully. Kili never even had to go to lessons at all. "Kili can do my chores today," he said in a burst of inspiration. "Then I can go sledding."

The even noises of Kili tending to the fireplace stuttered for a second, then quietly resumed. When Fili looked over all he saw was Kili's hunched back. Perhaps he was holding himself a little more stiffly, but that was just his way of pretending he wasn't eavesdropping (which he always was, though no one but Fili ever seemed to realize it).

Thorin had not said a word, and when Fili dared to look at him, he saw his uncle staring at him thoughtfully, a piece of bread forgotten in his hand. "You want Kili to do your chores." He spoke in that slow, even voice that Fili mostly hated, unless it was directed at someone else.

"Yes," Fili said truculently. "Why shouldn't he? He can't go sledding with us anyway. What else is he going to do?"

"What else indeed," Thorin murmured. He looked not entirely happy (but he never looked entirely happy, so this was no indicator of anything at all) and unusually thoughtful. "I suppose," Thorin said, "there is no reason he should not. Since, as you say, he has nothing else to do."

Fili narrowed his eyes suspiciously, because with Thorin it was never certain if you were talking yourself into a trap. "He can't chop the wood," he said carefully, "because he's too little to use the axe. But I did that yesterday so we have enough for a few days. He can do all my other chores." Kili would, in fact, undoubtedly do a better job of it than Fili himself. Though he was younger, Kili was much more careful about his chores - about everything, in truth; things hardly ever broke when Kili was around, though it never stopped anyone blaming him for it, just the same, as if his mere presence in a room caused things to get smashed to bits. Fili frowned a little. At least he knew better than to believe something so ridiculous, and Thorin did as well, and Thorin was really the only one whose opinion mattered where Kili was concerned.

"Mmm," Thorin said, but that was all. He rose to his feet, taking his now empty plate with him, and placing it carefully in the sink. "Have you had enough to eat?"

"Almost," Fili said. "Is there any more sausage?"

Thorin nodded, and placed the last link on Fili's plate. Fili ate it in just three bites, then cleared his own plate from the table. Once the table was empty Thorin took the remaining eggs and bread and put them on a new plate. "Kili," he called. "Your breakfast is ready. Come here, nidoy, I have something to tell you."

Kili sidled in slowly, rubbing at his cheek, which just smeared the ash there further. He glanced at the plate, eyes widening a little at the sight of two eggs waiting for him, but didn't sit down yet, and wouldn't until Thorin and Fili had left the kitchen. Fili didn't know how he could stand it; for Fili, eating breakfast was the first and most important part of his morning, but Kili had been up for hours already with not even a single bite. Fili supposed it was a skill one could learn with sufficient practice, like reading runes and using a sword. Perhaps, he thought, when he was older he would learn this too, though he was not entirely sure he wanted to. Thorin said it taught self-discipline; Fili thought it just taught you to be hungry and not complain, which was not exactly the same thing.

"You're to do all of Fili's chores today," Thorin said brusquely. "Except for chopping wood."

Kili nodded immediately, which just proved he'd been listening, not that Fili had harbored any doubts about that whatsoever. "Yes, shemor."

"If anything is too difficult for you, you must come and tell me right away," Thorin said seriously. "I do not want you to hurt yourself trying to prove you can do something that you're not big enough to do."

Kili nodded again. "Yes, shemor." He glanced at the table again, a little longingly. Fili, who had been feeling, perhaps, just a tiny bit guilty over giving away all of his chores, concluded that Kili was more concerned with his stomach than his chores, and so there was no reason to feel guilty at all. Actually, he supposed he was doing Kili a favor by giving him more to do during the day. Kili liked to be busy, and now he would be busier than ever.

"I'm going sledding now," he said, feeling rather pleased with himself for how the whole situation had worked out.

"If you're not back by lunch, Fregrid will put something aside for you," Thorin said. "Don't hurt yourself, nidoy."

"I won't," Fili said, rolling his eyes. "Goodbye, Kili. I will tell you all about it when I get back."

Kili nodded distractedly, eyes still on his food, and Fili left the kitchen quickly, in an excellent mood and excited for the morning's fun. He grabbed his sled from the small garden shed and raced to the hill as quickly as he could — which was not so very quick, as his boots were new and a little too big and the snow already rather deep — to find several of his friends already there.

"Fili!" Albed called, waving to him. "We thought you wouldn't be here for hours yet. Thorin always makes you do your chores first thing on snowy days."

"Kili's doing my chores today," Fili said smugly.

Bergin, Albed's cousin (of a sort; Fili was not entirely clear on how they were related), stared at Fili enviously. "I wish we had a khazd khuv at home to do our chores."

"Hush," Albed said, frowning. "You wish no such thing. Khazd khuv are bad luck. Everyone knows that."

"It doesn't seem to be hurting Fili any," Bergin said. "And now he has no chores to do. I wouldn't call that bad luck."

"If you had a khazd khuv in your house," Albed said, "then I couldn't come to visit. Mother won't let any of us near him. She said the curse can spread sometimes, like an illness."

Fili scoffed. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It's not an illness. You can't catch it. I've lived with him his whole life and I haven't caught any curse."

"Well, you mightn't know," Albed said reasonably. "Maybe you've been cursed all along, and you just don't know any different."

Irritably, Fili threw a snowball at him, unintentionally starting a very large snowball fight, of which Fili was the unquestioned victor, which he felt quite proved his point about not being cursed. Fili crowed about this for for several trips up and down the hill until Bergin plowed headfirst into a snowdrift and ended up entombed with only his legs left to kick uselessly in the air until they pulled him out, which was funny enough to drive any thoughts of curses quite out of any dwarfling's head.

It was warm enough to stay out the whole day, and as Albed had packed snacks enough for everyone (and more! Albed preferred his snacks frequent and substantial), there was no need to go back home until the sun was setting. Fili was thoroughly drenched and exhausted by the time he dragged himself back through the front door, snow packed into his boots and mittens and all round his waist under his coat.

"Boots!" Thorin roared the instant Fili slammed the door shut behind him. Kili came scuttling up from the parlor to help take off all of Fili's sodden clothing, and between the two of them they got him wrapped in a towel and in front of the fire, with a mug of warm honeyed ale clutched tightly between his numb fingers.

"I thought you would never come home!" Kili whispered, eyes round. The smudge of ash from the morning was still on his cheek, and now its twin graced the opposite side of his face, down by the jaw. His fingers were very warm against Fili's skin as he carefully brushed all the ice crystals from Fili's hair. "I thought you had fallen into the snow and couldn't get out again and they wouldn't find you until the thaw."

Fili scoffed grandly. "The snow is hardly so deep as all that."

"It seemed deep to me," Kili said. "I sank in past my knees and got stuck, and Thorin had to come pull me out. It was a long time before he even realized I was gone. My fingers were turning blue and my teeth were chattering so hard I thought they might break."

Fili stared at him. "What were you doing outside?" He could think of no reason at all Kili should have left the house on such a snowy day, if he was not going to do something fun like sledding.

"We needed more kindling," Kili said.

"The fire was already going well when I left," Fili said. "Why did you need kindling?"

"Oh," Kili said, "it took me so long to sweep the floors that all the big logs burned away. I do not know how you do it so quickly," he said with a sigh. "It is only ever a few minutes for you, but I think it took me almost two hours."

Fili shifted uneasily, unwilling to admit that the only reason he was able to sweep the floors so quickly was that he did a horrible job of it. "Well," he hedged, "I am much bigger than you. My arms are longer." (This was an outright lie, as he was at most two inches taller than Kili, and Fili was certain there was no appreciable difference in the length of their arms, but Kili was young and trusting and accepted everything Fili told him as the truth. This was quite possibly because Kili knew no other dwarflings, but it was nonetheless a fact Fili had used to his advantage many times.)

"Then I suppose I shall just have to wait to get taller," Kili said morosely. "Mr. Oín says I am tall for my age, but sometimes I think he just says that so I won't be sad that I am so small."

"You are not small," Fili said. "You are taller than all the other dwarflings your age in town. You are just young, that's all. Are you quite recovered from the snow?"

"Yes," Kili said. "Thorin gave me honeyed ale to warm me up." He made a face. "I didn't like it but he made me drink the whole mug. I was afraid I would be sick, but I was not. Then he made me stay in front of the fire for so long I thought I would melt." He looked at Fili with wide eyes. "He told me if I moved even so much as an inch away from the fire, he would make me take a bath! In the middle of the day!"

This was, Fili knew, nearly the end of the world from Kili's perspective. Kili liked baths only slightly more than cleaning the cesspit, possibly a little less. The threat of a bath was the most certain way to guarantee Kili would mind what he was told (though he almost always did anyway, with considerably less fussing than Fili).

"Well, I am glad for you that you avoided that horrible fate," Fili said. "And that you did not freeze or melt."

"Tell me about sledding," Kili said. "Did you go very fast?"

"Oh, faster than I have ever gone before!" Fili said. "I was the fastest there. Well, almost the fastest. Albed was faster, but I think that is only because he is so fat. On one run I went so fast I thought I must be about to fly!"

Kili was staring at him with rounded eyes. "Could you?" he asked breathlessly. "If you go fast enough, could you fly?"

Fili thought about it. "I don't know," he admitted. "I have never seen it happen. Perhaps dwarves cannot. We are very heavy, you know, and birds are very light."

"Oh," Kili said, sighing. "I suppose that is true." He had finished pulling all the ice from Fili's hair and was now combing it out carefully. "Well, I shall try it someday when I am all grown, and find out for myself."

When I am all grown was Kili's code for, when my sentence is finished, though that was so many, many years away, Fili had trouble even imagining it, and Kili would be fully grown long before that. Fili had never seen a grown dwarf go sledding. He fell silent as Kili finished combing his hair, hissing occasionally as tangles caught in the comb.

"There," Kili said. "That's good enough. I can braid it for you after dinner, if you like. Fregrid is roasting a ham. I have been smelling it all day." He frowned. "And turnips."

Kili did not especially care for turnips.

"If it is a whole ham," Fili said, "I am sure there will be some left for you. It is just us here tonight, and I am not so very hungry." Actually, he was very hungry indeed, for Albed's snacks had been filling but no excuse for a real lunch. Still, he would make certain there were at least a few slices of ham left for Kili. It was, Fili thought a little guiltily, the least that he could do, after Kili had spent his whole day doing Fili's chores and practically freezing to death besides.

"That would be nice," Kili said. "But if not there will at least be fresh bread and butter, and there is still milk left over too. And turnips are not so bad as parsnips." He clambered lightly to his feet. "Now I have to go do the ironing."

"The ironing! But it is nearly dinner time." Kili was slow and methodical with the ironing, and had never once burned himself or any of the linen, but even at his slowest he was always done by mid-day, while Fili was still trapped in the classroom struggling with his maths.

"After the ironing I will still have to fold the towels," Kili said with a small frown. "I am very late today. Thorin made me sit in front of the fire for so long, and while I was there he would not let me do any of my chores at all, and when I finally could get up I had all your chores to do as well." There was not a hint of complaint or accusation in his voice, but he did sound very tired, and Fili now felt very horribly guilty indeed.

"It is my fault you are so far behind," he said.

"It is not your fault I fell in the snow," Kiki retorted instantly. The day was yet to come that Kili would let Fili take the blame for anything, even those things that were obviously Fili's fault. Fili rather suspected that if he were to drop a brick on Kili's head (not that he ever would do such a thing!), Kili would apologize for getting in the way of it.

"You would not have been in the snow at all if I had done the sweeping. And now you still have all this work to do and the dishes too after we eat. You will hardly get to bed before it is time for you to get up again."

Kili did not seem to be bothered by this. "If I am very tired tomorrow I am sure Thorin will let me take a nap. It is not a wash day, so there will be far less to do, even if I am to do your chores again."

Fili was momentarily dumbfounded. "Why would you do my chores tomorrow?"

"Oh," Kili said without concern, as if it didn't matter to him either way, "it is just that it has not stopped snowing, so Mr. Balin will not come tomorrow. You will probably want to go sledding again, and then I should have to do your work for you so you can meet your friends. And I did most of your chores today well enough that Thorin will probably want me to keep doing them even if you do not go out. He has never taken away a chore once it has been given."

Fili wondered if this was true. He had never paid all that much attention to Kili's chores, except that he thought sometimes that there seemed to be a great very many of them. Even so, "You cannot do all of the chores in the house."

"Not now," Kili agreed, "but when I am older, perhaps." He dipped his head. "What else shall I do? I do not take lessons, and I cannot be apprenticed out. I must do something useful, or Thorin will not want to keep me."

"That," Fili said staunchly, "is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard you say. Of course Thorin will keep you, whether you are useful or not. He is your shemor."

Kili frowned. "That is no reason. He could give me to someone else if he wants to. And that person might not be so nice."

Fili was rather taken aback by this, as "nice" was not a word he would have ever applied to his uncle. "Strict," perhaps, or "gruff," or, at best,"not terribly mean." Still, though Fili had never much felt he was anything more than a burden to Thorin, Thorin at least tolerated him without complaint, and Fili had certainly never worried that he would be turned out.

"I heard him talking once to Mr. Balin," Kili confided, crouching back down so he could whisper near Fili's ear. "I suppose I should not have listened, but... " He looked guiltily towards the door, then learned in even closer. "I heard them say my name."

"I would have listened too, if I were you," Fili reassured him. "Anyone would."

Kili chewed on his lip. "Mr. Balin said Thorin was coddling me. What does 'coddle' mean?"

Fili had no idea. "I think it means to clean," he said confidently.

Kili nodded, looking only the slightest bit doubtful. "Then Thorin said he was hardly doing that. And Mr. Balin said there were plenty of others who would, but Thorin needed to set an example because he is my shemor. And then Thorin said he wished he was not." He stared at Fili then, jaw set stubbornly.

Fili pursed his mouth. "I cannot believe Uncle Thorin would have said such a thing."

"He did," Kili insisted. "And do not tell me that I did not hear him correctly, for I know I did!"

"I—" Fili said, frowning. "Well, I am sure you heard him correctly, then." He was quite sure. Kili had the best hearing of anyone Fili knew. "But that does not mean he will not keep you. I am sure he is no happier at having to be my uncle than he is to be your shemor, but you don't see me worrying that I have to keep him happy or he will give me away."

"Well, he can't get rid of you," Kili said reasonably. "You are his sister-son."

Fili put on a very stern face. "He can't get rid of you either. You are his khufud; it is not like he can just take you to the market and trade you away. He- he signed a contract," he added in a burst of inspiration. While he had no idea if this was in fact the case, it was at the least entirely plausible. It very much seemed like a contract might exist, somewhere. The fact that Fili had still been in nappies when all of this had happened was just the sort of thing Kili would never even think about. "He signed it when he agreed to be your shemor. It was a big contract, a huge scroll as long as you are tall, and Mr. Balin and Mr. Gloín witnessed it and Uncle Thorin cannot change his mind now."

Kili gnawed at his lip a little. "I do not know what a contract is."

"It is a legal document," Fili said, in a very important voice. "It means he swore his word, and he cannot break it, or they will throw him in jail."

Kili's eyes grew very round. "But he is King! They cannot throw him in jail!"

"He is not really king yet, and they can throw anybody in jail for breaking a contract, even a king." Kili sat back on his heels, eyes still wide, silent for several minutes while he considered this new information, until Fili patted him on the leg. "So you needn't worry, you see. You will be staying here. Though I suppose it would be best to keep Uncle Thorin happy anyway. But I ought to do that too, just like you. He is not my shemor but he can still send me to bed without supper." (Thorin was particularly prone to doing so, as it happened; Fili had a small stash of pastries stored in his wardrobe for just such an occasion.)

It was at that point that Thorin poked his head into the room. He eyed them both a little suspiciously for a moment before jerking his head toward the kitchen. "Fili. Suppertime. Have you done the ironing yet, Kili?"

"No, shemor," Kili said guiltily. "I was just about to."

"Get to it then, nidoy," he said. "Supper for you in half an hour."

"Yes, shemor," Kili said, and scampered away towards the back room.

Fili followed Thorin into the kitchen, where the table was already set, plates filled high with ham and turnips and some sort of brown mash Fili had no intention of eating, plus a basket full of fragrant bread dripping with melted butter. Fili's stomach growled, and Thorin laughed and cuffed him lightly on the head. "No wonder you are hungry. You never came home for lunch. Kili was very worried about you. Every time he walked through the parlor he would stare out the window looking for you."

"He thought I got stuck in a snowdrift," Fili mumbled around a mouthful of bread. Then he told Thorin all about sledding, and Thorin even looked interested to hear it, though after a little while he started nodding at the end of every sentence, and grunting occasionally, which Fili knew meant he wasn't really listening any more. "Uncle," he said, after a few minutes of this, "are you going to make Kili do all my chores from now on?"

Thorin blinked and refocused his gaze directly on Fili. Being the focus of that stare was more than a little unnerving, and Fili shifted restlessly in his seat.

"Well," Thorin said, "he is bigger now, almost as big as you. He managed most of them well enough today. I will probably give most of them to him, yes."

"But you never would have if I hadn't asked!" Fili said. "You can't give him all those chores just because I wanted to go sledding. It's not fair!"

Thorin breathed in very slowly, staring somewhere over Fili's shoulder. "No," he said after a moment. "It is not very fair at all, I suppose. But if he is big enough to do them—"

"Oh," Fili said, heart sinking. "It's another law, isn't it." He stared down at his own plate miserably.

"Fili," Thorin said, unusually gentle, "Fili, why are you so upset? You hate your chores, especially sweeping and making the beds."

Fili nodded. To his horror, he felt a tear prickling in the corner of his eye. He would have wiped it away except that Thorin was staring right at him. "I do hate it," he said. "But Kili will hate it too, and … and he will blame me."

"He will not blame you. He will not blame anyone. Fili, you know this. Kili accepts what he is told. And I do not think he will hate doing your chores. He likes being busy."

Fili had thought the same thing, but there was a difference between being busy for a day and having no time for fun at all, ever. And Kili had looked so tired, and even now was ironing all alone in the back room, which at this time of day was cold and dark and a little scary. Fili sighed and pushed his plate away, having completely lost his appetite. At least there was plenty of ham left. Kili could eat as much as he wanted, for a change. "Well," he said truculently, "I don't suppose there is any law that says I can't help him, is there? Is there a law against that?"

"No," Thorin said, after a moment. "No, there is no law against that."

"Good." Fili sat back in his chair, arms folded. "Kili told me it took him hours to sweep today, so obviously he is not really big enough to do it properly."

Thorin sighed. "He did a better job of it than you, nidoy. And Fili, you know he will have to do all of these chores eventually, and more besides."

"I know that," Fili said, and he did; he knew it as he knew that someday he would be king, but both of those things would take place in the distant, nebulous future. Right now, it was hard to think much beyond the next day, when there would again be no lessons, and all his friends would be meeting at the big hill for more sledding, and Kili would be stuck inside the house with only Thorin and Fregrid for company. "Uncle," he said, "what does coddle mean?"

Thorin raised an eyebrow. "To pamper," he said. "To spoil. Why, do you think I am coddling you?"

"No," Fili said. "No, I was just wondering."

"Mmm," Thorin said. He crossed his arms and gazed at Fili speculatively. "Because I am sure I can come up with some new chores for you. There is plenty to do at the forge."

"The forge—" Fili stared at Thorin in dismay.

Thorin stared back at him for a moment, then grinned. "If only Vori were here to sketch your face. It would make quite a picture."

Fili scowled.

Thorin laughed and cuffed Fili around the head. "There is one sweetmeat left over, if you would like it for dessert. Then it is time for bath, and perhaps some fiddle practice."

"All right," Fili said, cheered at least by the prospect of the treat, though not so much by the bath or fiddle practice. "Kili said he would braid my hair after dinner."

"Kili has enough to do already," Thorin said. "I will braid your hair myself. Here." He placed the sweetmeat on Fili's plate, then stood up and began clearing his dishes. "Eat up, then get into the bath. Kili!" he shouted. "It is almost dinner time, nidoy."

"Give him plenty of ham," Fili said, around his dessert, "and no turnips. He doesn't like them."

"I don't like them either," Thorin said dryly, "but Fregrid insists we must eat them. She says they keep away the ague." Still, Fili saw that the turnip Thorin put on Kili's plate was the smallest of them all, and he smiled to himself as he headed off to the bath.

"No chores again!" Bergin said to Fili the next morning, when Fili arrived at the hill, cheeks already flushed from dragging the sled from the house. "Will Kili do them always for you now?"

"It seems so," Fili said, a little shortly. "At least the ones he is big enough for. I still must do the wood. Thorin will not let him near the axe."

"If Thorin is smart, he will never let a khazd khuv near an axe," Albed said. "He will as like chop off his own foot as the wood!"

Fili scowled. "Kili would not chop off his own foot. He is very careful."

"But he's cursed," Albed said. "He might do it by accident."

"Of course it would be an accident. No one ever chops off their own foot on purpose," Bergin said. "He might chop off someone else's, though."

"Kili is not going to chop off anybody's foot," Fili said grumpily. Despite the bright sun, he was already in a very foul mood, though he was not sure of the particular reason for it, for nothing had happened that was especially out of the ordinary, but that there had been no meat at all for breakfast and he had seen Kili struggling to straighten the heavy quilt on Thorin's bed. Neither of these things were of the sort to make him especially joyful, but so too neither should have put him in such a poor temper. In any event, it was certainly true that this conversation with his friends was not improving his mood at all.

"He might," Albed says. "He is sure to do something horrible sooner or later, and better to himself than you or Thorin."

"He is not going to do something horrible!" Fili said in irritation. "He is just a dwarfling, you know, the same as you or me."

"He is not like me," Albed said, looking quite offended. "He is not like any of us. He is khazd khuv, and Mother says they are no good from the start of their lives to the end."

"That's stupid," Fili said. "And if you believe it, then you are stupid too."

"I am not stupid," Albed shot back hotly. "Everybody knows it's true. Thorin should have sent him away, but Mother said there was no one who would take him, so now all of Ered Luin must bear his bad luck."

Fili stared at him. "You don't know him," he said finally. "You have never even once met him, not you or your mother. You would not say such things if you knew him. He is clever and he works hard and never complains, and right at this minute he is doing all my chores so I can be out here sledding with you." He was quite infuriated, and might have been shouting, though he was too angry to care. "But now I cannot imagine why I should have wanted to spend any time with you at all!" He turned away and gave his sled an angry jerk, heading back home.

"FIli!" Bergin shouted, puffing a little as he chased after him. "Fili, don't go. The sun is shining and it has stopped snowing. It will be even better sledding than yesterday. Don't be angry with Albed. He believes everything his mother says."

"I am not angry with Albed," Fili said, even though he was in fact quite angry indeed with Albed, and with his mother and every other dwarf who said horrible things about Kili just because of what he did when he was a baby. It was Fili's mother who had died, after all, and if Fili wasn't angry with Kili for it he didn't see why anyone else had the right to be. And Fili would certainly have noticed if Kili was prone to doing things like chopping off feet by accident. "I am just tired. We were out for a long time yesterday and I find I am not in the mood for more sledding today. I think I shall just go home and get ready for my lessons tomorrow. Mr. Balin is going to come early and I think he shall never leave."

"Well," Bergin said doubtfully, "if you are sure." But he trudged next to Fili for a little while anyway. "You know," he said presently, "Albed does not even mean those things he says."

"No," Fili said. "I do not know that. If he does not mean them, he should not say them. Those are the words that come out of his mouth. What else am I to think but that he means them?"

"You should think he is a silly dwarfling," Bergin said, "who does not know any better."

"His parents are not dwarflings, and they say them too. And they are not alone." He sighed, and gave a firm tug on his sled, which had gotten stuck on a branch sticking up from the snow. "I am just tired of defending Kili, that is all. He is nice, and funny, and kind, but nobody cares about that. All they care is that he is khazd khuv, and that he is cursed."

"Well," Bergin said, "He cannot be completely cursed, or he should not have a friend like you to shield him so well." He stopped walking. "I must go back. I cannot leave Albed alone for too long or he will eat all the food."

"Oh, you cannot risk that," Fili said, managing a small smile though he still did not really feel like it. Bergin gave a little wave and turned around, hurrying back to the hill where a dozen or more dwarflings were shrieking with glee as they sped down on their sleds. Fili watched them a little wistfully for a moment, but then turned his back and continued resolutely on his way. It would make no point at all if he went back to sledding as if nothing had happened, and anyway he did not think he could quite trust himself to speak to Albed again so soon without punching him in his big round nose.

"Boots!" yelled Thorin, as soon as Fili walked in, and if he noticed that Fili had been gone less than an hour, he did not seem to think it especially worthy of comment. Kili though, looked at him with a very worried expression on his face (again – or still — covered in ashes). "Why are you back so soon?" he whispered, tugging on Fili's left boot. "You have hardly been gone at all!"

"Oh," Fili said. "I decided I was not in the mood to sled today."

Kili looked at him, brow crinkled. "But surely all your friends are there," he said, "and you told Thorin yesterday it was the most fun you had had in an age!" Fili had said this at dinner; how Kili had heard it from the back room was a mystery, unless his hearing was far better than Fili had ever guessed.

"It was fun," Fili said, "and my friends are there, but I am not in the mood for it, that's all. I think," he said thoughtfully, "I would much rather sweep."

Now Kili looked at him as if he had lost his mind. "You hate sweeping," he said blankly. "And it is my chore now, not yours."

"Nonetheless," Fili said, "I am in the mood to sweep, and you cannot stop me from doing it if I want." He waited for a moment, then made a little shooing motion. "Why are you standing here? I can take my other boot off myself. Surely there is something else you are supposed to be doing right now."

"I am supposed to be mopping the washroom," Kili said. "And after that I was to sweep."

"Well, now you need not sweep. I shall do it. Off with you, then! I am sure the washroom floor will not mop itself."

Kili looked at him with deep suspicion, but retreated, and after a moment Fili heard water sloshing about. He finished taking off his winter clothes and placed them carefully by the fire to dry, then retrieved the broom from the closet and began sweeping the parlor floor with quite a bit more care than he usually did.

Thorin came in and stood for a moment, watching him. "So you were serious about helping Kili, nidoy."

"I told you," Fili said stubbornly, "he is too little to do it well."

Thorin hummed. "Well, I will not try to stop you when you are so determined."

"When I finish this," Fili said, "I am going to tidy the parlor and help Fregrid with the vegetables."

"And why," Thorin asked carefully, "would you do that? Those have been Kili's chores for a long time, and he does them perfectly well."

"Well, he has already made the beds," Fili said, "and if I do these things while he is mopping the floors, then all he will have left to do is put away yesterday's laundry, and all the chores will be done."

Thorin nods. "I think that is right."

"If we are both working then we should be done by lunchtime," Fili said, "and even after washing the dishes, Kili will have nothing to do until it is time to get the dinner ready."

Thorin nodded again. "I suppose he will not."

Fili hesitated. "Well," he said, "that will be hours with no chores to do, and I thought perhaps‒" He swallowed. "It is just that it is a very fine day outside, after all, and my old boots and mittens fit him well enough, and I thought—"

"Fili," Thorin said, slow and deliberate, "he cannot go sledding with you. You know that."

"He cannot come to the big hill," Fili said. "But there is no reason he cannot go outside of our own house, is there? The hill in our backyard is not so very big, but it is big enough to sled a little bit, isn't it? You might be able to get from the shed all the way down to the far fence. I think it might be quite exciting, if one had never ridden a sled before."

Thorin was still and quiet for what seemed to be a very long time, and the expression on his face was so peculiar, Fili did not know what to make of it. "Make sure you do a better job sweeping than usual," was what Thorin said when he finally spoke. "I'll have no dust-bunnies under the cupboards, nidoy."

"Of course not," Fili said. He felt very strange, his heart thumping so powerfully he thought it might burst right out of his chest, and he was so excited he felt he could hardly wait for lunch to be over. He started sweeping furiously. "The floors will be cleaner than they have ever been, Uncle."

Thorin fell silent again, then he heaved a great sigh and shook his head a little, as if to clear it from whatever thoughts were there. His eyes were still a little peculiar, as if he was looking at something that was not really in the room with them. "You will be a good king one day, Fili. Through no fault of my own, I think. But you shall be a very fine leader."

Fili did not know exactly what to make of that, for it was a very rare day that Thorin said anything about Fili's future kingship except to express despair that Fili should make any sort of king at all. "Thank you," Fili said politely, when no other words came to mind, and he bowed a little because it seemed safe. (It was always safe to bow to Thorin.) To Fili's great surprise, Thorin nodded his head a little in return, which was the same as if any other dwarf had scraped the floor with his beard.

After Thorin had left, Fili stared at the door from the parlor for another minute, almost expecting Thorin to return and say he had thought of some reason Kili could go not go outside after all, but Thorin did not reappear. His heavy footsteps clomped away all the way down the hall to the little room in which he did all the mysterious king-ish things he did every day, and then there was no noise in the house to be heard at all but Fregrid bustling about in the kitchen and Kili sloshing water about on the washroom floor, quite as busy as always.

Soon, Fili thought gleefully, Kili was going to be busy in a very different manner. He attacked the sweeping with renewed energy, determined to get it done before Kili had even begun to dry the floor. Of course, there was still the matter of convincing Kili to let Fili do some of his other chores, which might be no easy task at all, but if necessary, Fili could just order Kili to let him do them; Kili was hardly going to complain to Thorin about that, when he let so many worse slights go unreported.

Fili swept and swept until the floor practically sparkled in the bright sunlight peeking through the window. "It shall be a very fine day after all," Fili said to himself, his mood entirely improved from the morning's gloom. "A very fine day indeed!