"But I thin -"
"... and that will be all for today."
The other dwarf halted and huffed, then nodded stiffly. "Aye, my lord."
The overzealous captain turned on his heels and walked away, still blathering under his breath about training schedules and military drills. Kíli cringed at the formality - all the "my lord"-s and "Your Highness"-es that the other dwarrows now seemed so hell-bent on bestowing upon him - but welcomed the solitude. Since the early afternoon he had been thinking about visiting a certain elf-maid who now dwelt inside the stony confines of the Mountain, one whose company he had had little time to enjoy in the previous weeks. Busy weeks, and more to come. Rebuilding a kingdom was proving more arduous than either his brother or him had ever imagined.
Then he heard the rumble of thunder and knew that a great storm was coming. From the small windows lining the hallway he could make out the lake and the grey stony sky, harbinger of rain. He grimaced at the idea of what awaited him in the following days - training cadets under the deluge.
He walked briskly in the maze of hallways and halls ensconced somewhere in the western side of the mountain, nodding his head at the occasional passer-by and receiving discreet bows in return. The population was still scarce, but ever-growing. Many of Durin's folk had chosen to return to their homeland - every day he saw new faces, looking up in awe or joy at the vastness of their reclaimed city.
Kíli was going to the Foreign Quarter, as it had been called back in the glorious days of Thrór - a vast residential complex that had been the dwelling of foreign visitors when the city was young. He had insisted that Tauriel share his own apartments but she had wanted none of that, insisting on the inappropriateness of it. Oh, he had hoped for a whole lot of inappropriateness, he couldn't deny that - and then he saw two dwarf-maids, Tauriel's maids, walking towards him. They were coming from their lady's apartments. The two stopped and bowed respectfully.
"Hello, ladies. Is Tauriel home yet?" he enquired.
"She is, my lord," said Freya, the blonde one. "She wasn't much in the mood for conversation, though. Playing her kin's music," she added in a low, conspiratory tone.
The other, a brunette with a most graceful beard whose name always eluded him, noticeably frowned.
Kíli nodded and the two departed with a small bow.
"Dreadfully sad," he heard the brunette say under her breath. He could hear Freya's elbow hit the other girl in the ribs, followed by a small 'ow'.
The Foreign Quarter was composed by a vast common hall decorated in the most opulent dwarven fashion, in a way that had surely been intended as a way to let foreign dignitaries know, in no uncertain terms, of the wealth and power of Durin's descendendants. The stonework on the floor was unparalleled, as were the massive square columns holding up the heavy dark ceiling on which a famous sculptor (was it Hamnar of the Iron Hills?) had carved notable scenes from dwarven history. Every single dwarf represented had tiny gems in its eyes and gold filigree on their coats, so that the whole ceiling held a vague, beautiful sparkle. An admirer of precious things, Kíli had been fascinated with this detail when he first saw it with his own eyes; Tauriel, after showing a respectful amount of interest, had walked up to the windows and pointed out, her voice tinged with sorrow, that she could see Mirkwood from there.
Oaken doors on the sides and at the very end of the hall led to smaller halls and to the apartments. He had given Tauriel (well, technically Fíli had) the best and largest one and he had spared no expenses: all the furniture came from the Elves of Rivendell, for he knew Tauriel disliked the heavy lines of dwarven design, and the opulent carpets came from the hands of the women of Gondor. Tauriel's verdict: "excessive", but she said it with a smile. "A future princess of Erebor deserves this and more," he told her. As he came closer to the door leading to her apartment's antechamber he heard it - faint music, muffled by the stone and wood.
He knocked. It was Vila who opened the door, the third and oldest of Tauriel's maids (for he had insisted on her taking at least three maids, lest his princely honor be offended, he had joked) and also the one who had been entrusted with the delicate task of teaching Tauriel the basics of Khuzdul. She had been a teacher to young lasses in Ered Luin for over fifty years, stern and demanding. As a student, Tauriel had proved herself both dedicated and talented, even exceeding Vila's - admittedly not high - expectations.
"She is playing her harp," said the dwarrowdam in an in irritated whisper as she took his leather vest and hung it on one of the wood pegs lined up on the wall. "And has done so for the past two hours." Soft, sparse music arranged in a despondent melody was coming from the sitting room beyond an ornately decorated door. Dreadfully sad, he remembered.
Vila announced him, then came back and sighed. "Two hours! Mind you, I like her enough and all but by my beard - "
Kíli chuckled. "You can go, Vila."
The dwarf lady raised an eyebrow but had the good grace to bite her tongue.
"I promise," said Kíli, "nothing untoward will be happening in these rooms. My fair lady keeps a firm hold on her honor. Too firm," he added, "if you ask me."
"I hope so," said Vila pointedly. "Let us not destroy even this last bastion of decency. It is all bizarre enough as it is."
Kíli ignored the implied jab and shot her what he hoped was his widest, most charming smile as he put two hands squarely on the woman's shoulders. "Rest easy, dear Vila," he said."Honorable people we both are - am I not the face of patience, respect and, most of all, conservativeness?"
Vila couldn't completely suppress a small smile as she shook her head, muttered "pah!" and took her leave.
"Ah, please, Vila, tell Freya and the other one to bring us dinner in an hour. Venison - fillet -, potatoes, green stuff and ale. Wine for Tauriel."
She nodded curtly and exited the room. After a fraction of a second her head re-emerged from the hall, "I have to say it, my lord - please tell the fair maiden here that dwarven clothes will do a perfectly fine job of covering her up, instead of those flimsy things she calls dresses!" And off she went.
Kíli chuckled as he stepped into the sitting room - there she was, beautiful as always. Beyond her, the huge stone balcony overlooking the valley, the lake, and, in the distance, her native woods. The sky was darkening.
A last note trembled in the air. Then all was silence.
She looked at him with a little smile. "Hello."
Oh, what a sight to behold - an elf-maid at her harp, the hair loose on her shoulders and flowing down her back.
"No, please, continue," he said, feeling vaguely embarrassed. There she was, in long flowing robes of finest velvet, playing the golden harp he had gifted her, all impossible beauty and grace; and there he was, short and stocky and fatigued after a day of training, dirt under his fingernails even after a shower and boots that would never be just as spotless as hers. As much as she professed her love for him - although not as openly and vocally as a dwarf-lady would have - he wasn't sure he'd ever truly believe it. Out of your league, lad. "I- I would have brought the fiddle, had I known."
It had been a beautiful surprise to discover she played an instrument, for Kíli himself was a decently skilled musician (as almost all dwarves were) and they had delighted themselves in playing together sometimes. Tauriel the musician was far away from Tauriel the warrior - her whole demeanour changed when she sat at the harp and in those moments, like in few others, he could glimpse, through the usual somewhat reserved countenance of her kin, that sparkle of pure and childlike joy the Firstborn were known for. And when she sang - oh, she protested, I'm not that good of a singer, not at all - it was like hearing the very stars sing. But there was no joy in her eyes today.
"Your maids were complaining about your song choice, though," he added, walking slowly towards her. "They said it was too sad."
"Was it?"
"Maybe."
Her face was pretty behind the strings of the golden harp, but her expression was tinged by sadness. She shot him a little smile and then turned. "I'll try and be more pleasant next time."
Oh, he knew what was going on - he knew it all too well. They were a melancholy bunch, the Elves. Tauriel wasn't, not as much as the others anyway, like the ones at Rivendell who had looked melancholy even in the middle of a pleasant dinner: because she was young, she had told him once, although she was already a child of Mirkwood when Náin II, his great-great-great-grandfather was born; and because she was Silvan, "more dangerous, less wise". But an Elf she was nonetheless, and prone to that mysterious mood that dwarves could hardly understand. It wasn't common amongst his kin, and easily replaced by other emotions, quick anger, frustration or steely determination, and anyway easily fixed - with ale and raucous merry-making. But the Elves were different, that much he knew. They revelled in it.
He came close to her, at her height as she sat by the harp. Her neck was exposed in the most delicious fashion and he couldn't resist planting a gentle kiss. Such soft skin.
"What was that?"
"It's mine. Just a little thing I composed when I was very young. It's about Beren's death. Legolas really liked it -" and then her voice trailed off. He ignored the pang of jealousy at the mention of the elven prince's name. The fairy sprite was travelling now, prancing around on a white horse somewhere far.
"A sad story, that one. Although I guess it has a happy ending," he offered, somewhat lamely.
She remained silent, looking away.
"Are you missing your friend, the prince?" he asked, more coolly than he had intended.
Tauriel turned to look at him with an undecipherable expression in her eyes.
"I am thinking about many things."
"And playing sad songs about them. Beren's death, hm?"
Then it struck him.
He knew the story about Luthien and her mortal love. Not from the mouth of Elves - he had seen little of them up until the quest to the Lonely Mountain - but from the Men who lived near Ered Luin, and how misty-eyed they all got when they sang the tale! He had seen old men in inns cry like babes when they heard about Beren's death, and heard the hearty cheers when Luthien's pleads managed to move to pity the guardian of the dead. A doomed love, an immortal Elf falling for a mortal Man...
Kíli sighed. They were two months away - finally - from their wedding. Why on earth was she thinking about those dreary things when she was supposed to gaze happily out of the window, dreaming about their upcoming married bliss?
"I bet I know what you are thinking about," he said.
"You do?" she asked, surprised.
"Beren and Luthien. Death. Us. Why?"
One finger struck a lazy note on a string, and then another. "I can't help it."
There was a pause.
"I know."
Then she looked at him straight in the eyes and he saw there was a hint of tears in her green ones. But suddenly it was hard to look at her. He felt a mounting frustration inside him, not directed at her but at himself, perhaps, or at Fate itself. He walked away, into the balcony. Another low rumble, thunder. Rain was coming. "You still have two months to change your mind. You can still walk away."
"Don't be foolish."
"I'm being rational," he said, not looking at her but at the lake that spread large under his gaze. It looked like molten lead, he mused. A sudden tiredness descended upon him, and he became aware of just how much all his muscles were aching as he sat down on one of the stone benches. It had been a grueling day. This wasn't what he had been hoping for as he returned from the plains with the cadets. He had hoped to steal one or two kisses, and share a hearty dinner. Not anything more - the bedroom doors were always sealed when he came for his visits. Nor had he ever seen her in any state of undress - at most, the light, flowing tunics she wore when she was off-duty and lounging in her apartment doing whatever elf-maids did on their own free time -
And then he felt her hand on his head, stroking lightly, trailing down the single braid she had woven in his hair two days before. He had not even heard her rise and walk towards him. "Don't be angry."
He took her hand in his and kissed it. "I'm not."
She sat then on the floor at his feet, her teal dress pooling elegantly around her, and laid her head on his thigh.
"Do you ever think about it?" she asked.
"Your name will echo in this world long past mine, that's the way it is," he said, stroking her head lightly. The soft red strands slid between his fingers like water. So beautiful, and yet she insisted that her hair was just mediocre by elven standards. She kept her head down under his touch. "When I'll go, you'll have the Undying Lands. Your grief will be healed, there," he said, almost repeating exactly what little she had told him of that special place beyond the sea that the One had reserved for his Firstborns, "you will forget the pain in time," he added. "And then you'll forget me." His voice sounded pathetic to his own ears and he hated himself for it.
"You forget!"
He almost started at the forcefulness of her voice. "What?"
"That we always remember." Her delicate hand rose to his cheek and cupped it. Her pretty eyes were filled with tears. Mahal, this was the first time he had made her cry (apart from the time, he figured, when she had thought him dead on the battlefield. He had been unconscious then, though) and even her crying was beautiful.
"It is all so very mysterious," Tauriel continued softly, turning to look away from him. He felt like she was going away under his hands to a place where he wasn't allowed to follow her - a place of thoughts and contemplations he just could not penetrate. "What is true death? We don't understand it. Even the wisest of us… We don't talk about it much."
There was a pause.
"Neither do we. Not exactly party material, is it," he mused.
Unexpectedly, she giggled. "You kick it and then boom, off you go," he continued, encouraged by her reaction. He would have given away half his treasure for a truly joyful laugh. "Think about it. An eternity spent waiting in a hall with thousands of grumpy dwarrows complaining about the lack of ale."
"Truly a terrible prospect."
"You bet it is."
Her head returned on his lap and he felt her smile a little against his trousers.
"Whatever happens," he said, feeling bolder now, "we'll meet again. I know it. Sooner or later. When the new Song is sung and the world is renewed, as the bards say. But, my fair lady, we still have many years to enjoy before we need to worry about such complex philosophical questions, don't we?"
"You are right," she said simply. Her eyes were clearer now, he could tell, although he knew a couple of jokes weren't enough to pacify her sadness and her fears.
"I always am. I'm a prince. That means I'm wise."
She laughed softly and planted a quick kiss on his thigh. He knew they were still at an impasse, one they'd probably be stuck in for, well - forever. No matter how they looked at it, the painful paradox remained: the echo of tears to come, the desolation of her future grief. He was acutely aware of how selfish it was of him to steal an immortal's love. Her kin's music lasted forever, his melody only a few bars and then a sorrowful silence. While he'd be dreaming stories of his ancestors in Mandos as he sat beside his fallen kin, until the day the One would put them all to work again, all she'd have would be memories. And, he hoped, at least a couple of immortal children to keep her company. The alternative, letting her go, was unthinkable now. All he could give her was his life, his few years blinking and breathing in the world, and even that seemed a meager offering as he held her in his rough hands.
"I'll give you my whole life, my love," he said. "All I have. Every single day and night till my last breath. It's not much, but it's all yours. I hope you'll have it."
"It is all I want," she said and kissed his hands with reverence. She remained silent for a long minute, studying his hand, stroking it with her thumbs. "My sweet prince. I love you so," she finally whispered with a gentle smile and breath-taking softness in her eyes and then she rose, her body sliding up on his body, and she kissed him with abandon. All tension was lifted from him instantly, cares forgotten, his heart filling with something singing and soaring and he could feel his blood and his life thumping loudly in his ears. Would he ever get used to it? Her lips were honey and her scent was overwhelming and -
A flash of light pierced the dark sky and then they heard thunder, and the sound of the first rain.