He came with many others like him, just as the darkness settled upon the city. And just like his kin, he looked tired, his blue robes dusty and dirty, the fur collar that lined outer coat caked with mud.

They'd just gone through a deluge the night before, I heard one of his companions say as they sought shelter for the night. Their eyes looked hollow, as if they'd just stared at death right in the eye and lived to tell the tale. Yet as I watched them walk past my window, I wondered if many of them wished death would have taken them instead of allowing them life without a home to call their own.

For death had had a name. It was Smaug.

The news had reached our small town two weeks earlier, and as soon as the messengers left to spread the news to other neighboring towns, people began to wail in fear, holding on to their children as tightly as they could as they looked to the skies for any sign of the drake from the north. Ears pressed to the ground to listen for the faintest growl of its wings, heart thumping wildly within their chests as their minds drew wild and crazy images of carcasses strewn upon the floor.

But the dragon never came. And why would it?

It had found its new home within the grand halls of Erebor, where these wandering groups of dwarves used to live, their home snatched away from them in a blink of a smoldering eye.

Already there were talk of dwarves descending upon the neighboring towns upon the west of us, searching for shelter and some work to pay for their meager lodgings, some of them forced to live with the animals in barns for there was not enough room to house all of them.

For a proud race, Jürgen, the blacksmith who lived next door to me said one day, they probably do wish death had taken them. For now they come to beg for work and anything else they can get, having had to leave all their treasures behind them when Smaug came.

And then Jürgen continued to pound his hammer upon the smoldering metal before him, the clanging sound echoing throughout the narrow cobblestone courtyard that separated his home from ours. The dwarves were not his problem, he thought, though even he had to admit that he would seek to know more about the ways in which they forged their treasures.

Now while Jürgen's home is large, with stone walls and even a balcony that overlooked the hills beyond the east, ours was quite meager indeed. But what the blacksmith didn't have - a stable - we did, and there we had three ponies of our own, in addition to the ones that travelers often lodged with us for a fee.

For the inn was but a stone's throw away, and travelers always came with horses or ponies, for the most part, and while the innkeeper probably charged way more than he should for the safe-keeping of their animals, we charged him enough to get us by.

For it was just my brother and I in this world, and together we had enough to make for a comfortable life. Bernd usually tended to the animals while I sewed and mended clothing. There was always work to be had mending clothes, for it cost a fortune to always have new ones made. And whatever most of my neighbors had made, they wore till the seams practically tore off their backs.

Such were the times that had befallen most of us.

But there was always time for other things besides just sewing and mending. Sometimes, I helped Bernd with his work in the stables, for I always found the horses most beautiful. They were excellent company after working with fabrics from dawn till dusk, when the fading light proved too weak for my eyes to guide my fingers' way through the stitches along the fabric.

It was a relief to ride the horses out in the plains, always with Bernd by my side, for one never knew who came upon the roads and the spaces that had no roads to speak of. There was always talk of other creatures so unlike us, the same ones who'd taken our parents.
Mother had taught me how to sew. She taught me how to cut cloth along lines she'd draw on the ground using chalk when I was a little girl, moving onto drawing them on paper, snipping sharp triangles along certain areas to "create shape," she'd say, and distinguish a simple dress from one that wasn't simple at all. "Grand" was the word she used. Ornate was another one.

She'd been a royal tailor and dressmaker when she was a young woman and although there were no more kings and queens to sew such beautiful creations for, she'd never stopped practicing her craft and passing it onto her only daughter. But now she was dead, along with father, killed in an orc raid more than ten years earlier when she and father journeyed to a town three days away with other merchants to purchase rich silken fabrics for her customers.

As I put away the fabric I was currently working on, a shadow crossed the window and I gasped, dropping the basket of notions onto the floor. I stooped down to pick it up and as I sat up to look out of the window, I saw him.

He'd just turned his head to look through the window, his brow furrowed as if seeking a face beyond the glass that would have shown me in my simple frock and hair tucked behind my ears had I not bent down to retrieve the basket. But as I looked up, our eyes met and I froze.
He had piercing blue eyes that seemed to peer through my very soul, the deep blue of his irises betraying a deep sense of loss that nothing could ever replace. His strong aquiline nose was set against strong regal features, a neatly trimmed beard covering the lower half of his face. His hair, damp from the previous night's rain, was long and thick, streaming past his shoulders.

For a moment I stifled a gasp and he, having at that moment met my own eyes in surprise, looked away, his attention returning to the man he had come to talk about regarding work as a blacksmith.

He still wore the thick coat with its fur collar caked in mud, deep blue tunic that was adorned with gold trim beneath it that belied a man accustomed to a tailored wardrobe. I had not seen many dwarves till the last week or so, when they first started coming through the town and even Bernd had remarked at the beautiful clothing they wore.

So not unlike what Bernd wore, for he preferred to dress simply if he were to work around the animals, feeding them and cleaning after them, making sure the stables were always in excellent condition. Even when I made him such ornate overcoats, embroidered with the shiniest of gold or silver threads I could find in mama's chest, he refused to wear them.

Instead, he'd sold two of the best coats I had made him to the richest man in town, the merchant Lialam, who frequently visited the shop that was also our home to have his clothes mended - even when they did not need such repairs.

"You're the best seamstress in town," Lialam would say as his hand would accidentally brush against mine each time he would lay a torn coat or shirt or trousers he'd claimed he'd ripped while doing this or that. Not that Lialam did anything close to hard labor - if counting gold coins was ever an occupation to qualify as such.

"One day, you will not have to sew any one else's clothes but my own," he said just this morning, just before he told me that Berndt had sold him the second coat - the best coat he had yet seen - in exchange for something of his.

Bernd put the money from the coats Lialam purchased towards the acquisition of a horse rumored to belong to one of the Rohirrim - this according to the merchant himself. It was a beautiful horse, to be sure, and one that seemed to like Berndt, but its cost was too high even for us to afford.

It would require the cost of one more coat, Lialam had told Bernd.

"A coat fit for a king," Bernd told me just a day earlier. "Can you make one, sister? Lialam already said that there is someone else interested in the beast and I don't want to lose this one."

But I could not make Bernd another coat.

Not one fit for a king, for unlike my mother and father, I had not met any kings or princes to copy their coats after. Our little town was but a watering hole for traveling folk, a small mark upon one's map and if one strayed merely two kilometers away from the path, one would surely miss it.

No, there were no kings or princes to be met in our little village - men who would wear coats that I could copy and sew an exact replica for Bernd for.

But that was before today. For today, I had set eyes on the one the dwarves had called their prince, one of the line of Durin. Thorin Oakenshield had just walked past my window, his deep blue eyes seeing through my soul.

And he wore the coat of a king.