Prologue
When we went amongst the Men of a rebuilt Dale, they had tales for us. They were fantastic tales. Tales of Men slaying dragons, of tears curing blindness, of sleeping women woken from sleep with a single kiss.
But the tale I remember most vividly is one of a beauty and a beast. I'm sure you've heard it before, so I won't recount it for you now. It was the one that has stayed with me for all these years, lying dormant in me.
It reared its head just recently.
It was breakfast for us, the king's sister-sons, and as per the norm, we broke our fast with the king himself, our Uncle Thorin, and our mother. We sat across from him at the table, with his empty consort's chair beside him, and our mother to his other side. Uncle Thorin has always told us that the consort's seat will remain empty for as long as he lives, and I don't doubt it.
But it did not occur to me why until a servant interrupted our breakfast.
'Your Highness,' he said, and bowed, and there was fright quivering in his eyes. I did not know what for, but now, in hindsight, he was afraid of my Uncle Thorin, I'm sure.
Thorin said nothing, but took a drink of his stout and gestured absently for him to go on.
And go on he did. 'Your Highness, there was a… a lost child at the gate, and the guards took him in.'
Thorin said nothing but even he stopped eating and leveled a stare at the shaking servant, prostrated before us. 'What are you not telling me?' he demanded. He is many things, but not stupid.
The servant was shivering on the ground. 'He is an Elfling, your Highness, and not just any Elfling, but the son of King Thranduil.'
Thorin's eyes flashed and in a split second he had impaled the table with his knife to the sound of our mother's horrified gasp.
I should stop here — not only because what happened after was extremely nasty but because you probably don't understand why Uncle Thorin got so upset over something that should be an inconsequential detail.
Years ago, many years ago, before even my brother Fili was born, a dragon came to Erebor. He wrecked the village of Dale beside us and drove us from out under the mountain. Smaug, he was called, and he was in love with my great-grandfather's gold, which had a siren song about it that appealed to the greed that runs in dragon blood.
Therein lay his downfall.
Smaug did not care about killing us, merely about claiming our treasure. He toddled into our home under the mountain and did not chase us away, even though we stood only where Dale had been, just a stone's throw away.
In the ruins of Dale we regrouped. We armed ourselves with what weapons lay in the rubble and called for reinforcements and healers from our faithful friends, the Elves, who had once come to pay their respects to my great grandfather Thror when he was at the height of his glory.
King Thranduil would have been better off ignoring the messenger. When the messenger had come back, many of our people had died of injuries inflicted by Smaug - injuries that would have been helped by any competent healer Elf - and the messenger looked dead himself, having been forced to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince the unwilling King.
The second one, to King Thranduil's credit - or maybe not - he did ignore, and that one returned home much faster.
And it is for this folly my uncle wanted to repay him when Thranduil's young Elfling came wandering up to our gate.
It caused quite the uproar. Some dwarves wanted to skin the child, others to behead him and send his head back to his father. My uncle was of the same mind. No one would ever forget how two sons of Durin - Thror and Thrain, my great-grandfather and grandfather - and a husband of a daughter of Durin - our father - died into a battle they were forced to march into without their sworn allies.
The situation has since been diffused.
In the end, it was our mother, Dis, who convinced her brother to send the child back to Thranduil unharmed. Only the Valar know how she did it, or why. She had lost her husband in that battle against Smaug, after all.
However she did it, or why she did it, the fact stands that Thorin was even convinced to send him back without a single golden hair on his pretty little head harmed.
But it was then, looking at my uncle Thorin, his face red and his meat knife stuck in the breakfast table, that I realised my uncle was a beast and needed a beauty.
Fast.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Hobbit or The Beauty and the Beast.
Author's Notes: So, er, yeah, this is something that came to me and I'm just curious whether or not anyone would be interested in reading this. Let me know.