DISCLAIMER; I do not own anything middle-earth wise, it is all Tolkien's. Also, I owe the settings, various characteristics and several ideas (too many to individualize here) to fan fiction writer Neocleoi and to Peter Jackson.
Author's Note; This is set in the Blue Mountains, when Fili and Kili would be about the same mental/physical age as 8 and 6 year old humans. Dis is their mother, Thorin's sister. Their father is dead.
Rain poured from the low clouds, swooshing down the wooden roofs and dousing the street below. Evening had descended upon the mountain village. A dark-haired, icy-eyed Dwarf trudged wearily thru the puddles. He approached one of the sturdier-looking buildings and reached for the doorknob.
Thorin Oakenshield entered his home.
He sighed with relief as a wave of warmth flowed over him. Rain in the mountains was bitterly cold, and the wind had chilled him after a 12-hour shift in the forges. Shrugging off his wet coat, he strode closer to the roaring fire and collapsed in to warmest chair with an appreciative groan.
Dis entered the room a moment later, bearing a tray of dirty dishes headed for the washbin. She caught sight of her brother, and more specifically, his huge, muddy boots planted firmly on her best fur rug.
"Thorin!" she shouted.
Thorin, who had just began to doze off, jerked up with a shocked cry of "What? What?" as he reached for his ax. On finding no intruders, he dropped the weapon and moaned. "Don't do that to me, Dis!"
She folded her arms and glared up at him with all the ferocity in her 4 foot 0 self.
"I didn't mean to startle you, but would it kill you to take off your boots? Or wipe them? Or at the very least NOT stand on the bear rug you gave me 13 winters ago?"
Thorin looked down at his boots and swore lightly in Kahz-Dul. He gingerly lifted one foot, placed it on the stone-flag floor, and followed with the other. He pried off both boots, carefully knocked the mud from them into the fire, placed them by his chair, and sat down again.
Dis smiled and reached for the poker, stirring up the blaze to its maximum warmth. "I'll get you your supper in a moment."
"Where are Fili and Kili?" he asked between gaping yawns.
Dis stabbed at the coals viciously. "Those two rascals drove me to distraction. Running up and down and around all day, nearly taking my nose off with those wooden swords of theirs, stealing sweets from the larder and constantly exciting those Wargs you gave them." Dis firmly considered any type of canine to be a Warg, even two little, friendly, innocent collie pups. "At supper time they dumped their soup over the top of each other's heads and broke both of their mugs having a 'juggling' match. I finally gave up and sent them to their rooms to stay till they turn 50!"
Thorin chuckled softly. Knowing his sister's tenderheartedness, he would wager that his nephews would be free by lunchtime tomorrow, no matter how angry Dis seemed at present.
He smiled and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. Maybe I could take them off their mother's hands for a while. It would be sunny tomorrow; I can take them fishing. It would be nice to have a day off…been working so hard at the forges...
When Dis returned with a bowl of soup, she found him sound asleep in his chair. She placed the bowl on the table, took up her tray, and left the room.
Peace and quiet reigned...for about two minutes.
Around the corner there peeked two blue eyes under a shock of blond hair. Grinning, Fili ducked back into his hiding place.
"Uncle's asleep! Ready, Kili?"
Beside him, another Dwarfling with wet hair slapping into his brown eyes, nodded and raised his clutched fists to his brother. Fili critically compared their contents to those of his own, before nodding approval. Dripping rain water, the two rascals edged their way around the furniture. They approached Thorin's chair from behind and Fili, being the tallest, stood on tiptoe to peek over the back of it.
Thorin had slumped sideways in his sleep, his head resting on one shoulder, his collar conveniently open. Fili took his own item and that of his brother and carefully dropped the two, wet, slimy, kicking, bulging frogs, one after another, down the shirt front of his uncle.
It took maybe 5 seconds for Thorin to wake up.
Screaming in Kuhz-Dul, he made one frenzied leap out of the chair, clear over the rug and almost into the fireplace. Then he jumped up and down, from side to side, doing the best jig that had ever been seen in the Blue Mountains as he slapped and yanked on his shirt. The two frogs went flying across the room and landed in a puddle by the door, underneath which they quickly made their escape.
Thorin stood there, breathing heavily, with a glare that would make Smaug himself think twice about taking liberties, when a burst of pent-up laughter attracted his attention. Fili and Kili, who had watched the whole proceedings from the safety of the woodbin, were now laughing hysterically in their refuge.
"So help me Durin, a 100 years in your rooms will look like the Mansions of Aule when I catch you troublesome whelps!" Thorin roared.
Recognizing the all-too-familiar tone, Fili grabbed Kili's hand and dragged him off at a run, Thorin close behind.
The two Dwarflings skittered up the stairs and rolled under their beds as the first available hiding place. It may have worked, if Kili hadn't let loose a shriek of terrified laughter when Thorin stomped in and proceeded to rip the covers from their unmade beds. They pelted out the door and Thorin, his legs entangled with blankets, fell flat on his face trying to catch them.
Next they shot into the kitchen, where Dis was rolling dough. Before she could say anything, Thorin dashed in and cornered them behind the table.
Thinking fast, Kili shoved the whole dishpan of soapy water and metal dishware straight at his elders' legs, and in the ensuing confusion, pulled his shocked brother into the larder/storage room.
The two Dwarflings slammed the door closed and pushed a barrel of lard in front of it.
"OK, their coming. Where can we hide?" Fili gasped, looking at the chests of clothes and stacks of tools.
"Over here!" Kili whispered.
"Over where?" Fili asked turning in the direction of his brother's voice, only to stifle a shriek when Kili was nowhere to be seen.
"Kili!?" he squeaked.
"Up here! Come on!"
Fili looked up. Kili, his baby brother, who claimed that an armload of firewood was too heavy to manage, had somehow clambered to the topmost shelf of the shelves Uncle Thorin had built into the wall for Mum, and was even now leaning way over its edge, dangling his arm down for his brother to grab.
"What in Middle-Earth do you think...?" Fili began to argue, when the sudden thunder of blows assaulted the door, and the barrel began to inch its way forward.
Like a shot, Fili jumped onto the nearest chest, scrambled up the shelves, accidently kicked over a bundle of brooms and a scrub brush, grabbed his brother's hand and heaved himself onto the shelf.
"I thought you were saying...' Kili began with a smirk.
"Quiet." Fili snapped, trying not to look down.
The two brothers wiggled together into the dusty place behind the shelf's only contents; two large sacks of flour.
The door finally banged open and in stomped their furious elders.
"Boys!" their mother yelled, her skirt soaked with water. Uncle Thorin finished her sentence.
"COME OUT NOW!"
Fili peeked over the edges of the sacks. Thorin was opening chests and moving bundles, while Mum stood behind him, grimly holding THE wooden spoon. Fili gulped and settled back in the dust. He couldn't decide who was more dangerous at the moment; his huge, glowering uncle, or his Mum.
"Fili!" Kili hissed in a strange voice. Fili looked back at his brother, who was pinching his nose so hard it had turned red.
"I...gonna...sneeze!"
"No!" Fili begged, moving to cover his brother's mouth – far too quickly.
The following thundercloud of dust could have only one result.
"AH-CHOOO!" Fili yelled, his head slamming forward so sharply it banged into Kili's, whose own yelp was soon punctuated by his own sneeze.
Two miniature explosions were too much for the creaking shelf, which had never been built to hold both flour bags and a pair of sturdy Dwarflings in the first place. Fili and Kili had one second to stare at each other in horror before the whole thing collapsed.
If Thorin hadn't had been standing directly underneath, they would have broken their necks.
The flour sacks caught him square on the shoulders and burst, sending flour everywhere. Kili and Fili tumbled after, bounced off him and landed together in an open clothes chest. The splintered boards collapsed onto the lower shelves, sending glass jars and open crockery to the floor's violent reception. There was a thundering sound of smashing and scattering as glass shards, grain, milk, flour and formerly canned preserves rained all over the stunned Dwarves. Dis, the only one left standing, gave one cry of shock at the sight of her fallen family, and the wreckage of her formerly spotless storage room. Even when her shriek ended, the noise didn't stop. Buried under a landslide of food stuffs, Thorin was letting loose a slew of forge-restricted swearing that made her ears burn.
Both of her sons each clutched a leg and groaned in agony.
It took a long time for their food-covered elders to believe them, but when Thorin actually set Fili on his feet and he promptly tumbled over into Kili (smacking his bother's head on the stack of firewood) it was discovered that they did, in all honesty, have one sprained ankle apiece.
They were dusted and scrubbed and packed off to bed with herb poultices strapped to their legs. At first Thorin tried to punish them by putting them in separate rooms, but when Kili begged (at the top of his lungs) and Fili flat out refused to rest without his brother, they were permitted to stay together.
"On no account," Dis warned them sternly, "does this mean you are off the hook. As soon as you can stand on your own feet, you are going to give that storage room a thorough spring cleaning. And before you even try, "she added, catching their conspiratorial grins," don't attempt to stay in bed for a week and wear me down till I do it myself, because there will be nothing but oatmeal for you two to eat until that room is immaculate!"
Mum's oatmeal was not something to punish anybody with, much less his brother, Fili decided. Conscience and protective instincts pricking, he cast all caution to the winds. he opened his mouth to speak.
"I'm sorry Uncle Thorin and Mum! I didn't mean to make such a mess!" Kili beat him to it.
"It's my fault." Fili insisted, "I suggested the frogs, and I climbed out of the upstairs window to go get them when Mum said to stay put!"
"Yes, but I followed him, and I got the biggest one!" Kili shouted loyally.
"But I put them down you back, Uncle Thorin!" Fili said, trying again to take the most blame.
"I shoved the washbin and I climbed the shelf!" Kili yelled, who would have none of that.
"But I followed him up and I sneezed first and it broke!"
"But I sneezed too, and its-"
"ALL MY FAULT!" They finished together.
At that point, Dis and Thorin had been glancing from the bed to each other in shock, unsure whether to laugh or scold. Dis gave in first, and, bursting into giggles, ran from the room, leaving a thoroughly flummoxed Thorin to solve the question of further discipline.
He looked down on two pairs of big, sorrowful eyes, one pair blue, one pair brown, that each got bigger and bigger and more and more pathetic until finally he could no longer help a gruff smile.
"Your mother and I forgive you, and we know you didn't mean to make such a mess. I'm proud of you for owning up to your guilt, and trying to shield each other. But you will clean that room as soon as you can stand. And then I will take you two hunting."
The bed erupted in howls of delight as the two boys threw their pillows in the air and hugged each other. Thorin was turning to leave, grinning, when he caught sight of Kili. The Dwarfling was bent over the side of the bed in an odd manner. He pulled a small jar out from underneath it, took off the lid and offered it to his brother.
"What's this?" Thorin asked, confused once again. Kili shrugged.
"It's something I managed to sneak out of the storage room. Me and Fili were gonna save 'em for emergencies-"
"But, if we're eating nothing but Mum's oatmeal, this counts." Fili muttered, his mouth full.
Kili stuck one hand in, pulled out three...somethings, and popped one in his mouth.
"Cookie?" He offered, handing one of Dis's seldom made (and therefore greatly desired/greedily hoarded) gingersnaps to his shocked uncle.
"You scamp. I'm telling your..." Thorin began darkly, before hesitating. He too knew how horrid that oatmeal was.
He accepted the cookie.