Okay guys, here's a fixed up chapter 3 as promised. The beginning is the same, but it's a LOT different than the original chapter 3, so even if you read it before, you should read it again, I think. The end result is the same as the first version, but this has a lot more stuff in it. Lots of conversations and fun and bonding and stuff. So READ ON MY HOBBITS! *Announces from the back of a pony, pointing a pencil to the sky for emphasis*
Caput III
"The road goes ever on and on."- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Gwen immediately regretted joining the company the moment she saw those creatures. Fourteen of them stood there, drinking in the sun. On four legs they stood, hooves clapping against the dirt road. At the sight of them, Gwen stamped her foot down.
"Nope. I'm not doing it."
Kili and Fili, who were standing near her, looked at her in confusion.
"What do you mean?" Asked Fili
"There's no way in Hell I'm riding one of those things." She said pointedly, glaring at the things before her. Kili chuckled.
"You mean the ponies?" He said amusedly.
"Those creatures are pure evil and I refuse to ride on one." She said, stomping her foot down. Gwen could recall a time when she loved horses and ponies… and shuddered at the thought. A particularly bad experience with an equine-she refused to call it a horse- and her heart no longer held any love for them.
"Miss Gwenneth.." Fili started
"Nope. I'll walk. And it's Gwen. Gwenneth makes me sound like an old lady."
"Miss Gwen, we'll have to work something out." Reasoned Kili.
The dwarves were starting to mount now, and Gwen continued to stand still. She would rather pull a hobbit and walk barefoot the whole way than ride on such an evil creature. Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped around her waist, lifting her up and pulling her out of her thoughts. Abruptly, she found herself in what she thought was a horrible position for two reasons. One, being that she was on one of the beasts, and could feel the creature alive beneath her. Two, she was in front of someone. That someone being Kili, and she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, could feel his heavy coat pressing against the shirt she had borrowed from Bilbo the night before. Now, this wouldn't be as awkward for her if a. His arms weren't practically encasing her to grab the reins, and b. It were someone other than Kili behind her. Because let's face it, the other dwarves may have been handsome by dwarven standards, but Gwen was not used to being a dwarf. Now, Kili however, was not large nosed nor possessed a beard, and this was very good by Gwen's human standards. Add that to the fact that he was handsome anyways, and that made Gwen a slightly awkward yet happy camper sitting in front of him.
"Oi!" Yelled Bofur who had turned around on his pony to address the three.
"We're makin' bets on whether or not will show!"
"He's not coming!" Yelled Fili, followed by Kili. Gwen winced at his yelling in her ear.
"How about you, Miss Gwenneth?" Shouted Bofur.
"Uh.. I'm not placing any bets!" She replied
Gwen didn't trust betting, she had gone to a casino once at the young age of sixteen, fake ID in hand and a stuffed wallet in the other. The memory was blurry due to the amount of margaritas she had consumed at the less than sanitary casino bar, but from what she could tell, it had ended with the stuffed wallet being, well, less stuffed. Empty, more like. And from that experience she had vowed to never again lose her money from betting and gambling.
Kili looked at her amusedly.
"Aw, come on, Gwen! Scared of a little betting?" Kili teased.
At this, Gwen huffed. She was not scared of betting. Pride on the line, she changed her mind.
"On second thought, 5 gold that he gets here before Bree!" She announced, not one to back down from some teasing.
Of course, during all of this it had slipped her mind that she had no money to her name at the moment.
An hour had passed, and the sun was high in the sky as the company of dwarves plus one wizard made their way across the land. All that could be heard was the dim buzzing of the bugs and the incessant clop, clop, clop** of the ponies' hooves beating against the rock ridden path. Gwen was fighting to stay awake. The warmth of the sun and Kili's body heat behind her was draining her of her life force. As she bit back a yawn a new sound pricked her ears. Bilbo.
"Wait! W-wait! I've signed the contract!" Yelled said hobbit, unshoed feet padding against the rock and dirt as he ran to catch up.
"Hey look! It's Mister Baggins! What do you know, Gwen was actually right!" Yelled Fili, who had spotted Bilbo first.
The hobbit caught his breath for a moment before hopping onto the pony Gwen had refused to ride. Gwen secretly hoped that the combined weight of Bilbo and the supplies would crush the evil thing. Gwen caught the small bags of gold thrown at her, laughing at the Hobbit's confused gaze.
Not even ten minutes later did the peace last.
"Wait! Wait! Stop!" Yelled Bilbo and Gwen groaned; she was just about to fall asleep.
"What is it?" Asked Gwen irritably. The excitement of yesterday had worn down and she was weary from… what should she call it? Falling out of her world? She guessed that would suit, considering she felt like she had fallen off a cliff.
"I forgot my handkerchief. We need to go back." Said the Hobbit grimly.
At this, Bofur ripped off a piece of his shirt and tossed it to the hobbit, who tried and failed to not grimace at the cloth's state of cleanliness. Gwen chuckled, finding some joy in the fact that the hobbit was severely uncomfortable only ten minutes in.
Gwen leaned up against a large boulder, wedged in between Fili and Kili. Her stomach was warm from dinner and the fire in front of her. Gwen's eyelids began to droop and she leaned her head on Kili's shoulder from tiredness. As her eyes finally shut, a loud howl and crashing noise reverberated through the forest, snapping Gwen's eyes open.
"What was that?" She asked quietly.
"Orcs." Said Fili.
Orcs? She may have not known much about fantasy or anything, but wasn't it the rule that Orcs were the bad guy? And they were IN the forest THEY were IN. Gwen gulped.
"Aye, they strike in the wee hours of the night while people are sleeping. No screams or struggle, just lots of blood." Kili finished. Gwen normally would've found his rough accented voice so close to her ear attractive, but right now all she could process was that there were orcs possibly in the vicinity. Orcs. Y'know, the bad guy. The ones that killed lots of people and were like, evil. Even if she was in the company of a bunch of battle seasoned dwarves she was unarmed and had no experience. Gwen could feel the blood drain from her face. Kili took note of her expression and opened his mouth as if to apologize, but Thorin interrupted.
"You think that's funny? Orc raids in the middle of the night are no laughing matter." He said angrily, storming away.
As much as Gwen appreciated his interrupting, she didn't like him being so rude to them for a mere joke.
"What crawled up his ass and died?" She muttered bitterly. Kili chuckled at her language, not quite sure what it meant but too amused to care.
"Thorin has more reason than most to hate Orcs." said Balin, giving reason for Thorin's reaction.
Gwen leaned in, wanting to know more.
"After Erebor was taken, the King tried to take back the ancient Dwarf Kingdom of Moria. However, it had been taken over by Orcs, led by their leader, a pale orc called Azog the Defiler. Azog had sworn to wipe out the line of Durin, and he began by beheading the King." Started Balin.
"We were fighting a losing battle, and were about to be driven out completely, but then I saw him. A young Dwarf prince, facing down the Defiler alone. His weapons had been knocked out of his hands, all he had was an oaken branch on his arm as defense. Yet, as Azog was about to deliver a killing blow, Thorin spun and grabbed his sword, hacking off the Orc's left hand. At this, we started to attack again, and this time we were the ones pushing the Orcs back. The battle was victorious, but we did not count it as a victory. Our deaths were many, and Thrain, Thorin's father, went mad and disappeared." Balin finished.
Gwen finally realized why Thorin had the name Oakenshield, but a question was nagging at the back of her head.
"But what happened to Azog?" She asked. This time it was Thorin that replied.
"That filth died of his wounds long ago." He said with a finality and Gwen would've believed it, if it hadn't been for the grim look Gandalf had as Thorin said that.
Gwen reached into her bag out of boredom, curious if her items still remained inside. To her delight, they did. Too bad that her cellphone was dead, she had really wanted to play angry birds. As she was digging, she found another source of entertainment; a deck of playing cards.
She was about to set herself up a game of solitaire when Kili came to sit next to her.
"What are those?" He asked, glancing at her cards. It was only then that Gwen realized that these people had no idea what most of the stuff in her world was. She'd have to try to not make any references.
"It's a deck of cards. Wanna play Blackjack*? I can teach you how." Gwen said, pulling out a bag of marbles to bet with. (A/N: For anybody who thinks it's odd to have marbles and a deck of cards on hand just know that in my backpack for school I have a deck of cards, toenail clippers, a dictionary, two notebooks that aren't for any of my classes, and a stick of deodorant. I don't even take gym.)
Teaching a dwarf how to play Blackjack was one thing that Gwen never thought she'd do.
"Okay, so see how I went over 21? That means I bust and you win, unless you busted too. If that happens we keep whatever we put out to bet in the pot and draw again." Gwen instructed...
Twenty minutes later, Gwen was about to pull her hair out. The damn dwarf had won again.
"21." Said Kili triumphantly and Gwen wanted to slap the smug look off that handsome face of his.
"Okay, what the hell are you doing. There's seriously no way you could win this much." Gwen deadpanned.
"I guess I'm just that lucky." Kili said in amusement. Gwen growled and shuffled the deck, determined to not lose again. She could feel the "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" theme song playing in the back of her head as she forced herself to keep a poker face and look her opponent (he had been relabeled in her head to keep her from going soft, because this was now war) in the eye. She had an ace and a 6 in her hands, so it was good for now. Gwen grabbed another card from the deck, exhaling when it came up a 3. Okay, so she could have a 20 or she could try to go higher and play the ace as a 1. Deciding to risk it, she grabbed another card, this time a 7. Grabbing another, she opened her eyes to find the motionless face of a Queen card staring up at her.
"Dammit!" She yelled, ignoring the looks she got from the other dwarves. Kili just laughed.
Early morning sunlight shined onto the camp of dwarves, where all but one member of the camp were asleep in their sleeping bags, still stuck in the land of Nod. The other member being Gwen, was very happy at the moment. She had woken up early as usual, used to getting up before the sun from the early time her job- old job, now- started. Now, one might ask what caused the former human to be so happy this early in the morning, and that was that she had found her ipod. Not the fancy ipod touch, she had her iphone which was dead at the moment for that, but her ipod. The kind they had before the touch screens came out. She plugged her earbuds in and crawled away from the camp to an extent. She could still see them, but wanted to make sure she was far away to where she wouldn't wake her sleeping companions. Gwen pressed the button on her ipod shuffle, stopping whens he heard a familiar and favorite tune of hers fill her ears. Feeling giddy, she turned up the volume and gave in to desire.
"Oh yeah, I'll tell you something I think you'll understand" She began happily.
Moments later she was singing along and bouncing and dancing to the song.
"I wanna hold your ha-a-a-and! I wanna hold your hand!"
Gwen snapped her fingers and shaked her hips while belting out the lyrics, not caring that she probably looked like an idiot right now.
"And when you touch me, I feel happy inside, it's such a feeling that my love, I can't hide! I can't hide! I can't hi-i-de!" She continued, shaking her head left to right.
She took a breath, about to continue when she heard a voice behind her.
"That's quite the routine you have." Kili said while trying- and failing - to cover his laughter. Gwen's cheeks burned. Embarrassed, she tried to defend herself.
"Oi, I'll have you know that I was singing the Beatles, and that justifies singing and dancing."
"Who're the Beatles?" Asked Kili, and Gwen had to stop herself from smacking herself in the face out of exasperation.
"Nevermind that. Now shoo, I want to look like an idiot by myself." She said, putting in her earbuds.
"Nah, I think I'll sit right here and watch. Besides, you have a lovely voice." He said, smiling at her. Gwen wasn't sure whether or not he was being sarcastic or not.
"Shut up." She said blushing.
"No, seriously. Sing some more. I promise not to laugh." He said. Pursing her lips, Gwen conceded.
"Fine, but you have to pinky promise not to laugh." She said seriously, sticking out her pinky finger.
"What's a pinky promise?" Asked Kili.
"You cross pinky fingers with me" She began, gesturing to said finger "and if you break the promise you have to chop your pinky off." She said with false seriousness. Kili gulped.
"I'm just kidding, you don't have to chop it off. Though I might if you laugh." Said Gwen.
"Yeah? With what blade? I haven't seen one on you." Answered Kili and Gwen quickly replied.
"Oh? So you've been looking at me?" Gwen teased and Kili blushed.
The blush took Gwen by surprise, as she didn't expect him to actually have been looking at her, and she responded with a blush of her own.
"Oi! You two! Quit your flirting and get back up here!" Yelled Fili teasingly and the two of them blushed harder.
"We're not flirting, you git!" Replied Kili while Gwen just flipped him off.
"Oh, shut the hell up you ass!" Said Gwen as she climbed back up to where they were.
"What are you doing?" Fili gestured to Gwen's still standing finger.
"I forget you don't know what this means. Let's just say you should probably take offense." Gwen replied, sticking her earbuds back in. To her dismay, her device had died during her banter with Kili.
"Dammit." She said as she tucked her device back in her bag.
"What is it?" Asked Kili.
"I lost my music. I'll be forced to listen to the songs in my head as I remember them." She replied angrily.
"Well I'd love to hear more music from your world." Teased Kili.
"Maybe if you're lucky one day." Gwen replied.
Gwen hummed the Godfather theme song as she packed her small amount of belongings. Rolling up her sleeping roll, she shoved it in her bag when Fili sat beside her.
"What is it?" She asked.
"Listen. I think we both know it's obvious my brother feels something for you." Fili began and Gwen blushed profusely. No, evidently they did not both know that it was obvious. She had no knowledge of that.
"Well, that was blunt. And no, we both did not know. That was a surprise." She replied.
"And I highly doubt Kili, of all people, would like me like that." She replied incredulously.
"I'm just saying, dwarves only love once. Don't break my little brother's heart." Fili finished while Gwen shook her head. There was no way Kili could ever like her like that. He probably had loads of dwarven ladies lined up at his doorstep back home, she thought bitterly. She wasn't quite sure why that thought made her so angry, she had only known them for a few days and it wasn't her business whether or not he had a woman back home. Nevertheless, she had to force herself not to ask him if he was in a relationship.
Later that day, they finally camped out for the night. Gandalf had stormed off, causing Gwen to feel a bit tenser than usual, but so far nothing had happened. She had volunteered to watch the ponies with Fili and Kili, reasoning that another pair of eyes would help, but really she just wanted to ask them some questions and spend some time with Kili and Fili, who were her favorite dwarves of the bunch.
They arrived at the ponies, turning to face the creatures as they sat on a fallen log. Determined not to give in to an awkward silence, Gwen attempted to start a conversation.
"So, uh, what's Erebor like?" She asked.
"Well, actually, we've never seen Erebor. It was taken before we were born. We've lived in Ered Luin our whole lives." Replied Fili.
"Oh. Uh, do you like it there?" Gwen replied.
"Well, we've lived there our whole lives, so it's like home. I like living there, but Erebor is where we're supposed to be." Said Fili.
"That and Tabitha's there." Said Kili teasingly, poking a now blushing Fili. Picking up on Fili's embarrassment, she joined in.
"Oh, I take it this Tabitha is someone special then?" She replied just as teasingly as Kili.
"She's a dwarf lass in Ered Luin that is Fili's 'one'." Answered Kili.
"Do you have someone back home?" Gwen asked, hoping that her uneasiness wasn't betrayed by her voice. She ignored Fili's knowing stare as she waited for Kili to answer.
"Actually, no." He said. Gwen didn't believe it.
"Aw, come on, you guys gotta have the ladies lining up on your front door step." Replied Gwen.
"Well, we're not exactly much to look at in the dwarf community." Said Fili.
"You're shitting me," Gwen started, noting to explain what that meant after she finished talking.
"You guys aren't much to look at? Are you serious? I mean, damn, if I brought you guys back home with me you'd have to beat the girls off with a stick they'd be trying to get with you so much." Looking at the brothers' confused stare she quickly corrected her language.
"What I meant was are you serious? If I took you guys back home girls would be all over you two."
"Well evidently humans and dwarves have different standards." Replied Kili a tad bitterly.
"What's his problem?" She asked Fili, gesturing to Kili. Fili looked at Kili for a moment, before looking at her.
"Kili, as you can see, doesn't have a beard, and is leaner than most dwarves, so he's considered not as attractive and was teased a lot about it when we were younger." Fili said. Gwen stared. That was the biggest load of bull she had ever heard. Kili not attractive?
"That's the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard. They really care whether you have a beard or not? Seriously? Lots of girls from where I'm from don't like their guys to have facial hair in the first place. It shouldn't matter. I mean, you're both pretty good looking.." Gwen trailed off, noticing the brothers' grins. Suddenly they leaned in, each putting their arm almost around her in a teasing manner. Gwen blushed a bit, cheeks light pink.
"So you think we're attractive?" Fili teased.
"Well, yeah, I guess. Don't let that blow up your ego though because some girls would say the opposite."Gwen replied, and the brothers deflated. Gwen noticed Bilbo coming over and was about to greet him when Kili and Fili's voices stopped her.
"Gwen. Mister Baggins." Started Fili grimly.
"What?" Asked Gwen uneasily. What had caused them to become so somber?
"We have a bit of a problem." Continued Kili.
"We had 16 ponies," Said Fili.
"But now we have 14." Finished Kili, and Gwen paled a bit.
*Okay, so Blackjack is a really fun card game where you try to get to 21 and if you go over, you bust. At the end of the round the person closest to 21 wins.
Disclaimer: I do not own "I want to hold your hand" by the Beatles or "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien
Now I feel kind of weird with putting songs and specific things in fanfiction, but I put it in because Gwen is alright with being in middle earth, but the sight of a piece of technology from her world just kind of reminds her who she is and I would feel pretty happy if I was listening to the beatles in middle earth. I was also kinda listening to that song when that scene came into mind and I thought about how that song makes me want to dance like an idiot and sing along so I gave her that.
And I know that the romance might be moving a little quick since they've known each other for a few days at most, but in here dwarves only love once, and in my mind that means that it's something similar to a werewolf's mate in a story or a vampire's beloved, theoretically. Like in werewolf stories the two can feel a connection the moment their eyes meet, and I kinda want something like that in here. To me it means that there is one person out there specifically made for each dwarf, and I think that once you meet your 'one' that you would fall hard and fast, not mattering how long you've known them or what race you are. That's why I have them already starting to get feelings for the other.