Glorin awakened me early this morning, crying with hunger. He is a very good-natured chap, I believe, but even he must cry sometimes as he has no words as of yet, nor will he for a long while. He is beautiful, even when unhappy. He is beardless, but it does not trouble me – it will likely come in late, as did Kili's. It troubled him so much; perhaps Kili can prove to be a comfort to the little fellow, as his mixed blood leaves so much to wonderment even now.
I was telling of our journeys. By day our adventures would fill a greater book than I have here, and by night, Kili and I talked, as we have a habit of doing, discussing plans, ideas, and dreams by the cartload.
"Kili," I asked him, scooting over in my bedroll so that our heads would be close together, and we would not disturb the others' slumbers. "Kili, are you awake?"
"Aye," he grumbled a little too loudly, and I smacked a hand over his mouth.
"Shh!" I hissed. "If you wake up Thorin, you have to explain who it was that set up the tripod so poorly that it tangled and broke."
"Mahal, let me breathe," Kili managed, peeling my hand from his face. "What is it?"
"Nothing, just wanting to see if you're awake."
"Ah."
We lay there in companionable silence for a long while; writing about these things makes me miss the days in which Kili and I were all each other had. But I am recording this particular conversation because of the irony; I did not know then would be happening soon, amongst all the other mad things that had been occurring.
"Kili."
"You keep saying that."
"Well, is is the name our mother chose to call you," I whispered back.
"Alright. What is it?"
"It's..." I was aware of the hiss of my words, and tried to blunt the sound, but it was too late; I heard a hitch in the snores of Bofur, who was nearby, and Kili lifted his eyebrows as if to say, You see? Watch your own words!
"It's just something I've been thinking about," I resumed in a still quieter tone, once it was safe.
"Aye, I guessed as much," Kili grinned, pillowing his head on his arms and turning his face starward.
"Someday we won't be together."
Kili took in a deep breath. "Are you on about dying again?"
"Nay, nay..." I shook my head. I had an awful habit for years of taking it upon myself to warn everyone of their impending deaths, after finally coming to terms with the facts that all dwarves die sometime. I am sure Thorin had been telling me of these things, but I was a more serious dwarfling than Kili, and saw it as my individual mission to let death find no dwarf unprepared. It was a stupid phase I was in, really.
"I mean that – what if one of us were ever to marry."
Kili turned back over, and there we were, nose to nose, heads propped up by one arm, the sound of the wind in the wild the only thing heard in the night aside from our clandestine mutterings. It was a strange thing. We had teased each other about these things for years, but as of yet, had given it no real serious thought.
"When you are king, I suspect Thorin will arrange something for you," Kili mused, a tiny glint shining in his dark eyes in the dim. "When I was younger I thought we could marry each other."
"Mahal, you shame me by remembering," I grumbled, and Kili snickered.
"Aye."
"Have you no real ambitions to marry?" I put to him. "You are right, I will likely be subjected to Thorin's plans, but you? You could marry whomever you would."
"I hadn't thought on it much, at least I feel I have some time yet," Kili said, stroking a hand over his not-quite beard. "I don't feel old enough."
"Thorin would agree there," I grinned, and Kili gave me a punch.
"You said it," I retorted, rubbing my arm.
"Aye, but it's somehow worse hearing it from your mouth," he groused. "But in honesty, no, I - somehow..." he narrowed his eyes. "Somehow I don't want to be the one to marry first. It hardly seems fair, when you're older."
"Aule, don't worry about that," I mumbled. "That's silly, and besides, I wouldn't mind. I'm not so much older."
"Still." He twitched his nose in thought. "I wouldn't want to feel that I'm the one responsible for dividing us."
Dividing us. At that moment, my thoughts had been spoken by his words. And then I realized that I would have to marry a very particular girl indeed to take the place of my relationship with my brother. Strange as it seems, I had not thought of that at all. That marrying would separate us, as nothing had ever separated us before. And not that anyone could ever replace Kili in my heart, but that in a marriage, one knows more about the other, trusts more intimately, loves more deeply than even I know Kili, than even I trust Kili, than even I love Kili. The thought frightened me, almost – there could not be such a person. There simply couldn't be. If that were all there was to it, I would vow never to marry, and Kili and I could continue together, undivided, until the end of our days.
Aule knew that it would take a very particular being to prise me from the throes of my loyalty to my brother. And so he sent me Sigrid, the only person in the world whom I felt I could love as completely as I had my brother, and, as stretching to the imagination as it would have seemed to me at the time, that I could love even more. I cannot count the times that Sigrid has, as Kili often did, goive voice to the words of my heart with her tongue. My only trouble that my heart has no voice now besides these pages, now that she is gone.