A/N: I'm running a fever, and sipping ginger tea. That's what I felt was to happen next. Let me know what you think, me lovelies…

For the sake of allowing this story to flow organically, I've even decided to sacrifice my OCD induced love for same size chapters.


"Do you believe in prophetic dreams, my lady?" Thorin asked raspily, and he saw her body shudder, and she shifted her unusual eyes onto him. She was silent for an instant, and then he saw her jaw set stubbornly.

"No. Dreams are just dreams."

She'd lied. He could see, and he moved closer, seeking a crack in her armour, craving her to let him in.

"Do not deceive me, Wren. I know when you are lying."

Her face grew aghast. He realised he'd never before pronounced her name out loud. She creased her brow.

"You are forgetting yourself, my lord. Do not think that your stature gives you the permission to speak to me in such free manner..."

"I know you, Wren." The careless words slipped off his lips, but he saw she was lying. He didn't want to let the hope bloom, but his heart beat painfully. "I have..."

"Do not presume!" she suddenly raised her voice. "Do not..." Her voice broke, and he saw her hands curl around fistfuls of the covers.

"Wren, your magic… It could have given you dreams..."

"They were a lie!" she screamed into his face, and tears burst out of her eyes. Thorin winced away. "They promised me… All those dreams! I saw the future in them, with Amrod, and the children, and the house, and the ash tree!.. And then he died, and left me alone!" A sob wrecked her body, and she hid behind her shaking hands. "I had told him of them… And he laughed at me… And said they were just dreams, but they did not feel this way! They didn't!" He watched in terror her shoulders shake. "They didn't… And he told me of his, and they were different… A daughter, one daughter, with my hair, and a different house, in Ithilien, not Gondor, and we agreed they were just dreams… Just dreams..." She shook her head without taking hands off her face.

Thorin rose on his feet and left the room without a single word. At the moment he couldn't straighten his mind enough to comprehend what she told him.


"Do you feel sometimes that you were destined to have another life?" Wren asks, her fists stacked one on another, her chin resting on them. She's stretched on him, and her little toes are tickling his foot. He opens one eye.

"No. I am a man, it is a thought too complicated for my limited mind." He's jesting, and she snorts.

"I sometimes think that I was..." Her face is suddenly serious, and he peers into her features, sensing her change of mood. "It is just so bizarre, you and I… Erebor..."

"I think we are where we belong," he says, and brushes his palm along her silky narrow back, to the perky bottom under the covers and furs.

"Perhaps," she agrees, but he knows she's not disclosing everything. He feels jealous, and possessive, but he knows she will stay. She is his.

And after all, it's nothing but a dream…


He sits through the night, in the room in the inn three streets away from the infirmary.

Everything has changed, but it might still be the same. Even if suddenly his dreams became less of a wonder, she's still his Wren. He wakes up Dwalin and the guard, goes down to the stables, and returns to Erebor. He goes straight into his sister's rooms and tells her everything.

It is the first time he speaks of his dreams. His tone is monotonous. It's not a lament of a maudlin weakling, he is a man of action. He is gathering his forces.

Dis is crying. He tells her of how Wren's voice made him fight harder, in that final battle at the foot of the Lonely Mountain, how her will made him get up and how it allowed him to save the lives of Dis' sons. He tells that he was dying on the healer's tent, and the promise of Wren's love didn't let him cross into Indendum. Dis wipes her tears, she is the daughter of Thrain, son of Thorin, and asks, "What do you need from me?"


Thorin doesn't know what Dis and Wren talk about. His sister leaves the next morning, with guards, her face hidden under a low hood of her cloak, and returns after dinner. Her face is melancholic.

Thorin has been pacing his study the whole time. The princess comes in and sits in a chair across his desk.

"You will have to wait. To even speak to her. She is in mourning, and behaving disrespectfully will push her away. She is too noble and willful."

"How long?" Thorin asks.

"Give her a year."

Thorin wants to scream that he has very few of those left, his hair is full of silver, but he nods and then leans in and kisses his sister's cheek.

"Akhminruki astû, Dis." My deepest gratitude.

She gives him a sad smile.

He's a cunning politician, and he writes Wren a letter. He is shamelessly using the knowledge of her character, and she responds with a promise to think of him.

He rules Erebor and waits.