"Sanulimul." He said quietly, tracing the edge of the coin with his fingers. He was sitting beside the fire, watching the red light dance on the gold and listening to the crackling of the wood. He craved the warmth of it, and had sat beside it since it had been lit. There was comfort there.
Cerys had put up the two small tents and had a line of rope tied between the trees, where she was drying her skirts and the stranger's overcoat. She hummed a song to herself, pulling a kettle and pan from the back of the cart. It was a melancholy song.
"What's that?" She asked, pulling an onion from a small sack in the back.
He looked up at her questioningly.
"Sanulimul." She said, "What is it?"
"It is a word. In Khuzdul. It means gold that is no longer golden. Perhaps it ought to be my name."
Cerys sat on a log across from him, the fire between them, slicing the onion into the pan. She glanced up at him once or twice, but mostly kept her eyes on her work. When she was finished with the onion, she nodded.
"If a Dwarf told you that, he was lying." She said, "Their language is secret. They will not teach it to outsiders."
"I learned it from their runes." He looked up from the coin, and for a moment the fire danced in his eyes. "What do you think of it?"
"If I were to pick a new name for myself, I'd want one that looked to what I could become, not what I wasn't anymore." Cerys put the pan in the fire, shaking it back and forth, "How about Stig? It was a name I heard from time to time in Dale. I think it means a traveler."
"You pick fat names. Short, fat sounds." He tucked the coin back in his pocket, and took a deep breath. His nostrils filled with an exquisite, dancing smell that made his mouth water. He hadn't smelled anything so appetizing in quite some time, and it was an odor he didn't think he knew. He leaned towards the pan on the fire and looked into it with greedy eyes. "That smell…"
"Hmm," Cerys nodded. "Thought that might do it. I was trying to save them for a day with a harder journey, but I can't have you complaining about your stomach all tomorrow. It'd drive me to murder."
"I never thought that vegetation could be appetizing."
Afterwards, when the meal was done and the pan put away, Cerys grabbed a bucket of water from the babbling river and poured it onto the fire. It hissed and steamed, and left them in the dark. The stranger sat where he was, watching the embers cool.
"Your coat'll be dry by morning." She told him, and made her way to her tent. She looked over her shoulder at him, just to see what he would do next.
He had the coin back out and was studying it. Running his thumbs over the details of the letters etched into it. Something about the look on his face made her sorry for him.
"What happened to you?" She asked, "Out on the lake that day?"
"I died." He said simply, without taking his eyes off the coin.
Cerys didn't say anything more. She went into her tent and climbed under the thing blanket of her bedroll, and she wondered about the stranger until all her thoughts faded away and she was left with sleep. She'd decided to give him a little more time to pick out a name.
It was a little after dawn when Smaug awoke to the sounds of retching.
He was tired and bleary eyed, and his hair was a mess of tangles as he stumbled out of his tent. There was a pot of something sitting next to the fire, and a warm smell coming from it. A package of cured trout was half-unwrapped on the log next to it. It looked to him like the woman had left in a hurry during her morning preparations.
The sounds, unpleasant as they were, were coming from inside the wood.
It would probably be a good idea to make sure that the woman wasn't choking on a fountain of her own blood, or something equally detrimental to Smaug's progress. He was now in the wilderness, away from anyone who could aid him with adjusting to his new form. If the woman died, it would be incredibly inconvenient. Though he could probably cook the horse instead of having to eat any more trout.
He found her doubled over and vomiting into the roots of a tree.
"Ew." He sneered.
"Oh, get away!" She groaned, covering her mouth with her hand and glaring at him.
"It's probably because of that dreadful fish you made us eat."
"It's not the fish! Go back to camp and put on a shirt!"
He looked down at his bare chest and shook his head. "Is this illness of yours catching? My body seems to be very delicate…"
"No," She sounded angry, "Don't be a fool. Get away with you."
"Very well." Smaug bowed his head ever so slightly and went back to the fire. He checked the clothes on the line as he passed them, and his coat was indeed dry. He pulled it off the line and took it with him. When he had been a dragon, sickness had manifested in a putrid type of magma that dribble out between his teeth and left chasms of charred ground where it fell. Plants could never grow on that earth. He looked at the top of the tree where he knew the woman to still be. Would it turn black and die now?
Cerys arrived a few moments later. Her eyes were rimmed with red and her face looked pale and drawn, but she'd washed up a bit in the river and, though her stomach felt empty, she wasn't nauseated anymore. But it had taken a toll, and she was exhausted. If it kept on, and she knew it would, she was going to have to teach the stranger how to drive.
He was dressed and waiting for her, gnawing on a piece of trout, and looking deeply offended by everything.
Maybe she'd give it a few days before she started any kind of lessons.
"Did you sleep?" She asked. He nodded. "Good. We'd best be on the road."
They spent another morning travelling in silence. The sky was filling with cheerful white clouds and the crispness of the early winter air. The cold would not follow them south, and for that Cerys was grateful. It looked like it was going to be a bitter winter in the north.
On the seat beside her, the stranger took the coin from his pocket every now and then and it turned it over in his fingers. Just a quickl gleam of gold she caught out of the corner of her eye. It was making her uneasy.
"I wish you'd toss that thing onto the road and leave it well behind us." She grumbled.
He held it up in front of himself and gave a sardonic little chuckle.
"I should like to wear it, I think," he said. "On a chain of gold around my neck."
"You'd spend a pretty penny having that done, and it would be for nothing more than a token of wickedness," Cerys replied, her eyes hard and fixed on the distance. "Dragon gold drives men mad. Haven't you ever been told?"
"Were you frightened of Smaug when he came?" The stranger asked, tucking the coin back into his pocket.
Cerys remembered the night of running from her burning home, arms full of anything precious she could carry, heart beating fast for the husband who was somewhere along the docks getting ready to go out for a night of fishing. So many things had been destroyed.
"I was afraid of the fire," she said slowly. "The heat of it, and what it would burn. I could hear the dragon, but it was like hearing the wind in a storm. You fear the clatter of the shutters, the strike of the lightning, but you don't fear the rain of it or the wind. You fear what will be done by the rain and wind. I shall always hate the dragon, because he killed my love and destroyed my home. But it is not the same as hating a man. Not for me. You cannot truly hate a beast that way, since it is just a beast. Even if it's one as cunning as a dragon."
He did not like this answer.
"You ought to have been more afraid of the dragon than its fire," he said. "Smaug had many ways to destroy Lake Town. Fire was merely the fastest. And his mind was not only cunning, it was cruel. He was a genius of destruction, he could play notes of agony on the world the way an Elf plays his flute. He was old and the years had given him wisdom. He was no mere beast. This love of yours, did he burn?"
"Yes."
"Be grateful he was not eaten. Or slashed through with a claw."
The woman didn't reply at first.
The space around her was filled with rage – a raw and white-hot fury than was so strong, he could feel it pushing up against him. After awhile she said:
"At the first sign of bad luck, I am throwing your damn coin in the river. Even if I have to pry it out of your hands to get it. You and your accursed dragon gold will not stop me getting to Minas Tirith."
The stranger looked at her.
"Dragons are more than beasts because they are the same as men," he said quietly. "Men kill out of rage. Men kill out of greed. They too burn the houses of their enemies, locking the doors to keep them inside first, then setting torches to the roofs. They take daggers to the throats of their own brothers to seize riches and titles, and a title cannot even be held up to the light. A title cannot be admired for its beauty. It is a word on a page, and yet a man will bring about evils more wretched than dragon fire to get it. We are all wicked creatures. In our ways."
Cerys glanced at him.
"Alright," she said in a lighter voice, "what's your name to be? I've given you more than enough time."
He shook his head and looked at the ground as they drove along it.
"Kingsfoil."
She laughed. It was a very girlish laugh, and she caught herself halfway into it and wiped the smile from her lips.
"That won't serve you very well in Gondor. Pick another one."
"I'll come up with something later," he waved a hand dismissively. "I'm hungry. Prepare me some onions."
The cart was stopped, and a stick of cured trout was fetched and placed in his hand. He raised an eyebrow at it.
"I know a kind of game that's to do with fish," the woman said, taking the reins back up. "Alright. It's a word game. Now, a mother makes a fish dinner for her husband and leaves it on the table to go and speak with her neighbor. When she gets back, she finds that the fish has been eaten up, so she calls her three sons to her, and she asks them: 'which among you has eaten this fish?' She's very cross. Liable to choke the boy that's done it with her bare hands. So, naturally, the eldest boy says: 'I ate it, and it was very good, too!' So the second son says: 'I saw him eat it, Mother. He gobbled it right up.' So the third son says: 'All I know about it is that the middle son and I didn't eat any of it.' Now, one of the boys is telling a lie. Which one is it?"
The stranger couldn't hold back his grin.
"That's not a word game, woman," he drawled. "It is a riddle. And the answer is, of course, that the third son is lying. He and the eldest shared the fish, while the middle son watched."
"Hmm." Cerys nodded, looking very put-out, "Well, riddle it may be, but it normally takes a bit more figuring than that. Though you are right about the answer. I suppose you've heard that one before."
"No. Never."
He chuckled triumphantly and ate the trout without complaint.
A/N: Hi everybody! Thanks for following along with this story!
I need a beta. My usual pre-reader is overwhelmed with the non-fanfiction short stories I've given her, as well as my on-going LotR multi-chap, and something had to give. Since she's not big on romance, she asked if she could drop Calamity and I agreed. So, if anybody can recommend someone or volunteer, just send me a PM. It's 2+ updates a week, all chapters between 1000-3000 words. Thanks again!
-Sookie