Believe in Me
Disclaimer: I swear, even if I did invent all this canon hoopla, I'd still be doing this amount of research because there's no way I could keep it all straight.
A/N: All righty, you lovelies are getting downright spoiled with this chapter! :3 It's also probable that I'll update verrrry late on Tuesday night as well. However, you're not going to like the reason. Drumroll if you please. On Wednesday I leave for South America for ten days! (squee) Which is SUPER exciting but that means that while I'll be taking my notebook along and trying to get out some writing and some sketches, obviously I won't have Internet access, etc. So you'll all just have to wait until about T minus two weeks from now for Chapter Ten. Apologies! But I'll make the next one a bit longer just to tide you over ;)
Thanks this time around to the spectacular: Hiding in the Shadow, Calenia, kaia (They're very welcome! Glad to hear it :), . .Me, sociallyawkwardscot, BrokenHeartAlchemist, SerendipityAsAlways (what?! :D Thank you love, I feel so honored!), Abyss Prime, Star Delta, xDark-She-Wolfx, Guest #1 (Hurhurhur. You guess my thoughts, O wise one ;), Diana Silver, Howy98, Pledged To Artemis, Guest #2, Hawthorn Tree, blackbeltgirl95, and Belliwing!
All right, all right, here's her story! :P Enjoy!
Chapter Eight
In Which (Quite Simply) A Story is Told
"So. What about that story, Eisa?"
She nearly groaned out loud, having hoped he'd forgotten. "Mm. What shall I tell?" she asked, trying to at least sound enthusiastic.
"Anything," said Kíli.
"What about how you learned Khuzdul?" Fíli suggested much more practically.
Thorin, whose brooding capabilities had been severely hampered by the close quarters, looked up sharply from across the fire. "You speak it?" he nearly snapped, his eyes boring into Eisa.
"Of course," she said automatically. Was that a sin, or something? She had as much right to her people's secret language as anyone. "I'm not quite fluent, but I understand it well enough."
"Well, tell us how, then. You were in Ered Luin…?" Kíli prompted impatiently, nudging her with his elbow.
"It wasn't that simple!" Eisa scoffed, now looking back fondly on what had been quite a series of difficulties. "You see, I was approaching from the south, really nowhere near your halls in the north," she clarified with a nod to Thorin out of courtesy, even though he didn't appear to even be paying attention anymore, "and I wanted to see a dwarf civilization, since I'd heard there was—"
"Hold on, hold on," Fíli interrupted. "What do you mean? Were you not born… Where were you born?" He made a face, thoroughly puzzled.
"Oh. Right." Eisa paused for a minute. "I was born in a city of Men. In Gondor," she said finally. "I was orphaned as an infant, or at least I assume so." The words rushed out of her mouth as if they could disguise their meaning by coming out all at once. "But anyhow, obviously I wasn't raised by dwarves, so I never studied Khuzdul or even saw many of our people. After a while of traveling I decided Ered Luin sounded like a decent bet to learn a thing or two, but I was a bit naïve," she chuckled. "Everyone had always told me how secretive dwarves are, but I never really understood it until then. I found a door—probably a side one, not of regular use but still fairly active, I thought—but then I realized I had no idea how to get inside!"
"That is generally the idea when we make our doors," nodded Bofur, trying not to laugh. Apparently he was listening as well, despite the other quiet conversations going on.
"Yes, well, I could…feel it, you know, where it was, but that was all," admitted Eisa. Thorin suddenly swiveled his head around to stare at her again, but she didn't see him. "I knocked for hours, but nothing happened, until finally there came this voice, out of nowhere! It must have been someone hiding among the rocks, but I couldn't see them. They asked what my business was, in Westron of course, and I told them I was a…oh, what was it?" she asked herself, tapping a finger against her cheek. "A wandering dwarf with scholarly interests who needed a place to stay, or something along those lines," she decided as Fíli and Kíli broke out into snorts of laughter. "What's so funny?" she demanded.
"You make it sound so innocent," Fíli snickered.
"Why, whatever would make you think I'm not?" she grinned back, not actually sure whether she meant it seriously or not. "Anyhow, I tried to explain myself; that I'd been born in exile and all that, but naturally that didn't do much for me. You could say that we…got off to a bad start." Her understatement elicited a few more chuckles, and it was evident that Gandalf and Balin were listening to her speak as well. Even Bilbo had perked up his pointy ears a bit.
"There was a good deal of yelling back and forth, and after a few days I almost gave up." She paused. "But then I remembered that I was there to get to know the people and culture I'd been cut off from. I knew about the destruction of Dale, the taking of the Lonely Mountain, the Battle of Azanulbizar—the stories were everywhere by the time I was born—and the Blue Mountains were the next major dwarf civilizations in Middle Earth. I had no particular agenda, anyway," she shrugged unconcernedly, "so I remained there in the mountains by that door. After about a week's worth of arguing with someone I couldn't see—which was absolutely as ridiculous as it sounds, by the way—I just started hoping that they wouldn't send a few warriors out in the middle of the night just so they could be rid of me," she snorted. "I know they wouldn't have really—" her brow creased slightly in hindsight— "I think. But whatever the case, they didn't. It had been about a fortnight, I think, when it happened."
She stopped short for effect, raising her eyebrows at her audience. "It was the middle of the night, and I was sleeping in a sheltered spot between two boulders…when I heard someone move. Or something."
Bilbo looked suddenly nervous, and Ori began to fiddle anxiously with his knitted mittens.
"I woke up and I swore I saw something moving. I reached for one of my daggers, just in case, when all of a sudden…someone grabbed me from behind and stuffed a sack over my head!" She leaned forward and flung her hands out dramatically, thoroughly enjoying herself now. "I didn't know what was happening, of course, so I fought them like anything—"
"That I would believe," muttered Kíli, nodding.
"Yes. And I figured out not to when they told me to calm down and that they were taking me inside," she sighed. "Their voices were dwarven, so even though normally that would not be something I'd particularly want to hear, at the time it was fantastic. I couldn't tell you what I passed on the way in, but from what I could hear, part of their decision to let me in came from the fact that I was essentially blocking one of the entrances." Chuckling a bit evilly, she leaned back on her hands, feeling a bit proud. Several more of the dwarves were now paying close attention to her story. "I had become a problem when I refused to leave. They took me through their halls, way down into the mountain—I completely lost track of my direction or how far we'd gone—and they questioned me about who I was, where I'd been… All in all it was highly uncomfortable, really."
"And was it a large civilization?" Fíli interrupted.
"Surprisingly so, as a matter of fact. A good number of settlements were repopulated or reformed after the war." The war she spoke of was the War of Wrath, at the end of the First Age. It was thought for a while that all the dwarves of the Blue Mountains had fled to Khazad-Dûm after all the death and destruction that raged through their lands, but there were pockets that had survived. "Now stop interrupting." She went to ruffle his hair and he ducked her hand playfully. "I'm not quite sure who was in power there, actually. There's little chance that Azaghâl's direct line was able to carry through. It was the rebuilding of Belegost, of course," she remembered.
"The Broadbeams? Telphor's folk?" Kíli spoke up eagerly, disregarding Eisa's order to his brother. "Once, when we were younger, we heard about a mmmph!"
The dwarf maid had clamped her hand firmly over his mouth. "When they finally took the bag off my head, I was in a small chamber with a few other dwarves, and Great Aulë, you should have seen their faces when they saw that I had no beard," she began to laugh. When Kíli continued his muffled protests, she fixed him with a severe look and he quieted, shrinking down meekly. His beard scruff tickled her palm, and after a moment she removed her hand imperiously.
"But the novelty wore off eventually—you've no idea how strange it feels being the only adult in an entire city who hasn't got a beard—and they let me stay. I came out of that chamber and looked around the city, and by the stars…that city. I'd never seen one before, and obviously it was deep in the mountain, but if it hadn't been for the ceiling of rock way up above, I would have sworn it was under the sky, it was so beautiful. But!" she exclaimed, making Óin jump as she got through his hearing impairment (he had laid aside his ear trumpet earlier). "To the point, now. It got interesting when, one day, someone asked me to do something in Khuzdul." She sighed distastefully. "I felt fantastically stupid. I told him I didn't understand—that got me another wonderful reaction—and from then on I received instruction from a group of a few dwarves. There was no shortage of practice time, of course, and for a while I was learning along with a bunch of little dwarflings. Darling children, really." She smiled at the memory, then suddenly blinked and cleared her throat. "So there you have it. That's how I was taught Khuzdul." Looking around, she abruptly realized that nearly everyone had been listening with various degrees of interest, and she was glad for the dim light that hopefully concealed the color that spread up from her collarbone.
"Yet you said you aren't fluent?" Fíli questioned, guessing that it was all right to speak up now. He tugged on one side of his braided moustache thoughtfully.
"I mean," Eisa said self-consciously, "I didn't learn from adolescence like you did. And I haven't really had the chance to practice since." She covered a yawn and relaxed back against the wall of earth and rocks. At some point it had begun to sprinkle, and the rain was now falling in earnest. So far, their shelter was proving effective. "Except to myself, I suppose. And that doesn't usually go very well."
"That was a fine tale, Miss Eisa," Bofur complimented her cheerily from past Fíli, who was on her right. "It's been a long time since I've heard a young lady tell a good story."
"Oh," said Eisa, blinking. "Thank you, Master Bofur. That's good to hear." She promptly yawned again and slumped further down the earthen wall. The rest of the camp was quieting down. "Well, I'm going to sleep. Aren't you two?" she asked, looking between Fíli and Kíli.
Kíli shook his dark head and explained, "We have the first watch."
"Oh," she said again. "All right. Do you…mind—" the blush came back, but this time it snuck all the way up to her cheekbones— "if I just…stay right here?"
"Not a bit. We're not going anywhere," Fíli assured her.
"Thank you. Goodnight Fíli, goodnight Kíli." She resisted the urge to fan at her ridiculous cheeks and arranged herself and her bedroll on the ground, pulling her long coat back over her.
"Goodnight, Eisa," they chorused quietly, as the rest of the Company was settling down, and they prepared for the next few hours to pass very slowly.
The snores soon became audible, most of the noise being generated by Bombur, Glóin, and Dwalin. Thorin and Gandalf, of course, slept silently and stealthily, and the Halfling probably couldn't even sleep in the first place. Óin couldn't hear the racket anyway, but the dwarves made a considerable amount of noise altogether. Eisa didn't make very much noise, however, although she shifted slightly a few times after falling straight into a sleep like a log. A few stray locks of hair had flopped over the braided sections and gotten in her face when she moved, but she didn't wake.
She was facing Kíli, her features softened in slumber and her mouth threatening to start hanging open. Her hands were knotted in the thick fabric of her coat as she curled up tightly on her left side. And every time she breathed in and out, a thin lock of hair fluttered past her cheek and tickled her nose, which had begun to twitch slightly.
Kíli noticed this before too long, and had to stifle a quiet laugh. He decided that he should be a gentleman in this situation and help her, even though she wasn't conscious. Maybe especially because she wasn't conscious. But regardless, in a bit either she would wake up probably cranky or he would lose it and start laughing, and neither scenario would turn out well for anyone. Except perhaps Fíli, but that didn't count.
Carefully he reached over and extended a broad forefinger, hoping she wouldn't suddenly move and make him stab her in the eye. Brushing the finger along her cheek, under her eye, he hooked the piece of hair and tucked it carefully behind her head.
She shifted again a bit at his surprisingly light touch, and Kíli froze in anticipation, but she only reached out and grasped a larger handful of material to hold tightly in her fist as she slept. It wasn't until Fíli—who had seen what his brother did, but chose not to comment—woke the next dwarf for the watch and Kíli began to settle down that he realized Eisa had taken hold of a corner of his coat in the process. It had been spread out around him as he sat, and the edge rested near the young woman's face. So he just shrugged and did his best not to disturb her, relaxing and instantly succumbing to sleep himself.
