Silwen shook out the dark waves of her hair and, accepting a glass of light, golden wine from Tauriel, settled into the cushioned seat beside her friend.
"So," Silwen prompted once she had tasted her wine, "You chased some dwarves and were banished; you outlived dragon's fire; fought in a war; you fell in love and saved one prince's life, while the other returned without you. Perhaps you had better start at the beginning!"
Tauriel nodded. "What, exactly have you heard?"
"Everyone knew you left the Greenwood with Legolas, despite the King's order to close the borders. We guessed you were concerned over the latest orc incursion; it had been no secret that you pushed for expanded patrols in those last few months.
"The rest was just gossip when the army returned from Erebor. Your banishment was common knowledge, of course, as was the King's favor to you after the battle. But some heard you had been alone in Laketown when it was burned by Smaug. And people even said you'd been found on the battlefield, nearly dead in the arms of the dwarf prince, though the ones who told me that seemed to believe it less than the dragon story."
Tauriel smiled self-consciously, yet said nothing despite her friend's curious glance, so Silwen continued.
"I finally got Legolas to tell me that you had both followed the dwarves to Laketown and that he had left you behind to heal one who had been injured. He said you had found him the next day, and the two of you had ridden to Gundabad, only to return to Erebor with an orc army on your heels. And he confirmed you had followed the dwarf prince into battle and that you'd ransomed his life with your own when he fell." She looked knowingly at Tauriel and added, "Legolas never, in fact, said you loved the dwarf, but I thought that was clear enough from the tale. He was the one in Laketown...?" Silwen finished expectantly.
"Yes." Tauriel sipped the wine, her expression curious. "Legolas didn't tell you it was Kíli that I healed? I suppose he couldn't, when I chose Kíli over him."
Her friend nodded. "I wondered if he loved you."
"Oh, Silwen, Legolas made it quite clear when he came after me. And I couldn't say anything, because I needed him—wanted him—at my side. And because I couldn't tell him I was falling in love with a dwarf."
"Legolas has long been your friend; I know he would not grudge you the support that you needed."
"No," Tauriel agreed, "I don't believe he would. All the same, I fear I've hurt him. And I wish I had not." She sighed. "He is the reason I was upset earlier."
Silwen laid an arm across her friend's shoulders in a brief hug. "I know how close you two have been. I wondered what would happen if one of you fell in love."
Tauriel laughed in spite of herself. "I suppose you never thought to include a dwarf in your conjectures!"
"Indeed not!" Silwen grinned conspiratorially. "I'm sorry I was on border patrol when that all happened. I wish I had seen the dwarf who could steal your heart! I'm not sure how to imagine him." She tried to school the smile from her face, with limited success. "Forgive me, Taur, but the last dwarves I saw were old, quite fat, and had beards so long they wore them tucked up in their belts to keep from treading on them! I'm sure your Kíli must be handsomer than that, but I confess I cannot imagine him any other way!" Silwen hid her face against her friend's shoulder, both amused and apologetic at once.
Tauriel laughed. "It's all right! I should have said much the same, had you asked me to tell you of dwarves not long ago. I can assure you that Kíli is young, not at all fat, and as for the beard, he wears his trimmed quite short."
Silwen looked up at her. "Well, that's a relief. I was worried about you trying to kiss him through all that hair!"
"Sil!" Tauriel shoved her friend playfully. She was not offended; Silwen and she had teased each other for years over everything from the way they wore their hair to one another's skill on the archery range, and suitors were not exempt from their jests. Indeed, Tauriel was grateful that her friend's first concern over her love for Kíli had apparently been that he make her happy. It was obvious that Silwen wanted to find what made him attractive to Tauriel so that she might see it too, and equally obvious that she was failing.
Tauriel continued, earnest now. "Kíli must be nearly our age, according to the reckoning of his folk. He has brown eyes and very handsome dark hair. And he is somewhat tall for a dwarf, though even so, his head doesn't clear my shoulder." She laughed at the comical expression on Silwen's face. "But his shoulders are broad and his hands strong, and promise I don't feel unequally matched when he puts his arms around me.
"He's bold and loyal, and teasing, and kind. He's also an archer, and he plays the fiddle quite merrily. And sometimes he talks like a poet."
Silwen laughed. "I thought you had decided against poets."
"Only the kind who write sonnets," Tauriel returned with a smirk. "Besides, you haven't heard what he said to me the first time we met. When I put him in his cell in the King's prison, he asked if I was going to search him, since there was no telling what he might have in his trousers!" She snorted.
Silwen stared at her, both delighted and aghast at once. "What did you say?"
"Oh, I told him I'd likely find nothing, and locked the door in his face," Tauriel recalled with amused satisfaction.
Silwen burst into laughter. "Of course!"
"I couldn't believe he was trying for my attention! I had slighted him earlier, you know. He had asked me for a weapon, when we fought off the spiders, and I had not bothered to make my refusal anything but insulting. But his clumsy flirtation was rather endearing, in a hopeless sort of way," Tauriel admitted. "I—" She flushed, embarrassed at the memory. "I even defended him to Legolas, who was clearly evincing his offense at the trousers remark."
"Oh?" Silwen prompted.
"I suggested I found Kíli attractive, and I'm afraid I hit home!" She sighed. "Poor Legolas, I shouldn't vex him! But he does make it so easy, sometimes," she finished fondly.
"And did you? Find him attractive, that is?"
"I— Well. No. I supposed that, by the standards of his folk, he might be considered handsome, but not enough to turn my head.
"Still I was curious. He wasn't what I expected from a dwarf, neither harsh nor ill-tempered. He seemed so young and full of wonder. I could see that to him, all of this was new, and I almost felt sorry that his first glimpse of the world should land him in a prison cell."
Silwen shook her head in mock disapproval. "Tauriel, you've gone soft if you're pitying the King's prisoners! Even the young, sweet ones."
"I know! It seemed harmless at the time; I merely thought I was lessening his hardship by being kind. I made a final pass through the prison at the end of my shift, and I stopped to speak with him. I thought he resented me at first, but then he relented and I knew his bravado was only an act." She smiled, remembering. "We talked for quite a long time. He told me of many things they'd seen on their journey so far, and some of the dangers they'd passed through. Nothing, however, that would have answered the King's curiosity, and therefore, nothing I felt bound to report!" she interjected in response to Silwen's marveling glance. "By the time I arrived at the feast, all of the best wine had been drunk. I hadn't even had time to change, and Legolas seemed strangely put-out, though he would not tell me why."
"I'm sorry, my dear, but it takes more than 'curious' to account for missing the Feast of Starlight," Silwen remarked pointedly.
"All right, by that time I was...charmed. Kíli was friendly and artless, and his smile was so earnest and sweet."
Silwen sighed. "Oh, Tauriel, you were already falling for him!"
"I know. But you can hardly expect I could admit it to myself! He was my prisoner, and a dwarf, at that. I knew I couldn't fall in love with someone like him." She laughed at herself. "Couldn't fall in love with a perfectly charming young man, that is. I was rather foolish for pretending I didn't see him that way. Amidst all the commotion the next morning when we discovered they had escaped, I even found I would be sorry if I never saw him again, to wish him well."
"I heard how you nearly stopped them at the last river gate," Silwen noted. "Didn't you see him then?"
"I saw him, but that was all. We were hard-pressed to defend ourselves and the dwarves, much less recapture them. Did you know, it was Kíli who braved the wall, unarmed, to open the portcullis? He took an injury to do so. I've told no one, but," Tauriel added, her tone confessional, "I covered him as best I could. If I hadn't, the dwarves likely would not have escaped."
Silwen opened her mouth, but said nothing.
Tauriel continued, "But if they'd stayed trapped behind the gate, I don't doubt but that some would have been slain. They were, if you'll pardon the expression, fish in a barrel."
Silwen found words then. "Tauriel, don't imagine you betrayed your duty," she said warmly. "Your attention to the good of all those under your command is the reason I, and so many in the guard, admire and respect you. You've never needlessly sacrificed others simply to follow your orders."
Tauriel caught Silwen's hand. "Thank you," she said, and Silwen could see she had indeed been troubled by such thoughts. "Afterwards, we learned that orcs out of Moria had been following Thorin and his men for some time, but the King would do nothing. And... The orc we interrogated claimed they had fatally wounded Kíli with a poisoned blade."
Silwen's eyes widened. "So you did go after him," she noted. "I wondered, once Legolas had confirmed the rumors, whether Kíli had been the reason you left."
"I knew his companions would not have the skill to treat him!" Tauriel protested. "And I couldn't pretend his life didn't matter, that I didn't care."
"I was worried about you, when I returned from patrol and heard you'd disobeyed the King and left the forest, even though Legolas went with you."
"I know; it was reckless of me," Tauriel admitted. "I was angry that no one troubled over what became of them once the dwarves were out of our hands. Kíli was not the only one in danger.
"I was justified in my fears: when we caught up with the remnant of Thorin's party in Laketown, we arrived barely behind the orcs that had been tracking them. We saved Kíli and his friends, as well as the Laketown family who had been helping them. And Kíli!" Tauriel's face betrayed the concern she had felt. "The poor boy was raving with fever by then; it was consuming the last of his strength! Some blessed soul had thought to fetch some athelas, and I used it to purify the wound.
"He recognized me then. He was delirious, but he still said enough for me to know what he felt. And the next morning, after we escaped Laketown, he asked me to come with him." She paused, her cheeks flushed slightly. "I pretended not to understand when he told me he loved me. That really was the worst of all my foolishness! Because I did know I could love him in return. I just couldn't see how it was supposed to work for us. I was afraid to admit to wanting something that could not be. But Kíli was certain, I think, that all that mattered was wanting it. He put his hope in me, and I was drawn to him all the more for that. And in the end, he was right."
Silwen smiled gently. "I understand, now, why you love him. You never have been content looking only to the past, as so many of us do. And Kíli made you want to believe in something new."
Tauriel nodded. "What I feel when I'm with him, I've never known before. He makes me feel...alive," she finished with a smile, remembering what he had once said to her.
"You do look different, you know," Silwen said thoughtfully. "It's your eyes. Their light is bolder, somehow, as if..." She hesitated, uncertain.
"What?" Tauriel urged.
"It's as if it is no longer your spirit alone that shines in your eyes."
Tauriel flushed deeply. The change Silwen had described was one the elves saw in those who had wed. It was how their people knew, without asking, whether one was free or bound to another.
"I haven't— If that's what you mean," she stammered. Acts of passion were rare among their kind, and if Silwen thought she had yielded and slept with him, her friend must think Tauriel had truly taken leave of her senses. Elves were by nature chaste.
"Forgive me! You misunderstand!" Silwen appeared equally alarmed and embarrassed.
Tauriel laughed, guessing her meaning at last. "No, we did not pledge ourselves in secret, if that's what you are thinking. When I saved him, I reached out to his spirit with mine and fed it with my fire, lest it die out completely and forsake his body. I suppose we share a true bond now."
"Tauriel," Silwen said. "If there was ever to be one of the Eldar to choose a dwarf, it would be you."
"Oh?"
"When you know what you have to do, you never stop to ask if it's impossible."
Her friend laughed. "Well, I suppose we are suited for each other. He, too, can be rather bold." Tauriel's smile turned rueful. "And now I understand what amazed my parents so when they saw me. My mother cried as if I were indeed dead on the battlefield as she had feared. I thought Ada would make more trouble over it than she. He seemed more surprised than grieved, though."
Silwen paused thoughtfully over her wine before responding. "Taur, if it had been anyone but you, I would have said you were mad. Perhaps you are, a little bit, but in the good way that I've always liked about you," she interjected fondly. "I still cannot imagine wanting to settle your love on a mortal, a dwarf. But I trust you. Forgive the rest of us for not being able to understand."
Tauriel sighed. "There is nothing to forgive, my friend. And while the others may trouble me, they do not surprise me, nor can I blame them." She set her glass down and looped her arms round her friend's shoulders. "Thank you for believing me."
Silwen hugged her in return. "Don't thank me yet! I'm going to make you take me back to Erebor to meet him!"
Author's Note:
Warrior elf girls are still girls! I wanted to offer Tauriel's account of why she'd drop everything to go chasing after some dwarves (and one in particular) that she'd just met. I also wrote a sort of companion scene between Fili and Kili, which you can find on my page under the title "Starlight Reflected." Poor Fili, that's the only time I'm going to get to write him for this story continuum.
Ada - Sindarin diminutive for father; hence, "Dad."
In "The Laws and Customs of the Eldar" (found in Morgoth's Ring), Tolkien states that the elves can tell, just from the speech and appearance of another, whether he or she is married. I've never been quite sure how to imagine that must work, but Silwen's description of the change in Tauriel's appearance here is my best guess. The same chapter describes that marriage is, at heart, a bonding of souls. Tauriel's soul-bonding rescue of Kili is entirely my own invention, but I've based it as much as I can on what there is to know about elvish metaphysics. Yes, I'm obsessive.
I'm not going to use the term morgul for the poisoned weapon used on Kili. The description of morgul weapons in Fellowship of the Ring makes it clear that such weapons are both very rare and also may only be wielded by someone of great power, like the Witch King. When I saw Desolation of Smaug, I couldn't believe they wanted us to buy that orc peons are just running around with morgul blades. Furthermore, Frodo's morgul wound wasn't healed as quickly and required more knowledge to treat than a wood elf would likely know (Aragorn, with all his ranger skill, couldn't cure it). Plus it plagued Frodo till the end of his life. Let's just say I'm not doing that to Kili. I still think it's completely believable to posit Kili was wounded by a weapon bearing some kind of cursed poison without making it a morgul blade. Okay, end minor lore rant. I know this fic is already waaay off Tolkien's original canon, but I still can't help doing my best to follow the rest of the rules that I'm not breaking!
