The next morning he opened his eyes, and stared at strange dim light around him. It glistened and danced, like it did on the walls of treasure chambers lit up with torches - patches of different colours shimmered, making his eyes hurt. He knew it could not be real. He groaned, and tried to move, but all his joined ached and resisted. His mouth and throat were dry and as if scratched.
"It's alright." Wrena's voice sounded muffled; and he felt a cup or a bowl press to his lips. "Drink, it'll help…"
He took a sip, cringing from bitterness and disgusting sweetness coating his mouth at the same time; and swallowed with difficulty. Her small hand brushed hair off his face, and then he felt a cool wet cloth lie on his forehead. He couldn't remember ever being ill as an adult - but he'd seen his children tended to in such manner. Perhaps, he had been too as a tot.
"Am I ill?" he asked. He could see her face as if through fog; and her hair seemed to burn around her face like the hottest of forge fires.
"Yes, you are," she answered. She took off the cloth from his forehead; and heat and pain immediately spilled on his temples and brow. "It's a simple fever, I think. There are no hives, and you've only been unconscious half a day." The cool cloth lay on his skin again, and he closed his eyes in pleasure. "If you hadn't been so, I'd almost think you were feigning it to postpone our return." His eyes flew open, and he stared at her. She was frowning, and looked altogether irked.
"I'm not… I don't know what happened…"
"You splashed in cold water; slept on a hard cot in a cave; and that is considering you've spent the last decade of your life living in comfort and luxury," she answered snappily, and rose. "You're simply too old for such escapades."
There was a pot on the fire, and she scooted near it and stirred the content.
"You're lucky I'm a healer, and not a wine merchant like Lady Revna," she grumbled. "What a ridiculous death for the King of Longbeards it would have been - to succumb to a coryza in a forgotten hole in the mountains."
"When will I be well enough to travel?" he asked, struggling to keep his eyes open. The drink she'd given him made him hot, and all his bones and flesh felt as if liquid.
"Sleep. We'll talk when you wake up," she answered; and he fell into heavy slumber, scorching and suffocating.
When he opened his eyes again, it was dark; and she was sitting by the fire eating. The smell of food made his mouth water; and then he started coughing painfully.
She walked up to him and touched his forehead.
"Your fever broke." She then pressed her fingers to the sides of his throat, under his jaw. "Not swollen. So, no grippe. Congratulations, my lord, you've been felled by a simple cold." Her tone was sharp and unpleasant. "Are you hungry?"
He nodded. The throat was aching; but even a thought of food scratching it didn't lessen his hunger. She stepped to a pot she had on the fire, and came back with some sort of broth in a mug.
He tried to sit up, and noticed with disgust that his limbs were weak and shaking. His clothes were sticking to his skin, drenched in sweat. He finally leaned his back against the wall, and took the mug out of her hands. The first gulp ran down his throat, bringing immense relief.
"How long have I slept?" he rasped out between more sips.
"The second half of yesterday, and a full night. It's close to dawn," she grumbled back. She'd returned onto the log by the fire.
"Have you slept?" he asked. The mug was now empty, and he threw a sad look at the bottom.
"Of course. It's not as if I was worried and kept checking if you were breathing," she answered sardonically. She came up, jerked the mug out of his hand, filled it up again, and pushed it into his palm. He caught her other wrist.
"Wrena…"
"What?" She gave him an irked look down.
"I'm sorry I've gotten you into this."
"Well, no harm done. You did wake up after all."
"I didn't want to cause you any worry…"
"Worry?!" She jerked her hand out of his. "May I remind you, you brought me here forcefully! And then you wouldn't wake up! And you burned for almost a day, and thrashed, and I thought you'd die! In this Mahal forgotten cave! And I would have to bring your body back to our children! And you talked and moaned, and…" Her voice broke, and she sobbed. "You, dim-witted, pig-headed…" Nothing else seemed to come to her mind; she made an angry noise, and stomped away from him.
He quickly drank the second mug, and was feeling sleepy again; and as much as he fought it, his eyes closed. This time his slumber was warm and dreamless.
The next time he woke up, daylight was streaming into the cave through the vent slits at the ceiling. He groaned, and opened his eyes.
Wrena was sleeping, sitting on her sleeping bag, rolled out on the ground near his bed. Her hand was outstretched, and was lying on his chest. A strange thought came - that he had never given a proper look to her face before. He could only see a half of it now, the turn-up nose with freckles across the bridge, the curved lips. Even in her sleep, there was a distressed frown on her brow, and bitter lines lay in the corners of her mouth. She had been - in his mind - the same woman he married, sprite and able; the one who was laughing at their wedding feast; the one who held their newborn children. She was not that woman anymore; the realization made him inhale sharply. Thin wrinkles ran from the corners from her eyes; the youthful liveliness had been replaced with some sort of dignified grace; elegant and regal. He might not have thought her attractive when he'd married her. She was endlessly beautiful to him now - the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
She shifted, her hand twitched on his chest; and she lifted her head. Their eyes met.
"You need sleep, Wrena. You look tired," he said; and she immediately narrowed her eyes at him. The green of irises was furiously bright.
"I look so wretched because I haven't had a bath in three days, and I haven't slept in my bed, and..."
"You don't look wretched," he interrupted her in an uncertain tone. He wondered why it was that she always heard the opposite of what he thought.
She muttered something under her breath, moved, and started dragging her sleeping bag back onto the other cot.
Thorin sat up.
"Let me cook now," he started; but his head spun, and he had to grab to the wall. She was already by the fire, setting the pot with the broth on the spit. "Wrena..."
"When it starts boiling, you can have as much as you want." She stirred the broth, closed the lid, and headed back to the cot. She climbed on it, and slumped on her sleeping bag. "There are also sausages, I cooked them yesterday. And..." A yawn interrupted her grumbling.
"I will manage," Thorin answered hastily.
She turned away, and pulled the cover over herself.
He ate, went to the stream, and brought water, which he then warmed up, and washed the dishes in. After that, he had no strength left, and he climbed on his cot again.
Sleep didn't came. He felt sluggish, and the food pleasantly warmed him from inside. He lay on his side, and watched Wrena. She'd shifted in her sleep, and was now facing him. Her right hand was curled in a fist under her cheek, the same way their children had in their sleep. He didn't notice how he fell into slumber again.
He woke up first, and quietly slipped out of the cave. The evening was unusually warm; and he heard birds sing in the branches. He filled the buckets he brought with him; and carried them back. By the time he reached the cave, he was wobbly on his feet. He was also famished, and he hesitated between warming the water, and food. He then told himself that she would be hungry when she woke up; so some fried up pottage and cured mutton couldn't harm.
He was starting on coffee; when he heard her coarse voice. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm well. Would you like some food?"
She climbed off the cot and came up to him, ruffling her hair. It was sticking around her head, disheveled and tangled.
"I brought you water." Thorin said, passing her a plate. She sat on the other end of the log. "We can heat it on the fire, and you can wash. It's no bath, but there is a laundry trough." He pointed at it.
"You underestimate my backside," she grumbled. "I can't fit it in." He threw her a quick look over. He wasn't sure what she meant. He always thought she was small for a Longbeard. "You should wash as well - to rinse off the sweat after the fever - and change into clean clothes. Otherwise you'll fall sick again." She ate her food with a displeased face. "Are you feeling strong enough to travel tomorrow morning?"
He nodded, and threw her a glance. She was chewing, pensively peering at something by the wall. He looked as well, and saw the chain glistening in the dimness.
"Where did you even procure it?" she asked, without turning to him.
"I'd seen it in the inventory, when we'd been doing the recount of Erebor riches, after the Mountain was reclaimed. It belonged to my Grandmother."
She suddenly snorted a small laugh. "What?" he asked. He hadn't heard her laugh for so long.
"That would be the same Grandmother who had an interesting collection of books, I presume. Seven shelves of lewd literature in the Erebor Library. You should have seen the faces of the librarians when they started cataloguing those volumes..." He stared at her flabbergasted. Her nose scrunched, and the slanted eyes shone. She finally looked at him, askance, from under long black lashes. "I don't wish to shock you, my lord, but those chains weren't kept as a decorative family heirloom. They had been used, and extensively..."
Thorin thought of his Grandmother - severe, dark faced, with bristly black moustache above her upper lip, and always generous with a bark and occasional - not painful, but utterly humiliating - thump to the back of a head - and his Grandfather Thror. Thorin suddenly felt like a child again; and a child that had just realized that the adults around him were people as well - and he burst into guffaws. They rolled louder and louder, and he bent, almost folding in half, remembering to put down his mug with coffee on the ground at the last moment. She joined his laughter, with her melodic silver one - and he just couldn't stop. In a few seconds he had to wipe tears that rolled over his eyes.
"I feel like a naive tot," he breathed out, between more guffaws.
"You are a naive tot," she deadpanned, and he only laughed louder. "I bet you thought that the decorous martial duties under covers, with candles out, were all that was to it."
"Indeed?" he drew out, throwing her an impish look. "And what about two weeks ago, on your study floor?"
She choked on her laughter, and bright blush predictably spilled onto her cheeks. Her nose twitched in her usual nervous habit. He'd seen it before of course, but he'd never thought it was as charming as it seemed to him now.
"And how do you know what else there is to it?" he asked her. "Have you been perusing my Grandmother's books?"
"Women do talk about it, unlike men," she answered with dignity, her cheeks still flaming. "You'd be scandalised if you knew what conversations we lead over mead at the end of a long day."
"About your marital life?!" he asked, indeed feeling scandalised.
"And about what happens under those covers." Her tone was defiant. "It has to do with our health after all. There are ailments to look out for, and the childbearing is a tricky matter. And for some, it's also pleasure, not just duty."
He wanted to ask if it were for her, but a strange thought that he had no right to pry came to his mind. And then he thought that if it hadn't been such for her in their marriage, it had been his fault. The conversation they were leading out of the blue was endlessly enlightening - and unnerving. To think of it, in a hundred years he'd been living with a woman, he had never given a thought to her being a woman.
She picked up both their empty plates, and carried them to the basin by the wall.
"I'll wash them, and you start on your bath," he said, and she threw him a surprised look but said nothing.
She dragged the trough in the middle of the cave, close to the fire, and settled the first bucket on the spit.