A/N: Just a reminder that I have a blog - kolmakov dot ca - with my links, news, updates, and so on. Have a peek!
Present day...
"Balin, I say we should finish our affairs for the day," Fili offered, hiding a smile. The old Dwarf was clearly distracted. Fili had had to point out the same spot of the map twice already, and once again Balin's eyes grew distant.
"Aye, laddie. Perhaps, it is a good thought." The white haired Khuzd sighed and rose. In the last ten years he had grown heavier and wider, but remained just as agile. Admirable achievement in his mature age. The sighs and the groans were more of an expression of exasperation than fragility of an old man.
Balin patted Fili's shoulder, and looked down at the maps and schematics of Moria scattered on the table.
"We will talk tomorrow, aye?" he offered, and Fili nodded.
It had been a fortnight since Thorin's arrival, and revels had been held every night. The days were mostly spent in Thorin having long conversations with yet another Khuzd who wished to see him, and talk, and reminisce, and more often than not it was Balin. While his brother seemed unaffected by Thorin's miraculous reappearance, Balin seemed emotional, sometimes teary, sometimes frantic.
Fili nodded to the Dwarf again, and Balin hurried to the exit.
Fili leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Most likely, Balin would rush to the courtyard where training was almost over. Thorin would be sitting by the wall, having finished his sparring with yet another warrior who craved the honour of clashing blades with the Thorin Oakenshield; Dwalin would be smacking yet another dummy at the background; Thorin's boy would be either sitting near his father listening to explanations, or trying out smaller blades. The boy was exceptionally good. Fili had gone almost every day in the first week, then every second day, and now didn't want to go at all.
The entrance door to the library screeched, and Fili cringed in annoyance. Surely, considering how much time Ori and Balin spent here, they could have oiled the hinges.
The visitor quietly walked between the shelves, and then Fili heard humming. It was awfully out of tune, and the voice was female. Fili recognised it just three instants later.
He was sitting at a large table, in the heart of the round hall of the library, surrounded by the shelves, which formed a maze around the central part. If she continued her - seemingly aimless - wandering, she'd come to him eventually.
He should have let her know he was there. Call for her, perhaps - and she would answer something polite and squeaky from the distance, and most likely flee. Instead, he sat and waited. She was circling him, unaware of his presence, humming her little song, and he heard rustling of volumes and scrolls. Then something dropped, she mumbled some mild decorous curses; more rustling came; and then she stopped humming and her steps grew more confident. She was walking towards him, and he sat and waited.
"Oh..."
Just as he expected, she froze in the opening between two shelves, her hands full of volumes, eyes widened.
Fili rose and gave her a small bow.
"Lady Wren," he greeted her with a smile.
"I apologise," she blurted out in return, and he smiled wider.
"For what?"
"For my singing. I assume that you, as most among your people, are an excellent musician, and my singing is horrid."
He couldn't help it. A chuckle fell of his lips, and he saw gentle blush spill on her cheekbones.
"It wasn't that bad," he reassured, and it was her turn to snort.
"There is no need to be polite, my lord. Flowers wither from my singing - what is to be said about a musically gifted Dwarf?"
He laughed and invited her to the table with a wave of his hand. She lowered her books on the very edge of it, and shifted between her feet.
"Please, join me," he insisted, and she tucked herself into the chair that Balin had occupied just a few minutes ago. "What are you reading?" Fili asked sitting down.
"I don't know yet," she answered, and he saw her eyes greedily study the spines and covers. "I just take whatever seems interesting. Sometimes they are in Khuzdul, and I don't read it well enough. Sometimes Sindarin, Quenya, or Common Speech. They are easier. Sometimes it's about swords, or history, or family trees. It is as if I play that game they have at travelling fairs, when you put your name in a jar, and you don't know whether you win, and what you win."
She brushed her hand to the cover of the book on top of the pile.
"I learnt here that I love reading. We had no books in the house when I was a child. I'm enjoying Erebor a wee bit more now," she stated, and he continued looking at her fascinated.
She was - put simply - odd. There was a mixture of a child and a wisdom of an elder in her; he was almost certain she could notice and understand more than others; and yet sometimes - at the moment, for example - she seemed to be in her own realm. She could say just the right things sometimes - he had seen her converse mannerly with Dwarves at the feasts; or say something candid just like a moment ago when she'd confessed to not quite enjoying her stay in Erebor.
"And what prize did you win today?" he asked, and she opened the first book. She then showed it to him, and he saw it was a book on beekeeping. She seemed content with it and started flipping through pages, brushing the tips of her fingers to especially bright illustrations.
Strangely, he didn't feel uncomfortable in her presence. She was already absorbed in her beekeeping book, and he felt he could just stay like that, reading his volume, without feeling that he needed to speak, or even acknowledge her presence. He wouldn't forget the latter either though.
A few minutes later she pushed her hand into the pocket of her coat, took out two apples, put one in the middle of the table in front of him, and started eating the second one, crunching quietly. Fili stared at the apple, and then picked it up.
It was crisp and fresh, and reminded him of the apples Kili and him had been stealing from gardens on the road. They were young then, before the Quest for Erebor, and they would accompany merchants, and could have afforded buying apples, but Kili always wanted to climb the Long Ones' fences, and snatch a few juicy fruit. If one bought apples at a market, they never tasted that good, he would say every time.
Fili sank his teeth in the apple; and tangy and sweet taste flooded his senses.
A few minutes later she closed the beekeeping book, set it aside, and opened the next one. She was leaning over it, he could see the copper curls on the top of her head, and the delicate shoulders.
"How are you enjoying your stay in Erebor?" he suddenly spoke, feeling surprised by the question himself.
She lifted her eyes off a map of Ered Luin.
"I'm glad Thror gets to meet his kin. And it has been long overdue for Thorin to return here." He noticed how little answer to his question was in her answer. Their eyes met, and she gave him a small melancholic smile.
"Has Thorin mentioned how long he intends this visit to last?" Fili asked, and saw her pensively chew her apple.
"He mentioned three moons. The journey back would be dangerous in Winter. And we have matters to attend home before the ice sets." Fili wondered whether she'd been repeating all these reasons to herself again and again, reassuring and comforting herself.
"Thorin said he was running merchant companies, fur trade he said." She nodded confirming Fili's words. "And you? What do you do? Are you a healer?" He'd noticed the stains on her fingers, he'd seen plenty of them in the moons he'd spent in healer's tents after the Battle of the Five Armies.
"I'm the Mistress of the Big House." He tilted his head, encouraging her to elaborate. "The Mistress watches after the merchants, and their families; we do have an infirmary, so I oversee it; and we also need to hire wine-girls to go with the merchants. And while men are away, and if the Master is gone, the Mistress manages the trade."
Fili remembered the merchant villages from the travels of his youth. She didn't strike him as anything like those women - the ones he'd met were older, louder, ruder, and greedier.
She sighed, her eyes unfocused now, on the wall behind him.
"My father hadn't been the Master for the last three years," she continued. "Thorin manages better than Father ever had. He's enjoying his dotage, his fishing and hunting. Mother doesn't approve. She says I will never make a good Mistress. She says I have no backbone."
She blinked and focused her eyes on him.
"Do you enjoy it - being the Mistress?" he asked impulsively. It was a strange conversation, but he suddenly craved to understand her.
"I do," she answered simply. "I do have a backbone. I just don't yell at the help, and do not wish any favours from young handsome merchants and guards. It would have been easier if Thorin supported me, but he thinks I can manage myself." She gave Fili one of her odd distant smiles. "And now, being here, I can see only more clearly how much I enjoy being the Mistress. I can't wait to go back."
"It'll be just three moons," Fili rushed to console her, and her cat like eyes met his.
"We both know it isn't true," she answered, and then with a sigh she looked down into her book again.
They did, didn't they? Fili thought. There were also many other things that they both knew, felt, and saw, while others didn't.
"Why did you marry Thorin?" he asked, knowing that unlike many others she wouldn't question where this inquiry came from, and whether he had the right to ask.
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Summary: Wren Leary, a young biochem student is placed before a choice: Will it be Philip Durinson, the self-assured ball of sunshine and a uni stud, or his cantankerous and mistrusting uncle, John Thorington? The first one is her friend, the second one regrets that night in the tent. Wrennie is in a pickle.
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Renee Miller is a reclusive web designer who, after several hours of delirium from flu, wakes up to find a stranger in boxer briefs standing in her bathroom.
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