Believe in Me
Disclaimer: I don't own The Hobbit, but I sure as heck own the wicked tip money I earned today! xD
A/N: *wails* I'm sorry this took longer! For some reason I've gone into a weird phase of writer's block and it's killing me trying to even concentrate for the amount of time needed to edit a chapter. *bangs head against wall* It might have something to do with my 45-hour work week and seriously missing my bff, but bleh. Life. I'll be doing my best to keep the writing coming. Anyhoo, technology has continued its endless crusade against me, so it's ix-nay on the review replies this time around -.-' I beg of you, do not ask. BUT I appreciate each and every reader, follower, favoriter, and reviewer, so here's to all of you: StabMeWithASmile, meredithe, InspiritDW, colormenikki, I Am The Wind, Emmiline-Zahara-Rose, Hksmith, an old fashioned girl, TheShawndaLee, amdragjakelong'sgurl, RelapseWarrior, DwarvenWarrior, Sbgchan, AemiKili, Amber, the Random Oliphaunt, Fellowship of Avengers, Hiding in the Shadow, Abyss Prime, DragonOwl, Singer of Water, Jess, Fluff-Loving Guest, Guest, Ox King, Pinkdude3000, MissKatieJayne, Sonnenelch, and all those faithful but unnamed! :) By the way, your reviews were all very flattering; I can't thank you enough for your praise! *hugs*
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Chapter Twenty-Four
In Which We Just Plain Learn A Lot
"I don't know whether I should be relieved or nervous that everyone's limbs are still intact," Eisa murmured into Kíli's ear practically as soon as the Company stood up from the table in response to Elrond and Thorin rising to leave. Unfortunately, her eavesdropping skills did not extend all the way down a table full of dwarves at mealtime.
"It went surprisingly well—I think," he admitted as Fíli drew closer to the two of them.
"No one went for their weapons," the blonde pointed out.
"Or did any outright name-calling."
"There was some passive aggression—"
"—but really, what would you expect?"
"It seemed more like a test to me," Fíli perceived.
Eisa tilted her head from side to side. "That makes sense. How did the conversation go, mostly?"
They gossiped like this all the way to the courtyard that the dwarves had annexed from the start and had been frequenting since, gathering every night as they would on the road before retiring to their bedchambers as late as possible. Like clockwork, Óin and Glóin got a small bonfire going. Everyone else took a seat on several long benches that they had purposely left intact. Eisa wondered if the elves had wondered where the extra furniture had gone, and if so, if they had made the connection to the nightly fires.
"I have to ask you, since it's so pretty—" Bilbo took another gulp of ale, which as it turned out, he could be quite fond of— "where did you get that necklace?"
"Probably from a lord of some distant kingdom," Nori chuckled quietly.
"Or a market in a city no one's heard of," added Fíli with a grin and a wrinkle of his nose.
"Aye, that's our Eisa, the traveler," Bofur grinned, tapping the ashes off his pipe.
The possessive 'our' warmed Eisa more than the fire ever could have, and it took a moment for her to stop smiling like an idiot as she held her palms up for calm. About half of the Company was in on the conversation.
"I haven't a clue where it's from, really." She paused as the others stopped to wonder if she was just teasing them with a mind-puzzle. "I've had it with me since I was born. It's never tarnished or anything, strangest thing…" They all knew she was rambling for a reason, and she made herself breathe, trying not to grip her knees too tightly where she sat on the bench. "My mother gave it to the wife of the man who owned the inn where I was born. She told her to tell me two things: to always keep it, and to never forget." She snorted through her nose and smiled faintly, glancing up at those who were watching her. Kíli and Fíli leaned into her slightly from either side. "Which is a bit silly really, since I don't know…well. Anyhow."
"Who raised you?" The gentle question came from Kíli, by her left ear.
"The wife—her name was Mhoire—and the cook, Greta. They were both humans. They did well, too—taught me my letters and all, taught me how to do an honest day's work. Although I learned things like how to ride and fight from the stable boys." She chuckled lightly and Ori took this as a sign that it was alright to delve a bit further.
"And…when did you leave?" he asked softly, from the other side of Fíli.
"I was twenty-eight," came the precise reply.
Bofur's eyebrows shot up. "That's a brave thing, lass. With you not even of age."
Eisa shrugged. "Well, even if I had known so, it probably wouldn't have stopped me. I didn't tell anyone, you see. Just left a…a very long note in the kitchen, in the middle of the night."
There was silence for a moment.
"Sometime I'll tell you about my first year on my own, but that's a bit complex for right now," she half-joked with a mind to get everyone back to normal.
"A few hitches, were there?" Fíli smiled amenably from her right.
"Just a few, just a few."
"Not to pry again, lass, but what did you say your mother's name was?"
Eisa couldn't remember whether she had ever told Bofur before, but she didn't mind either way. "Auda. I don't suppose you recognize the name?" It was dubious whether she sounded more careless or hopeful; it was an odd combination of the two.
"No, none of us here remember anyone called by that name." Bofur looked apologetic, but Eisa shook her head. "May I see that for a moment?" He gestured to her necklace as Bilbo had during supper.
"Oh, of course." She reached around and unfastened the clasp, then handed the piece of jewelry to the miner.
He held it carefully, peered at it, turned it over, then drew back almost immediately, his brown eyes widening. "Heavens, lass," he chuckled somewhat nervously, "careful what you go handin' people!"
Her brow furrowed. "What do you mean?" Unnoticed by most, Balin had suddenly taken a sharp interest in the conversation, and he raised his bushy eyebrows as well.
"Well, for one, I wouldn't go passing my mithril around if I had any, which I don't, and for another—"
"It's what?" blurted Eisa in confusion, voicing the thoughts of those around her. "I mean—truly?"
"Er, yes…" the miner went on slowly. "You didn't know?"
"Hadn't the faintest clue. You forget that I haven't the knowledge to recognize it."
There was a hushed chorus of comprehension and some uncomfortable shifting.
"Ah. You're right, lass, I should've remembered." Bofur smiled easily from underneath his hat, but there was a slight twinge at the corners. "But secondly, you shouldn't go handing your name around like that, either. That you should've picked up by now, but, well, you're a tough one sometimes, lass—"
Eisa held up her hands and waved them exasperatedly. "My what? Nienna so help me, you're a dear, Bofur, but I'm going to go mad. What 'name' do you mean?"
"Well, when your name, your true inner-name," he explained patiently, "is written—or in this case carved—on something, you don't let other people see it. It's private, you see?"
"No, I—I know that." The crease between her eyebrows deepened, giving her the angry expression that she got when something persisted in baffling her. "But for one thing, I don't have an inner-name, and for another, that's just a load of gibberish carved on there. It makes no sense phonetically."
"Well, no, you learned the language secondhand, so the sound of a heart-name shouldn't make much actual sense to you, but—" Fíli broke in to lend Bofur a hand, but stopped as abruptly as if he had been struck.
Kíli picked up where his brother's thought process had been sharply rerouted. "You…what do you mean, you don't have a heart-name?" he asked rhetorically in a hushed voice.
Every member of the Company was now watching the exchange revolving around Eisa. Ori looked like he was about to cry. Bofur's countenance had dropped the goofy exterior that he kept up in all but the direst of circumstances. Glóin and Óin exchanged an unreadable look after Glóin had paraphrased the past few minutes for his elder brother. Thorin appeared as impassive as ever, but was playing an internal game of tug-of-war between sympathy and scorn.
But Eisa could only focus on one person or idea at a time in her state of bewilderment, and right now, she only had eyes for Kíli. His eyes were as big and brown as ever, but he looked heartbroken as he realized what she was saying.
"But you do have one, lass," Bofur broke in gently.
Eisa looked up and refocused, Kíli's heart-wrenching expression pinching at her eyes and throat, and found herself looking to Balin for confirmation.
"The dwarf knows his metals." The old advisor nodded and pressed his lips together. "And anyone—raised as one of us—recognizes an inner-name when they see one."
"I didn't read it," Bofur put in hurriedly. "A glance is all you need, really, to recognize one—but you, you ought to know it. Oh—here." Remembering that he was still holding the bright little disk in his palm, he handed it back to the young woman by the chain. She immediately flipped it to the proper side and took another good hard look at the runes carved along the bottom of the curve.
"Just sound it out," Fíli murmured encouragingly, making a point not to watch what she was doing. "Though not out loud. Run through it a few times in your head and it'll start to make more sense."
"I…okay."
Khuzdul lettering followed the same basic one-character-one-sound format as Westron, and spelling the word—the name—out in the common tongue was easy enough. It spelled R-I-D-R-Á-I-N-L-E-I-F, and the emphasis would go on the second syllable. Pronouncing it under her breath was easy enough, but it didn't feel like a name—her name—without knowing the meaning. Eisa knew enough about heart-names to know that they were made up of several components, each meaning something different that didn't necessarily correspond directly to spoken Khuzdul.
And they always, always meant something extremely significant.
Fortunately, it wouldn't be difficult to hunt down the individual meanings with a library as extensive as Elrond's. Spoken and written Khuzdul might be Middle Earth's best-kept linguistic secret, but with the right textual references and perhaps some covert help from Gandalf, she could put her inner-name together in a matter of minutes. She could visit the library tonight, once everyone began to retire to their rooms. It seemed very close and yet very far away as she considered how quickly she had found this all out.
However, her revelations for the day weren't finished.
"Erm."
The Company looked up expectantly at Eisa, who had half-raised a hand.
"I…correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't mithril found only in Khazad-Dûm?"
Thorin might have been royalty, but Bofur was the mining expert of the group, and it was he who answered. "Aye, that's right, lass. That's what makes the kingdom so valuable, apart from being the first home of Dúrin and our ancestors an' that."
The gears of Eisa's mind were spinning in an entirely unexpected direction, and began to fit together in an impossible way. "Dúrin's Bane was awakened, what, about a millennium ago? What have the dwarven trade routes been like since then—fairly closed after the mass exodus to Erebor, weren't they?"
This time, Balin nodded. "Those were dark days, during the flight to the Lonely Mountain, until it began to prosper in full. In terms of mithril—of course it was closely guarded. There was very little chance we would return to our ancient home, so no matter the riches there, it became a finite resource."
Eisa half-opened her mouth and then closed it, swallowing hard.
Conveniently (or perhaps not) Fíli was right there with her train of thought and was the one to voice it aloud. "You're a Longbeard," he blurted suddenly, surprising even himself, but held his own when everyone whipped their heads around to stare at him with varying degrees of comprehension.
Isn't that ironic, was her only thought that wasn't caught up in an odd jumble with other things.
"Your mother was a dwarf of Erebor," Fíli went on, now watching Eisa in wonderment. All she could do was stare back as he fleshed out her string of conclusions aloud. "Mithril trade virtually stopped a thousand years ago and the wealth of it was transferred to the Lonely Mountain. Our people kept it and crafted things from it—sparingly, of course—up until the dragon took the mountain, when we were scattered and most fled to the Blue Mountains. But not all." He looked around at the Company before furthering his logic, and for a moment the concentration in his brow made him look very much like his uncle. "Years later, Eisa's mother comes to Gondor and has a child, and the one, single thing that she leaves for the child is a trinket of mithril with the child's heart-name carved into it. That means it had to have been inscribed recently, but the chain is silver and shows enough wear to have lasted at least a century or so. Case in point: she must have come from Erebor."
Balin murmured something quietly in agreement, and that was the only sound in the courtyard for several very long, very stretched out but very rapidly passing seconds. Ori was eyeing Bilbo with trepidation, probably fearful that the Burglar would faint again, and was torn between that looming danger and the itch in his fingers that wanted him to snatch up his journal.
"Well, that explains a lot," Eisa's mouth said candidly of its own volition.
"Kíli, really! I'm fine, it's just still sinking in," protested Eisa, despite her feet still refusing to obey her commands with the proper precision.
Or any precision at all, rather. And that wasn't mentioning the slight lingering quakes in the cores of her knees. She was pretty sure that she'd never had an emotional shock like this in her life. After all, she had grown up without a real family. And yet, that too had suddenly changed, to an extent.
"And I'm still not letting go," Kíli retorted stubbornly, staring straight ahead even though he knew she would never be able to see his blush in the torchlight. He had her tucked into his side with an arm around her waist as he walked her back to her chambers.
Eisa huffed but didn't complain. There wasn't anything to complain about in the first place; only that she quite frankly wasn't used to being taken care of. Kíli's closeness and warmth were nice, and she thought she might be feeling a bit steadier by the time they reached her door.
That thought went straight out the figurative window when they stopped and she looked up into his face.
They were still very close together, and even though she could only make out half of his face in the light from the lamps, something made her want to look away but not at the same time. Sweet Valar, why was her face burning?
He blinked and the torchlight seemed to get caught in his eyes. Eisa noticed offhandedly that no matter how the rest of him got chewed up and spit out by nature and battle and Eru knew what else, his eyes never changed. It was…nice. Comforting. Steady. Strong. Like him. And he still hadn't let go of her waist.
"Are you going to be alright?" His question should have interrupted the comfortable silence, but it didn't. The question came of genuine concern, not just an expected gesture.
All of a sudden, Eisa's throat was very tight, and when no sound came out at her first attempt, she settled for a nod that was probably more vigorous than necessary.
"You look better, I think," he murmured, putting his other hand to her cheek gently, as if subconsciously. "You were a bit pale for a few moments there."
She nodded some more and then forced herself to stop. Her hands were still pressed against his chest, and it was like they were sealed there by the heat of his heartbeat. "I think I'll be alright. Maybe I'd better just sleep on it."
It was Kíli's turn to nod too much, and he struggled for a moment as he tried to think of what to say while trying not to let go of her too quickly. "I just…um." He snatched up her hands without thinking and was again surprised at how much larger his own were. "You…"
"Yes?" Eisa was surprised that she was able to say anything, for her mouth was suddenly parched, and the words seemed to be forming themselves without consulting her mind.
"Y…You looked beautiful tonight," he said without rushing it too much, but it still felt like only a blink later once he had brushed his fingers across her cheek once more and uncharacteristically retreated into the shadows.