Author's Notes:
Would like to take another opportunity to thank everyone for the input/follows/favorites. I welcome reviews from new and old readers alike. I love seeing what you all think and look forward to new ones always :)
"You're early," the queen grinned, stationed in the doorway.
"A wizard arrives precisely when he means to."
Gandalf stepped into the antechamber where Meisar had laid the small, round stone table with a plate of sweetmeats and cheese, a braid of bread, teacups, a raspberry tort. Scarcely had tea provided so plentifully, except at Bag End. Had Thorin taught her the art? he wondered in passing, thinking it unlikely though. She fixed the table in a haphazard way, with obvious effort, but the skill of one un-schooled in any sort of ceremony.
When she turned Gandalf saw her hair was only half plaited in the back. Nonetheless she dismissed the two maids who were likely in the middle of helping her accomplish the task when he came knocking. The two dwarf women slipped out quietly past them, and Meisar crossed her arms lightly, flushing aside her skirt to sit. "And that means missing the company of the mannish folk? The lord of Dale himself supped with us this evening past. We missed you, Gandalf."
"As I am well aware. I thought it more prudent to leave Thorin to his business, and treat with Bard on my own time, and for my own purpose."
"And what purpose would that be?" She cut him a wedge of the tort unevenly, placed it on a little plate in front of him.
When he sat silently and eventually tried to fumble an answer, she ducked her head, focusing awkwardly on her braid, and wondering if it had been improper to ask.
"I hear you had a fondness for red wine. I saved you several casks from dinner last night," she offered, regaining herself with a sort of awkward grace. She poured two geometric chalices to the brim. Kuthu zall tamdini ib-bund rârâk zataznishîn tu. Thorin had told her as much that morning, and it felt to her like a command, whose purpose she was not able to fully read. She felt ever the spy, the spider leading a fly down into a web.
"I am glad you have come, Gandalf. I know we have meant to take tea and speak for days now."
"Tea or wine. The latter is as well received," Gandalf offered, all but pouring the chalice down his throat in one stream.
Meisar filled his chalice again. "The wineries of Dale are esteemed. In the days of old, their reds were considered the finest east of the Misty Mountains. Even the wine cellars' holdings in Mirkwood could not compare," she told Gandalf, taking her own in small sips. An incessant scratching on the other side of the chamber door gave way to it peeling open a crack, and Fred and Redcoat sprang out in a rush of spinning tails, and leaped eagerly into Gandalf's lap, whining.
"Nonsense!" Gandalf laughed easily in response, paws tangling in his beard. "Though it is the first I have seen a dwarf keep such curs as companions."
"Am I such an improper dwarf woman?"
Another woman might ask such a thing with a playful coyness about her, but Meisar's eyes were sharp with self-concern.
"Not at all. You are the queen of Erebor. Such a choice on the part of your husband would not come to any other lady but one impeccable in her dwarvish qualities, I think," he soothed her. He watched the quick, unassuming motions of her hands, working the fistful of hair into its plait, much more orange hair still pooled in the dark seat of her lap. In a strange way, he thought it endearing she would receive him in such a state, but she was hard to read, this Meisar, who had Thorin Oakenshield's heart in her keeping, among other things one would not expect.
"Not in the least, my lady," he repeated himself, though it was only part true, not for the worse alas. "An unusual one though, yes. I've heard you are possessed of some strange talents."
"Talents?"
A worrisome feeling surged in him, low but pricking all of his senses, like a storm still far on a distant horizon. "Bearing knowledge dwarves are not known to have great reckoning in. Stone yes, but the sky, the earth. These are not common things a dwarf is well-used to. But I have heard that you read both with a certain familiarity. Dunininh, they called you. Before they called you queen, that is."
Saruman and Galadriel alike had given their orders and expected them to be obeyed. In their wisdom they had given them, the wisest of all beings no less. Who was he to go imparting such things onto a dwarf, even a queen?
"Yes," Meisar agreed, a quiet contemplative stoniness coming to her face again. "Some may even still call me such. I do not mind. I find it difficult myself to be called queen. I forget sometimes as easily."
Gandalf sighed through his nose toward her, something on the edge of his lips not quite ready to reveal itself entirely. "My lady, what do you know of the Arkenstone?"
She eyed Gandalf queerly out of one eye.
"The King's Jewel. So brilliant it commanded the allegiance of many a kingdom, corrupted the hearts of Durin's Line from Thror... and not exempting my husband." Her eyes met Gandalf's sadly. "I might have been very frightened to see him in such a state. I think... my heart would have broken."
"Indeed it would have my lady. Indeed it would have," Gandalf mumbled darkly. He placed his hand on hers lightly, a twitch under her skin that felt like a wanting to pull away, a peculiar politeness seeming to stop her from doing so. "There are many tokens in this world which inspire a very dark sort of lust that cannot be satiated. The Arkenstone is only one of many. For Thror it was a mad lust of gold that was triggered by its discovery. For others it may inspire a different line of thought, but it is an object of a potent magic whether you believe in such things or not. It overcomes whatever good sense is applied."
"You are trying to tell me something. I'm afraid I don't follow." She set down her chalice so quietly it didn't make a sound on the stone table.
"It lies in Thorin's tomb. A tomb he vacated but the mercy of the Creator, that he would be brought to you. I believe that, Meisar, with all my heart. And I tell you now, it must never be removed. Not for any circumstance. Any at all."
"We dwarves do not go digging in tombs, Gandalf. Even empty ones. It is a great sacrilege to disturb a resting place. Why would you fear such a thing?"
"Yesterday, I visited D-"
The door to the antechamber was flung open with a heavy "whoosh" and in flooded a cache of dwarrowdams, all kvetching and throwing echoes of their chatter off the walls of the chamber.
"We've come to see the wizard!" boomed Lulia.
"Can you do the smoke rings again? Can you teach me?" Yrsa followed eagerly, clutching a poppet in the elbow of her mangled arm.
"Good gracious now, you are far too young for pipe-weed." Gandalf patted the dwarfling's head and ruffled her unbraided hair. She and Anbur took a seat on either side of Gandalf on the settee.
"It is a nasty habit," Gandalf continued, his voice the only half serious chide of a stern mother, as he began to blow smoke rings into the air to the girls' delight. Their sister Virta soon followed, harried, with the healer Eda, and Siv, who was her kin. The latter had sculpted peaks of hair exactly like Nori's but no, that couldn't be, no, no.
The dwarrowdams clustered around Gandalf in the crowded antechamber. They refilled his chalice, his plate with another slice of tort, offered him ale and cheese and seemed ruffled when he declined another bite.
"What a good and gracious company of women you keep here, my queen," Gandalf managed to compliment when they had settled down and flanked their queen protectively, across from him. Only Anbur and Yrsa remained beside him, fighting for space on his lap. The older dwarrowdams laughed when the smoke burst from his cheeks in a great poof as they plunked their weight down excitedly on him, knocking the air out.
Meisar dipped her head graciously. "It may grow over time depending on our needs, but for now, these are the only ladies I need or want. We crossed a continent together. We have each other's trust that way."
"Indeed. One must have such a thing. The female sort especially," Gandalf agreed. He studied this unexpected court quietly. The dwarrowdams garbed themselves proudly and with a certain panache- velvets and damasks and good furs, their hair elaborately arranged, their jewels worn at neck and wrist and on every finger, even in their hair. In comparison the queen was a plainer sort, in a dark loose gown of midnight-blue and burnished-gold damask over bodice and a sheer pale partlett.
Gandalf chuckled with disbelief, then a strange sort of serenity. "I see much renewed beneath this mountain, good things that grow. A prosperity of love, and gladness, where I, anyhow, thought it least to spring. It is worth all the treasure that has ever flowed from its depths."
"The treasure has given us most of the cause we have to be prosperous again. Why, even to exist at all," Emli countered to Gandalf lightly. "Alas," she went on, smiling. "I would be a pauper and have love. I would beg and my loyalty would be to my husband, above any who promised me a hot meal or a thing to barter."
"One day a pauper this one'd lose 'er mind," Siv jibed under her breath.
"Have I told you lately Siv how ridiculous you look?" Emli retorted. "If Nori is so wealthy now why can't he spare you enough to buy sufficient material for a dress that covers you shoulders? Is he is so miserly another yard of taffeta won't do?"
"Nori likes me shoulders just like this," Siv dripped with her lopsided wicked grin, squaring them, pushing out her chest in Emli's direction.
"Aye, Dwalin likes mine too," Freyda swooned lightly. Her eyes turned truculent again and gave Siv a dithering glance. "Wouldn't have all the kingdom gazing at 'em though."
"I have only just been asked properly in courtship," Freyda gushed, answering Gandalf's wordless inquiry. Typically the curiosity of any but a dwarf would not be rewarded, but her heart might as well have been worn on the outside of her dress.
"My sincerest congratulations. I am certain he is the greatest integrity that would court a woman of your... esteem."
"It is Mister Dwalin who courts her," Gyda informed Gandalf proudly.
"Dwalin? Dwalin, son of F-" Gandalf inquired again half in disbelief.
"Fundin, aye. That one," Freyda confirmed proudly.
"Swoons like a pretty mannish maid with flowers in 'er hair when this one comes about he does," Siv teased.
"Sure Nori bats his eye the same when yer bosoms are pushed up so high, wondering what loot he can hide down there," Freyda retorted. "Dwalin's got honor about him at least."
Gandalf laughed at the exchanges between them which seemed to ignore his presence altogether, but rather to his amusement. "After this place has seen so much death and destruction, what except the power of love could truly make it better again? It seems the rare power that can stand against anything."
"Anything?" the small one, Yrsa, asked earnestly.
"Yes," replied Gandalf.
"What about an evil wizard? Are there any evil wizards?" entreated her sister, climbing on the settee beside him again.
Gandalf did not answer immediately. Instead he gave the queen and her fair-haired lady in waiting another clandestine study. The faces of the two dwarf women were so plainly, so blissfully in love with two of the most foreboding dwarves he had ever known, and as assuredly loved in return. and all of the weight of his worry seemed to fall away, at least in the moment.
"Evil wizards? Of course not," he chuckled. "But evil, yes. Evil is like an ember in a fire that refuses to die. It may flicker down. But it can rise again, and burn a great section away from the world. But you should not worry, dear child. There is good in this world, and under this mountain, that is strong to stand against it. Come what may, my dear, come what may."
.
II
Bard and his delegation came again down the long sky-walk toward the throne to bid their farewells early in the morning. Thror had always seemed so comfortable, so commanding in that seat, whereas Thorin suddenly gained an urge to slouch in it.
"For your food and ale and company you have our gracious thanks, my king," offered Bard, staidly.
"You are welcome my lord. What sort of king would I be should I allow my guests to go hungry?" Thorin pursed his lips, resisting his own politeness. "A messenger will be sent to the city when your cache has been forged. A week's time, no more, I think. And when spring comes and our merchants set on the roads themselves, we may discuss this further."
Bard turned back as he departed, the taciturn eyes giving off the slightest bit of light. "I was right after all," he said to Thorin.
"About what?" The king sat up straighter on the throne, at attention.
Bard smiled mildly out of the corner of his mouth. "It seems you have found something more precious than gold. Perhaps we had crossed a threshold into a new world after all."
.
Dis sat up in her chair as the door to her chambers quietly opened. When he entered, Thorin greeted his sister reverently, kissing her hand, her cheek, giving her cold clutched fists a firm grasp in his own hands.
Her coldness alarmed him, her listlessness. "The lord of Dale has departed," he told her. Her eyes rose defensively at him, as if there were some other meaning behind the simplest of those words. There always was.
"I have no business to be supping alongside the men of Dale. What use am I? So they can bear me their sympathies and tear open my wounds again?" Dis said.
"I would not have you do any of that, if you did not wish. You know that," Thorin assured her gently. "Come to dinner tonight. It will be only dwarves, and our own kin no less. Only Balin, Dwalin, his lady Freyda, Oin and Gloin and their kin."
"And Meisar?" her clouded eyes suddenly were hopeful.
Thorin kissed her hand again. "Of course."
.
They took dinner together in the antechamber of the council hall. Dis was in black again and her rubies. The steward came several times with the ale but at least she was eating, Thorin assured himself, something in him twisting, pulling, like a wire drawn too taut. Dwalin might have sensed it, but he seemed imbued with that same tautness of his own, a kinder one alas. Freyda was pretty in cream brocade and pale blue. He still fumbled when he tried to talk to her in the presence of others, but it was endearing in its own way. As well he should, Thorin thought.
Finally she had drunk too much and burst into tears seated between Balin and Meisar as she was. Oin offered to escort her to her chambers and make her a potion, and she did so, leaning heavy on his arm, and begging Thorin not to follow. Gandalf almost did himself, but Thorin's truculent gaze forced him to sit again.
Oin returned a few moments later. "Her highness wishes to take a moment to herself and return to her chamber unaccompanied."
"You should have gone with her, Oin. All the way to her door, regardless," Thorin growled, his disapproval quiet and cutting. Oin nodded helplessly. Even Gandalf's disapproval seemed to land on him. Aroin's especially. Her was always the worst of it too.
"I will keep it in my mind, my king. My apologies," Oin said, contritely.
"Forgiven," Thorin muttered. He felt Meisar's hand on his, heavy with worry, gentle enough to soothe his discomfiture in the moment.
"I will see to her," murmured his wife, her eyes fixed toward him in a dutiful gaze, one he had almost missed seeing. "If you would excuse my presence for a spell."
"Do as you must, my queen," he permitted, quietly.
Oliada walked with her. When the Blacklock turned toward the royals' chambers on the next level, Meisar halted her. "No, she is not in her rooms," Meisar informed Oliada quietly. There had been no words, no open indication, but she knew.
Together the two dwarrowdams walked the long length of the kingdom down to the necropolis. Stairways and more stairways, long loggias of stone spanning ever-darker depths, and it only seemed to get darker the deeper under the mountain they ventured. Oliada carried her brazier, an open flame, as the light and heat of the great forges ebbed and they came ever closer to the necropolis that was a long, dark level below it. The walk there always felt miles in length. Few had even taken notice of them along the path there. In her cloak with the hood drawn, Meisar was indistinguishable from any other dwarrowdam, and for the immediate occasion, preferred it all the same.
Oliada hated the tombs. It was one of the only things Meisar had ever known her to admit without hesitation, even some enthusiasm. Darkness in itself frightened her anyway, inexplicably.
"You don't have to go in if you don't want to, Oliada. I won't be long."
"As my queen commands it." Her eyes were dutiful. Her expression never moved. But that weight, that quiet fear, betrayed itself even in the sternest of their sorts.
"Why are you afraid of darkness, Oliada?"
Her narrow eyes fixed colorlessly at Meisar. "My queen, you ask wizard why all ought fear dark."
.
The tombs conflated into each other in the growing dark. Sconces were lit every tenth yard or so along the walls, but they seemed pinpricks within a darkness above and below that felt infinite, able to swallow their light in a breath. The flames didn't even lick from side to side though, or up, or down. There was no wind here. No wind, no light, and the air was always cold and sharp.
She came down the steps to the royal tombs on silent feet. The lantern in her hand lit the dark only a few feet in front of her. So she followed the quiet weeping of the woman in the dark, at the far end of the burial chamber where the newest ones were forged.
"Sister?" she whispered, aimlessly, but no reply came. She held the lantern in front of her as far as her arm would stretch. A sliver of light caught Dis in it. Thorin's sister looked up with wide startled eyes.
"Kharkel!" the princess put her hand to her chest. It took her several ragged breaths to regain herself from the shock.
"I am sorry. I didn't mean to," Meisar gasped, backed away slowly.
"Don't go," Dis half-wept, her face turned away again. Crimson rings bordered the robin's-egg blue of her eyes, red from crying in their whites. Dried tears on her cheeks made a wretched film over the skin.
"You were wearing black again," Meisar commented, more a question she only vaguely understood she was asking.
"Before and after the year-markers pass, my dear sister. They've been gone two now."
"Thorin didn't tell me."
"Oh Meisar, he was never much for anniversaries. Not even of his own birth. I do not expect he will mark them with any fanfare, the good or the bad. It's not in his nature."
Dis rose up to sit on her haunches before Fili's tomb. "I would feel it an affront to come down to these Halls in merrier shades. Every time I see these tombs I feel as if my rubies become part of my body. I feel them grafting to my skin. Reminding me."
"Why do you come so oft when it gives you this grief to see them here?"
"I cannot leave them down here alone. Kili was terrified of the dark when he was young. My babe, he would howl like a wolf when the wind blew the candles out. It is so dark down here, Meisar. So dark…" Dis's voice lowered to a thin whisper at the end.
Meisar rested a hand on her shoulder blades. A suffocating, sharp heat radiated through her clothing, as if the grief had burned so hot inside it filtered through like a chimney, all of the toxic black smoke oozing out of her pores.
Meisar rubbed a hand over her back, soothing her, as a mother might a child. As she might have once, as my own mother might have. Perhaps in some distant subconscious, she remembered the touch of a loving hand in her own grief, however it had expressed itself.
"Oliada tells me that in the East they put their dead in tombs with a borehole of light to shine in. So they can find their way to the halls of the fathers. Here, Balin tells me the dark helps them rest."
Dis made a small, wistful guffawing sound at that. "Not Kili. Kili was like you in one way. When he was young, he taught himself the art of being guided by the stars. He adored the sight of the moon. Sometimes, being deep underground frightened him. I never understood why. But I do now."
"Perhaps it is a strange skill a dwarf may use in exile, the guidance of stars," Meisar suggested, quietly. She could almost see the sweet, impish quality of his face. Beardless but for stubble, a smile with such a quality she could never imagine on Thorin's face, even in his joyful moments.
Dis finally met her eyes, their weight like stones. "I do what I must do to stave off an impenetrable darkness, Meisar. Thorin does not do himself well to judge me."
"He loved them, Dis. As assuredly as their mother. Did not he raise them from the time of their youth?"
She didn't answer. Her head wobbled and swam. The middle of her throat tightened and her lips sucked into her teeth and trembled ahead of words that seemed ugly to speak but desperate make themselves known to nonetheless. "Milk of the poppy in enough cups, with enough potency, would end my suffering for good, dear sister."
Anger flashed hot in Meisar's chest. "And should you, the doors to the Father's Hall shall be closed to you for all times. Dis!" She held her by the shoulders and shook her, almost violently, drawing away her hands quickly after a few hearty jostles, the tips of her fingers growing hot with shame.
"Oh Dis, forgive me. I shouldn't have."
"You should have and more. Maybe you'll do me the favor and slap me next time, and leave a fine print on my face to remind in the morning, lest I forget," her sad pale eyes widened in self-pity. Then she slumped again, resting her head on the protruding knob on Fili's tomb.
"I've made myself look a pitiable fool," Dis groveled. She brushed a lock of tear-dampened hair from her face, picking it out of the corner of her eye, peeling it from her cheek. "I never wept when I was a child. I knew I had to be strong. Where did I forget that?"
Meisar pushed back Dis's hair gently, the wet, matting strand she had missed that still clung to her cheekbone. Her eyes, expressionless, didn't even flinch in their sockets.
"That is not strength really. It's just denial," Dis concluded.
"But you are strong," Meisar countered, though her words felt wooden in her own mouth.
Dis shook her head, a high, thick black brow cocked at Meisar. "All denial, sweet sister. I cannot accept it, it is true. Do you know when I cannot sleep I see them? I put my arms out to them, to hold my sons, and then I wake, and I come around to find only darkness in my arms. This is all I have left of them. So here I am, again. In my head though I am always here. I am always…"
"Sister, I grieve by your side."
Grieve, but should I watch with open eyes? In some corner of her mind she could hear Gandalf's voice again. There was something he had no told her. But no, it could not be. What worry for, or use could he have, for this wretched lady? This broken creature. In relation to things that seemed, in the bloody pool of her anguish, beyond her care.
Dis fumbled in her girdle pouch, pulled out her locket. She kissed the visages of her sons beneath their protection of glass, over and over.
"I am sorry that you couldn't say goodbye," Meisar whispered.
"No, no," Dis sniffled high through a choked sob. She took two silver clasps and a gold one, and a black stone from the pouch. "Gandalf rescued these for me you see. The silvers are my sons', the gold Thorin's. And this stone…." She smiled wistfully. "Is nothing more than a trinket really, a good luck charm, to ward off the bad. I gave it to Kili. He was still very much a child, and put more into little superstitions than not. They said they found it clutched tighter in his hand than his bow…"
She pushed the stone hard into Meisar's palm and withdrew suddenly. Dis doubled over again, her weight on Meisar's shoulder so dense she had to brace herself just to hold the weight of her angst.
"Oh Fili my golden-headed babe. My dear sweet little Kili..." She pressed the locket to her lips and wept. "Abrâsh. It is too much to bear."
Meisar shouldered Dis's grief, literally, her tears now wetting the heavy fabric of her cloak clean through. Dis's tears still felt hot, sizzling, when they touched her skin at last, and then they grew cold, unbearably cold.
"What force can bear a mother's grief?" Dis bemoaned. "Oh, I apologize. What would you know? Lone woman. My brother's wife..."
"Love," Meisar answered. "A mother's love. Do not forget that you loved them. Or that the living still have it to give. Do not let it slip your mind. It is the only thing that may keep us alive yet."
"Us?" Dis's voice was a muffled hoarse half-breath.
"I... don't know exactly. Just words of wisdom I heard from a friend."
.
"I went to the council chamber. Balin said I would find you up here."
Thorin squinted against the setting sun toward the figure moving toward him, bundled in a heavy extant cloak of dark nappy wool, the fur collar drawn in front and clasped in a jeweled brooch, the hood drawn over her head. The orange hairline, as orange as the line at the horizon, revealed itself and the king smiled with a woebegone relief toward his queen.
"I thought to walk and think on things," said Thorin.
The sharp orange and reddish-pink of the winter sunset painted the sky harshly above them and toward the horizon stretched on. Bundled in her furs, she stood close to Thorin and gazed out over the horizon from the terrace above the Front Gate.
"It will snow soon," Meisar predicted, though the sky was still clear.
"How do you know?"
"Old instincts I suppose. I saw many changes of season. I learned to read the sky and the earth alike. Sometimes it's hard to forget," she sighed, gazing upward at the single emerging star that blinked once at her through a thin, moving veneer of cloud. "This mountain is home. A home I have never lived in. But it feels the same as coming back to an old place after many years. I suppose any dwarf well knows they belong in halls of stone, even if the stars are the most beautiful sight."
She wondered if he knew. If he remembered. A child afraid of the dark (as all ought be), in love with the moon. But his face betrayed no recognition.
"You belonged here all along. The Creator made you to be my queen, beneath this mountain." She felt the warmth through her heavy winter clothes of his arms coming around her, pressing to her back his body flush. She placed her cold hand over his where it rested on her torso.
"As well I know now. But snow..." Meisar gave a small smile. "You can smell it on the wind. One never forgets that."
"My queen, you may prove far more important than ever you could imagine."
"Oh Thorin, what am I to the politics of this world?"
"Judging from your performance with Bard, a necessity," Thorin offered plainly. "You have a gentler soul than I. Believe it or not."
"How is such a thing measured?" Meisar pondered.
He sighed into her, heavily. "You once told me that something queer was afoot in this world. You told me that you felt in the earth itself. I thought that a strange proclamation for a dwarf. I still do."
Meisar stared at the ember of light flickering in a tall narrow brazier on the outer wall of Dale. It puffed out, leaving the braziers on the city walls unevenly lit. "Small rumbles of some nature or another. Sometimes they feel ominous, but I cannot say in true what it is. I have no windows into the future. Perhaps you should ask Gandalf."
"I'm asking you. Because perhaps I trust you with more assurance. What does your heart tell you?"
The darkened brazier over Dale was lit again, a flame ballooning out, retreating to burn even with the others. It was not the Dale of her girlhood, with its gaiety and sun-bleached stone, tile roofs. Harsh, sharp corners to everything, fortified almost as if a war were expected at any moment, it rose now. But perhaps then they would be safe to, under such grim but wizened guidance. The same, she remembered the pride that had made light in Bard's face, his modesty forcing his expression toward staidness, alas, when she had praised his daughter. Perhaps love shall save them too.
She rubbed the tip of her thumb over Thorin's knuckles. "My heart tells me we are well-defended against anything and all that may be. My hands, and my face tell me we ought get inside. It is so cold, Thorin."
He kissed the cold surface of her hair. "Fear not winter's breath. I know a place we will warm quickly, without its interference."
.
She sat on Thorin's lap in his chair before the fire, his head rested into her neck, his breath tight and worried.
"I would sleep now, my husband," she laughed, coyly, trying to soothe him, to comfort him with that if anything. She rose and stretched. "I am so very exhausted."
The chill was so stubbornly hewn into the air even with the fire going. Their bodies made a nest of heat and comfort against it, climbing into bed clothed as it were. She nuzzled against the sturdy linen of his sleep-shirt.
Eventually he rose, smothered the braziers on the wall and even the candles, and drawing the curtains around their bed so they were in total darkness. Again she sought the warmth at his side. Without sight, she focused on texture, the smooth linen of his clothes and where it met the warm, bewhiskered sliver of skin at its draw-laces. The pebbles of nipples under its sturdy veneer. His familiar smell, vestigial with the pine soap he had washed with.
In the dark he placed his arms around her ready enough for sleep. Her nightgown felt flimsy; warming her was a comforting task. But his mind never slept. It was the same years before, when he had slept in the total darkness of a chamber much like this, on a bed of pelts low to the ground and perfectly roomy. The roaring hearths of the Blue Mountains, deep underground, had always welcomed the weary dwarrow. They were still carving ever deeper, blasting and digging and shouldering loads of rock away, and he, a king, had stood with them, wearing little more than sweat as they carved out walls and caverns and great naves, trying to make it livable, trying to make it a home that would never quite own the title. Dwarves of all kinds had dwelt in his Halls there- earthy dwarves as the coal miners of the southern part of the mountain range, and the stubbornest of wealthy exiles, who had followed him loyally all the way from Erebor, pattering through in garments of fine, hardy wool and velvet, liberally and ever carefully patched and sewn back to semblance. The last scraps of the life they had known. Like him, they had never let go.
And he would not still, come what may.
.
Kuthu zall tamdini ib-bund rârâk zataznishîn tu- When ale enters the head, secrets fly out.
Kharkel- Fright of All Frights
Abrâsh- Pain
