Traditionally, dwarf weddings end with the newly married couple, or group, entering a week long seclusion. Before they managed to create the contraceptive charms this week would have allowed them ample time to learn and explore one another at a pace of their own rather than a rushed consummation on the wedding night. Now it is more of an opportunity for those in question to learn to live with one another properly, take care of making changes to the home provided by one or the other, and enjoy themselves in whatever way they deem fit.
For Billana, Fili and Kili this means a number of things. The rooms that they have come to are the ones in the royal wing that the three of them had decided to take as their own. The apartment will likely need months of work to be made comfortable, even if an afternoon of intense cleaning has made it liveable. The main bedroom, at least has been cleaned and their bedrolls placed upon the huge bed of carved stone and furs. It rather resembles a nest to Billana's mind, but it is comfortable and warm on the rare occasion when she finds herself alone in it. There is also a private bath in the apartment, which she strongly suspects that Fili and Kili used while she was bathing with Nori, that is filled from a large copper tank. The tank itself has an ancient heating charm on it, so the water that comes from it is always the right temperature and they spend a lot of time in the bath just enjoying feeling clean. Being married and out of sight of the rest of the Company seems to have made Billana's normally wild curls a temptation that neither of her husbands can resist and she grows accustomed to feeling their fingers in her hair as they weave both practical and utterly ludicrous styles through it.
Idleness, however, is not something that suits any of them. Fili and Kili have been raised with their duties and the need to support their people, especially after losing their fathers, and Billana has come from a home of her own that needed constant work. This apartment will take time and care to restore, although she begins to see signs of opulence and wealth that she will struggle to become accustomed to having, and as much as they would like to spend their time relaxing together it isn't in their natures. This is not to say that they spend all their time working, rather that they use their time to begin sorting through the belongings that have been long left abandoned. Fili finds a number of novels, some in Khuzdul which he tells her he will use to help Billana improve her grasp of the language, and others in the common tongue. Some of the latter make her blush to the tips of her ears when she flicks through them, but she enjoys lounging with them all the same and sharing the task of reading from them aloud to one another. Fili is happier to join in this time, away from the scrutiny of his uncle and the need to appear the sensible heir. This becomes especially true when Kili emerges from what must have been his grandmother's study with several magical texts in hand.
"I'd thought these lost," he says as he waves them at Fili. "Uncle was never able to find them for me."
Billana has to physically remove the books to get him to come to dinner. She isn't without her own distractions, the garden outside will need a great deal of preparation to restore it and the first thing to do is remove the long dead weeds and bushes so that the ground can be made ready for new plants. The practical part of her wants to make sure the garden has a large vegetable and herb patch. The herbs, at least, Fili will need for his healing because sometimes an enhanced poultice or ointment is better than pouring the gift into someone, especially given the fact that bodies build up a resistance to magical healing over time. Besides, even the most wealthy and important hobbits in the Shire keep a well stocked vegetable garden and she would miss being able to get her fingers into the dirt and grow her own food. She doesn't much like cooking, another thing which had made her something of an outcast in the eyes of the other hobbits, but the little she does for them over those seven days she enjoys more than she ever has. It must be because she is cooking for those that she loves rather than for only herself, she decides, and she is certain that the contentment she feels in providing for them like this will only increase when it is her own produce that she is preparing and setting onto the table.
Unfortunately, the seven days pass all too quickly and soon enough they find themselves back among the others. It is immediately clear that while Billana, Fili and Kili have been able to rest, relax and recuperate, things have not been so easy for the Company. Thorin is still well and truly in the grip of whatever curse Smaug lay upon him, his skin even greyer than it had been when the three of them entered their time of seclusion. He mutters to himself constantly, when he isn't in the treasury sifting through the gold that is piled there. Balin admits to them that he only allowed that because Thorin became agitated if kept away from it and it has become easier to allow him in there and risk further complications from the dragon's magic than to keep him out. Consequently, the others have begun to dismantle the body of the dragon, a task that will likely take months. His claws and teeth are not silver, as Billana believed, but mithril and have been carefully set aside so that they can be melted down and worked into priceless pieces. The mithril mines in Moria, she is told, are long lost to them and to have this when the kingdom is just beginning to find its feet again will be seen as a good omen. For now, however, they are being carefully concealed in a treasure chamber that not even Smaug had managed to find, the entrance hidden in one of the great pillars of the treasury that takes them down to a small room that is filled with pieces that Billana would not have thought of as valuable at first glance. There are a number of axes, swords and knives stored there, along with other great pieces that Billana doesn't have a name for but that must have been very valuable for Thrain to store them here. Plates of solid gold, encrusted with jewels that seem to glow that she is told are shards of the Arkenstone from when it was shaped so that it could be placed in the throne, are piled high. The Raven crown, which had been thought lost, has also been placed in here, and she discovers that it is a crown of mithril set with large thin sheets of some dark gem that absorbs the light.
The great treasury of Thrain might be filled with gold and gems beyond comprehension of wealth, but she suspects that the contents of this room are the things that he truly treasured before he lost his mind to his lust for gold.
Now out of their time of seclusion, Fili and Kili join Balin and Ori in the old library looking for a way to help Thorin. Billana takes her turn of watching at the gates, avoiding the dwarf king when she can. Even though Kili had checked over the Arkenstone when they had entered their time of seclusion, and returned it to Thorin when they had emerged, Thorin is still suspicious of them. The few times when she is alone with him he demands to know what plans the three of them had made together, tells her that he knows that they plan to steal his throne from him and that their return of the Arkenstone is a ploy to lull him into a false sense of security. On one occasion he even throws the stone at her, raging and screaming that she is a thief and a liar when she catches it out of the air rather than taking the risk that it will shatter on the floor. Fortunately, that time Nori had been watching them nearby in silence and she had been quick to get Billana out of the room, without the stone, while Dwalin dealt with the rage that Thorin had fallen into after being drawn by the shouting.
After that everyone has done their best to make sure that Billana and Thorin are never alone together and Billana spends more time on the walls, or in the air, watching. Her uneasiness has been growing with every passing day. She knows that the Men of the Lake must have realised by now that the dragon is dead and gone. There had once been smoke visible from the broken gates into the mountain as a reminder that the dragon still lived there, after all. It is long gone by now, as is the smoke from Mirkwood and if the source of that fire is as they suspect it cannot be long until Thranduil concludes that not only have the dwarves survived their escape from his dungeon, they have achieved that which they sought to. So she takes to the skies, which Fili and Kili are less than thrilled about, and joins the ravens of Erebor as they swoop over the landscape and keep watch. Nearly two weeks after emerging from her quiet time away with her husbands one of the ravens spots Dains troops moving towards them from the east. They are still three days away, at best, but Billana feels her worry ease knowing that soon it will not just be the fourteen of them inside the mountain.
Fili and Kili are less easy about it. With Thorin's current state of mind it's very likely that Dain will decide that he is in no fit state to serve as king and that will cause problems of its own. Thorin has lucid moments, but they are few and end violently whenever someone inadvertently mentions the gold. Which brings Billana to the next thing that has been spotted, and far closer at that.
"The Men and Elves are coming," she tells her husbands.
Kili groans and puts his head in his hands. They are no closer to finding a cure for Thorin which they know will work and that they can easily make happen. A clear and absolute threat to the life of those he loves and the safety of his home will shock him out of it, permanently if the threat is great enough, but with Dain on the way any threat will be viewed as an inconvenience at the most which will be dealt with by his arriving kin. Failing that, only one who is a true servant of the Valar would have power enough to undo such a curse.
"And where could we find someone like that?" Fili snaps irritably. "We've been over this, Kili, there has to be something else. We haven't see a servant of the Valar since the Seer left us in the days before the Corrupter fell."
"Actually," Billana cuts in softly, "I think we might know someone, if the twins weren't tugging on toe hair that is."
A.N: Do not get used to this. It was mother's day here in the UK so I got time to do my own thing and I used my lie in to type most of this up. I finished it while procrastinating typing up results of a science experiment for my degree. The bricks and mortar universities are closed. The distance learning continues.
Happy mother's day to all the mummies out there from the UK. Stay safe and well, everyone!
