A.N: I'm going to try to keep to a daily posting schedule so that my house move doesn't affect you all. Mostly I just need to edit what I have. It's all typed up and I just need to get to the computer when I'm not filling boxes.
Chapter Eight: Ori
T.A.2937 Ered Luin.
Ori pauses in his writing to look towards the door of Master Balin's private office. The sound of raised voices has been clear for the last twenty minutes, ever since King Thorin arrived with a black mood swirling around him, but they have fallen silent now and that concerns Ori. His experience of closed doors and raised voices are with Dori and Nori and that usually leads to broken furniture, bruises and Nori leaving in the middle of the night for months at a time.
Ori knows what it's about, he's been Balin's assistant for twelve years and he's been privy to a great many of the secrets that the royal family carry about. He knows this is about Erebor, or more correctly about reclaiming it. Thorin's mind is often turned towards that mountain and the safety it could bring their people. His arrival this day has come only an hour after Ori had delivered a report on the latest mine collapse and the loss of fifteen lives where the bad rock that is so much a part of the Blue Mountains had once again given way. There was a reason this area was mostly abandoned by the dwarves of old, the instability of the stone was one of the greatest parts of it. The fanatics, those so devoted to Mahal that they believe all dwarves to be superior in all ways, all claim that their suffering since Erebor fell is a sign that the line of Durin has become weak and unsuited to rule, that their long association with other races is what has led to their downfall. Ori might have believed that when he was a child and going to bed at night with hunger gnawing in his stomach no matter how hard Dori worked to put food on the table. He knows better now.
"Even if we had the support of the seven kingdoms, Thorin!" Balin yells and Ori flinches.
The words are so clear that for a moment he thinks Balin has opened the door and caught him in his thoughts. A glance in that direction shows that the door remains closed and Ori bends his head back to his work. It's painstaking, copying from Balin's original draft of a contract for a company to journey to Erebor. Quite what they are going to do when they get there Ori doesn't know. Part of him doesn't want to know because more than likely they are going to end up incinerated by a highly irritated dragon. The greater part of Ori, however, longs to go there. He wants to be a part of this quest even if it ends in his death because he wants to be more than Balin's assistant. He wants to be more than Dori's little brother kept safe and coddled and without a weapon of his own because Dori can't afford to buy him one. He wants to find himself and he doesn't think he'll be able to achieve that here in the Blue Mountains where they are comfortable, but that comfort is built on the daily struggles of everyone to keep the settlement safe, whole and secure. He remembers the orc raids, he knows that they have died down over the last decade but for nearly a century before that they have been heavily targeted every winter. It isn't just the poor who lose their lives then and too many of their 'dams and dwarflings are killed in every attack. They need somewhere safer, somewhere where they can live under the stone as they should, and unless they can find somewhere new that leaves only taking back one of their lost strongholds. Any of them will likely lead to a slaughter, whether they face one dragon or a dozen cold drakes or thousands of orcs.
Ori keeps his head down when the King-in-Exile storms past him, Thorin's ire always burns quickly and hot and the occupants of New Belegost have long learnt that it is best to avoid his attention rather than experience it. Only Dwalin, Balin and Lady Dis seem to be able to face him without crumbling once he turns on them. Nori says it's because they're all touched in the head, but Ori thinks it's because they are the only ones who know Thorin well enough to be able to tell difference between when he is saying something because he means it and when it is empty rage.
"How are those contracts going, lad?" Balin asks from the door. He looks exhausted when Ori turns to him, the argument seems to have added years to his face in those few minutes.
"I've managed five today," he replies. "I want to sign one for myself." He adds on impulse.
"You're young yet," Balin smiles, "why would you want to?"
"Because I'm young," Ori shrugs, "and if I don't do this now, I'll probably stay here forever and never see anything other that the settlements around Ered Luin. How can I do the job you're training me for if I've never seen the world?" They both know that Balin is training Ori as his replacement. In a few years he'll have to start working more closely with prince Fili (a prospect Ori isn't looking forward to) and this quest will be a good opportunity to get to know him a little better.
"You make a fair point, but you won't be able to do it if you're burnt to a cinder either," Balin pulls a face. "I'll speak with Thorin," he continues, "but I make no promises."
Ori, barely, manages to stop himself from cheering. He knows that Thorin won't turn away anyone willing to join him (although he nearly had Fili and Kili). Instead he smiles his thanks and bends his head back to his work with only a brief thought on how he is going to break this news to Dori and Nori
T.A. 2941 The Great East Road.
Ori watches Bluebell as she laughs with Kili and feels guilt twinge at him. She is a good, kind and caring girl who has opened her heart to Fili, Kili and himself in friendship and he had been glad of it. He has known the two younger princes for so many years and he still can't quite interact with them as anything other than Balin's assistant. They share very few interests in the grand scheme of things and have had very different upbringings. Fili, by all accounts, will be a great leader one day if he can ever be permitted to step out of his uncle's shadow and Kili will likely be his War Master if his head for tactics is anything to go by, even if he is a jeweller by craft. For years Ori had written the pair of them off as stupid, ignorant of the world and frivolous with their days, liking nothing more than to be on the practice fields together sparring or larking about New Belegost without a thought in their heads for the poor parts of the town. Now he knows how wrong he was, and it has taken a hobbit, of all beings, to show him that.
"Find out more about the hobbits," Balin had ordered him, only hours after taking to the road, and Ori has followed those instructions.
Lingering on the fringes of her interactions with Fili and Kili hadn't got him very far, he doesn't have Nori's knack of listening unobtrusively. For the most part the conversations had begun in that frivolous manner that characterises all new acquaintances and that Ori has never been able to move past with Fili and Kili for all the effort the pair have made. He recognises it now, of course, that even when they spoke of useless little things they were trying to draw the same from him, but Ori has never been good with people. He has always hung too close to Dori to really form strong friendships and been too fearful of being abandoned (which is always how it feels when Nori disappears for months on end) to really trust anyone he might get close to. Bluebell notices him listening, of course, and he expected Fili (who she was riding with that morning) to tell her not to bother. Instead, the prince had smiled at him kindly when Ori had made the effort and soon the conversation had shifted enough that instead of three people talking and joking it had become four.
It has been a little over a week, now, since they left Bree and although Ori knows she has secrets that she keeps close Bluebell is as open with them as they are with her. Ori has told her about Dori and Nori, how they crowd around him and stifle him. How they followed on the quest because they didn't trust Thorin to keep him safe rather than because they actually wanted anything to do with it. In return she tells him about her family, her aunts and uncles and cousins who barely talked to her before her father was killed by orcs let alone after. She tells about caring for her mother during her long illness and sending for Frerin because the missing prince was Belladonna's oldest friend and she had hoped he would help where her family had abandoned them. She knows dwarf secrets, Ori realises, a few words of Khuzdul and the meanings of certain braids. She even seems to know a little something about the Stone Sense, although likely just that it exists, and has heard many tales that aren't always told to outsiders.
"Where do hobbits come from?" He asks when Kili moves away in response to a question from Thorin. Bluebell blinks.
"The same place as dwarves I would imagine," she smiles playfully. "When a boy hobbit and a girl hobbit feel certain urges and act upon them…"
"That isn't what I meant," Ori interrupts and is frustrated to find that he is blushing. Fili, who has settled in the space vacated by Kili, laughs and hands her a steaming mug.
"Only with other hobbits?" He asks.
"Well I would imagine if it were with a dwarf the resulting offspring would be given a different name," Bluebell grins. "Like a dwobbit." She takes a mouthful of her tea and pulls a face.
"If you don't like tea, why do you drink it?" Fili nudges her, making some of the hot liquid splash out and she moves her mug to avoid her skirts.
"Because all hobbit women start drinking it in their tweens and carry on drinking it until they're ready to have children," she replies reasonably. "Can you imagine how many siblings I would have if Mama didn't drink this stuff every day?" All eyes drift across the camp where Frerin and Belladonna are curled up together. Belladonna is also drinking from a mug and Ori wonders how he missed the fact the hobbits are the only two who drink tea morning and night, even Dori has given it up on the road.
"Not all that many, surely?" Fili asks.
"If we didn't drink this the Shire's over crowding situation would be a dire fact rather than a certain future," Bluebell shakes her head, "every hobbit wife would spend her days pregnant with a new born and tweens would be kept apart at all costs because experimenting would have long term consequences. It tastes utterly vile, but at least if I wanted to take Ori somewhere private and demonstrate what boys and girls do to make baby hobbits there won't be any baby hobbits."
"Why Ori?" Fili demands in mock outrage as Ori feels his cheeks flush scarlet.
"Because your head is plenty big enough as it is," she pokes his shoulder, "no need to give it a reason to swell up even more."
"That's not the only thing you could make swell, you know," Fili winks and she rolls her eyes, and turns a lovely shade of pink, but ignores him in favour of answering Ori's initial question.
"We don't know exactly where hobbits come from originally," she barely moves when Kili flops down in front of her and wraps an arm around her ankles. The princes, Ori has learnt, like to touch. "We know we wandered for about four hundred years and lost a lot of our knowledge of what came before in that time, we've only been in the Shire for about ten centuries, but we hold on to a lot of the traditions that came from when we searched for a home, to remind us of it. We do remember that we were created by Yavanna and that we were made to be the caretakers of all things that grow." Her eyes flicker over to her mother and Frerin, Ori has noticed the way they glow when the sunsets. He's tried to bring it up, but she changes the subject every time and Fili and Kili must know something because neither of them press for more information. "Things like this," she adds, pointing to a patch of wild strawberry plants near them.
Ori watches in amazement as tiny white flowers appear on the plants. Watches as they lose their petals and tiny strawberries grow and ripen in front of his eyes. Then he looks at Bluebell's face. Her eyes aren't just glowing, now, they shine with indigo light. Fili isn't watching the plant, Ori realises, he's watching Bluebell and utterly enraptured, though Ori doubts he's aware of that. Kili dives straight in as soon as the strawberries are ripe, picking every one of the tiny fruits and only sharing when Fili kicks him and reminds him to.
"Hobbity magics are so much better than ours," the youngest prince grins. "Ours is rubbish, it can't do anything like this." Fili scowls and kicks him again and Ori remembers that Fili has a very strong Stone Sense.
"It must have it's uses or your Maker wouldn't have given it to you," Bluebell shakes her head, "and one day we'll break down and share all of our little secrets, but for now this is all you're getting from me. All of you." She adds as she plucks a strawberry Kili has tossed out of the air and pops it into her mouth. At her feet the brunet grumbles but she ignores him and leans against Fili with a shiver. The blond wraps an arm around her without thought, the tension in his face from his brother's thoughtless words easing. Ori wonders if Bluebell even knows that her touch has comforted him so easily, but she's lost in her own little world and he isn't going to make mention of it.
"I love when you grow us little treats," Kili all but purrs at her feet.
"Well I wouldn't do it for just anyone," she mutters, sleepily.
Ori can't tell Balin about this, not the strange little magic anyway. Bluebell has shown a great amount of trust in him to demonstrate this and it would repay her friendship poorly to betray it to Balin when it's obvious that her mother has advised against it. Knowing what he now does its little wonder the hobbits keep to themselves and rarely leave their homes. If any race found out that the hobbits could make things simply grow like that there would be nowhere the hobbits could hide and nothing they could do to protect themselves. Ori likes to think that his own kind would try to protect them if they asked, but he has heard enough stories of the time of Thror and seen enough of starvation to know that there are many among his own people who would see such a gift as something to be used and exploited.
"Does it have anything to do with theses?" He asks, fiddling with the little token Bluebell had given him. Her mother had spent a great deal of time brow beating the other into taking them as well. Bluebell opens an eye to glare at him.
"Stop fiddling with it," she says in the same waspish way Dori used to when Ori would pick at a scab or some other hurt when he was young. "It's a hobbit superstition, that's all."
"I don't think it is," Kili pipes up and Fili kicks him again. "Belladonna wouldn't have been so determined for us all to have them if it were!" He argues.
"It's clan," Bluebell sighs. "Hobbits don't travel outside the Shire unless we desperately need to. But if we do, we either go alone or with our clan."
"Isn't that like family?" Fili asks.
"In a way," she hedges. "Family is blood and marriage. Clan is family and those we value most closely, those we trust with our lives and our memory, those we would protect and sometimes that goes a lot wider than simple blood. It can be temporary, as with those tokens, or permanent, as with our tattoos. It makes us feel easier about leaving the Shire, that's all, a request to our Lady to watch over us all. Given our destination I would think we could use all the help that we can get. Put it away and forget about it, Ori."
He obeys, although reluctantly. He has so many questions and just when he thinks he's getting an answer Bluebell will suddenly give a reply that isn't really an answer at all. He'll tell Balin about the clan thing and tell him who created the hobbits, perhaps it will help his mentor to trust the hobbits more if he knows that they come from Mahal's wife. He can understand Balin's hesitancy. Frerin is completely devoted to Belladonna (and Ori is the last one to judge a dwarf taking up with another's widow, if it never happened neither he nor Nori would exist) and Bluebell seems to have become remarkably close to Fili and Kili in a very short time. As far as Belladonna and Frerin are concerned, Ori has learnt that they travelled together extensively in their youth and have always been good friends as well as more. Frerin loves Bluebell as a daughter, the occasional glint of gold behind her left ear and the times she slips and calls him Adad are evidence of something more official though Ori still hasn't been able to think of a way to ask the question and find out why they hide it. As for Fili and Kili, they're young and friendly and Bluebell is unattached and equally young. Honestly, Ori would have been more surprised if they hadn't tried flirting with her a time or two. She's certainly responsive enough, though she withdraws to Ori's company when they go too far, rolling her eyes at Kili's attempts and blushing at Fili's. She gives as good as she gets, but in Ori's limited experience there doesn't seem to be anything all that serious in it. So, really, Balin has nothing to worry about.