Author's Notes:

Ayo! We have an artist rendition of Nadi (post beard shave,) drawn by the amazing Poting1508 of Pixiv Fanbox.

Check it out in the cover art!

X

A Glimpse of the Past...

It was laundry day for the inhabitants of Erebor. And laundry day meant sopping, half-dressed Dwarven women by the river.

Kili wouldn't miss it for the world.

Usually, the women folk handled the specifics of laundry day. But that never stopped the male Dwarves from tagging along, especially the younger ones. The women didn't mind their jests and attention, and the men were more than happy to indulge in the rather spectacular view of the she-Dwarves stripping down to their undergarments and splashing about in the river.

The day was uncommonly hot, so much so that the heat hung around the forest like a moist, misty blanket unfolding through the trees. Kili sat with his back against a tree trunk, smiling as he tossed his medallion in the air. Farther along the river, a Dwarve named Dina was wringing a large shirt through her ruddy hands. The river silt had traveled up along her calves and stained her underskirt. She looked up, caught his wandering eye, and cast him an amused smile. The medallion did two impressive turns in the air - its rune engravings catching the sunlight - before landing back in his palm. He smiled back at her and could have sworn that he caught a charming blush flush across her broad cheeks.

"You came all this way, you might as well make yourself useful," came a voice from behind him. Kili gave a small huff as he stuffed the medallion beneath the flap of his vest. His father had always had a way of appearing right when Kili was engrossed in more...wicked thoughts. "Go and help the ladies with the wash."

"Da," Kili said in a voice that clearly implied a 'let's be reasonable' sort of tone. "I am being useful! I'm keeping watch over these spectacular women. Someone has to make sure that a troll doesn't appear in the middle of wash."

Laughter and high chatter rang up and down the river. The Dwarven women called back and forth to each other with smiles in their voices. Someone on the river cast a bucketful of soapy water at Dina, drenching her undershirt.

"Keeping watch, indeed! 'Tis not a troll that they should fear, but your hungry gaze. " His father let himself down along the tree trunk beside Kili, his wrinkled hands clambering smoothly against his staff. Kili was inclined to ask what had brought his father to the river. Surely, such a day did not require the presence of an aged Dwarve such as himself. And yet, he knew that such an inquiry would inspire a firm smack to the back of the head. "Go, now, son. Help the ladies with the wash."

"Why can't Fili do it?" Kili asked. His brother was on the other side of the river, watching Dina from behind. The female Dwarve looked back at him and he quickly pretended to busy himself with peering up at the sun.

"Have you ever seen a coming prince wash his own trousers?" His father asked.

"I've never seen a coming prince do much of anything - OW!" Kili quickly covered the back of his head where his father had smacked him with his ringed fingers. "Alright! I'm sorry."

"You will be, boy. I would say that you are much like your mother, but I worry that you might take it as a compliment."

His father leaned back against the tree trunk with a sigh. Kili sat there rubbing his hand along the back of his head and frowning. His father had grown rather weak in his old age. His black hair was still luscious and full, as it was in his youth, and his eyes still shined with a mischievous golden glow. But lines were now rolling from the corners of his eyes, and his hands had begun to shake at even the smallest of tasks. Kili glanced down at his father's fingers - wrinkled and reddish - and swore to himself that he would age with much more grace. And with better looks.

Although, the women of both Erebor and Dale were quite fond of telling him that his father was 'quite the attractive one.'

"Agh," Kili said, tossing a severed strand of grass in front of him. Already, he had forgotten that he had been ordered to join the women in the river. "Sometimes I wish that he was never born."

"Who?"

"Never you mind," he mumbled beneath his breath. His father raised his hand again and Kili instinctively ducked. But his father had only been attempting to adjust his britches.

"Ah, you mean your brother." His father's gaze wandered over to his eldest son. Dina had bent over and this, for whatever reason, had caused Fili to fall into a fit of rather fake-sounding coughs. "I suppose you envy his right to rule. I'm sure that you imagine that you would be a better choice as a sovereign."

"Erebor would never know, would it?" Kili asked spitefully. "He could bring the entire mountain down with his idiocy, and still the people would have the audacity to ask where they had gone wrong." Kili chuckled derisively. "I'd have quite a lot to say, then, believe me-"

He chanced a glance at his father. The old Dwarve looked very tired as he ran a calloused hand over his eternally-aching knee. His father's eyes bounced around the river with uninterest as he took in the faces of the womenfolk. He saw them, then, and was only reminded of the strange and powerful woman that he had wedded many years before. Dis had not made an appearance that day, engrossed as she was in training the younger generation of Dwarves in weaponry and combat.

"If Fili were to kneel before you and offer you his crown, you would not take it," he finally said.

"Nay!"

"Aye. You love him, dearly. His rise to power is your rise as well. How would you feel, m'boy, sitting tall upon a stone throne and accepting trade news of some foreign world beyond the interest of your own? You would be bored to death. His realm is within the court. And, due to certain influences, yours is within the forest."

"Eh?" Kili said, twisting his finger in his ear. "What influences?"

His father sighed. "You have the attention span of a dead squirrel."

"Do not!" Kili said, much affronted. Then he paused and his attention was drawn to a commotion on the other side of the river. Sadi was quickly approaching. Her high, scuffed boots squelched as she stomped through the mud. She was dragging Nadi along by the ends of her hair. The poor girl was holding her palms to her scalp. Even from a distance, Kili could see the water brimming in her eyes. Sadi cast them an annoyed glance and then swung Nadi around.

"'Bout time you learned how to swim, girl," she said and then shoved Nadi's shoulders. The young Dwarve's arm spun around as she struggled to balance on her tiptoes. Then she crashed forward and fell face-forward into the silty river. Some of the women laughed and the others stared at Nadi with distaste, no doubt vexed by her squealing and thrashings. The river water had turned a swampy shade of brown beneath her flurried movements, soiling all of the clothes. Sadi sat back on a boulder and lit a pipe, watching her daughter struggle with a stony countenance. By chance, she looked up and caught Kili's eye through a cloud of smoke. Whatever she was smoking was not tobacco. Kili could smell it from a distance. The sight of her bare cheeks and almond-shaped eyes set the snakes in his stomach wriggling.

Finally, having realized that she was not going to drown, Nadi pushed herself up and sat as if in a daze within the riverbed. She put a hand up to her face and fingered her upper lip where a line of blood was slowly rolling along her skin. She pulled her hand back, noticed Kili watching her, and quickly smiled. There was a gap between her upper teeth and her loosely-curled hair was strung through with dead leaves. Her hand was caked in mud and blood as she waved happily at him. He smiled and waved back.

"Ah," his father said in exasperation. "Kili, no. Not that one."

"There's nothing wrong with Nadi," he said back. He realized that he was still waving and he quickly stuffed his hand in his lap. "She's very friendly, you know. She gave me an apple with my name carved into it. It was rotten but...it was a nice gesture."

"Unfortunately, you misinterpreted the message," his father said. He put his hand on Kili's shoulder and forced him to look at him. "Listen, boy, and listen well. Long ago, the Great Mahal made to smite the seven fathers of the Dwarves with a great hammer, for He had come to repent His impatience in creating them. But the Dwarves cowered before Him, and Iluvatar stilled His hand for He had come to accept the emergence of the life that Mahal had created. But, there were some Dwarves among them who did not cower before Him and His mighty hammer. They gazed upon Him without fear, without humility, and Mahal saw in them a spirit that could not be conquered or tamed. This alarmed him, as He knew that no Creation should ever gaze with defiance upon their Creator."

Fili hopped across a few stones within the river and approached him. He fell down upon crossed legs and listened as his father spoke, a faraway look in his eyes as he gazed upon Nadi sitting upright in the mud.

"Imagine that, sons: a God repulsed by the makings of His own hands. These Dwarves that showed no fear made Him sick with regret. He did not trust them and their flaming eyes."

"And so?" Kili asked breathlessly. His father puffed out his chest.

"And so! He cast them into a pit of fire and watched as they burned beneath Him. Let us not forget that Mahal is a charitable being: He would allow them a chance to show humility, but only after they experienced a trial by fire. It was only when their skin was burned and blackened did they finally call out for his grace. He removed them, then, but the damage had been done." His father tilted his chin at Nadi and Sadi. "Have you ever wondered why their skin is so dark?"

"I'd assumed it was just too much sunlight out in the forest," Kili said and ducked as his father immediately raised his hand.

"They are of the family of Dwarves that Mahal burned. They are treacherous and ill-fated and not to be trusted. Mahal understood that, and so why shouldn't we heed His warnings? That is why we call them 'odd folk.' That is why they often disappear into the woods for days on end. Nadi, Sadi, Kadi…" his father leaned forward and spat upon the ground. "They may look like us, they may talk like us, but they are not of our kind. Let their brown skin be a reminder of that."

Kili stared at Nadi. She had pulled her boot off of her foot and was holding it upended above the river. She was smiling lightly as small fish and stones tumbled out from beneath the worn leather and back into the pond, her interest and curiosity piqued by the river life. He tried to imagine her and the handsome Sadi burning in a pit of flames, but the image caused him great distress. By that time, he had only just begun to acquaint himself with Nadi. He knew that she was gentle - unless he was being testy with her - and would rather see a spider flourish than crush it beneath her boot. She looked back up at him with a smile that caught him off-guard and held up a single, silvery minnow by its tail. He had never seen her skin color as something to be alarmed by. Though he had heard of other Dwarves his age refer to it in derogatory terms, her coloring had always reminded him of soft soil after a light rain and the chocolate that sometimes made its way into Dale. Once, she had handed him some object that he could not remember, and, entranced, he had run his fingers along her wrist until she had pulled back with an angry squeal. Never before had he felt skin so smooth. There was a fragrant nut that grew in the forests along the edges of Dale. Nadi had told him that she and her mother often gathered it up and grounded it into a soft cream which they massaged into their arms and legs. The scent of it wafted around her and left imprints on his clothes whenever they embraced.

"KILI!" His father suddenly thundered. "There you go again, the attention of a dead squirrel! What were you thinking about just now, if not the warnings that I just gave you?!"

"Velest," he said without thinking. It was the name of the nut that Nadi had been referring to. His father cuffed him on the back of the head again and he whined.

"You will never learn," he hissed in disgust. Sometimes, Kili got the sense that his father's displays of disappointment were only for show and that secretly he was amused by his youngest son's distracted ways.

"Did he tell you that he wants to be the coming prince," Fili asked and Kili immediately rolled his eyes. "Instead of me, that is. Thanks to his wonderful display of qualifications, I think we can safely assume that that will never happen. Right, Kili?"

Kili said something rather inappropriate in Khuzdul and his father gave an amused belly laugh. He patted his son's back as he chuckled.

"Oh, but your creativity does make me proud. I-"

His father suddenly paused and glanced at the water. Both boys watched as his jaw fell slack and he rolled his eyes to the sky. A trio of crows was flying in a triangular grouping, and this seemed to have caught the old man's attention.

"Da?" Kili said, shaking his father's shoulder as Fili looked on in concern. "What is it? What's wrong?

It took a while, but finally, his father looked back down and wrung a large hand over his beard. He looked terribly frightened - indeed his cheeks had grown pale and his eyes had taken on a haunted look.

"Da?!" Kili exclaimed, shaking him harder. The old Dwarve braced his hand upon Fili's shoulder and attempted to lift himself, but quickly fell back down.

"Oh…" he croaked. And then, "Mahal…"

"What is it?"

His father shook his head and then

attempted a smile that did not reflect in his eyes. "Along the mirror that reflects the daughter of blood unspooling in peaceful water...turn your eye to the wayward crows, that herald the warrior in deathly throes. It's a portent, of sorts, taught to me by your grandfather. It means that if a man sees the blood of a woman in the water, and then turns his eye to see a flock of crows flying backward in the sky, then he will die a strange and violent death soon after."

"Huh," Kili said. "I wonder who's going to die, then." He looked up at the flock of crows as they passed. They weren't flying backward, and there hadn't been enough blood coming from Nadi's nose to stain the water. It was probably nothing. Most likely, the old man was just babbling nonsense to scare him again. His father reached out with both arms and pulled his sons close to his chest. He gave them each a swift kiss on the top of their heads and reminded them that his love for them was unparalleled in that world.

He died later that night. It was an accident. Whilst mining, one of the Dwarves had dislodged a boulder which fell and crushed him immediately. Kili would never forget the sight of his father's bloated face nor the eerie portent that had been delivered that day.

Years later, whilst out exploring with Nadi, he had taken their Adventure book and written the poem on the very last page. She had read the words silently and then looked up at him with a confused expression.

"What's this, then?" She had been on the verge of reciting it when he had suddenly reached over and clamped his hand over his mouth.

"Those are the words that we will speak at the end of all things when we close the book for the last time. But trust me, starlight, that time is long in coming."

Never could he have known how false those words were.