A/N: Much appreciation to any new followers and thank you for bearing with my drawn-out storytelling. I'm a sucker for little details. I promise next chapter will pick up the pace quite a bit.

Zesulal- One Who Is Alone/Loner

I

The dwarves were filled on ale and heavy food from Bree. When they left half were bumping along full-bellied and nearly the other half woozy from too much ale. Meisar was unhappy and forbade any more drunkenness now that they were deep into the Lone Lands along the Great East Road, where there had been reports of orc attacks and armed thieves. Bofur and Bifur had spent the last of their coin on several barrels of Bree blonde, and with Nori's help, acquired another free of charge. They listened not to Meisar after a few ales, and the harsh sound of her voice melted against the snap of cold ale.

With drink night watches were blown off, so much to Meisar's chagrin that she took it up herself.

She took an angrily stroll across the camp to make her displeasure known. She had a heavy stride for such a tiny woman. For a moment, Thorin mused, she reminded him of himself in the days of exile, heavy-footed and heavier-hearted, but never cowed by despair, at least not where anyone could see.

"What in Durin's name is Meisar up to now?" Dori whined. "If she keeps up with this night-watch business all of us are going to wind up sleepless and miserable." Thorin had felt a consternation rise in this throat then.

He remembered Fili and Kili and the ponies.

"Leave her be," Nori huffed. "Stubborn wretch." He rubbed his smarting fingers from where she had struck him the day before, pilfering goat jerky from Urdlaug's wagon. Thorin ignored him purposely, fetching up the last of the ale. He stood and brushed the ash off his clothing. "Where are you going?" the 'Ri brothers demanded in unison.

He did not answer. The darkness swallowed him up, and they returned to their stew. "Do you think?" Ori put out, wiggling his brows. Dwalin shot him down quickly. "Not a chance, laddie."

Dwalin looked after Thorin in the dark with a keen eye. "Not a chance…"

II

"I thought you were Master Nori, finally turning up for duty," Meisar growled. Her voice was irritated. "Nori is a cunning fighter, though he can be rather impervious to taking orders," Thorin protested, stifling the urge to defend him further.

"And a petty thief," Meisar grumbled. "He despises me because I caught him stealing smoked meat and nearly broke his fingers. For that I am not sorry."

"I imagine Master Nori is though," Thorin observed flatly. He sat on the rock next to Meisar, at a comfortable distance.

"I despise thieves, regardless of their war-stories," Meisar asserted stoutly. There was a moment of awkward silence between them. "What are you doing out here, my king?" Meisar's eyes narrowed at him shyly.

"Night-watch is always two at each post. You shouldn't be out here alone."

"I can manage myself." Thorin took a gulp of ale, handed the tankard to her. She nodded politely. "Though I am grateful for your offer."

"I will stay regardless," he insisted, not quite brusquely but forcefully enough so that Meisar raised no other objection. "You prefer to be out here alone? Will you alone keep us safe from harm or is it stubborn pride, woman?" Thorin harrumphed.

"You're one to speak of stubborn pride, my liege." She smiled, hints of irony in her voice forming little commas at the corners of her mouth.

Her shyness seemed to lift only for a precious minute, and she stiffened in her body language and countenance quickly again. "I will not have my people slain as they sleep. The lone-lands are crawling with beasts," Meisar stated tersely. Her eyes were locked into his deadly serious. Thorin grumbled resignedly to himself. He thought the ale would soften her mood.

"Your people? It seems you have spent most of your time away from us. Was that by choice?" Thorin quipped. Meisar was not amused. "Good-night, my king." She pushed her blades angrily into their scabbards and rose to depart.

"It matters not to me," Thorin muttered. "Would you stay?" He gestured for her to sit, which she did, reluctantly. "You stay because you enjoy my company so?" Meisar grumbled sarcastically.

"I stay because am a king. It is my duty to protect my flock just as it is yours. I find your commitment honorable, for what it is worth." Meisar shrugged agreeably, the rigidity in her shoulders easing for the moment.

"Thank you," she responded quietly. He was not one for heaping praise on random folk, and this she seemed to surmise, having heard the king under the mountain was a noble man but a brooding one also, who displayed neither humor nor light-heartedness in any great abundance. She pondered him curiously, looking up at him when she went to refill her ale.

He took her in carefully. She was plain-faced, even by dwarven considerations. Meisar had many lines about her eyes, the wear and tear of exile worn plainly. She had a roundish face with a stubborn chin, ruddy about the cheeks with windburn. When they were not capable of slicing throats with a glance, her eyes had a hooded look about them, heavy-lidded and mournful. She had a small scar at the bridge of her nose, which was stubborn and proud like her chin and lightly freckled. But there was something redeeming in that face, from the heart-shaped mouth that was small and set, ears that were unmistakably dwarvish and hung modestly with burnished copper rings. And her hair was a lovely, shocking autumnal shade. He saw something that he did when his own reflection was looking back at him, and that frightened him about her. It was the eyes. Always the eyes. Such pools of quiet radiance bore a terrible weight. Thorin tried not to study her so intently.

"It is a long night on watch, if you wish still to stay. I would… welcome it."

He gave the smallest of a smile in response. She had heard the king was rather burdened in his countenance, and smiled rarely.

"Aye, and it will be long day again tomorrow."

"This journey has only begun," Meisar muttered.

"Yes, indeed it has."

III

By the morning there was hope in the endless expanse of blue sky stretching east. It was summer but it was not as hot as it had been in the previous weeks. The Lone-Lands were windswept; there had been little rain that summer.

The dwarrowdams had proven hardy company, and for their part, had made life on the road slightly more comfortable for Thorin and his comrades, who were used to traveling rough. Urdlaug and her sisters did all the cooking. Her wagon was kitted out as a mobile kitchen. A second wagon and two pack animals bore their belongings and provided them a place to sleep. The dwarrowdam Hegi had a wagon of her own though she travelled alone. It was covered in ax-marks and arrow holes, what looked like a few splatters of dried blood, and painted in loud runes that warned all to keep out of her things. Eda and Siv rolled along with their mobile apothecary, both on ponies; their wagon drawn by a pair of rotten-tempered Ibexes. Leading the wagons was Emli and Gimli's oblong wain, black-cherry wood with keen steel wheels meant to take the mountain passes. It was cluttered, almost impassibly with the trappings of their comfortable life in Ered Luin. Gimli spent most of his time seated at its reins, kept impressively groomed and dressed even on this long, roughish migration. He polished his mail each night while his mother supervised. The bellwether amongst the dwarrowdams, Emli rode her pony side-saddle, always in proper, womanly dresses, so that her legs would never be displayed to the men.

Some of the women attired themselves much like the men did in leathers and vests of mail. In exile, they dressed as men to fend off defilement, some of their own accord, others at the behest of their kin and Ones, who would have been driven murderous by such outrages. Now, in times of relative peace, they were wont to clad themselves simply, if heavily, for travel, in long tunics belted at the waist with cinchers of leather and metal and long, unobtrusive cambric skirts or thick breeches. They donned good furs though, jewelry subtle but still displayed proudly. Like the men they all wore heavy boots and kept weapons at their belts. Exile, alas, and enough of its trappings, were coming to an end for them, and it showed.

The women stuck together and they kvetched, from sunup to sundown, and their ponies had a tendency to clutter and skitter when they tried to get too many abreast on the road in the midst of conversation. Meisar, save Brynja who shared Bofur's pony, was the only female that rode with the men, in the front of the caravan, with Dwalin and Thorin both abreast. She never spoke, just kept her eyes trained on the road and all that surrounded it.

In contrast, the chatter of the women never seemed to cease. Women's talk had never much interested him, but now Thorin he strained at every word.

"Is he…?"

The answer was muddled by Dwalin trying to make small talk, in his way with long, animated stories peppered in baudy jokes. He tried. Mahal bless him, he tried. Thorin's languor frightened him, and bless his beard, he contained it. But he couldn't hide it. And neither could the rest of them.

"Nekhush," Oin said, lamentably. So deaf he was now, it was unmistakable; he had no understanding of volume, and everything came out louder than it was supposed to. "It has lain his sister the princess low. I fear it has gripped him also."

"Quiet yourself. Put your ear trumpet in," admonished Eda.

"He is our king!" came an indignant, hoarse protest in a voice struggling to remain a whisper. "Mahal has brought him to us, here, now. You mustn't speak of him like-"

"Hush," came Emli's voice, proud, ever-commanding. At least amongst the dwarrowdams, her word was often the last.

Daruth, Nekhush. He had learned that there were two terrible kinds of darkness that weighed upon the mind in this world, as the dwarves knew them. Daruth, the despair, was every dwarf's burden, dark times for people laid low, a collective misery that would color their stories and their songs. But Nekhush, the sorrow, came after daruth, when hope was lost altogether. He had seen it. For all the hunger and toil, the heat and the cold, the fevers and plagues that killed off men like flies that they survived, nekhush, was the most unbearable burden. At first, it wasn't an obvious thing but after years in the dregs it was, and slowly, over time, it showed its fatal tendencies. Sometimes they simply lay down in the shadows of rocks with their hammers in hand, and waited to die. And some had committed the worst crime against Aule's creation of all, and pounded on the doors of their Father's Halls long before their time, of their own accord, as their fortunes sunk too low to bear.

It had never crossed his mind. He was still too proud for that, and that gave him a small comfort. But it was not himself that he had long worried for.

"Bundushar," grunted Bifur, too loudly for anyone's comfort. Head in smoke. Dwalin glared a warning at him. But he suddenly realized that Thorin had been listening all along, and Dwalin had no words, for the first time in years.

Nekhush. Dis. Sister.

Zesulâl. Beneath the mountain. A Princess of ash amid the splendor.

He stopped his pony and muttered a need to go off the road for a moment. Meisar halted and peered into the empty space between them that Dwalin had unblocked as he reeled back on his pony. She thought she caught a glimpse of something in his eyes, a glint of woe so deep it was capable of throwing him off his center. But if he sensed it too, he seemed to catch himself, and the melancholy pools became frozen over and staid once again.

He went off the road and she watched him go behind a jagged crop of rocks. Just beyond him, she squinted up at the round rise of stone and dirt that was Weathertop, an ancient sentinel that would have seemed past its use.

"There is the old watchtower of Amon Sul," she pointed toward it, growing shadowy against the late afternoon sun. "Perhaps it is wise to stop here after all."

Thorin knelt against a jag of stone just off the road. Nausea gripped him, a dark pit in his stomach and chest. One harsh breath after the other left him dizzy. He struggled to hold down the rabbit stew Urdlaug had made at midday. Gently he put his head to the warm stone and whispered into the empty air, where no one could hear, waiting for the wave to pass. It always did. Somehow, it always did.

"Sister… forgive me. Sister-sons… my sister sons…"

IV

"You must be joking," grumbled Dwalin.

"Look there, Mister Dwalin. The sky is clear. One can see to the foothills of the Misty Mountains, and everything in between," Meisar shot back.

Balin began to squirm nervously the longer Thorin was off the road and out of sight. "Brother," he nudged at Dwalin.

"…Cooling our heels for what? A bit o' exploring?" he queried, irritably. She turned her pony around so that it faced his. "Spend time in the wilds, you'll learn how to see to all ends." Her voice was low and defiant.

"Brother," repeated Balin, louder.

"…Best we move, until dark…"

"I must look ahead."

"Brother!" Balin was beginning to squirm back and forth on his pony, rubbing his hands over the reins until they were chafed. Thorin was nowhere in sight. He cleared his throat ready to make his next exhortation heard a league away.

"-What say you then, my king?" Dwalin asked suddenly. Balin turned around to find that Thorin had returned.

"Thorin?" His white-knuckled hands released themselves from the reins. Thorin caught the flushing color of his knuckles as they turned from white to red, the blood coming back into them.

"You should not go alone," said Thorin suddenly. He retrieved his ax from the saddlebag. "Very well," Dwalin grunted, dismounting. "Let us provide the lady an escort. To… tour, the old watchtower."

"Stay here," Thorin told him. "Keep them safe." An air of command had returned to his voice. It might have relieved Dwalin under another circumstance, but judging from the way his eyes squinted and he snuffed a growl of protest, it didn't seem to.

"Best we be quick about it, then, shepherdess," he muttered. She acquiesced, wordlessly.

Throwing Balin an urgent glimpse Dwalin silently begged some backing, for what he couldn't say. So Balin was silent and bemused. He shrugged his shoulders, helplessly.

If he had sensed ill, and sense ill Dwalin often did, even when there was none to be had, he knew he would have been off his pony and on the tail of his king, and the woman, the beardless dwarf. But there was no clear sense of that foreboding, even if he wanted it to be there. A mistrust of all strangers, even their own, had hardened in him. He wanted to believe there was reason to latch to his king's side, but his legs would not make the motion to dismount and follow, as if his mind, in its better wisdom, would simply not allow it. He let them go.

V

"He watches your every move. And mine," Meisar remarked quietly as they trod up the steep stairs. The passageway upwards was dark, light filtering down from the head of its twisted, overgrown stair. They kept their weapons drawn. "My lady?"

"Mister Dwalin. He cares for you as a brother, as much as a king. It is plain to see."

"Yes. He does. And I for him."

"It is good, to have someone in this world, with whom you can trust your life." There was a deep and intrinsic, if stilting, kindness in her words, but there was sadness too. He could feel it, in his bones. Long had he learned the secret language of those who were alone in the world, and it troubled him.

"He has protected me all my life, though I let him believe, for many months, that he had failed to do so."

"I sense there were forces at work in that matter… beyond your control, my king. Praise Mahal that you are alive."

"I draw breath, my lady." He uttered no more. They made eye-contact with brief side-glances at each other. That uncanny spark of kindness, a flash of some kinship in woe, expressed itself, fleetingly in her eyes again, though she was silent. There was a cloudiness in his mind about her. She might have had the coloring of a flame, to him, still, she was more smoke than fire, and something in him wished desperately that it might clear a bit.

Alas, yet, he would have said all the things that were on his mind if he had the words to say them. She was, after all, a lone woman, a simple woman. She might understand his predicament, even his grief. She had never spoken of any family. They might be gone too, snatched away before their time. Dwarves were tribal creatures, their loyalties and bonds like iron. A lone dwarf always had a story, usually a terrible one.

When at last they reached the top she circled one way and he the other. They met at its eastern side. She had a primitive scope with her that she pointed over the Lone Lands to the East. Plumes of ashen grey smoke rose in the distance, over an open plain of land where she knew there to be several villages of men. "Smoke rises from the dwellings of men," she bit at her lip, concernedly. "Midsummer's Eve was only this past night. Perhaps it is bonfires," he suggested. It was true enough, but he did not like the look in her eyes. She went on.

"A caravan of some kind travels northeast, toward the Ettenmoors. I see the dust of some company on the air." "Of good or ill?" Thorin asked. He felt a tight knot form in his belly, between his ribs. The world had been a quiet, bucolic stream of days, far too long.

"I know not, but I am un-eased at the sight of it. We will make camp here."

"Very well then."

"Perhaps it is best that you tell Mister Dwalin yourself."

They made their way down the north side of the watchtower. "Look there," she pointed; he drew his sword. "'Tis a berry patch only my liege." His eyes were drawn suddenly to the patch's offerings. Blackberries, sunlight illuminating them a rich, dark, royal purple; she picked one off the brambly bush and savored it, a hint of a smile creased her lips, almost sweetly. Thorin followed cautiously after her. The ripeness of the fruits tickled his nose. He remembered the sun and the fields of The Shire, the smell of fresh dirt and root vegetables, the plumpest of berries, the sharp, earthy scent of pumpkins at the end of summer. Bilbo had been fond of berries, raspberries the best. Blackberries he disliked for their terrible thorny vines, as he despised all manner of discomfort. Dear Friend, he mused silently. How I miss your gentle company. After awhile Bilbo had begun to understand. He feared, listening to the hushed whispers of the dwarves, that his own would not, not for some time. They might know pain and grief, all the same things his eyes had seen, his nose had smelled- the sulfur of dragons' breath burning away their world, the sweat of the forges, ashes that turned acidic in his sinuses and mouth- but they would never know a king's burden. He would not have wished it on any of them, not an ounce to share, for their love and loyalty had endured all recklessness and bloodshed. But they feared for him. He knew it with painful clearness. And fear was a terrible poison.

He banished the ill thought from his mind. While she filled the jars in her pack, he sucked the juice from the ripe skins, let the sweet and sour play on his tongue. There would have to be some good in this world if he were to return to it. The warmth and sun of the Shire had brought him a peace he had not expected to find there, but he longed for the embrace of stone. To embrace his sister, to ask forgiveness of her, and of-

The berries suddenly tasted sour and flat in his mouth. Meisar at last rested on a rock amid the brambly berry-bushes, and offered Thorin her water skin. "I'll have Bombur's lasses can them and make preserves." She spoke with a slight accent, a bit rough, like many of the dwarves who came from Moria or from generations brought up in Ered Luin. Hers had a refined edge, soft consonants punctuated by pronunciations that had gone rough over the years. Much in the way that he caught himself saying "aye" the longer he and Dwalin travelled together. A surge of something deeply unfamiliar panged at him. Meisar's heavy, downcast eyes, focused on her task as she was, did not seem to notice.

"Where do you come from, Meisar?"

"Does it matter?"

"You lead this company. I would like to know something about you other than foul anecdotes from a thief you struck."

"Master Nori I take it," she smiled with uncharacteristic sarcasm. "Who I hear has called my father a lecherous dwarf and my mother a lecherous human, who was paid for her lechery."

"So what is it?"

"My mother was a daughter of the East, of Dale, fully a dwarf if you must know." Meisar's eyes caught his sharply. "As was my father, so far as I know."

"I implied nothing," Thorin retorted, defensively.

Meisar exhaled, tiredly. She went on filling her containers to the brim, unbothered by the thick brambles. "Is it my lack of beard that strikes your curiosity?"

"For a dwarven woman, perhaps so."

"For your honesty I will oblige you. I was born in Dale is as much as I know. As for my lack of beard, I have heard it said by a dwarf who sheltered me for a spell that my follicles were singed. I came out of the inferno with no eyebrows or hair." He dared himself to study her face again; her eyebrows were wispy, against a prominent brow. Had it not been for their red-orange hue, like her hair, they might have been ephemeral altogether. The hair though, was quite thick, and very long, in its twin plaits. What luck for a dwarf, he thought, sadly. He searched her face for any sign that it had once been bearded. Suddenly all he could see was fire.

"Dale, you said?" he repeated, stilting.

"Yes, my king."

"And the inferno…"

Her face darkened along with his. "I was little more than a toddling babe when it came, the dragon and then the bedlam. We could not stay."