A/N: Shemaldurj- "Curious Ground."

"Get you wrapped up good," Eda said gently. A blanket wrapped itself suddenly over Meisar's shoulders and around the front of her. Eda crouched down and rubbed her shoulders heartily. "That was a mighty thing you did, dunininh," she smiled. "Anbur is well. A wee shaken up, but just fine." "The king brought her back to you. Brought us back."

"Give yourself some credit," sighed Eda. "The child can't swim, dunininh. She'd be right dead." "Never met a dwarf who could swim," replied Meisar. "And you went right into the rapids nonetheless," Eda reminded.

"You'll not like getting a late-summer fever. Them's the worst."She hugged the blanket a little tighter. "I'm a dwarf. I shan't worry much for that. Not like men we are, carried off by a wee cough."

Eda put her hands on her hips and grinned at the woman's casual defiance. "Won't kill you, but you'll not like being in the saddle with the river running from your nose harder than the Loudwater." Meisar squirmed at the thought. Wet hair left a single damp, icy print down the whole of her back, posterior and the backs of her legs. She felt cold in the light linen, as autumn forged its way down the valleys from the Misty Mountains in the East, a frosted breath of what was to come. "Mayhap in our mountain halls, we shirk away the plagues of men. Yzbah. Hot baths. We take them in the hot springs under the mountain. Oh, even the common baths in Erebor were marble with flecks of gold in the walls. That's why the plagues take off men like they do- they don't bathe none. Carry their stink for years along with the disease. Out here I reckon the lot of us dwarves aren't much better-faring, so I wouldn't take any chances if I were you."

She drank the hot strong herbal tea Eda had brought her. "Thorin brought me back. Made sure I was…" Her voice trailed off, trying to remember. It was all a blur, ears full of frigid water, sinuses stinging from it, and his voice, thundering over her. Being suddenly warm again and in his arms was all she knew. Fur on skin. She woke up again wrapped in his coat with no clothes on. She raised the cup and drank conspicuously slow enough for Eda to notice. She waited until the fire had faded from her cheeks to pull it away from her lips. "Just a bit hot is all, best drink slow," she murmured.

Hegi strode amongst the dwarves, wincing on pained feet but with her head raised high, making a rather excitable demonstration to an enthused audience of Bifur and Yrsa, both laughing hysterically at her gibbering and wild emoting. She mock-punched Bifur's gut and Yrsa rolled back on the grass belly-laughing. The healer too chuckled at the sight, Eda with her big warm plump hands, soft eyes and delicate wisp of a beard, ash blond going gray. The softness of her palms raised then and cradled Meisar's cheeks. "Learn from her and let a bit of that dwarven pride show. You have more to give than ever you know, lass."

Thorin and Dwalin with Bofur had gone to hunt and brought back several squirrels and a few braces of cony. They were eaten with potatoes slathered in butter and herbs, served mashed and with forks, doled out by Lulia and the dwarves who deigned to eat them scooped on two fingers drew a stern look from Urdlaug; she preferred her food treated with a reverence unfamiliar to certain members of the company. Dwalin was eating a raw red potato off the tip of a hunting knife and grinning amusedly at Freyda struggling to balance a plate on her elbow and a tankard of mead in her good hand. "Rats!" she cried as her plate tumbled onto the grass and Meisar's dogs were snarfing her supper before she could get another string of curses out.

Dwalin stopped smiling when she looked up down him self-pitiably. "What good's a dwarf with one hand?" Freyda raised her bandaged ax-hand and winced. The fingers were swollen and purple under the wrap. "Certainly not this one." As soon as she plunked down empty-handed at the cook-fire, Dwalin moved stealthily to her side to offer up half of his potatoes, pushing them over to the side of his plate nearest her, and without a word, just a mild grunt. He held her surviving tankard of mead for her while she ate a bit, gratefully. "Ah, bless yer beard Mister Dwalin."

"I suppose I owed you a favor," he muttered. "Aye," she grinned. "Pray ye don't need that more than a day." She gestured at his arm and Dwalin winced at the makeshift sling Oin had set it in. "Aye," he repeated. "It hurt?" she asked, strangely soft and shrinking. "Not more than a bit. And yer fingers, lass?" Freyda found the palm of her injured hand rested suddenly and delicately on the back of the hand he'd raised to her to see. "A little sore is all." Dwalin turned to issue a menacing side-eye to the 'Ri brothers and Bofur who were looking in his direction a little too amusedly for his comfort. They went back to their cony and potatoes quick enough. Freyda's hand was still rested gingerly atop his own, and he felt the slightest of tremor course from her palm and to the tips of her fingers to make tiny waves upon the back of his hand. "Didn't mean to hurt ye lass." She gave him a forgiving smile in return, her strong-bridged nose twitching lightly when he finally mustered up enough of something to look in her eyes directly. "I gave ye my hand to squeeze. Got only my own self to blame there."

His chest heaved in a hesitant sigh toward her as she moved to stand, tankard empty. "Sit tight, lass. I'll bring ye another."

II

In the morning Thorin looked for Meisar, half-expecting her to have gone ahead before dawn against his command, but she was dutiful, scurrying all about the camp early.

She still donned the green dress, though a heavy vest of boiled leather was worn over it now, collar of goldenrod-haired cony long gone ragged drawn up about her neck. Her legs were cased in wraps of tattered wool, two layers of calico braies to give the appearance of light breeches rather than a precarious extra layer of small-clothes, seeing as the her skirt was rucking up about the saddle when the dwarves had finally gotten up and mounted to move on. She wore no cloak, and her boots squelched a bit still wet in the stirrups. The wolf-pelt mantle was laid across the tops of her thighs in the saddle for modesty's sake if nothing else.

It was such a lovely garment. She had seen Thorin's eyes, even Dwalin and Nori's, when she turned up in it. A rough woman in genteel clothes however simple was just that kind of sight, she reckoned. Nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps they even mocked her out of her earshot and sight for trying. Not Thorin though. There had been something different, even frightening about the way he looked at her. Different even from the way he had looked at her as she lay wrapped in his coat, naked beneath. The thought of what he had done, necessary to save her, at the riverside, dizzied her. He was a king, and she…

She moved her hips against the pressure of the belt around her waist. You know what you are trying to do. Stop. She raged at herself like a scolding mother. Plucked from the waters by him, warmed by him, wrapped in his own coat. But nothing, nothing had felt quite like his hands. There was no mystery in it, no grand overture. No purpose except to halt her from walking away, it seemed. But she had seen his face, eyes wide with surprise in contrast to pupils that turned sapphire to onyx, wondered what she must have felt like to him, under his hands. Had he ever touched a woman as he grasped at her clumsily just then? Her body was a dwarf's body, in spite of her face. Roomy hips, strong and stout to the touch, "birthing hips," as men would say of their wives amongst the tall-folk, squat matrons with hearty broods that had been spry little maids once. She had neither borne a child nor had a husband anchored eager hands to those hips at night and lovingly sought what was in their midst, or so Brynja's reticent whispers amongst the dwarrowdams went. A woman's hips were a powerful thing, whether elf or dwarf or human. That so much she knew.

Pained moans halted the caravan nearly as soon as it had started to move. Hegi's wagon had caught fire and burned to ash at the river, and the tempestuous she-boar that had drawn it had fled in the chaos. The burn blisters on her feet had opened in the night and agonized her too much to walk. She lay down on the grass while Bifur pulled off her boots only to draw back shuddering at the sight of her red, cracked soles, one of the toes nearly charred. He held her hand while Eda and Oin slathered her in healing ointment to the ankles and bandaged her. So Meisar offered her Jenny's mount, the least she could offer her for mettle against the orcs. She was a madwoman in full, but her particular brand of madness had saved the lot of them. Much madness in this world, she thought. Coupled with the redeeming.

She thought of Thorin under the mountain, sick with gold-lust. Charging from the gates to battle ready to give his life in defense of something greater, when all was brought back 'round. Were they so different, a mad miner and a tragic king? Jenny threw her head back and brayed at the former, refusing to walk on, until Meisar walked beside her at her bridle for nearly all the afternoon. Her own feet grew sore and her knees stiff. Even her hounds had jumped on Eda and Siv's wagon eventually, but she went on afoot. Hurmul. A leader sacrificed for those trusted to them. The caravan moved slowly enough along the terrain for her to keep up the pace, following what might barely be called a road in the more civilized parts. It would do; she knew her way home.

They kept northwest along the Loudwater, treading toward Rivendell. Shallow forests, leaves yellowed ahead of the coming autumn, gave way to scrub, and they had gone single-file where the road narrowed to a beaten path through a stretch of chaparral, islands of weathered rock peaking in its midst.

Thorin waited for the caravan to pass ahead of him, deciding to bring up the rear as he squinted to the setting sun in the west, the wind from the east growing chill. Meisar and Hegi finally made their way past.

"Will you not ride?" he asked impatiently. "Surely a dwarf could make room on the saddle." He eyed Hegi a bit accusingly but she shrugged dumbly back at him. The king's eye turned back to Meisar. She looked pale and chilled, her eyes and nose both starting to water. "I am perfectly fine, my liege. Carry on." She waved Jenny through, finally resigned to Hegi's mount, and unseeing how Thorin's eyes had suddenly narrowed at her.

"You test me, woman," he half-snarled, and without warning, she was scooped up in one fell movement and plopped roughshod on the saddle before him. "Oouf," was the sound she made when he circled her body with one arm and hoisted her upward. It was a funny sound, like one of the pack animals would make but higher and surprised, and she could see the dwarrowdams at the back of the caravan coming through the road having a nervous giggle amongst each other at the sight. His arms reached around the front of her to grasp at the reins and when his thighs squeezed impatiently at Minty's flanks to spur her again, she could feel the flex of his body, his middle, even his chest, through all the layers of his clothes, ever so lightly against her back. He was pressed to her, the fur of his great-coat tickling the back of her neck, his breath impatient and warm there the same.

"As you like it, my king. Thank you." He grunted in response and she made no more talk then. She had thought of him too much, too unbecomingly, too greedily. He had made her weak when she could least be weak. The creases of his elbows and the upper parts of both his arms were not so drawn about her now, only a brush of forearm when he moved. Her weaponry belt would have to do in that case, or the genteel clinch of linen about her midsection, to make again what she had felt that day past in the camp. He was a king after all. To think there was some greater purpose behind his ministrations, his touch, even his utter need of her comfort, was a foolhardy venture, a dangerous one. He was a king, dead or alive, a king. She pressed the bony mass at the base of her abdomen ever more slightly against the saddle horn.

III

They made camp under the cold veil of dusk.

Autumn was coming down from the foothills, an icier wind one could taste in its breath just out of range. Summer nights here were still heavy, but denser, cold and clammy like a fever sweating out on a cold night.

Thorin lay down at the edge of the sleeping dwarves as he always did. Away. Dwalin was on watch. He was alone and should have preferred it that way. Wheezing, Meisar was circling the edges of their encampment with torchlight when he summoned through the dark.

"Sit," he ordered. She sunk into the ground beside him, her legs tucked beneath her. She set aside the bedroll and set of blankets she had rolled up and carried on her back. She looked paler and ragged; her breath seemed short and a line of water had creased at the reddening corners of her eyes. He took her hands in his before she had a chance to respond, his fingers pushed up against her own. He rubbed her arms up to the bare elbow. She shivered at the sensation of his large, callused hands moving over her skin but her body betrayed her and she jerked away, half in alarm, half feeling quite overwhelmed. "You're cold," he said. "Cold but with a fever coming. I can feel it."

"The nights here have been chill, milord."

"No. You need to stay warm or you'll be deathly ill by sunup. You've run yourself ragged." He shrugged off the fur overcoat and wrapped it about her. "Do you not also need your layers, my king? To cushion the ground perhaps? It is hard here. And chill… as you say."

"I am fine," he replied tersely. She hugged the coat closer, self-consciously. Her cheek against the rough fur at its shoulders triggered a shiver quite unlike fever. Her stomach clenched. "My king, I…"

"Lay down," he muttered. He evened out his bedroll on the ground without looking at her, tossing his cloak down on top.

"Pardon milord?"

"Lay beside me and we will share warmth then. Lay the coat underneath, and take my blanket. It will cover the both of us if you wish to… stay here."

She gave Thorin a knowing half-smile. "If it is my warmth you are concerned for, I should go lay by Donbur. Fattest is the warmest after all." Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure he could hear it, more furious and rumbling than all the snores of the 'Urs combined. A joke. A wee splash of humor and perhaps he will not see. Perhaps he will not…

"When four bowls of stew come out as air it smells like a troll cave. Wouldn't you prefer to breathe?" Thorin grumbled entirely without amusement.

"I would prefer to breathe," she whispered. Trembling hands pushed her bedroll to Thorin's so that the earth was fully covered between them. She lay with her wolf-pelt over her and Thorin with his cloak over himself. He covered Meisar without a word and she found herself stiffening against the warmth that suddenly enveloped her, with his arms roughly setting around her. A harsh breath drew into her lungs and he drew away a bit. Made some sound but no word; she could hear him swallow harsh and awkward together. "Forgive me, my lady."

A nod of forgiveness lessened his rigidity but only a little, and then she rolled, clumsy and involuntarily, over on her blanket, so that they lay for an awkward moment belly to belly, the tip of his strong nose brushing hers. "My lady…" he muttered, as Meisar turned to lay on her side facing away from him, cracking the cartilage along her spine as she flexed, her back against his chest. Her heat by his side comforted him. He could not have imagined the heat that would radiate from so tiny a thing. Meisar was warm, and she smelled sweet and sharp like grass.

There was a warmth inside her that savored the closeness of him, a feeling she knew was intrinsic to all living beings. His scent was woodsy, campfire-smoke, damp earth and musk. His hair fell over her when he moved to adjust his position beside her, and she became momentarily absorbed in the heady scent of it. It could have used a good wash but in her mind, he smelled the way a man should, raw and masculine. She nestled into the fur of his overcoat that he had laid across her, inhaled its stubborn aroma. It carried his distinct earthy scent, pine-needles and sweat and a hint of hot metal. She imagined what he would be like with a woman.

Rough perhaps, if perceptive, she surmised, and grinned to herself out of his sight.

She squirmed awkwardly, felt the fine tremor in her body, the raised hairs on her forearms and the back of her neck, at his closeness. The heat of their bodies radiated in the cold night and he sighed, a contented sound which surprised her.

He seemed to sleep quickly to her relief though she did not. She need to, but how could she? The heat in her was coming quickly and then draining out of her entire being again in an instant, leaving her shivering. In his sleep, Thorin's arm extended clumsily, lay over her stilly as she held her breath, and curled tighter about her 'cross her torso. His entire body seemed to lurch then and roll, entirely onto her and she stopped breathing altogether. Suddenly her lungs were filled with heat, his coat and furs and his body and breath, and she was engulfed, utterly drowned.

She rolled over quickly and nervously so that her back pressed up against his chest, her head tucked just beneath his chin. Trapped by his arm she was, so heavy it felt over her, clothed in layers upon layers, but she could feel his warmth all the same, his need. His palm opened before her as his arm shifted.

Ever since that first touch, as she lay bruised and sore, it was his hands that intrigued her so. A blacksmith's hands- she had learned years ago the blacksmith's distinct forge calluses- hands tough and relentless, though capable of creating works of fine craftsmanship whether from pig metal or diamond. Things of great beauty needed to be handled by hands as careful and considerate as the ones he had handled her bruised face with… Thorin… Thorin… THORIN.

She banished the thought. She tried.

Inching away from him, her movement stirred him, but his arm did not move from where it had lain about her. In his half-consciousness, he could have well been hugging his sword, his pack, even Dwalin. It mattered not. And yet a hot tinge pooling in the very wellspring of his yearnings wrested him suddenly from his sleep, feeling something tickle at the palm of his hand. He looked about and prayed Mahal do not let her wake, for I am…

Her eyes fixed languidly upon his hand, her fingertip in his palm and pressing silently to it. (Tried, she had). How small her hand felt lightly brushing against his thick fingers. She drew her finger lightly across the callus on one palm. "You were a blacksmith once," she murmured, shyly.

"Aye." He nodded quietly. She drew her thumb across the ridges of his knuckles, studying the thick fingers which seemed so much larger than her own. When he exhaled awkwardly without thinking, she craned her head to him, nearly as timid. He found her eyes yielding to the same curiosity, tinged with the same fear of the unknown, but kind, unresisting. His lips found hers and began to devour her.

Her own lips parted as shy acceptance of his, and mimicked the undulations of his mouth with her own. He found her tender and yielding, not the Meisar he had known thus far on the road, that hard, enigmatic little woman, like bending a cage of steel with one's bare hands she was. And so pliant, practically boneless, in his arms.

The first dip of tongue into her mouth caught her by surprise. Thorin stroked her hair back when she pulled away, his eyes with pupils blown undeterred by her sudden trepidation. "Majesty…" was all she managed to sigh forth, meekly, before he was kissing her fully again.

It was no use resisting; she felt the surge of heat in her, and in him, the tingling sensations his touch created within her. His warm breath and the harsh intoxicating taste of his mouth held at hers possessively, a flick of tongue against her lips begging for entrance. They parted cautiously, Thorin's tongue purposeful and determined like him, with its long absence from a woman's mouth written into its hungry ministrations.

Just as quickly she broke it, pulling her lips from his and tugging at his bottom one lightly as she jerked away, and scampered to her feet fleeing the campsite entirely. "Meisar!" he called, even the deep resonance of his voice lost on the night air, which she had disappeared into as quickly as he could no longer feel the heated nectar of her lips on his.

She bolted into the trees alone, found a good base to nestle against and put her face to the cool, earthy moss, her legs seeming to give way and turn to mush beneath her. Her mind twisted and seared and her conscience, her primal understanding of her own nature, raged at her. She yet tasted Thorin's kiss; it lingered, the mead and the raw heat of his breath.

She hated herself in the midst of this strange sense of flattery and the foreignness her own desires kindling in a place so deep inside her she had never dared to explore it. Who was she that Thorin Oakenshield would kiss her the way men did in the old romantic legends? Beren pining for Lúthien ached at her separateness for they were so unlike each other (even though Lúthien was an elf and the daughter of the loathed Thingol, she loved that tale as a girl). Beren, the mortal-man took the weight of great darkness and Herculean feats in the name of his love, his nightingale, a mortal man common as she, come to wed the daughter of an Elven king after many trials. How she had loved that tale so. She could not even remember who had first told it to her.

Who was she now? If not the lonely girl who left Bira and Bombur's safe hearth for the wilderness. Treacherous beasts aside, it was aloneness, and aloneness was always safe. Meisar the Beardless. Meisar the Shepherdess. When the people walked through into the great halls of Erebor, who would she be among them then? She could face the world, learn a trade, maybe blacksmithing or masonry, and live as men did, respected at least for her skill. Or go back to the wilds, and when she grew old and readied to die, find a cave or a rock face to perish under the way dwarves did in the pain of exile.

She had lived as such for far too long, and was growing weary of it. Her aloneness had devoured her, not in the way Thorin kissed but a hollow, unnatural consumption. The wind took her by the face, raising the lingering burn of Thorin's beard against her cheek. Meisar returned to the campsite, hoping to find Thorin where she'd left him.

"Meisar?" he murmured in the dark. She sighed, nervously. "I am here, my king."

"Have I frightened you?"

He took her by both hands and pulled her down beside him. Propped on his elbow, he lay on his side facing her, sitting up, legs tucked beneath her again, hands in her lap wringing against each other. "No my Lord. I am, flattered, truly, though I am not accustomed…" She had a vulnerability about her that he was not entirely sure how to interpret.

"Do not fear," he murmured back. "I mean well toward you."

"I know, I, do not doubt… your intentions are kind and… my king, it is only that I have never-"

Never. It sparked inside of him something raw and intrigued, and he cupped her by her cheeks with rough hands, stroking the peak of her cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs. Her countenance was timid but the heat he felt in her was feral. "Never?" he whispered, a subtle inquiry however heated.

She nodded no, cheeks dusted with blush that he could feel the hot flush of even in the dark of night. "You saved me from a rather pathetic end. And for that I thank you kindly."

"Make no mention of it. It is my duty only."

"Duty? Methinks it is more than that."

"It is. Now… would you share warmth so that you do not catch a fever?"

It caught her by surprise and froze her for a moment. Her legs uncurled slowly, and Thorin gently nudged her by her shoulder to lay back. Supine, she took deep, trembling breaths through her nose and exhaled lightly from her mouth, thinking if her breathing would steady, so would her heart. To no avail. She felt the touch of a fingertip along her jawline in the dark. "You have guided us well and honorably. I would not want for you to fall ill."

She nodded, lips parted without a word able to leave them. He wrapped her into his furs again, covered them together with a warm blanket. He lay his head on Meisar's wolf-pelt mantle, which she had laid on the ground beside them, and pushed a section of it under her head as a pillow. "Are you warm?" he murmured lowly, her back against his chest, the thunder of his heart rumbling over her spine, even through his many layers of clothes. Meisar drew slightly closer to him. And thus was her answer.

His arm lay over her, rested heavily against her belly. She was so soft there, soft but strong.

Hot breath tingled against her scalp. Did he not see what he was doing to her? "These years must have been very… lonely," Meisar said cautiously in the dark.

"Lonely? No. Preoccupied, yes. But lonely… no. The only lonely people are the ones who have nothing else on their minds."

Liar she thought to herself. Over and over she had repeated those exact words, so much it became a mantra playing in her head, to justify that empty space. Perhaps she and Thorin were more alike than they had ever imagined, and she was not sure whether that was a good omen or a dread one.