A/N: 'AGÂNI- The Beginning
Dwalin had already put out Thorin's bedroll and blankets beside his own. A sliver of space was left at the king's side. Was this some kind of game? Some test? Meisar pondered it dispiritedly, pressing a blanket into the space hesitantly, and pushing up as close against Freyda and as far as she could from Thorin, lying to her right and already snoring, by the time she had followed from a final perimeter check.
The silence of the night aside from the wind-heavy night-music made by sleeping dwarves only sharpened her mind, when it should have been weary from a long day. The texture of his mouth, wet and heated inside, tongue slightly rough as it was demanding, she remembered. The abrasiveness of his beard on her chin and the heat of his breath across her face rushing from his nose like a bellow while he kissed, bristles rubbing up quite ardently even against her teeth. It had not left her, not for a moment. It was the only thought that could lull her into the comparative peace of sleep.
It was still dark when she woke again from a dream of red rain. She thought it was blood turned to icy pellets, but it was rubies. Hundreds of thousands of rubies raining down. She rolled to her left to lay on her side, ribs still aching. Thorin's clenched hand drew itself up toward his chest and she found herself, without forethought, reaching to clasp the clenched fist tightly in her hand. Fingers clasping close to the tense skin of his knuckles, his opposite arm, which he had been using as a pillow, flung itself out from under his head and came to rest with gentleness almost too purposeful for sleep, over her head. Fingers knotting in her sleep-mussed hair with their callused tips scraping the back of her neck through the thick mane and curling to get a heavier grasp on her, his forearm rested on her cranium. The opposite fist un-clenched beneath her fingers, taking the tips of her own on his four, thumb giving her little finger a careful stroke, how rough it was his skin, yet so gentle. A hot plume of breath and rasp of beard against her forehead. When Dwalin stirred, she rolled away carefully, closed her eyes and tried to sleep again. Tried, tried she had.
.
In his unconscious he had been tenderer. When he woke, he was edgy.
He had sensed her presence, however subtly, during the night hours, but she was gone by the time he woke again and stretched, achingly, against the pile of dwarves laid out in lumps all about him, their stale mead-heavy breath and the dense heat from their closeness making him feel tense. He had seen his sister weeping again, heard her cries in the great empty halls of Erebor and followed them to a throne adorned in ash, where she knelt like a penitent, weeping, weeping, until the tears came no more and her body disintegrated from grief and hunger and dryness before him. The ash kept falling in a rain until it weighed down the very stone he stood upon and carried him into the darkness below.
"Are you quite alright, Thorin?" asked Balin gently. His morning bread and hard cheese untouched, Balin put a hand to his shoulder. "Thorin?"
"Yes, Balin. A bit tired is all."
"Care for some of Freyda's black drink?" a gentle voice asked from behind. Meisar took a hesitant seat, as if he would rebuke her, his eyes full of ghosts again (she knew that look, so many times before, on so many faces).
"It is quite bitter and hot, but it may give you energy for the day." Thorin took the cup from her, blankly. Erebor and Thror at his desk, its intoxicating smell all around the great room, and Thror's steady hand on this treaty or that. He had bent down and put his arms out to him, a little prince who could fit upon his knee still so easily. Black drink, carved tusks taller than he, and plums from the south. Thror wrapped his small hand about one of the firm, dark fruits. "Bring it to your sister. It is her favorite."
She put her cloak to the side on top of his own, between them. Thorin's steady imbibing grew jerky, as if he would choke. He put the cup aside in haste as his throat closed off. She stared at the tightening of his neck under the skin, puckered just under the chin, the swell in its center constricting. It was the trembling of the hand that had held the drink that frightened her, wrapped all too tight around the cup, too hot, much too hot. But still he gripped, so hard she thought it might crack. The opposite hand slid under the pile of their cloaks to hide how it too trembled. Dwalin was drawing near and the tremor had spread, to his lip. Quivering, it struggled to still itself. Instead it trembled harder and the vein on the side of his neck began to swell and pulse. He would not hold. He would not hold unless…
She slid her hand beneath the cover of cloaks and sought his hand clumsily. The leather of his vambraces gave way to skin and his thick fingers found and clutched tightly at her seeking hand. Tender at first, threading her fingers through his, he grasped her palm to palm and fingers entwined. He held tight, and then tighter. He did not so much as eye her in his peripheral. Dwalin came to sit and make small talk and his hand was still trembling, gripping ever more harshly until she could feel the bones begin to crunch and creak, muffled by the cover of cloaks. He could not see. He would not see. Hurmul. I will protect him. Comfort him.
Her face willed itself not to scrunch or wince in pain from his grip. He held her so tightly she could feel the pulse in her fingertips rise into a panicky gallop, then begin to tingle. The pain went from a mild cramping sensation to a sharp burn.
"Thorin?" Balin asked again, lined eyes beginning to narrow with concern. The vise of his hand eased suddenly and drew away, and Meisar breathed outward in relief, as quietly as she could manage. "The morning is half gone," he said steadily to Dwalin and Balin. "Let us move on."
He stood as if nothing had happened, fetching up his cloak, leaving Meisar to draw her hand innocuously away. Fundin's sons both gazed at her intently as Thorin saddled Minty solitarily nearby. Balin's eye shifted to her left hand, a moment ago mean and red; the tinge of green-purple bruise was beginning to surface on the skin. Her fingers flexed in and out, as if in wanting to grasp something that was not there.
II
"It couldn't be," Dori insisted. "The king would never… It is simply not… proper." He sipped his tea with indignation. A late-night fire with mead and weenies on spits had attracted half a dozen of them, turning Donbur's midnight snack into a busy gathering.
"He is not the same," Dwalin put out heavily. "Battle knocked his head somewhere else. The Shire…" Balin shook his head at the memory of Bilbo Baggins (bless his hairy toes!), how he had last beheld him, peering down from the blockaded gate as the hobbit walked out of Erebor in tears. If only dwarves were as forgiving.
Balin heaved a tired, contemplative sigh at the gathered dwarves about their fire, drinking in the wee hours as wired as ever. "And what, brother, might temper his woes quite like a lady's company, if it is that?"
"She's a retiring kind. Could be he prefers the company of a strong silent type." "Nay," decreed Siv stoutly. "See the way they look at each other? Like predators. About to eat each other up." She nipped half a sausage in one bladed bite, causing a few of the male dwarves to squirm.
"Unlikely," insisted Dori again.
Dwalin and Ori shrugged in defeat. "Couldn't say what kind of lady would please his eye. Two hundred years I have not seen it," mused Balin. "A bitty redhead maybe?" suggested Freyda. Dwalin had taken a seat beside her there at the fire. He plucked a bit of meat off her skewer for her, hand still useless, just as he had poured her mead for her, set her blanket about her shoulders.
"Bitty in height anyway," an anonymous voice offered, sounded like Nori. The rest of the dwarves grumbled disapprovingly. "Didn't say it was a bad thing."
Dwalin glared at him but by now, with the drink, his mood was bizarrely gleeful. "More to worship is what I say, when it comes to choosing a lass. No willow-weed can handle a dwarf's… energy, when he's in that mood," Dwalin chuckled thunderously. Freyda withdrew blushing into the pocket of darkness just behind him. "A bit o' meat on her'll keep ye warm at night," Nori clucked. "'Specially if she's a big broad among men, taller than you by a head at least and fat too, good to curl into at night. Keeps all of you warm."
Dori's teacup rattled again. "What you did as a ruffian out in the wild is no topic I wish to discuss, and you ought to be ashamed to," Dori huffed. "Your brother does not need to hear." Ori scribbled something furiously in his great book, listening as intently to Nori as ever. Dori shut it on him. "Go on to bed now, Ori. It's late."
"He's a grown lad." Nori winked at his younger brother. "Aren't you, Ori?"
"I'm grown!" Ori insisted, straightening his shoulders. Dori waved him off and fumed at Nori. "What kind of dwarf are you? Worse than a thief. Snuggle down with an orc you would if it promised not turn you in. And you call the lady Meisar's a tall-whore's daughter for getting you red handed and reddening your knuckles? Shame on you,"
"I'm a dwarf that knows how to get me old brother all ruffled," Nori jabbed. "Anyway, what do you care so much for her honor all of a sudden, brother? Just remember I'm not the only wildling kind in this company. Think I'm the only one getting into a wee something-something?" "Now you're talking stupidly. Enough drink," scolded Dori again.
"Leave a dwarf to his- or her- own, you know that's what happens," Nori raised his eyebrows slyly. The dwarves seemed only moderately interested in what he had to say but that never shut him up. "Keep an eye on that one I would. The quiet ones will always getcha. One minute it's tracking orcs with that stiff face o' hers. Next she'll have a king's bastard in her belly and he'll be the one not remembering a minute of how it came to be, you know what I'm saying. A lass could use such a thing to her advantage in these times."
"What poppycock!" Dori groused. "We are dwarves, not unscrupulous menfolk." "Well out in the rough, we know our potion-making for things. Like you," Nori put a wet finger into Oin's ear after he'd taken out the ear trumpet against their banter, all flustered himself. He slapped Nori's hand. "I don't make those kind of potions that is for sure. I aim to cure, not to handicap," insisted Oin, irritably.
"Well who's to say she doesn't? Slip it in his mead at night; he won't know what way is up or down. Done it myself many a time." He was about to crack his knuckles self-satisfyingly when Siv sprung and walloped him in the side of the head, Freyda drawing her ax beside her. "Scoundrel!" spat Freyda. "Ought to rip your jewels off and feed 'em to the shepherdess's dogs for that!" added Siv. "Hold him!" commanded Freyda. "Wake up Urdlaug. Get her sharpest knife."
Nori dove behind Dwalin but the bigger dwarf reached back and flipped him head-about-arse over his shoulder, splaying him in the path of the two angry dwarrowdams. Nori put his hands up, cowering. "Not with a lass ye boneheaded wanton! I'm… I'm… offended by that!" He stumbled on, choking on his words in fear. "Get me eye on some travelers with their pockets jingling in a tavern. Slip 'em a good potion with their tankards and pick their pockets when they pass out. Get myself back on the road then to the next round of sticky-fingering." Siv withdrew, her and Freyda still glaring at him the same. "Better be the only sticky-fingering you're doing," warned Freyda. Dwalin grunted in amusement.
Nori wrinkled his nose indignantly at the two and shrugged. He put his hands up in defeat. "But that's me though. Talking about her." He waved his hand in the direction of the watch-post.
"Her?" Freyda pushed back with disbelief. "Not to disappoint you, Master Nori, but I don't think so. Sure isn't the knavish kind like yourself, the shepherdess. Much less a defiler."
Bristling at the word, Dwalin slugged another gullet-full of something stronger than the mead. "You… are truly out of your mind on that one and over the line. Freyda is right." He gave Freyda an approving glance and she beamed. He had never called her by her name before. "Anyway," Freyda hastened to add. "She's just… kind of lonely I think. Cagey kind."
"Like someone we all know," a low voice offered after a tense silence. Freyda looked up toward Dwalin and saw his face was perked and suspicious, but when he caught her looking his ribald enthusiasm returned. "Keep the tall-folk. Give me a good strong dwarven lass with shoulders like an ox, that'll brace against me good when I'm charging. Some wrestling under the bedclothes with a capable partner is how it's done. No fun 'less it's a fair fight."
Oin was gnashing his teeth the same way he was gnashing a mix of lily-root and rue, with one eye on Siv, who was clapping her hands and roaring with delight, skirt up over her knees with strong, thick legs outstretched, in naught but a pair of thin, tattered stockings and short boots.
Balin gave another equally red-faced dwarrowdam a reassuring look, as Dwalin slurred on. He was drunker than ever he'd been, or else he'd be over the other side of the camp watching Thorin toss and turn in his sleep. Odd how he'd never left his side until…
Dwalin shoved a tankard into his brother's hand. They had not woken Thorin. At least there was that, the old dwarf assured himself.
.
Gimli had been her watch-mate but the boy was so weary and achy from sitting at the reins all day over rough terrain she sent him to bed with her assurances that the night was at peace and Dwalin would soon be on. Alone, ears strained against a sound on the wind that sounded a wounded whimper. Was it him? Even when Dwalin and Balin were by his side he muttered in despair sometimes, in his sleep. But she could hear the distinct thump of Dwalin's laughter back in the camp. Dwalin never laughed like that when he was around Thorin. He must have been sleeping then. Good, good. Grant him rest, Mahal.
She flexed her hand in and out, the knuckles still stiff and aching. He had kissed her and now he had made her weak once again, all the same. Weak like he is weak down where no one can see, lonely like he is… NO! He is my king I must not-
She was shaken back to her current reality, by Thorin's low, deep voice. "Meisar?"
She snapped around with wide eyes to face him, a gasp escaping her. He drew back, with surprising gentleness and her furrowed brow eased at him. "I am sorry. You surprised me, is all. I thought you were sleeping."
"I couldn't sleep," he mumbled. "I did not mean to scare you. I suppose I have done that oft these days past, dunininh." He paused, hesitantly. "In a manner of speaking," she half-whispered. His closeness was making her itch. "Have you been avoiding me purposely?" he asked suddenly.
"Of course not." Her cheeks flamed. Liar.
He took a seat cautiously beside her. "Perhaps I thought it wise to," she admitted. His eyes seemed to burn a hole in hers through the dark between them, close as they were now. So close she could hear his heart thumping under his clothes, feel his air in her midst. When a hand extended toward her, she did not move, only held herself stiffly as a single forefinger running down her jawline became two putting her chin up a bit toward him. "Do not blush. You are worthy of my admiration." "Your… admiration my king?"
"You defended me with your life, for one. Does that alone not make you worthy?"
"And so did you save mine." She flinched heavily. "What is it you fear so, Meisar? I can see it your eyes. You might as well grant your king the small favor of your honesty."
"How I feel when you're near me." Her voice had an unfamiliar tremor in it, as if she were on the verge of tears. But she had said so with stoutness, forthright, if fearing to utter it. He gave her a little reassuring smile. "You kissed me, Thorin, my king. I suppose it is I wonder why."
He was silent and guarded and did not answer. "Am I to believe it, my king?"
"Believe what?"
She sighed hesitantly. "Were you betrothed once? To a Firebeard? A lady with red hair?"
The flash of shock, even pain, in his eyes made her immediately regret her words, but his visage softened toward her quickly enough. "It is true." He drew his hand up toward her cheek but fell back. "A contract of marriage was made by my grandfather, between myself and a Firebeard princess from the Blue Mountains, when I was but in swaddling clothes."
"What became of her, my liege/"
"It makes no difference," he said more cagily. "I never beheld her face, nor knew her name. It would have been revealed to me when I was considered of age for the marriage to take place. Smaug arrived before that time did, and put an end to all of that." Meisar wrinkled her brows in confusion. "But she was your One?" It was only half a question, really.
He shrugged. "A dwarf may have a One, but a King has the One he is given, and must make do. Oft they are content enough in marriage. I had good examples in my father and grandfather. Both loved their wives deeply."
"I had the impression that it was of a greater loss, is all."
"Not so, compared to others. What does it matter anyway?" His eyes grew sad. "A king without a kingdom is no match even for a Firebeard."
She shrugged, relieved but not really. One heaviness of mind had only been replaced by another. "I… only suppose I wonder why it was you sought my company. That would have explained it." She was quivering finely all over. "If you are looking for a Firebeard princess in me, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."
"I am not looking for a princess."
"Then what are you looking for?" She shivered away from his touch, no matter how great the pleasure was it gave her. "You are shaking."
"I am fine," Meisar answered more assuredly this time, but he could feel her trembling still.
"It frightens you that I have grown fond of you?"
His hands cupped and braced her upper arms, a gentle yet commanding hold. She studied him, his heavy brow and his broad, sturdy shoulders and long hair. His handsome features were pleasing to her eye, if there was something oddly stimulating about his mannerisms too, burdened and wary as they were. He was too much like her. Maybe it comforted her. She could not say.
"Well?" His face had an interrogative impatience to it. A whimper half-formed on her lips. "It confounds me slightly," she confessed with earnest timidity peppering her voice, which was so harsh on an ordinary day, reduced to the mewl of a frightened girl. "I have only to offer you my loyalty, and my company, if that is what you wish from me," she murmured lowly. His tense gaze seemed unfulfilled by that answer. "If it is some affection you hold for me, I am honored my liege."
"I have grown to want for your company," he confessed quietly. His vulnerability was raising the hairs on the back of her neck, like a stag's might in the path of an unseen bow. "My company?" She repeated it with a dream-like distance.
"Yes. And that is so odd to think?"
"It is a strange thing to imagine, yes, that I am…and to you no less." "Why?" His eyes bore deep. Did he want her to say it?
"You have been through so great of grief. Does it cloud your judgment, I fear."
"Seems a convenient explanation for everything, doesn't it?" he seethed back at her. "My grief, my gold-madness, my year in the Shire with the Halflings playing at dead. As if I had a choice. Is that all there is to me?"
"Of course not," she replied, wounded. His expression seemed to regret himself. "You are correct that I have been terribly aggrieved. I have lost much. But can I not find comfort in one who has held my confidence, and shielded my life with her own? Still you think it strange?"
"Mahal! You wake in the night and come here to me, seeking… seeking… this. I, a woman who has shown herself to be no comforter, and you confide more in myself I think than you do even in Dwalin, the closest you have to a brother now. And he worries for you so."
"I cannot very well cleave to his side in the night."
"Then it is more than comfort, isn't it?"
"Yes. It is." The way he moved then, it seemed a weight had been lifted from his shoulders in the literalist of ways. Yet he seemed melancholy still. And why shouldn't he, she thought. It had struck her suddenly with a pang of urgency, something inside her needing to move, extend. A sense of benevolence toward him grew, more than she had ever felt for anybody, and tried to think back upon those who had been as close to her in life as this foreign, melancholy king was now, and realized that there were none.
An unfamiliar quake made a tremor through her body, holding herself at length from him. "You kissed me, my king. You kissed me…"
While she said no more, her eyes lifted to his slowly and his held the strong bearing of her gaze. The trembling of her hand as his own shifted haltingly along the ground between them, coming to brush lightly over the tops of her fingers with his own, said everything.
.
"Brother, please," scolded Balin finally, flustered, storing his thoughts for a better time. "You've not the know-how to say what you'd do… under the blankets." Dwalin retreated, wordless and scowling. "Never even kissed a lass, have ye Mister Dwalin? Doubt it," Donbur teased, jumping on the opportunity. Freyda's eyes prickled as she caught Dwalin's shift in her direction, self-consciously.
"You'll stop talking if ye knew what we good fer ye, like any lass would come near the likes of yer bubbly arse," retorted Dwalin finally. "I might have a One!" Donbur whined. "You had a One. You ate her." The dwarves laughed and Dwalin kept the momentum going against Donbur's smug nonchalant brush-off. "Sure did taste mighty fine, that she-pig ye slaughtered for the road back in Ered Luin!" Dwalin's voice surged upward in a roar of laughter. Donbur plucked another sausage off the stick, biting his fingers in the process as they were shaped quite the same.
"If it is a bonny stout lass is what ye fancy so, what's the problem with the king having an eye on one? Dwalin's face seemed to darken worriedly again. He drank some more. Donbur munched another sausage stupidly. "Nice-sized, I say, the shepherdess. Good for the king if he fancies her. Seek her hand myself I would if she weren't so close to kin. She's awful nice once you get to know her. Da was sad when she left."
Dwalin smacked him upside his head. "She has as much use for you as your mother does your father."
Donbur shrugged off the insult, skewered another sausage. "Save some for the rest of us," whined Nori.
"In that case, I should have her cook for me. I prefer my meat well-done."
"Yer meat is still breathing, boy," Dwalin snorted.
"Strangely, Mister Dwalin, your mother said the same thing not long ago. But she cooked it nicely for sure."
Dwalin slapped him upside his expanse of chins and that was the end of that.
Balin winced and Bofur entered the fray, gently, putting a comforting hand out to Donbur's shoulder. "Leave the lad be," he chided. "Don't let him bother you so, nephew. You're a fine lad and as good a cook as my brother. Mayhap someday a fine fat-bottomed lass will come waltzing to yer supper table and into yer heart."
"Isn't that the way to someone's heart, through their stomach?" trumpeted Donbur. Dwalin glared at the two of them, curling his lip at such wanton optimism; Bofur, as usual, ignored him. "As for the other small matter… if it is, it is. And if it is, it is a good thing," Bofur tried settled the matter finally. Meisar was a fine lass, righteous at heart if not particularly charming. He hoped Thorin, of all people Thorin, might find light in her.
"Would ye like my scone, Mister Dwalin? I'm right stuffed," Freyda offered. Dwalin seized and snarfed the blueberry scone and rubbed a huge tattooed hand on Freyda's head in thanks. "Very good lass. Very good." She reached and patted his hand back, a twinkle about her that Dwalin was oblivious to and Balin was smiling amusedly at.
"And just what are you two doing here with the menfolk? Listening to all this dastardly talk?" Eda stomped through the gathering dispiritedly, Emli on her tail and equally miffed. The fire was still going, the dwarves still rambling on bawdily. "Can't sleep with all this commotion," Emli's head jerked around at the sound of two more female giggles. Lulia and Virta had been hiding in the shrub just off the fire. "You two go off to bed before your sister sees you here. She's stirring over there from all the bedlam." Emli shooed the girls off, who didn't need much more warning than that, and she gave Freyda and Siv a good stern look. "Sound like a bunch of ruffians in a whorehouse. Act like dwarves!"
Nori belched ferociously. "There, that dwarvish enough for you, Missus Gloin?!" Emli's faced puffed out indignantly. "I have a name of my own, scoundrel." Eda snapped.
"Mine's Nori by the way."
"Very funny, very funny," Eda raised her hands and waved them once irritably before they came to rest smartly again on her hips. "All the potions I have for the morning headache after drink are gone. See how funny you all find it tomorrow morning." Dwalin made a low rumbling sound. "Come on lass." He patted Freyda's shoulder. "Get me some of that Southron swill ye call coffee. We've got watch."
.
"Rats!"
Meisar pulled away suddenly from their nearness and yelped as Freyda and Dwalin came barreling through to the watch post. Freyda fell forward as one of Meisar's hounds got under her feet. Dwalin caught her in one arm. A quick glance into her eyes was all he gave her in acknowledgement before it shifted irritably to the hounds. They'd been nesting behind the rock and now came and clung about the shepherdess's feet. "Rats with fur," grumbled Dwalin. The hounds mumbled at him, hurt. "Unless you wish to go sniffing orcs in the dirt yourself Mister Dwalin, better get used to these furry rats under your feet."
"Keep 'em under yours and I'll be happy, lass." Dwalin nudged Thorin off of the earthen seat. "Get some sleep, my king. Not even on watch, were ye?" His brows furrowed at Meisar.
"Fair enough. Goodnight," Thorin replied quickly. "Save my spot. I'll be along soon enough," Dwalin said. His eyes were on Meisar as if he could read her heart already like moon runes.
III
When she went to rouse them in the morning, half did not wake at all, not even with a swift kick in the hindquarters or a violent shake or two. An empty barrel of ale that had been full at supper sat with its stopper eyeing the lumps of drunken dwarves accusingly. Both Emli and Eda had lamented the situation to her so pitiably she rightly felt a need to disappear for a spell. A patch of woods and a long-abandoned orchard half a league along their route beckoned her. She could smell apples, fall-fruit and icy wind on the air.
Soon, she had foraged berries, a sack of mushrooms, and a heavy pail of not-yet-ripe apples, the orchard though long-abandoned, still fruitful. Now she sat quietly over a rock, cleaning a rabbit skin. Footsteps behind her came heavy, but tentative. She knew them by now, and her heart was warm suddenly, her head hot. "You have not accompanied me on these adventures for many days now my king." She kept to her task and didn't look up at him. Thorin rumbled at her, ruefully. "Surely you can understand, Meisar…"
"I am glad for your company again my king. I have missed it, truly." She stopped as he came around to her. Her eyes were warm and she was illuminated serenely under the morning sun. "The dwarves are awake I hope?"
"They are coming to life."
"And you prefer my company to them whining of headaches?"
"I came because I wanted to give you this," he took her hand and pressed a flat, polished stone into her palm, folded her fingers gently around it. "A talisman," she said, opening her fingers and examining the stone as he looked on with eager, almost timid eyes. "It shows fine craftsmanship for such a crude canvas. It is beautiful."
"I carved it. For you." She drew her fingers over the smooth, meticulous groves of the dwarvish runes. They were tingling, and it was not alleviated by his fingers suddenly brushing up against hers as he took the stone from her. One thick finger moved over the first rune. "It means guide," he explained.
"Appropriate. And this one?"
"Honor. Loyalty, that one." She flipped the stone over to see another one, alone on the back. "And this, my king?"
"Beauty." Her chest tightened and she stared up into his eyes, suspended in a wonderment she could not process. It made her feet numb, her knees weak and her head about to spin off its axis. Something inside her clenched, not quite in her belly but lower, and deep, deep inside. It rose and made her throat tighten against what might have been tears.
"It is a gift of thanks, my lady. For your… discretion. Yesterday." Her heavy eyes cast themselves almost too willingly downward. "The depth of your sorrow is daunting to me my king." He took her hand gently in his. "I did not mean to crush you so, for them." His callused fingertips whispered between the ridges of her finger-bones.
"It is a lovely well-thought gift, my king. I shall cherish it always." She bit her lip against a rising swell in her throat. "Are you alright, Meisar?"
When she wanted to answer, only a squeaking sound came out. She felt like a small girl, a blushing maid. When the words finally came, rushed, they were stilted. "Fine. Just a tad overwhelmed. No one's ever really given me such a gift, and from a king, I… I am overwhelmed is all." She smiled with her eyes at the ground, the ducts in the corners starting to sting. The worst was the threat of tears; she bit her lip and when she stopped it was bloody, Thorin wiping away the blood with his thumb. "You must not feel shame, or fear, for any of this." He cupped her by sides of her neck, his hands so rough but so safe, so familiar and warm, his thumbs at her cheek. "Beauty?" she whispered, whether it was a question even she herself could be sure.
"Beauty," he confirmed, quietly. She opened her eyes and found that his were silent and begging. "Might I kiss you again?"
"Yes. Yes…"
Her eyes slid closed, and he watched the twitch and then the hesitant parting of her lips. His head went forth to claim her lips and fumbled back, when she opened her eyes and flinched. Their noses bumped twice before his mouth was on hers again, with eager purpose. His lips were thin and severe but to kiss them was to make them swell in the slightest. How deeply those lips needed to be kissed she had not conceived of until hers were on them a second time, the tip of her tongue skimming his bottom one. Though his mouth was slim and sparse his lips were warm and cushioned with wet heat when he kissed. Her lips parted shyly again and she felt his tongue slip along hers for a lingering taste, the touch of his mouth thoughtful yet intense. He must have been starving she thought. Had he even been with a woman before, lain with or even kissed? The hungry motions of his tongue seemed to belie some practice, at least with his mouth. She twitched at the friction of his beard against her skin, letting her tongue find his and explore tentatively, none too clumsy for its lack of practice.
The sensation was so acute to him it could have been a razor dragged over it the same. Her own were full and slightly chapped, all too pink for her complexion, and as they drew away from Thorin's, positively rosy. When his lips had left hers, she saw dark spots peppering the peripherals of her vision. She licked her lips and tasted his foreignness on them, savored the smoky tang of it. He leaned and kissed the freckled bridge of her nose. "There is much to you, my king. I know that. And there is much good in you. I see it." She swallowed a gullet full of air. She could have choked over the words that were caught in her throat, drowning in his eyes again. They paralyzed all of her being like a poisonous spider. What will become of us now?
He brought her close and kissed her head, murmuring something in Khuzdul against her hair, warming her scalp with his breath. "I cannot explain this," he sighed weightily. "It simply is, my lady."
"Nor can I, but…" "But what?"
"Your company and your… affections, my king, are…"
"Are what?" he murmured gently into her hair again.
"I am… well I suppose I am… Isrej."
"Isrej," he repeated in a content murmur.
Not So Alone.
IV
By mid-afternoon her own exhaustion had begun to make her feel heavy all over. Hegi sat behind her on Jenny, clasping about her waist and making nicking sounds at the irritable pony below them. When she dug a pair of greedy fingers into the tobacco pouch at Meisar's waist, she smacked her hand away, irritably. "You smell of gunpowder, Hegi. When did you change your clothes or wash your face last?" she muttered in Khuzdul. Hegi's coal-blackened fingers took a pinch of tobacco and stuffed it into her pipe, defiantly. "Don't be lighting any pipes in my midst!"
Hegi smirked wildly in response. She buried her face into the back of Meisar's head and took a deep breath of her hair. "What in all of Arda are you doing, you madwoman?" Hegi laughed again, her unhinged grunting laugh. "Your hair smells of pipe-weed and it's not yours," she garbled again in Khuzdul. "Pipe-weed and someone else's breath." Her laugh rose into a screeching cackle. Meisar near halted the pony, mouth shot wide open. The other dwarrowdams riding before them were at a not-so-comfortable distance and Emli had the ears of a fox. "Another word and you'll be walking."
"You're… on edge," Brynja said pointedly. Meisar snapped forward again as Brynja fell back to ride beside her. Meisar glared a bit toward her. "Shouldn't I be? If the past weeks have been any indication?" To her eternal gratitude, Hegi was just cackling stupidly again.
"Are you alright? I've heard rumors." "Brynja, please-"
"Not bad ones though," she chirped.
"Enough with rumors. Believe what you see and nothing more," Meisar repeated, remembering Thorin's own words. Hegi tugged on her long plait and anchored her face to her head again, laughing and smelling her hair. Brynja looked utterly confused at least. "Bedlamite she is. Don't pay her any heed." She jammed her whole body backward at Hegi, nearly knocking her from the pony.
"Oh you snap at old Hegi so. She is harmless," chided Brynja. She patted Hegi's hand from over her pony and the dwarrowdam winked slyly back at her and jerked her head toward Meisar, only seeming to confuse Brynja more. Brynja smiled muddily. "Only trying to be nice in her way, dunininh."
Her naïveté was suddenly obnoxious to her. "Trying to stop her from striking a pipe is all, Brynja. Light a match she will and our ashes will be raining down on Rivendell." She glared edgily at Hegi. "A miner knows better-"
Brynja shrieked fast as Meisar stopped mid-sentence and made a sound like a bullfrog in a swamp, halting her pony harshly. Jenny screeched, and the shepherdess's eyes were as big as saucers. "My lady?" said Brynja fearfully. "What is it?"
"Rivendell!" Meisar keened. "Oh Mahal, we are going in the wrong direction!"