He was not angry. Nor was Dwalin even. They had sat that evening around the cook-fire, silently, after she had broken the news, and the two of them, Thorin and Dwalin, shrugged it off, to her relief, but even greater confusion. Dwalin had patted her shoulder and the look Thorin had given him was like a knife when his huge, tattooed palm made contact. "The longer I can avoid the company of elves, the better," Dwalin had grumbled, forgivingly.

"Hear they've got healing powers not like ours," Eda said. She finished re-dressing Dwalin's arm and felt Meisar's forehead. "A wee hot. Told you to rest, lass. You get run down, this is what happens."

"I feel fine," she assured Eda. "It's not a fever." Her eyes raised up shiftily toward Thorin, avoiding his equally unsteady gaze. "I'm going for a walk," she announced briskly.

"Might I accompany you, dunininh?" Thorin asked quietly.

She curtsied, stiffly. "Of course, my king."

Nori and Dori turned to each other silently and looked to Dwalin for help, supposing if Dwalin suspected ill he would have drawn the king away. He did not- not this time. It had been so long since Dwalin had seen him so… unburdened.

.

"I thought you would be cross with me," she said quietly after a long silence.

"I am not."

He walked on with his face held stiffly ahead of them. She continued. "We could continue to the mountains, though it is a longer tread than if we turned back for Rivendell and-"

"Have I distracted you so in your purpose?" he interjected.

"My king?"

"That you go three days in the wrong direction?" he questioned. He turned to her and took both of her hands in his.

The apples in her cheeks were blushing. He cupped her face with a certain intensity about his touch, thumbs sweeping over the flushed peaks of her cheekbones. "You would be fool to think that you are not the cause."

Thorin's face stiffened at the words. An ache formed in his chest, low and tight. He was about to leave when he felt the woman's hand on his, the warmth of her skin on the back of his hand, threading into his fingers with an uncanny desperation, her warm palm against his own.

"Don't go…"

"Meisar," Thorin said breathily. He squeezed her hand harder, took her fingers and threaded them through his own and held tight in a heavy grip that was full of need. He brought his hand up to touch her face again, thumb brushing lightly over her cheekbone, her arms coming to cling nervously around his forearm. He leaned his forehead to hers. He felt heavy, so heavy against her, as if a great boulder lay beneath his forehead. His nose, so harsh and prominent, pushed lightly into the groove between her nose and the apple of her cheek.

"Did I not promise to protect you?" she questioned, shifting her head ever so slightly to feel the rough of his beard rub along the naked skin of her face.

O what have I woken up in me? (A being that fire could not kill in a black arrow's reach)

"And you still think I need it?" he asked, his tone a bit darker, his grip tightening.

A black arrow or blue eyes.

She pulled back and stared heavily into his eyes. "Have I not been forthright in telling you so, when you asked that I speak freely?"

"I'll make you captain of Erebor's guard then. That'll be a sight," he smirked darkly. She pulled back from him and crossed her arms.

"Comforted then. Is that a better word?"

"The meaning is much the same, isn't it?"

"And is that the worst thing, my lord?"

"No." He moved and kissed her swiftly, deep and thrusting. His mouth was hot and tasted of smoke and ale. He kissed messily for a king but not for a dwarf, or one who had not kissed a woman for some time, if at all. His mouth was hard and frenzied on hers, and his beard scraped her cheek and left a brush of pink skin there. He rumbled a groan into her, the feel of a woman's mouth on his, all heat and sweet nectar, foreign, exhilarating.

There was a constant smokiness about his lips, a primal, masculine essence about his taste. She pressed her tongue lightly past his lips and he pulled away.

"I am sorry. I didn't…" When they touched his face he could feel her hands were callused and worked like his, and yet they were tender, so light and hesitant.

He smiled, serenely and turned his head to place a soft kiss in her palm, the roughness of his beard there stirring her and making her sigh from deep in her throat. "Please, do not be sorry. There is enough to be sorry for in this world. You are the last that should be."

.

"I thought he'd react differently," Balin remarked, when they were both gone, and it was just him, and Dwalin. Dwalin's eyes squinted and his forehead scrunched in thought. He gave his brother a suspicious look.

Balin sighed. "He's sporting a different mood. I can't quite figure it out. But these have been strange days the last."

"You don't think?" Dwalin asked, daring not to say it aloud in a better way.

"Three days off the road from Rivendell. The lady is a guide with some skill," pondered Balin aloud. He had read something in the wordless glances between them, but it might as well have been in Elvish. A tenseness, that he had only ever seen the likes of once before.

II

"Do you think I've broad shoulders, Meisar?" Freyda asked disarmingly. In her furs, she was undoubtedly broad. Furs and a coat of mail that came near to her knees and to her elbows the same glinted sharply in the midday sun.

The two dwarrowdams walked along the bumpy terrain, the dwarves at their midday meal having made a brief stop.

"Well?" she asked again. Her face, which had been so fierce to look upon, set mouth and snarling blue-green eyes, was imbued with the self-consciousness of a maid on the cusp of womanhood. "You are a dwarf. Of course you do." Freyda's vulnerability amused her, not like Thorin's frightened her.

"Yes, but even for a dwarf, do you think?" "She shed her furs and flexed her arms in the reflection of the pond. "Freyda, what is on your mind? Is it Mister Dwalin again?"

She looked at her feet and grinned, bashfully. "Drunken rambling about the campfire is all." "Talking mighty clear about the kind of lass he'd want warming his bed. Get the impression he's not had one before." Meisar gave a practiced smile. "And where would have? He hardly seems like the romantic kind."

"Well, we're not sprung out of stone, are we?" inquired Freyda earnestly.

"In the world of men, they might say yes."

Freyda chewed her lip. "A strong woman, big-shouldered, who can hold her own against him. That's what he said. Drink makes 'em tell exactly what's on their heart, ye know. Remember that day at the water when we were sparring?" She turned her face to one side and examined it in the still pool, fluffed at the pale hair at her jawline.

"Of course. He seemed quite impressed," Meisar conceded, her placidly starting to chafe.

Freyda spun around. "Well he's found that lass! Why can't he see it?"

"You certainly can hold your own, Freyda."

For a moment Freyda seemed to swoon. She sat herself heavily upon a nearby rock, with a dreaminess coming over the usually bellicose pools of her eyes. "Can't stop thinking about him. Want those big tattooed hands on me. I dream about it sometimes."

If only you knew what my dreams were like, Freyda. Or his…

"Feelings make dwarves do strange things, Freyda." She took a seat beside her cautiously.

"You're acting a queer fish yourself. The dwarves are nattering ye know, about… things."

"I have much on my mind," protested Meisar.

"Three days off course. I'm sure ye do, lass. I'm sure ye do."

"Freyda…"

Nori's theories had filtered up to her, via the nattering grapevine made by the dwarrowdams. She didn't know whether to be frightened or amused or-

Freyda twisted one of her braids on her finger nervously. "If the king… trusts you with things… can you coax him sometime, about Mister Dwalin, ye know? If he says anything about me."

She exhaled, with a bit of relief. "Of course, Freyda. I would be glad to."

III

In the evening before bed Thorin made small talk with Emli and her son. He was coming around more, his isolation less than constant, since the day they had met on the road to Bree.

"Well I would say your friendship has done him well, my lady," remarked Emli coming around from behind her, her smile purposeful as always. The ears of a fox and the eyes of a hawk, Gimli would boast of himself, but it was his mother who had earned that motto, truly.

"I suppose," Meisar noted, innocuously as possible.

Emli peered down at her, arms folded across her chest. "I think there is more to you than you let on," she said, cryptically, and turned as daintily on her heel as she had come, and walked away. Emli always had the last word.

"Isn't that most of us?" responded Meisar, but Emli was already out of earshot.

Or not she mused silent, sarcastic and peering over her cloak toward Emli. Another set of eyes on her was all she needed, and the eyes of a hawk no less.

.

She was woken in the middle of the night by a fur being placed over her. She woke and gasped into the darkness, only to have her sudden shock soothed by a warm, callused hand brushing her cheek.

"You were shivering. Are you sure you are past a fever's chance?" the low familiar voice rumbled beside her. She tugged the fur up around her shoulders sleepily against the cool night, laid supine in her bedroll as she was, and quickly realized it was his own.

"What are you doing here, my king?" she half-hissed. She squinted at every movement of the bedrolls around them.

"I have been laying just there all night," he said, pointing to a nearby space that was empty now. "Your chattering woke me."

She hugged the fur ever more tightly over her shoulders, like armor. "Perhaps I am, then. Cold. I didn't notice."

"Might we share warmth again then?"

She nodded yes, feeling all too hot now. He laid his bedding out quietly beside her, set his ax and his great sword to the side. Who was this dwarf? This king? Who clasped her hand and had kissed her, and who desired her lay at his side in the night now? She pondered to herself, anxiously. She had already found a part of him unlike the infallible, stubborn dwarf she had imagined, controlled and bitter and melancholy. But now he seemed so very wanting, vulnerable even, and it frightened her a bit. She craned her head up slowly to look about. Each of the dwarves were asleep, deep asleep if their snores made any indication of it. She resisted undulating toward the furnace heat of him, as her body ached to draw close to him and sink into his warmth. Wordlessly, she scooted herself with her bedroll about her, his hand on her belly coming to rest firmly, drawing her to his side.

His consummate, even shy, tenderness disarmed her so when they lay side-by-side. It had not perturbed her so much as the wounded sounds he made in his sleep. Protect and serve and comfort my king. Hurmul.

Her honor in that matter had been so unceremoniously discarded it seemed. She wanted so badly to kiss him and never stop, to taste the brine of his skin. To bury her fingers into his long hair and caress the dark heavy locks. And take in his scent, a dark and earthy scent, mingling with light sweat, but not unpleasant in the least. To hold him, cleave to him utterly. Shyly then she rolled to face him, his hand on her hip commanding a steady grasp, drawing her closer. It was not quite terror in her eyes that he beheld in the dim light of the fire, no. It was not fear of any kind that he had ever seen.

It was a shyness, a timid curiosity that hurt her deep in a place inside she had never known could ache like it did. And it would not stop hurting until… until what?

She reached out and ran the tip of her finger over his bearded chin. She looked so frightened when she touched him, as if he would rebuke her for it. She could feel the effervescent rumble as he sighed at the contact. In avertedly, the tip of her nose brushed against his. Hers was short and stubborn, with a dwarvish bridge. His was perfectly angled in a harsh, prominent way, and it was the most striking part of his face she thought, more so even than those eyes. Eyes that she could perceive the intensity of even in the dark of night, so close to her, and yet so far.

He took her into his arms again and pressed her tightly to him. "It is a peaceful thing to hold you," he murmured softly.

"Shh… they will hear us. If they see us, my king…" she breathed.

He nodded into her hair, caring not for it. It had been long, so long, since he had known a woman's closeness. He took in Meisar's earthy, natural scent. Her hair smelled of rain, and her skin. He tasted her skin, the earth and salt of it, something natural and primal and female. She intoxicated him to his core.

"I will leave you before dawn, I promise."

She stirred lightly against him, overcome with both her need and his, a sensation that left her heady. Thorin Oakenshield was not a man to become intoxicated by anything, not even ale. A burdened, sometimes officious man, Meisar had always pictured him as cold and distant, if especially noble in his countenance. And that he was to most. But Meisar…

He closed his eyes and tried to forget and held her. Took in the sweetgrass and heady scent of her hair. Like Kili's after he had run thru a field in the morning, and rushed in to wake him. But she was not Kili, that sweet carefree boy with the impish grin; she was Meisar, the least of all carefree. But she was comfort; something that lay beneath her surface startled and made him weak. When he held her like he did now, her head pressed on his shoulder, her arms cautiously folded up against his chest, he was protecting something. Guarding her heart as if it were his own. Under the exterior, she, like everything he had ever cared for, could be broken.

She was not Kili, or Fili, or his kin. She was…

He tugged her head lightly upward to meet her lips in the dark.

She responded with her tongue in kind. Thorin's taste- a mix of smoke, ale and something vague and masculine- was strangely intoxicating to her. And the hot breath that poured across her cheeks from his nostrils when he would not stop kissing her even to break for breath. It was too overwhelming, too wonderful a sensation to deny, and she surrendered to it utterly. He caught her bottom lip stubbornly, the thrust of his tongue deliberate and rough. Meisar let him devour her, suckling and nipping until she was sure she would wake up swollen and purple. Ripples of heat coursed between her legs, a heady feeling all over. When he relented eager for breath, she then caught his lip, pushing teeth into it gently, drawing a harsh groan from him. Her fist wound in his long hair challenging him to surrender first. He hissed against her and freed her lips from his, and pulled her head back by the root of her hair, beard rasping over her neck as he teased her there with a dark gaze thrown up at her daring her to make a sound. Teeth grazed over the base of her throat, catching a small fold of skin and nipping at it. His kiss burned over the pulsating flesh, making her squirm. He did not like being bested at this particular game.

"Sleep well, Meisar," he said gruffly. He kissed her forehead curtly and turned over to sleep.

.

He woke drenched to the skin in the cold sweat of night.

"Bad dreams, my lord?" he heard a voice hum quietly.

She sighed. "We all get them sometimes…"

His head was cradled on her knee as he thrashed in his sleep, stifling his anguished moans against her. This unintended humbling burned at him, a humiliation however slight. His dreams were his own. Thorin Oakenshield did not wail and gnash his teeth in fitful sleep for phantoms, nor ghosts.

She took her water skin, poured a cool stream on the end of her cloak and dabbed at his brow. For her stony disposition, there was a tenderness in her hands, the way she wiped the sweat from his face.

"This very earth we lay upon has drunk so many tears that none will ever see," Meisar sighed with deep sadness into the night. Thorin tensed against her. "It keeps its secrets well and so do I."

She bent and quietly kissed his forehead. "You shall tell me sometime of happier days. I should like to see you smile."

IV

She excused herself for watch quietly the next evening, hoping none would realize she was early for it, and found Thorin waiting where he said he would be. His and Dwalin's watches had left them sleeping in shifts and Dwalin was out like a rock in the camp, for once. They were safe, safe and alone, if only for a spell.

He bent his head to kiss her clasped hand, a whisper of a kiss on the knuckles that tickled from his beard.

"Sit."

He puts his arms out for her. She moved, quavering to him, his big hands coming around to settle at the small of her back, so gingerly, but weighing on her like boulders. She felt the globes of her bottom twitch in want of something she had never felt before and could not fathom. Before her knees could give way from beneath her he pulled her to sit upon his knee.

His hands remained clasped at the small of her back, steadying her upon his knee, anchoring her there.

"I am sorry I was short with you last night. I did not mean it."

"I forgive you." Desire stirred slowly and then ripped over her. She placed her arms about his broad shoulders and his moved from the small of her back to stroke the side of her neck, shyly. His fingertips left a trail of goose-flesh in their wake, caressing first the round of her ear, her jaw, and then return to settle upon her neck.

"You have my promise still my king, that I will keep your confidence in all matters." That earnest, almost noble, expression returned to her face for a moment, stolid and detached. The memory of the previous night, the cold stickiness of his skin and the tenderness of her hands on his head, stroking, the softness of her lap beneath him, made his head feel heavy and it dipped lightly against her. Her fingers trailed along the edge of his beard where it met the naked skin of his cheek, a most tender exploration. "Let me kiss you," he said huskily.

Her lips drew in a shy, slight pucker. The heavy bristle of beard brushed lightly into the dip between her nose and top lip. The tip of her nose pressed lightly into the roughage of the beard above his lip. He brushed another light, faltering kiss against the not-so-innocuous space.

"You are unfamiliar with these things?" he inquired, the heat behind his words ill-concealed. Her hand stroked timidly over his hair. Thorin's was so long and dark, thick and virile, the feel of it not quite like silk but not coarse either.

His eyes got a hungry, dark gleam to them when she nodded yes quietly. But his serene smile softened his visage then, a thick finger tucking a lock of hair loosened from her braid behind her ear.

"And are you, my king… unfamiliar?"

He avoided her question with a small smile, head bowed a bit. "We will learn… together."

"There is something growing between us, my king. I think I should fear it more than I do," she admitted, darkly. You have woken something up in me, that is swallowing me whole, but there are no words to tell you so.

"No. I am quite tired of fear," he growled.

"Then you shall not fear, my king, and I will try not to." She took him then, smoky-mouthed and coarse-bearded, to embrace again together. His kiss was tender and lingering now, not tense and claiming, savage like it had tended to be.

"You kiss with such tenderness Thorin Oakenshield." She drew a hesitant hand over his head, finding his temple plait, running her fingers over it until she reached the clasp and rolled it nervously between her thumb and forefinger.

"And that surprises you?"

"You are not a tender kind."

"Am I not?" He kissed her again tugging on her bottom lip with his teeth, drawing her it into his mouth and suckling heatedly at it.

"Tell me, am I the first?"

"Bofur!" she gasped suddenly. Bofur burned in Thorin's mind. How could he…?

"Bof-" he started to glower.

Meisar skittered off his knee and scolded the intruding party. "Bofur! You're not on watch for another hour!"