"You did not see anything last night, Bofur."

Bofur set down his whittling and turned around. Meisar placed an unthreatening hand on his shoulder from behind. She had held out a mince pie to him, his favorite.

"There is no need to bribe me, Meisar," he assured her, looking into her eyes when he did. Liars never looked into someone's eyes she was always told, and it relieved her some but not much.

"It is a good thing, my lady," he assured when he had swallowed the last bit and brushed the crumbs from his tunic. In scarcely three bites, the pie was gone.

"Is it?" Meisar sighed delicately and avoided Bofur's curious eyes.

"Do you have feelings for him, Meisar?" Bofur prodded gently.

"Feelings? I dare ask, what are those?" Meisar chuckled self-deprecating. Bofur prickled inside at the somberness underneath it all.

"Oh Meisar, sweet lass," he laughed consolingly. "You will know it when you feel it. One simply does."

Meisar looked into his eyes half-seriously. "What does it feel like?"

Bofur sighed and thought on the matter briefly. "It… it… tingles."

.

Foothills leagues ahead lay alternately forested and buttressed in sharp rises of stone. Drawing ever nearer to well-guarded Elvish lands, orcs and rogues among men were rarer. Still, Meisar took the hounds and left quietly ahead of the awakening caravan. She would need to find a suitable path for the wagons before they could get on their way.

Chastise me, Mahal, indeed you have, she mulled silently.

"Meisar..."

The voice came unexpected and her dogs turned and the hair on their backs and hindquarters bristled. "Hush," she soothed; she did her clumsy little curtsy to Thorin.

He put his hands upon her shoulders and pulled her upward to look into his eyes, brush a kiss against her forehead. The three hounds scratched at her boots and made runs in the thinning fabric of her double-layered breeches. "Do these curs follow you everywhere?" he rumbled huskily into her hair.

"Just as you do, my king." She allowed herself to smile just a little bit at his warmth so close to her.

"By all means, continue with your duties," he said. She walked ahead but he held ardently to her hand, tugging it back, and kissed lingeringly at the backs of her fingers.

"My king, we must be cautious," she urged helplessly. He sat on a fallen log and wrapped thick fingers around her wrist and raised it to his lips, kissing desperately at the exposed skin. Her vambraces shed, he pushed up the sleeve of her tunic little by little. Lips, coarsened by bristles of his beard, pressed to the tender, warming flesh and he murmured something in Khuzdul that she did not understand.

Go about my duties indeed. Oh my king, my king… now what could they be?

"You've escaped Dwalin I see?" He stood and wrapped his arms around her determinedly.

"He is sleeping, my lady." She nodded; her armed curled up in front of her at her chest as Thorin embraced her. His palm curled lightly about the side of her neck, fingertips in her hair and at her jawline. "I crave but a moment with you before we set out."

Could he feel her wanting? The sudden heat of her skin prickling against his touch. His thumb swept over her broad cheekbone and

"My king…" She went unresisting, arms uncurling to spread out and follow the patterns on his sleeveless outer coat up to his shoulders, wrap her arms tight about them, feeling how solid he was, how determined.

A woman's bare touch was not wholly unknown to him. But she was, her tender curiosity. "Does this please you?" he murmured.

"Yes," her warm breath and soft, beardless cheek nodded quietly against his own.

He embraced his mouth to hers, how pink and tart it was inside, like a barely-ripe fruit. He plunged his tongue deeper into her and made her gasp. "Sanzigil," he growled. His hold on her tightened ardently. He pulled his lips from hers and made her gasp against the sudden emptiness, growled that word again, lower, darker. Her eyes flickered open to see his were blown and craving.

"Sanzigil!" His lips crushed to hers again. Her heart was in her chest again and it was beating a warning.

"There ye are!" a woman's voice suddenly boomed. Thorin bit on her lip and she cried out in sudden shock, Thorin spinning around on his heels to see Bofur and Brynja hand in hand and neither looking surprised at the sight that beheld them.

"What in Mahal's good name are you two doing? Bofur, you swore!" Meisar sucked at her swollen bottom lip irritably.

"Ye think I didn't know?" Brynja squeezed Bofur's arm affectionately. Bofur shrugged against Thorin's unhappy glare. "Do you think mince pies are easy to wrangle from Urdlaug these days?" Thorin seethed at him.

"You too!?" Meisar stood gape-mouthed at Thorin.

"He does need to be bribed apparently, and for what?" Thorin's narrowed eyes accused Bofur and begged Brynja's silence simultaneously.

"He didn't tell me anything. I figured it out and he didn't deny it," smiled Brynja. Thorin hefted an annoyed glare at the two of them.

"You will keep your silence then, the two of you," insisted Meisar.

"Of course. We can keep secrets as well as any dwarf, not from each other so well. We are one now, after all."

They walked back to the caravan together. Meisar could feel Brynja's eyes studying her from behind, with some purpose.

Thorin glanced over his shoulder to see Dwalin's thousand yard stare landing squarely on him from across the camp. He excused himself wordlessly, leaving her alone with Bofur and Brynja. "Come to our wagon and help us get the ponies saddled," Brynja said invitingly.

"He has kissed you now more than once but he has not yet braided your hair?" questioned Brynja when they had gone to her wagon and she was pulling the saddle out of the back. She set the saddle on her pony and stroked the braid at her temple, clasped in a little stone bead Bofur had carved. "He braided this in my hair the day we met on the road west of Bree. It was meant to be that he would return to me. I accepted his hand for a proper courtship without a second thought." She rubbed her nose lovingly to Bofur's.

"You are fortunate to have each other," Meisar said sadly.

"Haven't you something yourself?" prodded Brynja. "Never heard of Thorin Oakenshield snogging a lass, not ever. You must be something to him."

Something to him. Sanzigil. Yes, indeed.

"You would have to ask him."

"And is he the same to you?" Brynja challenged.

He is to me unlike gold or gem or mithril. And I to him without a braid but a whore… a precious-gem of a whore.

"And just what are you three going on about?" Emli strode in self-importantly as always, smiling crisply.

Brynja's eyes went big at the sight of her. "Nothing Emli, just… elves," Brynja answered falteringly. Nobody lied to Emli.

"Elves?" Emli's brow raised with almost elegant suspicion.

"Meisar says Lord Elrond would provide us some food while we are resting in their Homely House. But I hear they eat grass and nothing else. That's why they're so thin."

"They eat onions and lentils too," Meisar said. "And... leaves. Big green leaves. Lettuce."

Emli chuckled. "Rather eat meat and have a tad on me. Elves. What foolishness." She floated off, satisfied for the time with the answer. Brynja exhaled, relieved when she was gone, but Meisar sighed out of her sight with more worry than before.

II

"Your lips are swollen, my lady," Gyda observed when they had stopped in the afternoon to water the ponies and eat.

"You've been kissed," Siv said more bluntly.

"Kissed?" Emli whooped suddenly. "By whom?"

"I have not…!" Meisar protested in a high whine as the dwarrowdams quickly gathered around. The unfamiliarity of so many eyes on her riled her cheeks to an all-betraying flush. "I bit my lip in the night; that is all."

Bofur kept silent, but he was grinning against his whittling. Meisar shifted edgily.

Urdlaug, as wide about the hips as a wagon, pattered through the gathering. Her broad button nose twitched in Meisar's direction. She was her father in all but her countenance, stodgy and meddlesome. "What is this I hear about kissing?" the dwarrowdam demanded. "There's been enough of that on this road," she humphed, eyeing Brynja and Siv.

"I have certainly not been kissed," Meisar said gruffly.

"He's handsome," purred Siv. "And you are not… so bad."

"King Thorin?" asked Lulia.

"Don't be a blockhead!" Urdlaug scolded her sister.

"Are you mad? I'm not… there's no one," Meisar insisted again.

"You are all wrong!"

The dwarrowdams all snapped around to Bofur as the words left his lips. Meisar held her breath as the dwarrowdams narrowed their eyes at him suspiciously. Bofur twisted his hands nervously around the handle of his sturrock. "Well… any dwarf who was courting her, of course he would have braided her hair!" Bofur said finally, nodding vigorously.

A cockerel in their little henhouse, thought Meisar, suddenly amused at Bofur's discomfort.

"Yes. Yes Bofur that is correct," chirped Emli finally after a tense silence amongst the dwarrowdams. "When a dwarf woman is courted, that is the way it is done. Always. When she has accepted his offer of a proper courtship, he makes a braid in her hair."

Emli strode to Meisar and peered down at her, hands on hips, expecting some response from her. "Wouldn't know. Never been properly courted," Meisar shrugged, rolling over the "properly" with some unintended emphasis.

"Well if you are ever are, you'll know it. And so will all of us. Though it would be preferable some keep their private activities to themselves," Emli went on, eyeing Bofur and Brynja with pursed lips. "There is no secret in a courtship. Dwarves are much too possessive for that to go unannounced."

Emli gave Meisar's undecorated locks a careful once-over and turned back to the other women with a look that confirmed it. "When Gloin came to my home and asked permission to call upon me in courtship, I accepted of course, and he braided my hair right there upon my threshold. And we walked through the village together so that dwarves and men alike would know what great matter had been newly forged."

The younger dwarrowdam swooned at Emli's recall. She raised up her head proudly. "That is how a proper dwarf would go about that business. He only gets one chance after all. If she says no, he might very well expect never to have another. Such is the temperament and stubbornness of dwarves."

Meisar was about to excuse herself when Siv swooped in and jiggled her bosom roughly from behind.

"Siv!"

"Or is a lucky dwarf finding these fine pillows at night, braid or no braid?" purred Siv, laughing at her own boorishness. Meisar swatted her away, tugged her heavy jerkin on roughly. "No. No… pillows. Dirty-headed girl." There was no dwarven word for slag, a shame.

"Shoo, Siv. Go on now and make yourself useful. Got bottles broke up in the wagon going rough over the land. I need the elixirs sopped up and the wagon bed scrubbed," ordered Eda.

Gyda begged off with Lulia and Virta lest they be asked to help, Brynja and Bofur drifting away too. When they were gone, Siv's eyes bored a hole at Meisar, purposefully. "Some dwarves got fingers incapable of braidin'. Used to harder work, or not thinking too hard about women when they've got enough to worry for," intoned Siv. She leaned and whispered into Meisar's ear with a wry grin. "Start reading the ones around you instead of tracks in the ground you'll see." Her black eyes knew everything and nothing.

"I'll offer Urdlaug your services if you won't do for me, cousin. Her cauldron needs a good scrubbing after the cheese and onion soup," warned Eda.

Siv left Eda and Emli with Meisar. "I am sorry for that, Meisar," said Eda.

"A dwarrowdam of such strong, immaculate character like yourself Eda. How did she happen?" Emli sniffed.

"Exile is no place to be bringing children into this world. None know better than the dwarves what could come of it. No wonder we dwindled by thousands during those years, one generation to the next." Eda looked out at Siv sadly. "She was born and raised about a lot of stable boys in the Riddermark. My father and her father, my uncle Nar, made a living there off horse-shoe-making for a while. Her mother died not long after her birth, caught an infection I suppose, not the kind a dwarf would get under the mountain is as much as I know. Born on an old saddle-blanket; it's a miracle she didn't perish too. Horse-Lords weren't as cruel to dwarves as some men, not that they cared much for us for us but we got fed as a good as not starving, and paid for a harsh day's work for what it was worth. Lords made sure we had a good lot of stone to bury Nar when he died. Colt spooked, kicked the life out of him while he was forging a set of shoes for it. Suppose a dwarf is just the right height for that. Anyway, the ones working in the stable were kind to Siv after that. Poor babe it happen she did. Suppose a wee dwarf girl was a novelty to 'em. They certainly didn't censor themselves around her." She paused sadly again. "I brought her West with me to Ered Luin. Too late; she'd already seen 'em standing up to piss and seen what was down there. That and the girls they brought about after dark to roll about in the hay, typical peasant stock. Siv saw it all. Don't suppose she was too put off by it. Wouldn't happen amongst dwarves that much I can say. Can't do much to erase what they've seen. Memories of dwarves."

"Makes you long for the days of old, doesn't it?" sighed Emli. "Back when a dwarrowdam wouldn't leave the mountain halls. We were protected."

Eda nodded. "Yes, we were. Secreted away sometimes I think. Not for ill though. Queen Lotte was adamant about that."

"Thorin's mother?"

"Grandmother," said Emli. "I had heard in the days of exile wicked and slanderous comments from the world of men, on we dwarf women. They said that our men hoarded us away like gold, kept us prisoner in the mountain halls, and that we were miserable oppressed creatures no better off than slaves, or livestock for the slaughter! One supposes they'd never been to the marketplace in Dale."

"I am from Dale," Meisar offered quietly.

"Well why didn't I know that?' squawked Emli.

"You never asked."

Emli harrumphed, unused to being second-guessed. "Different worlds, Meisar, the dwarf women of Dale and Queen Lotte's girls under the mountain. King's Thror's wife believed more than any in the specialness of female dwarves. Treasures more precious as gold she would say. So precious no eyes ought to lay themselves upon us but our own. She made every dwarrowdam born in Erebor her ward and forbade us from ever leaving the mountain. She educated and warded over every one of us herself, from the highest born down to the miners' daughters, taught us embroidery, tapestry-making and all the properties of fine jewels, a bit of alchemy when she was in the mood, and our social graces of course. Bless her beautiful silver beard, she did not live to see what the dragon made of her precious girls."

"Sounds a bit extreme," Meisar remarked hesitantly. The memory of her old home in the round tower, the warmth of the sun in Dale's long, dry summers came back to her, the smell of spices and perfume and flowers in the marketplaces, sitting on someone's shoulders as a babe and her face squashing into the lower back of one of the tall-folk, how it had made her laugh. "You never left the mountain before the dragon?"

Eda laughed. "Of course we did. Secret doors have many purposes, and dwarf women many secrets."

Emli joined wistfully. "How Queen Lotte railed against those dwarf-women who ran their market stalls in Dale! Thought they'd be giving away their virtue and all the secrets of the dwarven ways."

"What was Thorin's mother like?" Meisar asked, even more hesitantly.

"Tania, Thorin's mother, was not a "free spirit" as they might say, a rather reserved lady as I remember, but she was practical. When Thorin and Frerin were young, Tania took them to the common-folks' markets in Dale to greet the people man and dwarf alike, teach Thorin the art of diplomacy one would say. Thrain didn't have quite the knack for everyday politics and schmoozing with the lots, bless his beard. But Tania's efforts boded well for our merchants and the goodwill we forged in those days with the peoples around Erebor. Poor Queen Lotte nearly choked when she heard."

"Did she perish with the dragon?"

"Nay. Queen Lotte died the next year and Tania did things a bit different. Dis was presented to the realm same as Thorin and Frerin when she was born. Came far and wide they did, men, elves, to see a dwarven baby girl. Thror permitted it because the Arkenstone had been found not so long before. He wanted all the realm to see that along with the little princess. Tania didn't live long after that either though. Poor lamb."

The two dwarrowdams paused and looked at each other, as if daring the other to go on.

"Thror was corrupted by many things, the gold not being the first or the last of it," Emli finally went on.

"Yes," agreed Eda. "It would have been a beautiful age had Thrain and Tania ruled together. And Thorin their crown prince. What a resplendent child too, lovely manners, big blue eyes. Quite precocious if truth be known. He had a mighty weight bearing down upon him long before he even knew it himself."

"The treasure corrupted him too. What makes you think it would have been any different?" Meisar queried unhappily.

"I don't know," Emli said. "Just a feeling I had, all those years ago, even as a small girl. Now that Thorin has come back to us, it remains to be seen."

"I see that he has entrusted in your many things," Emli said after a long silence. "You have become someone significant to him. And for your friendship, I am sure he is most glad."

She breathed a silent sigh of relief out of Emli's view but Emli's eyes were on her again, hawk-like, but somehow unthreatening.

"I think you are a woman who has seen many unfortunate things herself. Or why would you go into the wilds alone?"

"Emli, please."

"Hence, why the king takes to your company so. You may just have that in common. It is good for him. He is much alone inside. That I know. Now more than ever."

"I will do my best," Meisar assured, quietly.

"It wasn't always like that. Not in those days under the mountain. May they return, even in a small way," mused Emli.

"What times they were," Emli breathed, half a wistful weeping.

Eda patted her shoulder. "Never dreamed a little dwarf girl might be born in a barn far from home. I'd take the stifling mountain halls over that any day, if only for her sake. She deserved better." Eda looked close to tears when she spoke of her cousin.

"You have made a valiant effort with that one, Eda. I commend you."

"A healer has the patience of a maiar and the stomach of a whore. It was meant to be. She may be crass, but I think sometimes she is true, in the dwarvish way."

Emli smiled thinly. "All that may be true. Still, keep her away from my Gimli."

III

"You ask me to speak of happier times." Meisar shifted as Thorin entered quietly behind her, at the gloaming of the day when camp was made. He carried a small bundle wrapped in dusty evergreen velvet. "If my mind cannot articulate, my hands remember." Setting the bundle upon the grass he unwrapped it- a harp, small and light enough to carry. The instrument was old, carved of the finest mahogany with emeralds embedded into its crest. He put his fingers carefully to the strings, and sang in a deep, contemplative lilt that carried effervescent on the dusk. She could feel the strings reverberating with his voice, mimicking the long, slow rumble of it.

And he sang

The world was fair, the mountains tall

In Elder Days before the fall

Of mighty kings in Nargathrond

And Gondolin who now beyond

The Western Seas have passed away.

The world was fair on Durin's Day.

When he was finished he closed his eyes and dreamily bowed his head just a bit. He then set the harp back in the velvet. "That was beautiful, my king," Meisar said softly.

"My grandfather taught me both blacksmithing and music. He considered it of great importance for a young prince to harden his fingers both at a forge, and against the strings of a harp."

"He taught you well then."

"My grandfather was not fond of bloodier business. Erebor was a genteel kingdom under his rule. Not only craftsmen thrived there, but engineers, mathematicians, makers of music and stout mead. Our craftsmen were revered in all corners of this world, and Erebor was home to the greatest of them."

Meisar took Thorin's hand and examined with her touch, feeling the thickness of his fingers and their careful strength, the calluses in his palms and at his fingertips. His hands were beautiful though, beautiful, capable of so much more than they let on from the outside.

"Can you play?" he asked.

"No."

He shifted behind her, and he took both her hands in his and enclosed them around the harp. He ghosted his fingers over hers and guided them to pluck a simple tune. He cared for this instrument; the strings were still taut after a century and a half, the wood without a nick or blemish upon it. If only he cared for his own heart as he cared for these things. She could feel his warmth at her back.

"We were craftsmen first, warriors when we were called to be," Thorin mused.

"And musicians?"

He turned her head to face him and could see she was hiding her smile. She was pretty when she smiled, unbearably radiant.

"Sanzigil," he said. "It means mithril."

"I see, my king."

"Mithril is a rare thing, my lady. Stronger than dragon's hide. It can survive the onslaught of flame."

"Yes, my king." Where once her heart had pounded in her chest, it dropped instead, into the place where that flutter disturbed her thoughts and made her body weak. Sangizil. Only but a gem. She knew what he had lusted for, what had destroyed him. Her body stiffened as she felt his fingers in her hair, loosening a section of one of her braids.

It tugged at her scalp, his clumsy thick fingers, but she cared not for it. Had she the urge to pull away, it was as if her body would not allow it at all. "Crafters of many beautiful things," he went on, his voice somehow different, gentle but determined. "And not just from stone. We traded weapons, jewels for exotic woods and carved beautiful furniture from it. We made flutes, horns, drums from the skin and bones of the livestock we bartered our crafts and our riches for. There was always music under the mountain."

"Tell me of Erebor. Tell me more," she whispered, half-pleading.

"In Erebor," he said, "there were craftsmen of many kinds. Not just in making fine things you could hold in your hand, but the very city itself. We were engineers and artisans alike. Learned in physics and chemistry and the mathematics. How else do you build a city within a mountain?"

"I suppose you would have to know what you are doing." Her breath had started to shorten inexplicably. She could feel Thorin's gaze on her darken.

"You think my grandfather a corrupted pitiable figure?"

Meisar nodded no against Thorin's forlorn eyes. "The tales I have heard are that he was a king of much bounty, and that he fought bravely to his last moments."

"A king of much bounty? Indeed. His hunger for wealth was what it was and it brought about our destruction. He was mad with his lust for treasures. I watched him each day grow sicker with it and the Arkenstone turn his pride to malice. But I also watched him as he walked the breadth and length of the kingdom every day, visiting every workshop and forge. I watched his scribes write the needs and the input of even the lowliest-born miner, and my grandfather honored each with diligence. He presented his laundresses and kitchen-wenches with rings and necklaces of gold for their service; he knew their names and inquired after their families. He visited the sick and comforted the grieving. There was no poverty in those days, no hunger. All toils were richly rewarded."

"It sounds very much like a paradise, of many beautiful things. And peoples."

"Ah, yes. We made beautiful things. We make beautiful things." He deftly, yet so gently, untangled the loose ribbon of hair and began to plait it.

"What are you doing, my king?" she trembled.

"It is only a simple thing, but I made it for you." He brought the braid around to her front and followed to sit before her. The hair bead was ordinary stone, brilliantly white though, smoothed and polished as only a man with knowledge of precious rock could achieve.

She studied in the intricate engraving carved into the bead of stone. "This is your emblem my king," Meisar half-gasped.

"The oaken shield, yes."

She clutched the end of her braid tight in her fingers. "Should I wear your emblem upon my person, it means then… we are courting. Properly. Am I mistaken?"

"No, you are not mistaken."

A firm hand turned her chin and came to rest on her cheek. He drew the roughened tip of his thumb over the bare skin, soft and unthreatening, like the skin of a peach. "Will you allow me… to court you properly?" he asked again, with a hint of nervousness edging his voice. Oh he tried to hide it, so hardened by his travails of the world, strengthened by burden, and undone by this.

She answered him quiet as a chamber of stone long abandoned. "Yes."

She rolled the bead in her fingers and studied its craftsmanship with admiration. "You have the passion of a dwarf. Your hands make something beautiful of something that… never was. Something rough and jagged and insignificant."

"We dwarves are made and born in darkness, in our mountain halls. Do you have any idea how brilliant that sight is to a young child living under a mountain, that light? Great naves and halls filled with golden light."

Thorin kept braiding her hair so that only the small courtship braid was left out loose. The other two plaits he wrapped snugly around her cranium, twining them into a small bun at the nape of her neck.

He had just clasped the end of her braid with it when she felt his callused hand snake around the side of her neck and grasp, turning her head backward and kissing her with forceful passion. She moaned half-heartedly into his mouth.

"I would have no other look upon you and see what I see."

"And what is that." She skimmed her own fingers from the nape of her neck to its side. She was no longer frightened.

"My lady. The king's lady."

A king's lady. King of lost kingdom long pined for. A throne that was his by birthright reclaimed in blood and fire, awaited him there. And his poor grim sister the Princess Dis, a widow and-

There was no word for a woman who had lost her children.

Perhaps it was too painful to dream up, such a word. The future panged at her, what would happen when they came to Erebor, if she would ever have to look into that poor woman's eyes. The thought frightened and consumed her with an inexplicable grief just to think of it in passing, as if she were her own kin. Tales had been told her of Princess Dis's distinctly dwarven grace that was upheld as a young girl turned sturdy mother and wife in exile. How her younger son had been the one to inherit the Durin coloring, but took a bit of ribbing for his lack of a majestic beard as to befit his Longbeard title. So young after all. Had he lived beyond the zeitgeist of his early manhood, would it have grown with him? Would Thorin let his own grow now, revered as he was for cropping it in memory of those who did not survive either the dragon or the battles that came after?

Mayhap would keep it short for all times, in memory of one who never had the chance to see his own grow long. And thus, she finally let herself to think, it was appropriate after all that a beardless woman, pored singed by fire or a fluke of nature, had sat patient and trembling as he made his emblem of courtship in her hair. There was no going back now.