CrazyKenz: Thanks for the feedback. I'll put a footnote in the end of the chapter or make it clear in the text the meanings of any Khuzdul words or phrases from now on :)
"There you two are! I've been looking for you!"
"Dinna check me bedroll, did ye? Just crawled out of it," groaned Freyda. The scent of her Southron Swill wafted pleasantly through the dawn-lit camp. She could see a sleeping Dwalin's nose twitching at it, a hint of a smile on unconscious lips. Still asleep, the lot of them were unhappily turning about on the rocky mountain surface.
Meisar surveyed them tiredly, feeling too heavy in the dense, crawling morning to issue the wake-up call. Thorin had been restless in his sleep. She had woken, covered by a blanket she had not remembered unrolling, and sung to him, lilt as quiet as stone, until he was tranquil again. She had stroked his hair back from his face one dark piece at at time, kissed his cold hands. In his sleep, the same hint of smile that Freyda was goggling at had crossed his own lips. She wondered if Dwalin ever had the same dreams...
Emli stood over the two of them, hands on her hips in her thick, plush crimson bed-robe, still waiting for acknowledgement. "What is it, Emli?"
"I'm here to help," Emli announced, voice silvery with self-satisfaction. She set down between the seated dwarrowdams a carved wooden box embedded modesty, for her tastes, with little jewels. "I see, for one, a lovely dwarrowdam yearning for the attentions of a certain rough-minded dwarf." She lifted the lid and took out little containers of perfume, rose-petal lip paints and pomade.
"Forget it. It's a lost cause," Freyda said tautly.
"Being well and long-married, you have no better adviser than myself when it comes to matters of the male dwarf. And I think it not a lost cause. You'll trust me on that and let me work," insisted Emli. Freyda related with an unhappy grumble. Even she was no match for Emli. Gimli waddled in behind her with a large trunk. Grunting with exertion, he set it down before his mother. "Best this be the one you asked for, 'Amad. I'll not do any more lifting before I break my fast with some meat," insisted Gimli. Emli popped open the trunk and shook out a rosy linen dress, holding it against Freyda with a giddiness in her eyes.
"Oh I'm not some dainty rose!" protested Freyda.
"And Mister Dwalin has no need of dainty roses. But a bit of a spruce up couldn't hurt his eye so. If you wish him to fancy you in return, best he not be looking at a mirror image of himself."
"Though I imagine he thinks as highly of himself," cracked Meisar quietly under her breath.
"As any dwarf worth your hand ought to. Save in the matter of romancing," said Emli. She plucked the harsh metals from Freyda's beard one by one while she grimaced, and combed it at the jawline so that it curled softly outward. Her hair, with similar metal implements braided all through it, was taken out combed back straight in a fair, slightly plait-curled mass rolling down to middle part of her back. Emli smoothed the defiant lips with crushed petals until they were perfectly blushing and bow-shaped. She squeezed her frame, broad even for a dwarf's, into the long dress of dusty-rose that matched her lips, pressed her bosom into a bodice rather than a chest-full of mail. She gave Freyda a mirror to see and Freyda scowled.
"Don't look a thing like myself," she sighed.
"That's the point. See if you get a response now."
Freyda sat petulantly in the fussy dress, an unadorned, entirely plain dress but a dress nonetheless, and pink. Emli shooed her off to catch Dwalin's eye by her devices, before they set out again. When she had tottered off, reluctantly as ever, Emli spun on her dainty heels in their flat fox-fur shoes and folded her arms with eyes on Meisar, ever observant, ever calculating. "Now, my king's lady has no business in skulking about; a common vagabond you look."
"I rank little higher in this world, Emli, save for one fact."
"A fact which makes it even more urgent that you make yourself presentable! We'll be in Erebor before you know it and you'll not be walking at the king's side with holes in your boots."
"I don't think Thorin has…"
"What Thorin is concerned with can wait. This is woman's work. Now sit yourself down and I will make a proper king's lady of you," Emli ordered.
"We need to be on our way, Emli."
When she tried to rise, Emli sat her back down with a pair of unrelenting hands on her shoulders plopping her back into place. "In time. Now off with those awful boots." Emli came around and did the tugging herself, boots slipping off after a stubborn couple of pulls, taking her torn woolen stockings with them. Her bare feet felt cold in the mountain air.
Emli crouched again and slid a soft brown stocking onto her left foot and up to her knee. "The best wool money can buy, from the far Eastern lands. They call it Kashamire. Oh just the word, it's like an exotic spice on your tongue. Kashamire."
She wiggled her foot into the utter softness of it. It was too divine, too luxuriant for words, even on the rough, cracked skin of her feet. "Fasten that 'round good and tight. Keep them up," Emli prattled on, cinching little ribbons just above the knee.
"Seems impractical for travel, divine as my feet feel," Meisar commented with a low edge of uncertainty. "Is this your way of asking me some favor?"
"No. Now turn around. I'll fix your hair right."
Meisar sat knees to her chest upon the low rock; hair soon loose trailed behind her in the grass. Emli took care with the undone braids save for the courtship plaits. She took up her comb and made a small, satisfied sound behind her. "Dwarven hair is so prone to coarseness, and yours my lady is-"
"A mess?"
"I was about to say it was very soft indeed. I sense you might have been a fair beauty in the blossom of youth, insofar as you lack a beard."
"A woman without a beard cannot be any great beauty."
"Good enough for a king. Who finds you ravishing enough to do this," Emli gave the fading mark on her a satisfied once-over, her head cocked in satisfaction. She dropped a heavy sheave of hair over her neck. "Might I arrange your hair over it?"
"No." Meisar took her half-undone braid from Emli's hand and began plaiting where she had left off. "No. I wish for all to know what has been made between us."
"Well then, you are less in need of my service than I thought. But I give you this one piece of advice: now that you have mended whatever disagreement was between you, you must never look back. Go forward only. It is one of those stubborn unfortunate dwarven traits to live in the slights of the past. But now, it is about what lies ahead. You must be prepared for it no matter what it brings."
"For Erebor?"
"And other things," Emli said cryptically. She finished her hair, put on her face a moisturizer made from petals, and brought her mirror around for her to see.
She smiled lightly at the sight of her face, a little brighter, a little clearer, in her view, the cheeks not so cracked and ruddy. Emli looked pleased with herself.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because I remember what it was like to be courted. There is nothing like it." Her wistful sight was replaced by a jubilant smile. "And of course, for my own enjoyment I do so, my pleasure and your great benefit, perhaps Freyda's too. Now, let us see how that goes."
.
"Good morning Mister Dwalin."
She had waited awhile, stewing in her attire, too nervous even to speak those three words to herself, under her breath, as a sort of practice. Swords and axes were infinitely easier practice. She looked overstuffed and chastised in her clothes and wriggled against the hempen bodice that constricted her midsection and seemed to push up her bosom halfway to her chin. Her stiffened beard without its many adornments made her feel naked. Dwalin stood alone at Harley's side, bedroll and pack being battened down tight at the hind part of her saddle by a pair of big tattooed hands. Dwalin felt eyes on them; it made the tiny hairs at each knuckle stand up.
"Mornin'."
By the time had dared look up from his task the only sight he had was her thick pale hair spilling loose down her back as she walked away, the strong torso and waist squeezed into an impossible shade of pink. He blinked once to make sure he was seeing her right. She turned around and smiled. Her face looked bare, too vulnerable in that state. The unfamiliarity of her form sat uneasily in his throat, and Dwalin made a small, typical grunting sound, vaguely in her direction. He had a lass on his mind but it wasn't her. "Won't be doing much fighting in that getup, lass," was all he thought to say, before mounting swiftly.
"Where are you going?" Balin demanded, waving his arms in front of the impatient pony, Freyda standing crestfallen behind him. Dwalin glanced down at him on the edge of irritation. "Something I've needed to care of."
.
The mountainside looming steep above, Meisar took her time on the narrow road that wound unsteadily in its shadow. The hairs on her arms and neck raised suddenly with the clacking of rocks behind her. The hounds clustered behind her.
"Bofur good gracious not again!" Without thinking she had drawn her sword and spun around with it held straight out, only to be repelled by the edge of a familiar ax called Grasper by its bearer.
"Mister Dwalin…!"
The bones in her hands may well have softened inside her; the sword dropped and hit the ground with a firm clank. Dwalin still held Grasper, tapping the top of the handle against his palm. She backed away from the dwarf and then stood there before him, unflinching. He didn't scare her. "What are you doing here?"
"Came to take care of something, lass." He took a hard step toward her and still she didn't move. On the knife's-edge of the mountainside, one step was easily death, and falling down was as convenient as it was quick and undetectable.
He took a further step and then another toward her in quick succession. Her hands solid on the dirks at her side, she put her head and chest up and out, forced him to meet her eyes. His own were dark and austere like him, eyes that lacked Thorin's tinges of melancholy; in Dwalin's there seemed a more monotonous severity. She wondered what Freyda might find in him appealing, aside from his wild strength of limb.
A tight smile crossed her lips, willing them not to tremble in his presence. Up close, he felt ever the more larger than her. "Now that we are alone here, let me say it first. You despise me. I am certain of it, and I hold little of it against you."
"No." Dwalin put his ax back in the holster on his back. He met the harsh, unyielding glare of her eyes with a more forgiving look. It only made her squint at him more severely.
"But there are things you wish to say to me. Which you could not in politer company?"
"Perchance."
"Then say it plainly." Her voice, suddenly harsh again, seemed to strike at Dwalin and make his shoulders square and slightly menacing toward her again. He stared at her for a long moment.
"Do you love him?"
"Pardon?"
"Answer me, lass. Ye heard me clear as day."
"I do, Mister Dwalin." She met his eyes, steadily. The hazel-topaz of them held at his own, no hint of uncertainty in them, nor fear. Dwalin made no move except with his eyes, scanning her from head to toe. If she flinched, he thought, he might relent, but she didn't.
"And has he known ye?"
An indignant swell in her throat she quelled swiftly. Meisar shook her head no quietly.
Dwalin gave a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth, concealed by his heavy, wild mustache as it was. "Then yer smarter than I thought."
Meisar folded her arms before him, rankled. "I did not know you thought me a fool as well."
"No, not a fool. Not you anyway."
"So Thorin is the fool then? And not even you could say that to his face?" Her one brow curled up a little with a peculiar smugness that Dwalin had found himself so rarely presented with. Smugness he typically rewarded with a swift hit but she was so small, so disarming even in her severe little stance. He drew back quietly.
"I have lass. Little use it is." Dwalin's own taut smile faded quickly. He heaved a thick breath already white in the crisp cold of the air. His lumbering frame sat itself even more heavily on a rock, there on the mountainside. Meisar approached carefully. He shifted to his right and let her sit beside him.
"We were barely on our feet as children when we first knew each other. All my life I have known him for something far different than the dwarf I saw under that mountain. The dwarf I saw to his resting place." Dwalin's fingers fanned outward in front of him and scrunched fast again. "I wept at his tomb for so long I couldn't tell whether it was day or night. He had forsaken me in his madness. But I had not forsaken him. Nor would I. The dwarf I see now, the one I see who courts a lass for the first time in his life... that dwarf, I seem to know less than the one I saw mad beneath the Lonely Mountain."
"Whatever hostilities have passed between us, I have always been beholden to your loyalty. It is a thing of honor, truly."
"What honor is there in losing him as I have? Twice over."
"So that is what disturbs you?"
"Saw the way he looked at ye when he thought none were watching," Dwalin muttered. "From the days our companies joined."
"And I to him, if it is truth we owe each other now."
"Dinna know what he saw in ye." Dwalin paused heavily. "I do now."
"Mister Dwalin?"
She cocked her head downward a bit to catch a look at his face, which he had turned away from her in haste, when Dwalin stood suddenly. For the first time, she flinched in his presence. His closeness made every hair on her neck and arms stand up. The dogs at her feet scraped the rock with their claws and held growls in their throats, edgily.
"If it is truth we speak of now, lass, you swear it to me now that you care for him, and always will. Swear it to me, or don't. I desire from you only the truth, lass. If you have a doubt in ye, walk away now. Just walk away." His voice, however gruff, was comfortably modulated for the time.
She came down on her knee before him, head faced upward, eyes wide open forcing his to meet her again. "I swear it. By the Creator I swear it."
A hint of a smile began to form on Dwalin's lips. Struggling at first, it broke free, however modestly his face displayed it. "This between yourself and Thorin. I have seen him done good by it. So there ye have it." He came to sit by her again, elbows rested on his knees, back hunched slightly forward. Red-Coat came about and sniffed his foot, a big hand coming down to rub at the canine's head. "Rat with fur," he chuckled, the smile widening then constricting suddenly again into a wistful stone-face. "I cannot understand him as a courting man. Never seemed it would happen; never gave it any thought. The things that go through your head, I can't… I never..."
"I would not expect you to. Unless you knew it yourself." She looked into his eyes fleetingly, gauging any sign that he understood. He didn't seem to. She looked away. "What it is to care for someone, in that way..."
"Aye," he half-grunted tersely.
"Thank you, Mister Dwalin."
"Yer welcome, lass... Meisar. Yer welcome."
.
II
Thorin looked up as Dwalin came to sit hard beside him. "Ye have my blessing."
"Dwalin?"
"Ye heard me. I shan't utter a word against ye. Or this." Dwalin's thick fingers took the stone on twine about Thorin's neck, rubbed it with his thumb once. "What the lady has done fer ye has lifted ye. I know."
Thorin placed a hand contentedly on Dwalin's shoulder. Dwalin clutched it there. "I was a fool, Thorin, to think of it otherwise."
"You are no fool."
"I see that her attentions have brought ye peace of heart, as I can't myself. Be a bit odd I cradled ye in the night like a wee babe," he smirked nervously.
"I am a deep sleeper. I may not have noticed the difference," he said lightly. He took a long drag on his pipe. "I have never held a lady in such esteem as I do her. Though it is strange at first to do so, it is for good."
"Aye."
Dwalin's shoulders scrunched awkwardly beside him. He stared into the fire. "A lady's company is a restoring thing. To have her is a light in dark times. Unexpected... consoling..." Thorin made empty gestures with his hands toward Dwalin. "It may surprise you, the gentler nature of things, Dwalin."
"What are ye saying?"
"You speak so often of my happiness, Dwalin. What of your own?"
"Haven't had the time to think of it." His chest made a doleful rumbling sound, lips and nose both twitching. Like Bilbo's did when he was nervous.
"You are deserving of it. The same happiness I have known in these times."
"The same?" Dwalin guffawed a bit, an apprehensive laugh fluttering through his lips.
"Freyda is a formidable lass, and I would desire none with lesser qualities to be in your company."
"Freyda?" Dwalin repeated. His silence was suddenly thick and contemplative. "Is she good to ye, truly? Meisar?"
"Yes."
Dwaliin's face compressed itself inward slightly. "Bled and sweated for us in a thousand bloody forges from Gondor to the pithy villages south of Bree ye did. Built us anew in Ered Luin. Without you we..." Dwalin shook his head vigorously. "What did ye take for yourself in all of that?"
Thorin sighed. "Nothing worth note. Far more than you ever had alas." He closed his eyes and he could still hear small voices, arms reaching up for him after a long day or a bad dream.
"And this now? I... you should have... loyal... a woman..." Dwalin's voice cracked, a smile full of pain wide and taut on his lips.
"Nadad?"
"Ye have my blessing. Ye need it not but ye have it." Dwalin exhaled heavily and rubbed a girded fist on his face, the gleam of salty liquid on his steel-bound knuckle catching Thorin's eye in the firelight. His hand came to rest solidly again on Dwalin's fur-clad shoulder.
"But I do need it."
"Aye?"
"From you, it is worth more than all the gold... worth something greater than anything I have ever given you in return."
Dwalin's face pulled in tight, a swell in his throat beginning to tremble. He held it down, lips pressed together, forehead in several deep lines. His head dropped as he exhaled a shuddering deep breath that was half a sob.
"Dwalin..." Thorin turned his head to look into his eyes. He smiled, comfortingly, blue eyes warm against Dwalin's dark ones, redness coming out from the corners in little lines and veins. "Dwalin... give it a chance."
Dwalin nodded in tacit agreement. "Aye."
.
III
Emli dressed Freyda in a pale-blue number with shimmering sleeves in the morning. Nearly bursting in the delicate seams, Freyda had sat miserable and chafing on her pony, sparkling ever more beauteously though in the autumn sun as they made their way up another mountainside.
Dwalin had ignored her entirely. Shimmering and shimmering, too many things had shimmered in this world and been for nothing of any good. He had no words anyway, not the words to tell her the blue was still pretty beside her fair hair, and the strength of her body was displayed so aptly in that fussy, ungainly dress, thick beautiful legs in a skirt, stout hips and strong torso, a hint of a bosom as solid as any part of her. If he looked at her, he might look at her the way Thorin had looked at her, fraying tunic her only layer, little white feet bare in the grass. Obvious to anyone paying a modicum of heed, and not being bookish, Dwalin hated the thought of being read like one.
.
Freyda gently shut the trunk on Emli as she rummaged through it, bent over at the waist and humming to herself. She was looking for something in a rich autumn shade, green or russet, maybe in a heavy linen, velvet even better. When they rested for food, she finally relented to Freyda's insistence that shimmer and ruffles were no good for a day's ride.
"Yer kindness is much appreciated, but I have this from now," Freyda told her gently. She donned her mail again, her beard adorned in silver and bronze, hair braided messily down her back. Emli sulked and chafed. "But… but… I found a suitable shade. Hunter-green! Very fine for autumn it is!"
"Any Southron Swill left, lass?"
Freyda craned her head around in alarm to see Dwalin looming above her. His mouth was raised a bit on one side but it wasn't a smirk. She passed the cup up to him, wordlessly. He came to hunker down beside her. Emli put the dress away fast.
"It's the last of it. You can have it if you'd like," she offered quietly.
"Tastes like a lump o' coal but I'll have it. Not so good for a night's rest, this rocky ground," Dwalin offered, feigning irritation.
"No. Not so good for rest. I dinna sleep too well neither."
Dwalin tapped her shoulder and offered her half of what was left. She drank, gratefully, handed a bit back to him. His eyes watched her tenuously, cup to her lips, eyes meeting his nervously through her pale eyelashes.
"No more pretty dress?"
"Wasn't too fond of it," shrugged Freyda.
"Useless rag," grunted Dwalin, half a smirk.
Freyda chuckled. "A fine gown I'd don and fight ye fair in it!" She nudged his arm slightly.
"Fight me fair? You, lass?" He poked her in the forehead with one thick finger and the whole of her seemed to wobble back. He smirked, and she butted him lightly with her forehead, her nose making contact with the tip of his.
"So that's what ye want, lassie?"
"Naturally. Ye got me figured for a fool?" She stood quickly and challenged him. Her smile was full of giddy anticipation which he felt odd for such a request.
"Nay." Dwalin smiled and bumped his forehead a little harder against her own. Her deep, anticipatory laugh was a sweeter music than he had imagined. Her dimpled smile, with the two front teeth slightly crooked, head first put down coyly then raised again anticipatory and grinning as went forward and tapped her head to his, withdrawing with eyes sparkling.
This peculiar game she played she was not going to win. Dwalin crashed his forehead full on into her own. It hit her skull with a thunderous knock, and back flat she fell and hit the ground with a dense thud. She didn't get up. Eda squealed with fright and came rushing in. "What he you done, you brute?"
Dwalin shrugged in a rising panic, hands up, palms flat out. The dwarrowdams were beginning to gather around him in an angry herd, jeering and pointing madly.
"Thought that's what she wanted. A duel of knocks."
"Duel of knocks?" Balin shook his head behind him half=amused, any pleasant beguilement suddenly fading when he realized Freyda was still down. Eda crouched beside her and peeled her eyes back, calling for Oin. Freyda's eyes fluttered and she groaned once before her head flopped back again and her body flattened out.
"Fetch Eda! Fetch Oin! Mahal keep her, she's out cold!"
.
Nadad: Brother
'Amad- Mother