A King of Ash and Fire

by Lady of Arda

"And though... love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps the greater." Thorin Oakenshield has survived the Battle of the Five Armies, but at a grievous cost. A second chance at life, and a first at love, will stand against the changing tides of Middle Earth. Thorin/OC. Dwalin/OC. Post BOFTA AU.

26. HE NAMED THE NAMELESS HILLS AND DELLS

A/N: Chapter title 'He named the nameless hills and dells..." is an excerpt from J.R.R. Tolkien's "Song of Durin's Awakening," and is credited to him. No copyright infringement intended.

They travelled East along the jagged ridge that trailed out of the eastern foothills of the Misty Mountains, petering off into a rugged plain where small villages of wood-dwelling menfolk observed their passing-through with suspicion, but little care. The road was un-cumbered, the last of the lupins grasping for life, browning and falling all along the sides of the withered road. When they had crossed the river at the Old Ford after many days of travel, Meisar ordered the caravan on a northeasterly path.

"We are going off course," Thorin observed. "The elven gate is-"

"We're not taking that way," she interjected suddenly. She could feel Dwalin's eyes narrowing at the back of her head after days of peaceable treatment from him.

"Then where precisely do you intend to take us? 200 leagues south to bypass the forest?"

"There is another route through it."

"It's a dangerous task, Meisar. You'll not like Mirkwood from the cellars if we're caught."

"We won't be."

"How can you be remotely sure of that?"

"Some elves are more willing than others to have dealings with dwarves."

She halted her pony and bid the caravan stop and rest before the vast looming forest and pulled a carved wooden whistle from her skirt placket. It made a long, lilting breath, a monotonous melody that seemed to reverberate deep into the tangled woodland. "Now what?" Thorin asked impatiently. Minty balked at the sight of the forest.

"Now, we wait."

They waited, for many hours from the middle of the morning until it was the height of the afternoon. Lunch was settling in the lot of them when a lithe figure emerged from the forest. Dwarves on their feet at once drew axes and spears, sturrocks and bows, but Meisar waved her hand at them to be at ease, and signaled for the longbow-bearing stranger to approach. The sylph-like figure threw back the hood of her faded brown leather cloak.

"Tauriel!" Meisar greeted warmly.

Thorin drew back as the elf approached, sinking down to one knee before the shepherdess. Rarely had he ever seen her treat with dwarves as warmly. The elf-maid embraced her tightly, picking her up and setting her on a stump so she could meet her eyes properly, and the two issued long, merry salutations to each other.

"Meisar the Shepherdess, you are looking well," the elf beamed.

"And you… you are thin, Tauriel."

"Tauriel?" Thorin suddenly blurted out. He had known this woman once for a formidable figure, briefly as they had once met. He studied her with arms crossed and mouth twisted just a bit. The sleek tunic and paneled coat which had once been rich hunter-green had faded and was patched in several places. In such attire, he knew she was no longer an Elven captain of the guard, so shabby she could not have even been one of Thranduil's lower-ranking grunts. Even his cup-bearers were garbed in silks.

The she-elf's porcelain face went whiter and then greenish at the sight of him. "Your majesty," she tilted her head in a subtle bow. "News of your passing saddened me. I am glad to see it was unfounded a rumor."

"Not quite but..." He grimaced a little as Meisar nudged him, urging a fairer tone. "Your sentiments are appreciated... Tauriel." The elven name on his tongue sat bitterly.

Tauriel looked over his head at the dwarves rearing to get on. She might have let her eyes linger but a bit longer at the number of female dwarves amongst them. She had seen so few in her time, and never in such abundance. "I shall mind the forest. You keep to the path. If you hear this whistle, stay where you are and keep out of sight. Do not fight them if they try to take you. I will deal with them," Tauriel admonished. She gave a lighter smile then. "Though I do not expect that will happen."

Thorin slowed Minty's stride as he passed her by. "Why do you aid us, and ask for nothing?"

"It is not nothing," the elf replied without a smile. Her face was melancholy and pale.

"Tauriel…" Meisar said quietly. "Your motives may be what they are, but you'll need this." She slipped Tauriel a small pouch, warbled something to her in Elvish which made the she-elf smile gratefully.

"Lady Meisar," she called out again as the tail end of the caravan was swallowed into the woods. "Stay on the road. If you remember nothing else, stay on the road."

"Spiders again?"

"Stranger things. Not as deadly but just as potent." Meisar waited for her to elaborate further but she did not. Tauriel managed a small reassuring smile before urging her on. "I will meet you along the route later."

She caught up to the front of the caravan to ride abreast to Thorin. He eyed her with a hint of misgiving. "Out of the goodness of an Elven heart?" His voice was gravelly and pessimistic.

"Does there always need to be a reason? A good one anyway?" she queried.

"Everybody has a reason," said Thorin distrustfully. "Everybody has a price."

"Indeed. One they ask for, and one they've already paid."

.

The dwarves passed cautiously along the narrow path, not a road so much as a clear trail with many ruts. The animals balked as it grew darker the deeper in they treaded. It was dim in the forest and smelled of dank earth and fermenting leaves. Now that autumn had settled, they were falling in many sheaves, orange and brown and green all blanketing the forest floor, sinking in, their earthy smell as they returned to the ground overbearing at times. The canopy overhead was twisted and tangled blocking out the sun.

It had been days since they entered and nights and days now blended together. Once in a great while a lance of sunlight pierced the canopy, illuminating all the shaded groves and shadowy twisted shapes of the trees around them. Tauriel met them at least once a day, bringing what food she could manage, and supplies. Each time Meisar slipped her something in a pouch, which she tried to refuse but the stubbornness of dwarves being what it was, she always accepted in the end.

They found a grove just off the road and decided to make camp. There were no fires here, only the dimmest of lanterns. And bread. Bread for days. Wild and the rare root vegetable were scavenged, rolled in salt and spice by Urdlaug to make them palatable (they never were). The mushrooms made the children sick and Tauriel gave them potions to ease the belly-pain and up-chucking, to which even Urdlaug was grateful. She sent Tauriel off with a pouch of her famous goat-jerky, even though her stores of it were low.

Thorin and Meisar sat together away from the miserable dwarves, a few bedding down before they'd even a bite to eat. Dwalin hunkered down with his brother and both were asleep within seconds. Freyda and Gyda watched the two brothers snore and roll, slapping at each other in the narrow sleep-space, butting heads without waking. The dwarrowdams whispered behind their hands to each other, Gyda's halting giggle and Freyda's deep laconic chuckle.

"The elf-maid is ragged and weary. Hardly a captain of the guard."

Meisar smiled back at him in the dim light of their lantern sadly. "She is banished on orders of King Thranduil. A streak of disobedience as she tells it, and I'm inclined to believe that part of it."

"You cannot trust that is the whole of it, my lady."

"No, I cannot. But whatever the whole of it is, is it worth digging out of her? Something tells me no."

"Earning a bit of coin or things to barter, smuggling dwarves through the forest. There have been many of us coming through; maybe there is something in it for her. I still think it odd. The risk is too high to be worth it. Look at her, shabby as a stray dog."

"She had a friend in a peculiar wizard who dwells in these woods. That, an I assume there are sympathizers amongst elven-kind. She was well-respected during her time in King Thranduil's court. Six-hundred years can cement loyalties not easily broken."

"She could go anywhere. Lothlorien, Rivendell. Over the sea. They would give her refuge. Even the villages of men would tolerate her. Why does she stay in the wilds and grow ragged, risk her very freedom?"

"I was once like her out here in these wild lands. There is a solace in being alone out here, hard as it is to get by. But she is different."

"I would hope so."

Meisar smiled too cryptically then for Thorin's liking. "Tauriel cares deeply for someone, whom she cannot have, or who is no longer here with us. Or perhaps both of those things. I know not. But something in me senses a special sympathy toward dwarves. Maybe for that reason."

"Odd."

"Sometimes females understand the needs and motivations of other females, whether we are dwarf or elf, or human."

She opened the wineskin and poured it into the kettle against Thorin's increasingly stodgy silence. She heated it on a plate that had been left to glow red beneath the lantern's flame. "It's too be drunk hot and spiced," she explained to Thorin's bemused, slightly repelled, expression. "From Elvish vine, but it is quite good to the tongue."

"I would rather drink from the Black River than ingest that Elvish swill."

"You are so stubborn." She put her lip out. "I suppose some things don't change."

She shook her head, more annoyed than amused now. "Best you conserve your water skins then if you won't have this Elvish swill. There's little to be found until we leave this forest."

They were joined by a restless Bofur and Brynja at the scent of hot wine. She poured them each a cup. Bofur leaned back against Brynja and took another long drag on his pipe between sips. Smoke fluttered in the air and was swallowed up quickly by the heavy darkness that lay just beyond the glow of the lantern. Brynja un-plaited his hair for the night and combed through the snares. Meisar and Thorin huddled closer, across from the ever-blissful pair, Thorin's arm coming around slowly to pull her close from behind. She rested her hand on his, settled into the solidness and heaviness of his body. He stroked her courtship braid while Bofur and Brynja tended to each other's locks, and she could feel the peace, the satisfaction in the way his body eased itself, a smile in his eyes caressing the back of her neck.

"I think it is time we retire," Brynja winked sweetly over Bofur's head, pulling his head back as she finished the plait, kissing the tip of his nose.

"Aye, and ye must stay close to me lass it's so dark."

"Shall we also?" Thorin's voice came barely audible against her ear.

They lay themselves down to face each other when Brynja and Bofur had begged off at last. Never parting lips, her hand clasped at his arm just above the elbow, his own settling strongly in the little dip at her side. Their cloaks cushioned them, tangled bedrolls pulled over haphazardly. He held her close in the cold and the dark of the forest. "Good-night my blessing." He kissed her forehead calmly.

"Good-Night my king."

.

In a dream she lay before him in a bed of furs. She was naked, save for a veil of hair that hid her from his sight. She saw him in the low firelight, pulling off armor, down to his tunic and pants, until he was naked from the waist up. As he untied and lowered his breeches a crack in the forest jolted her from sleep. She woke up alone. Thorin was already awake and commiserating with Dwalin nearby.

When she woke they were asleep and together, her head on his shoulder, the rest of her body stretching outward from his to the right side, their bodies making an L-Shape. His arm had flung back and settled, hand clutching hers, resting quietly on her belly. It was not even morn, but none could tell whether it was morn or midnight it was so dark in the forest. She shifted happily when she felt the bedroll rustle beside her, his warm, strong frame against hers again. She nuzzled her face into his beard, producing a soft, satisfied hum when he kissed the tip of her nose.

Anyplace she could be wrapped in his arms would bring her happiness, whether in their scant bedrolls beside the earth, or in Erebor, a bed of furs… Her thoughts trailed to that, resolved as she was. Time for what, she thought, dispiritedly, snuggling closer into his shoulder. Maybe he would have a fresh young dwarrowdam for a bride, maybe the daughter of a Firebeard as was destined for him all those years ago. He was old, but he was not too old, and he was handsome. Perhaps he would not marry at all, and when he went to the Halls of the Fathers the throne would pass to some distant Longbeard relation, still Durin's folk after all. Not a shepherdess, not a friendless girl latching onto anyone who would feed her from Dale to Dunland to Ered Luin.

She leaned to nuzzle and kiss his lips, aching for it.

"Bright and early you two," a voice boomed overhead as she leaned for the desired contact. Thorin's bristles twitched against her chin and she pulled away. to see Dwalin standing above, grin breaking out over his face. Meisar felt a strange tingle creep up her back. He was in too good a mood.

"Oh I am a shepherdess, and here, my flock. This one I shall mark for slaughter before we are arrived at our destination," she groaned, half-smiling out of annoyance up at Dwalin as she crawled out of her bedroll and stretched. The miserable company reluctantly emerged from their fitful rest in the clammy, windless dark of the forest and prepared for another day in its clutches. Once they had been suitably fed what scant bread and water there was, they continued along the path for what seemed like days but could not have been more than a few hours. At a crossroads there in the forest a lance of sun came down through the canopy and illuminated a tree as golden as the sun from trunk the ends of its leaves. The branches stretched overhead long and wide, fan-shaped and eerie.

"Here it is. The yellow tree," she said. "We do not pass."

"Well then what?" whined Nori.

"Then I suppose we wait. Tauriel will-"

"I'll not be taking directions from elves," sniffed Gimli. He left his mother at the reins of their wagon and sauntered right past, tapping at it with his ax.

"Master Gimli!"

Eerily-sweet smelling pollen rained down from the tree at the contact. The whole tree itself seemed to twitter and constrict and soon was raining down the thick yellow dust from every leaf, every branch. Dwarves tried to dodge into their wagons or under cloaks to avoid it but few were successful. "It smells like lemon!" exclaimed Donbur, rushing forth into the rain of it. He took a bit from his fingers and licked them clean. "And it tastes like it too!"

Meisar dove in and smacked his hand away. But she could not resist the urge to lick the pollen off her own lips. Indeed it was something sweeter than hard-candies or berries, delectable even for its rather dour shade of mustard-yellow. Siv had been plentifully bestrewn in a delicate coat of yellow dust, head to toe. She rubbed it from her ears and licked a path from the outsides of her lips to near reaches of her cheeks. "Lemon!" she purred against Eda's attempts to stop her. She wicked it from all corners of her person on her fingers and sucked the dust off cackling. Finally Eda shook her like a rag-doll in a cur's mouth until she was clear. Urdlaug's wagon, set just another a reaching branch, was suddenly dusted in another mad flurry of it from above. She and her sisters came out, wincing, only to be covered fully. They shook off like dogs, dancing around in frustration, howling.

"Look at you!" scolded Emli. "All over your good tunic and pants! And your beard! How will you ever get this out of your mail?" She flapped her hands at a Gimli's dusted clothes in a fluster.

Meisar urged them on growing ever woozier and restless. They stopped when they reached a stagnant dark river. There, in spite of its execrable appearance, Emli and Gimli washed the layer of pollen from their faces and clothes at its jagged bank, drying themselves vigorously. Urdlaug herded all of her sisters down there to wash beside them against the warnings of several of the dwarves, Thorin not being the least vigorous amongst them in his recommendation.

The other dwarves watched haplessly as little Anbur and her sister waded to their knees and splashed in the dark water. They seemed not to be growing as groggy or sleepy in the inexplicable way the dwarves had at this place months before. Just as the spiders had receded, perhaps the dark magic had here too, a few reasoned.

Then the small pair disappeared beneath the surface. Lulia and Virta dove for them crying out with Urdlaug shouting behind them, lifting her skirt to wade in before slipping altogether and plunging with a tremendous splash into the water, taking Yrsa and Anbur with her.

By the time they had all been carried to shore, they were out cold. "Can't wake any of 'em, shepherdess," shrugged Donbur.

"Mahal!" she thundered. The daughters of Bombur lay very much alive but plunged into so profound a slumber not even her booted foot upon their rumps could stir them. "What is this sorcery?"

"It is the river," Thorin said. "It possesses some strange magic."

"It is not the only magic in this forest," she speculated, all too curious now. There was a queer sense afoot in the air itself that she could not in her heart or head discover the essence of. "I do not know, but I feel it." She shivered feeling Thorin enter the space around her. His presence became suddenly overwhelming. "Thorin," she sighed. She stepped back and quietly but forcefully took his hand in hers.

.

Urdlaug and her sisters were loaded, passed out cold, into their wagon and piled on each other. Meisar's legs ached from walking, having surrendered to Donbur Jenny's mount. Surely the nag would not forgive her this one.

When they finally stopped for respite, she collapsed into the ground and shut her eyes, alone with her back against a tree trunk. She was woken suddenly what seemed like hours later by a pair of metal-clad hands shaking her shoulders.

"They've gone off the road," Dwalin complained. Meisar yawned languidly in response. "Who has?" She felt dizzy and distracted, out of sorts.

"More than a few of them. In pairs of two," said Dwalin.

Meisar nodded. She gazed at Thorin behind him, thinking nothing of her straying company, only the shape of his throat, the touch of his beard on her skin. "Where are you going?" he asked her as she started off into the forest, walking stick and lantern in hand.

"To see what in Durin's name is going on!" Meisar's voice echoed back, already swallowed up by forest. "Well laddie," Dwalin nodded, smiling for the first time in ages. "I think you better go see what she's onto."

Thorin went off the road into the woods and Dwalin looked back over his shoulder to find Freyda gazing hungrily at him.

II

Brynja and Bofur were making love by a stagnant black pond in a clearing. She was naked except for Bofur's hat. They carried on without a care in the world. He lay beside her, maneuvering a hand between her legs as her face flushed with pleasure.

It should not have come as any surprise. People loved as they did, even dwarves, and things happened on the road with men and women in close quarters. Mirkwood seemed such a strange place to indulge such desires, but perhaps the foreboding nature of it was enough to draw the dwarven travelers close together. Meisar pondered it in a haze, veiling herself in the darkness of the trees. She watched them curiously, the tingle which had been provoked in her so strong, so inexplicable suddenly becoming infernal and making a quivering mess of her from head to toe. What she knew of sex in any real way was all from men boasting and watching dogs rut in the streets, and eavesdropping on the chatter of women- and safe to say from that alone her knowledge was more than sufficient. They had a copious amount to say on the matter anyway, and she had been party to the traditional festivities of women on the night a dwarrowdam was married, listening to the dwarven crones impart their wisdom in no uncertain terms. She had heard that dwarves were rather possessive but kind and attentive in the bedroom.

Now Bofur was atop Brynja, kissing her breasts and her belly, spreading her legs and moving up and down the insides of them, from her knee all the way to-

Meisar squinted to observe this particular act which was already leaving Brynja moaning and writhing on the forest floor. When it seemed Bofur's hat had bobbled there for an eternity, Brynja rolled and crawled over the dank, dark earth stretched on hands and knees, her rump playfully presented. Bofur's hair was un-braided; he shed his small clothes in a trail behind him crawling after her. He caught her about the waist and took her from behind, the two of them giggling and stifling shrieks of pleasure the whole time. Brynja's face contorted in all manner of ecstasies, biting her lip between thrusts, writhing open-mouthed and eyes-lolling as they came in waves.

She could have stayed and exercised a certain voyeuristic pleasure at Brynja and Bofur's coupling, but she returned to the forest, and plunged deeper in still. The world around her utterly lost its equilibrium, and there was nothing but the insidious, relentless flaring of heat in the deep of her belly that would not abate in spite of her discord, in spite of proud, almost rigid composure. Except that her body had never done such a thing to her before. That feeling in her belly and lower still threatened to betray something that she would rather strangle at its root than reveal. She heard the sound of laughter in the forest and instinctively made her way toward it, perturbed when Thorin didn't follow immediately. There were Ori and Gyda off the path, and Nori and Siv, in the trees, and her throat completely dry and helpless wanting to call after them, shrill and humorless, take them by their scruffy necks and drag them back to the road. A shepherdess in true, branding her staff against an unruly flock. But then there was the forest. It was black and seemed to swallow them whole. Through the heavy veneer of the canopy, she saw the shadows of butterflies.

.

She leaned into the tree, roaming her hand along the band of her skirt, and upward over the heat of her skin, finding her nipple, pinching it between two fingers. Where was Thorin? He should have been right behind her. He should have been…

Abruptly, her foot slipped out from under her, buckling with the pressure of her arousal, and sent her downward over the rotted root. She landed squarely against Thorin's chest, arms flailing then catching him about the shoulders as her entire body-weight seemed to drop down to her feet, air beneath her them or feeling like it. As soon as he had hauled her upright, his mouth was on hers. Her lips parted and yielded and his tongue sheathed gently between them, and thrust at her palate, her throat. Penetrating her lips and slipping inside them, he kissed with a ferocity she had never known, not even in his tenser moments.

He moaned a loud hungry caterwaul that seemed to echo through the forest.

"Hush my sweet. You'll stir up the spiders," she laughed half-seriously.

"Tauriel says the spiders are vanquished," Thorin breathed heavily.

"And do you trust an elf?" She found his ears with her fingers as planted playful kisses all along her throat, buried amid that virile, magnificent mane. She gave him no answer to his inquiry, only a ravenous grin.

"Mizimel!" It slipped past his lips more as a hiss than a groan of satisfaction. When she touched his ears again something feral ignited and made him quake violently from head to toe. She played with the clasp piercing his left ear. And as if she weighed no more than a cloud he lifted her, hands roughly cradling at her backside digging into tender globes. His body pushed savagely at hers to pin her between him and the tree. He plunged his face back to her throat and began to rub his chin and beard arduously over the tormented flesh. They were intimidating, low, animalistic the sounds he made. "By my beard, I would ravish all of you until you were screaming my name."

"Aye?" she sighed in exhilaration. To touch and taste and breathe in… the act itself, the very thought of it, seized her limbs and rendered her helpless against its force. Thorin was busily kissing her again, on her neck and on her lips. She grasped his plaits and tugged him closer to kiss her, and her touch and her kiss were both rough like his own, ravenous, pleading. He pushed his lips roughly to hers in response, taking her in a consuming kiss. She felt suddenly desperate, to feel him, some other way.

"You are mine, mine always."

"Yes…" she groaned warmly.

"Mine alone?" It was a question, asked by strong hands pulling her head toward him, teeth grazing over her throat, pressing soothing kisses to the tender flesh. "Your first?"

"Yes…"

"Your only?"

"Yes. Yes…"

She covered his face in frenzied open-mouthed kisses, fondling his ears again, her hands finding their way to the pulse-points at his throat, feeling the throb, his boiling blood. She squeezed and he grasped at her waist so tight and so rough and she buried her moans into his neck, taking in the heat and scent of his skin, the heavy curtain of his hair that rushed over her. Questing fingers sought something deeper in her, and more intimate; a hand found the hem of her skirt and hiked it roughly.

"Oh Thorin by my beard... my..." His thumb brushed up against the shell of her, in its clinging casing of dampening fabric, how thin the calico that was all that was between his hand and her aching womanhood. "Mahal!" she heaved a high sigh into his hair, burying a deep moan as he rubbed her once more over her undergarments, digit to the pulse point of her centrifuge. His finger slid along the rift, until he found he divot he so desired, and pushed ardently against it. This was her desire, the place where she wanted him, in her, a part of her that could never be claimed again by another.

He did not pass, not with the fabric of her braies a stubborn barrier. Desire swelled and when she could bear it no longer, she reached blindly to his belt-line and slid her hand close against his own center, the place where she could feel that energy twitching restlessly beneath a layer of double-laced breaches and ruched tunic.

His hand covered hers and bid her pull the laces apart, as she felt his opposite hand skim at her belly, searching for the drawstring-

And then there were voices, Dori with his fussy ever-ringing voice calling for Ori, and the younger daughters of Bombur, coming into the forest in search of those who had disappeared inexplicably into its depths. Thorin kissed Meisar's lips fiercely one last time, withdrawing his touch as she did hers, resignedly.

"By my beard, mizimel, we shall with one before this forest is forsaken."

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes…" His possessiveness aroused her in ways she never thought possible. No one had ever consumed her quite the way Thorin did. The king's whore, the king's virgin… she had been labeled all sometimes in the space of a singular day but what did it matter now, she thought. How long this could go on was anybody's question. A king was a king after all.

.

Freyda's hauberk was on backwards and Dwalin's breeches were laced unevenly, one hand missing its knuckle dusters, when next Thorin and Meisar happened upon them back at the road. His bare hand was flexing giddily, Freyda grinning over her shoulder at him. Brynja and Bofur dragged themselves back to the encampment eventually, he cloying, sharp scent of sex clinging to them. Meisar gave them both a sound tongue-lashing for decorum's sake. The king's lady is still the shepherdess. Thorin at least would expect no less from her.

At the edge of the camp, where Gyda was laying down her sleep-sack, Ori shyly asked if he could put his bedroll next to hers. Dori denied the request in the politest possible tones, but Ori was sullen and crestfallen as was Gyda. Oin sat in the dim light of a single candle, mixing his herbs and roots together, and observing the pairings-off with a suspicious countenance, as night fell. The songs of the forest were indeed foreboding in that way. For its beauty, what lingered there was dangerous.

"Shall we take first watch?" Meisar asked auspiciously. Her hand on his shoulder rested with subtle encouragement.

"It is cold now," he observed, a smile out of the corner of his mouth sitting purposefully.

.

He came down heavily to sit and rest against the trunk of a great tree and gathered her into his arms. She let a small satisfied sigh as he pulled her close, enveloping her whole body against his own. Her head rested against the hollow his throat, his nose in her hair, breathing contentedly her scent. Her head dipped to find a patch of skin just over the ridge of his collarbone, the precious sliver of it exposed. Her hand rested on his chest pushing him back as he squirmed and growled, feeling his heart race wildly. A halting, sensuous kiss that soon became fierce. "You taste of Elvish swill," he growled. "And will that dissuade you from continuing?" she grinned, devilishly. "Nay!"

His lips alone had seemed to claim her, and it was true that a king's kiss was not given easily, and a dwarf-king's even less so. And now he trailed away from her smarting mouth, and she closed her eyes as his mouth met the sensitive, untouched skin of her neck, and found the lobe of her ear. Her body tensed and she let an involuntary, harsh whimper slip past her lips. He pulled back and then let his long hair fall over her face like a veil. She sighed against the heavy, silken feel of it.

"Ouf!" She plunked face-first to the forest floor turning, intent on tugging him down after her. For a moment she started to drag herself dizzily across the forest floor, but that was as far as she got before she felt the heaviness of a hand rest on the small of her back. It slid, precariously, over the curve of her backside. "My bold king," she purred, uncannily. The stilting hand emboldened, pressed up her skirt and gave the calico-clad bottom a hearty pat. She rolled over and pulled him close to her side. His body aligned to her from behind, she pushed her bottom defiantly against his hips and he growled at her. The grobbles and squabbles of the dwarves close in the camp echoed irksomely through the darkness.

Thorin pressed her skirt back over her braies, halting there momentarily. He had held her in their sight, and left the dark emblems of his claim upon her neck for all to know. Now, he ached for her alone. He grasped the heavy globe beneath the layers of tunic, skirt, small-clothes. Even through it all he could feel that she was brazenly corpulent there, fleshy and rotund not unlike the heavy bosom he had long ached to plunder at. He had never touched her this way. He put his hand under her skirt and searched defiantly, the burst of affection steadily becoming animal, the more he touched and grasped and squeezed causing something much deeper to spin out of control.

"Might we be more comfortable behind that line of trees?" he cleared his throat, huskily.

"Indeed..."

They went deeper and she knelt on the forest floor to spread her bedroll on a bed of dry leaves. She got up on her hands and knees to adjust and she felt his hands upon her hips, tugging her close to him.

"You take me like a broodmare?"

"Never." He spread his cloak and then his bedroll and hers, pressed down a ruck-suck filled with clothes for a pillow. She put her arms around his shoulders and tugged him down, his nose pressed hard over the bridge of hers, his breath on her forehead, his lips laid sideways and grasping for hers. He adjusted quickly to lay alongside her.

"Oh!" His hips pushed roughly and a bit awkwardly between her splayed legs. Her knees up on the forest floor and Thorin's cloak about her, a hand fumbling over her bent knee to take a handful of her skirt and push it up. He found the ribbons of her stockings, wiggling them loose. "So soft," he purred.

He could feel her skin quiver at the touch of his single finger, making dimples in the soft flesh. "They call it Kashamire."

The purr lowered into a thick growl and he peeled the stocking eagerly from her, discarding it on the forest floor. "Emli will not be happy," she smiled. "Those were a fine gift."

"There will be many gifts to come." A shift of weight pushed the centrifuge of his hips lewdly to her again.

She felt his lips grasp about her earlobe, his beard on her neck again as he kissed that familiar, marked place, her soft skin and the entanglement of her orange hair into his black. "Thorin…" she whispered. She felt his hand between her legs.

.

Emli's ears perked at the sound of a smothered moan. Dwalin was on night-watch with Oin; she and Freyda kept each other company about the dying fire as the other women snored around them and bedrolls seemed to shift clandestinely across the forest floor.

"What do you think they're doing over there?" Freyda smirked. She jerked her head in the direction of the forest.

"Unsheathing the blade, opening the oyster, plucking the pearl," Emli clucked.

"We are nowhere near the sea, mother," Gimli came in and said plainly.

"No indeed we are not. Now sit! Your beard is a bramble-nest." Emli tended her son's mangled plaits and beard while Freyda spun it again in her mind with the mischievous smile that accompanied such distinctly female knowledge. "The question is whether you can eat an oyster raw before it's ready to be consumed."

"Either way you should find it slightly watery."

A wee dewdrop of salivation began to coat the corner of Gimli's mouth, so pleasantly lost in thought it began to wick his beard along the bottom of his lip. "Do you remember when we had oysters 'amad? When we went to the sea with Da to trade with the men? You should not eat them raw. They should be well-done, simmering, with butter or better yet, cream."

The dwarrowdams burst into rapacious laughter and Gimli was immensely confused. Both Emli and Freyda knew the boy enough to realize he was talking about seafood.

"And just what else would you know about eating oysters? Your mother wants to know where you learn such things." Emli demanded.

Gimli fretted dramatically. "I found out that day I was very allergic to mollusks."

.

His hand drew away from her suddenly, where he had rubbed her back and forth over a thin layer of calico, when he heard the rustling of the other dwarves about the camp again.

His arms cradled her and laid her back on the forest floor, her cloak beneath them. It had become their near-nightly ritual, kissing and laying hands on each other under a protective pile of cloaks and pelts and blankets. But there was something different now, here in this eerie wood-realm. There had been limits and trepidation elsewhere. They had lain hands about each other but over their cumbersome layers of clothes, and their closeness in the night was tender and comforting. It was fierce now, and animal.

Command her as he did without a word, that he could ignite the she-wolf and make her whimper and moan all the same, and her innocence was now her vulnerability and not her armor. Thorin knew Meisar would not yield easily, nor would he urge it. But his need grew in the dark to something fierce, and desire spread a warm fire over her body that he could feel through her clothes.

She stroked the hinge of his jaw and placed a shy kiss there where it met his neck, and she felt the bristles of his beard twitch with pleasure when her lips met the sensuous, if long-neglected spot. She pulled his forehead close to her own and nipped kisses against his lips. "It pleases you, my king?"

"Yes!" His moan was low and wanton. It surprised her. His gaze, his steely azure eyes always so melancholy, so purposeful and controlled, was entirely black in appearance, pupils blown. She could only see him dimly in the light of the lantern they had left burning by her side, but sight was for little now. Only touch. Tongue and teeth took her, claimed her skin, kissing and biting and roughly exploring her with his big, rough hands in the deep unsteady silence of the night. She finally pulled his face to hers by his plaits, to kiss his lips again, never tasting him so hungrily, so desperately. She experienced something so instinctive and primal when he touched her that it simply could no longer be contained. There was a longing to be opened elsewhere. He placed his hand on her thigh.

"We could try," she offered, no more than a meek whisper in the night, colored with wanting.

"Do you give yourself?" he said huskily. His lust was unrequited and animal, and he wanted to see this small woman helplessly cede to their joining.

"Do you wish to…?" he breathed again into her ear, circling the shell of it with heated kisses. She could feel the growing part of him, and she smiled to think even his most primal instincts matched him in personality- restless, determined, so very quick to react. "Yes!" Her heart thumped with need; between her thighs she twitched and ached and dripped with it.

"I will do all to please you, I swear it. I will not hurt you." Meisar nodded, biting her lip.

She squealed when the finger pressed at her through the layer of her underclothes again, so much that her knees snapped together in shock. Perhaps this wasn't right after all, but she could not stop herself. She felt the hesitant brush of rough hands under her skirt again, on legs stripped bare of their stockings, and then finding the loosed band of her braies. His fingertips had started at her calves, so strong and solid and moved up her thigh, much softer but just as generous. There was short, deep gasp, and slightly longer whimper when he had reached his destination.

"Mizimel?"

Her knees buckled against the ground. "I… feel so naked. I-" A knee in between her thighs opened her for him. Her fingers nimbly unhooked the jerkin where it was fastened at the sides and wiggled out of it. Thorin fumbled with the laces fastening her tunic, kneading and grasping at her breasts with animal need. He took her nipple in his teeth through the thin fabric of her tunic, and tested it with a soft bite, and smothered her high keening cry with a crushing kiss.

The laces were stubborn and tangled; he gave up, and tugged her dress up about her hips beneath the layers of their coverings. The lantern dimmed then and snuffed out. Flat back she lay on the cold forest floor and their cloaks. The folds of her skirt fell around her juncture, veiling that desired place. "By my beard, I would taste you." Rough hands inched upward, ruching and gripping the fabric of her skirt in his hands as he came over her and settled again.

It was exquisite and time-stopping; but a moment to take in, even thru layers of his clothing, the heavily muscled chest, torso and legs that were pressed solidly atop her. The rough scrape of beard on her skin, and teeth, in places she had never allowed anyone so near; places he thought to kiss. To taste. Imagining, even halting, at the thought of her being naked there too, he found himself delighted to feel a shock of thick hair at the juncture of her pelvis. She groaned, and unable to sense where it was displeasure or not, he drew away and did not proceed further than to ghost over that un-yielded spot. Yet how fervently he wanted to open her, ready her for what was to come. He could not; he was pining, ready.

The sound of his heavy belt coming undone preceded it landing with a small thud upon her belly, and his hand taking apart his trews, laces snapping as they came undone. The impatient twitch of his maleness pressed against her through his breeches, and he drew his hand downward to free himself. She felt his desire slot itself into the hollow of her hip, and let an involuntary gasp.

He smoothed the strands of orange hair away from her face, hovering above her. "Relax, my blessing," he soothed. "I will be gentle. I will stop if…"

"THORIN!"

From above a swift blow came down hard on Thorin's head, veiled in the pelt of fur. As soon as he had reeled off of Meisar, a second strike hit her in the temple.

"MAHAL!" Thorin rolled in pain with sword and ax drawn in either hand.

Bifur cast his gaze down upon them, lying in the scattered contents of their bedrolls. The boar-spear dropped and he backed off quickly.

Bofur and Brynja then were brought to the grove half-dressed and shouting over the already-hawing commotion. Thorin glared daggers at Bifur, who had backed off, shrugging, spear in hand, while Thorin hastened in refastening the laces of his breeches, over his visible stirrings. Meisar lay frozen facing up toward Bofur, her clothes in disarray, skirt ruched about her legs. Nori and Siv were brought as imminently to the scene as more commotion started to come from the camp, and before they could ascertain an idea of what had been wrought, a bright flash of light came through and a high voice in Elvish.

The light flashed bright on Meisar's eyes directly. "Tauriel! Mahal, bring the entire forest why don't you!"

Hegi sprung at Tauriel from the darkness, pulled back and lifted off the ground kicking madly at the elf by Bifur. She threw her head back knocking Bifur in the nose, and when her head launched forward again she tried to bite Tauriel. Tauriel bounced her off with casual ease. Hegi went sprawling to the forest floor with the wind knocked clean out of her.

"I told you not to touch the yellow tree!" hissed Tauriel.

"I didn't! They did!" Meisar found herself sulking there on the ground like a small child caught with her hand in the sweets jar, denying her involvement. Tauriel jerked her head at Meisar and smoothed her own skirt, clearing her throat. Meisar still lay in a daze upon the ground. "By the Valar, don't any of you dwarves wear small-clothes?" chuckled Tauriel finally. She bent down and smoothed Meisar's skirt back over her bare legs, eyeing Bifur and Bofur and Nori together whose heads were tilted to have a look up her skirt. Her cloak and torque were flung far over the forest floor, and her furs and braies.

"I do," Meisar huffed in Tauriel's direction. "They're… somewhere here." She rolled over onto her hands and knees and patted all over the ground in search of her missing clothes. Thorin's eyes fixed at the plump shape of her bottom beneath the thin skirt. He might have deigned to give it another smack had the elf-maid not been looking down on him so intently, a king laid out on his back with a bruised head the laces of his trews fastened unevenly. He adjusted the length of his tunic and glared at the she-elf.

"That which falls from the yellow tree in autumn bears a bizarre spell," Tauriel sighed.

"And?"

Tauriel reached down and pulled Meisar to her feet. "Let us speak privately as women, my lady." Tauriel led her away from the dwarven encampment and not far then she set the lantern down between them and sighing, shed her green cloak. She then drew her tunic up to her rib-cage. Against her thin frame her belly looked swollen, but deflated in a strange way, like a flattened cushion. "Tauriel?"

"I saw the man I had loved before me but it was all an illusion. I should have known."

"When I woke I was beside another whose affections I had earned. I cannot say it was against either of our wills. We took what we desired in that moment of each other, under that strange spell or not. The babe came of it."

She poured another dribble of wine into her cup. "I delivered the child still-born long before its time, a fortnight past. I may have died myself had it not been for the healing powers of a wizard who dwells in the south of the forest."

"Why didn't you tell anyone? Might it have lived?"

"Oh Meisar, how could I have birthed it living? I am fading, dear dwarf-maid. Such things are not the ways of elves, just as I know such… ardors… are not the way of dwarves. It is this forest. It is that yellow tree your reckless dwarfling decided to rattle."

"Two that I loved are dead now. Perhaps it is my fate to love briefly, and with grief at the end of all things. Before I go I shall make myself of use." She smiled painfully. Meisar put her hand on hers, pale fingers so thin and graceful. "What shall you do?"

"Many an elf would make their way across the sea, and in the Grey Havens dwell. I have no desire to."

"Tauriel?" Meisar's breathless voice wavered on the edge of tears. "Who was the man you loved? What became of him?"

"The man I loved craved but another moment of life. I could not give it. That is all that is important for that matter."

"The yellow tree?" Meisar changed the subject quickly as Tauriel's face began to twitch in irritation.

"Has made fools reckless and primal of those who taste its pollen. Once it seemed a darker force; now it takes the form of lust most often, which is no less dark in its wickeder manifestations," Tauriel said quickly. "It draws from those who touch it their most hidden desires, the things that lie dormant, pressed deep down within them. What has happened... it is not our way. Or yours. I would have never taken you for a woman of such animal desires, even under a strange spell."

"I suppose there is much we will never know of each other."

.

Bifur and Hegi tended each other's wounds while Thorin sat sullenly beside them, waiting for Oin to assess. Somehow he could not bring himself to stay cross with Bifur. Bifur had no reason not to believe that he was beset by an orc, or a spider, or worse, a hostile elf.

"There is a fire in the mine," Bifur said grinning in Khuzdul. Dwalin edged him aside and drew near to Thorin. "You could have been killed, my king!" Dwalin snapped.

"It matters not," Thorin retorted, stiffly.

"And for what? You bedding the halfling? You do not trust me as your friend and kin with this?"

"I am not bedding her," Thorin grumbled defensively at Dwalin. "And do not call her the halfling. Her name is Meisar."

Her name is Meisar. He looked at Balin with guilt in his eyes.

His name is Bilbo.

Dwalin sighed gruffly and let his thoughts catch up with him. "There is something queer afoot in these woods." At this Bifur nodded vigorously and grunted to Thorin in Khuzdul something about dark magic in the air.

Dwalin explained. "Just this night, Brynja and Bofur had a romp, layin' at arm's length from Ori and Gyda."

"They are wed and utterly shameless. What of it?"

"Ori and Gyda is what," Dwalin replied simply. The thought of either making that first, awkward attempt was both amusing and worth a cringe (and hoping he had found the right jacksie). Dwalin leaned in with less amusement. "I heard sounds I never thought could come from Ori. It sounded like a mule being slaughtered… but not as miserable."

It seemed to him odder still that such a thing… Ori? He looked over at Dori, so collected amidst the chaos of rutting and groaning still echoing from just outside the light of the camp, he must have been unawares.

Dwalin leaned into him, eyes narrowed. "Siv is in a fine mood. She rolled about to Gimli and sat right on him, while he slept by his mother's side. Though I can say she gave him no more than a few wet kisses, Emli nearly took her head clean from her shoulders." Dwalin jerked his head in the direction of Nori's bedroll. He was awake and at his brothers' sides but there was another lump still stirring aptly beneath it. At a distance, they could hear a satisfied female groan.

They eventually came back to the caravan where Oin was still assessing the situation with feathers ruffled. It did appear Bifur was the only one unaffected, of the dwarves who were not deep asleep in their wagons since the dawning of the day. It might have been the axe in his head. He had walked all night among the stirring bedrolls grunting to himself in confusion.

"Indeed it is lodged in his person at the part of the head that… well… the medical experts of other races I have heard say… controls the part given to animal lust…" Oin rattled off. Bifur grunted at him in disapproval and made small jerking motions with his hands. "Yes I understand Master Bifur that you are virile. That was not what I was implying." He turned around as Donbur staggered over with his breeches twisted about his waist and a stiff tent rising about the center of them. His face was flushed and sweat-drenched in panic. "Master Oin! It's been like this since morning! It… won't… go… down!"

Thorin growled under his breath. "Get us out of this cursed place."

Mizimel- "Jewel of All Jewels"