LUZDH- Translates as either "worth" or "value" in Khuzdul
A/N: To UnseenWatcher: Oh honey chile' I think I may have received your birthday AND Christmas lists... for years to come. You just keep on reading lovie. I accept your forgiveness most graciously :)
Tarask: Thanks for the lovely review. I think the only thing I love writing about more than Thorin is lady dwarves, and I am happy you think well of my girls :)
It was still dark when she woke again, dawn just beginning to break. Meisar stretched cautiously in the pile of warm furs and her blankets, head lolling to the side to look upon Thorin's sleeping face with a swelling tenderness. A kindling warmth, not like the heat she had felt there in the grove. The night had burned at her with a fierceness that not even the deluge of coming undone as she had, could quell that fire.
Except now. Morning light, however dim it was, had a strange, harsh way of quelling the things that darkness hid. Then there was her utter benevolence, void of that bae lust, for him. When he slept, there were times he looked so peaceful, not like so many times before. Now was the third night he had slept without the agonized tossing and turning. She wondered what his dreams were like now.
Humming a brief high sigh, she ran her fingertips over the side of his face, over his braid, and brought its clasped tip to her lips to kiss, as reverent and chaste as if she were to kiss his ringed finger in a ceremony of oath-taking. As the memories of the previous night rolled through her, heart to nethers, it seemed oddly appropriate.
In the less comfortable distance she heard a frantic rustling, near at the edge of the camp where the ponies rested. There were village ruffians who lived on the peripherals of the Lake-Men's shores, thieves and rogues. She slid stealthy from the bed roll, ax in hand, dirks at the ready. At the grumbling and neighing of a pony on the other side of a veil of birch trees, she sprung.
Siv and Nori turned around and yelped.
"What are you two doing? Thieving again Nori?"
"Thievin'? More like leavin'," Nori returned flippantly. "Taking this lovely lass with me."
"Siv, you can't leave! Nori, you've gone mad!"
"I can and I intend to!" retorted Siv, loading her travel-pack onto the rump of Nori's pony. The girl had a determination about her in the moment, with all the sass-tongue and chest-puffing stripped away.
"Eda will throttle me if I let you go."
"And Emli will throttle me!"
She turned toward Nori desperately. "Won't you talk some sense into her?"
Nori made a less-than-caddish sneer toward Meisar. "I'll not be constantly drubbin' it into 'er head what a scandal she is. The likes o' Eda can't let 'er be for once."
"Siv, you are worth more than to be a thief's side-arm," she pleaded to her low and privately.
Siv drew back, lips moving silently and face scrunched in mild offense. "This thief's got a mighty fine heart if you took the chance to get the core of it. Eda can't see through to mine, and Dori can't see through to his. Company's gossip is one thing but our own kin think us none but trouble. Do you have any idea what that feels like?"
She saw a deeper hurt tinge the girl's eyes and sighed. "I have been called ugly things myself, Siv, when I am nothing of the sort. I know it is a rotten feeling."
"From your own kin?"
"I have no kin."
Siv's mouth turned downward, almost sympathetically. "Aye then, but were you not told yourself to avoid certain men?" Siv countered, pointedly. "Told you were no match for someone, when it turned out," Siv smiled, a warmth coming around about her. "It turned out, you were well right for a king."
"Eda will devastated if you go."
"Let her be then. Thinks she's protecting me she does, always lecturing me, always scolding me. Naughty girl Siv she says, like I'm one of these mangy pups of yours that done pissed on 'er leg." Siv hissed at Red-Coat, who had ripped up her skirt in that distant tussle. Perhaps we are not so different after all, you and I. Meisar willed herself against musing at the moment. "Perhaps it is not right to say such hurtful things, but neither is running off without a goodbye, especially to your own kin," she eyed up Nori accusingly.
Siv backed up a step and held Nori's hand to her shoulder from behind, ignoring all talk of kin or decorum or goodbyes. She looked comfortable with him, happy even. She would never trust but at the moment he wasn't appraising her with that knavish eye about him. "We see what's better in each other. Stayed up all night we have for days on end. Just talking. 'Bout our lives and such." Siv looked meditative and peaceful. "Morning after Mirkwood he didn't call me no hussy, spite o' sharin' his bedroll and more. Can't say the same for the rest of you."
"Siv, got to ride. Sun's up!" crowed Nori.
"Siv, please! Nori! We are but days from Erebor. Don't be foolish."
"See you at the mountain then, lovely."
"You'll go nowhere!" Meisar asserted in a sudden hiss. "Eda and Dori have entrusted me to see each and every one us home to the mountain! I'll not move!" She held the reins and glared at Nori, Siv clinging tight 'round his waist.
"Goodbye Meisar," Siv said quickly and with a bitter-sweetness. Nori's heels went into the pony's flanks, knocking her onto the ground as she was forced to release the reins or be dragged on. Into the sunrise they seemed to gallop, like a scene out of a very peculiar fairy story.
She went back to the camp and sunk dispiritedly back into her bedroll beside Thorin. So much had made her dizzy, turned her knees to dust beneath her body, she could hardly bring herself to be concerned with what had just transpired.
"I missed your warmth. It is a cold morning, this," she heard a gravelly voice murmur sleepily.
"I think I will not be cold again," she smiled, legs folded daintily beneath her, looking down on him. Thorin rested on his back, sword at his side, sleepy eyes cast upward at her with a dreamy quality she had not seen in him before. After last night, will anything ever be the same?
She thought to linger in a dreamlike state, half suspended in disbelief what the night had wrought between them. She bent her forefinger at the knuckle and stroked it lightly over the side of his forehead, from the tip of his eyebrow to his hairline, her eyes cloudy, nose coming down to rest and nuzzle lightly against his. "Not after... this night." It made on her an entirely different blush that neither the dim light of dawn nor the coy veil of hair at her cheek was willed to conceal.
She remembered the touch of his beard betwixt her thighs and lay down beside him in the manner of a fainting maiden the way she swooned down and lay upon her back there, and he moved swiftly to lay close by her side and embrace her. She tugged him impatiently by his plaits to kiss. "Put your mark on my skin, Thorin." "And let them and the men of the lake know I am yours."
"Have I not sufficiently made you mine?" He ran his tongue just between her lips.
"Aye, but it is a secret language your tongue has spoken there." She wanted it where it had been, wanted his hands where they had torn her skirt, to tear the one that cumbered her now...
He pinned her arms above her on either side of her head, stealthily, but all to keen with his own desire, a barely contained baseness to his grip.
With his torso pressed at hers with a mighty want in every inch of him (but especially there), she let her head flop back and arch at the neck as his mouth met the front of it, kissing down to the hollow just as its base where he took a little fold of skin in lips and then teeth, a long, languid but hard suckle, and then a nip of teeth. His hair tickled her cheeks and her neck when the long locks dragged over her and wildly as he marked her neck. All the time his thumbs had pressed into the pulse points of her wrists, inflamed by how her blood raced beneath her skin.
A moan strangled as she heard two flustered voices rushing in at them. "Up! Rise now! Meisar! Majesty! They're gone!" In a pitiable fury shaking and waking them were Eda, and Dori.
"Well they couldn't have gotten far," Meisar said at last, yawning. She dared not let Eda onto the truth of the matter. "I'll take the dogs after their scent, bring them back if I find them."
"Please, don't let my dear cousin slip away with that thief!"
"Don't let my brother fall into that hussy's arms!" Dori lamented, more dramatically.
Eda glared at him. "She's only got but a wicked mouth on her. She's not a sordid lass. He's nicked enough loot in his time to satiate a dragon's appetite!"
"She's got a wicked mouth on her, that's what I worry for! Have a new generation pickpockets and dodgy lasses for nieces and nephews! Our line tainted forever!"
"That's not how it works!" wailed Eda.
"The two of you, calm yourselves!" Meisar lashed at them at last. She was hot and swollen again between her thighs and crabby for having been deprived a morning's affections with its source. She mounted the pony irritably and turned north along the river with the dogs running before her.
Her thighs chafed and felt tender, rubbing together, the bare skin lightly stinging from Thorin's ministrations the night before. She followed and found the hounds running in circles down by the river. An empty dock with moorings torn up and a rope cut all frayed as if by a knife. "Well, that's an end to sniffing those two out," she grumbled resignedly to herself. She summoned the hounds and rewarded them with dusty old ham bones for their service, the best she could provide at the moment.
The gray hound looked up and cocked his head at her for a long spell.
"Don't look at me like that, Raincloud." She sat and studied the podge of her belly and found it marked in a jagged line of bruises, from her navel and there trailing downward. "I suppose you think you know. You could never know what it's like…" she said to the staring hound, dreamily.
"Truly, there is nothing more beautiful than making love out of doors, in nature."
Meisar leaped a yard from the ground.
"We dwarves do not always get that chance," Emli added quickly, smiling. She was looking down on Meisar with her arms crossed, a valiant look on her face. "I see it quite clearly. I know that look. You're no longer a maid."
She flushed high and hot with sudden paranoia. "Emli what are you doing here? And why do you ask me such things?"
"I wanted a moment alone with you."
"To interrogate me on private matters? Now what?"
"So he has made you his. Now what, is the question."
"Should you not be back at the camp guarding your son's every move?"
"Siv has gone," Emli smiled crisply and jubilantly. "I have no fears for my son being seduced or defiled at the moment, now that she's run off with a dwarf far better suited to her... persona."
"You should not so unkind toward her. She is not so base. I've seen plainly a better soul than that."
"And I've seen her plainly sitting upon my son with her skirts up and her... on his beard!" She put her hand to her forehead dramatically. "My dear sweet good son! Oh he may never recover from it! I pray he is not put off by women for all times seeing what he did. I might have killed her on the spot but I had my vair bed-gown on. Hard to get blood out of a fine fur like that."
Emli calmed her bluster and regained her focus. "Now... where was I? Ah yes. You. There is a change in you. I know the look of a woman with a new experience under her belt. Oh, quite literally, under the belt. And with a king no less, a courtship braid in your hair on not this is serious business."
Meisar stared gape-lipped at them, stuttering a quiet answer. "I have not been with Thorin… in bed."
"We have not had beds since Rivendell, my lady. Don't be coy with me now."
"Coy? I'm not... coy! I..."
Emli sat down beside her and took her hands in hers. "If it is such that you are lovers now, don't be selling your virtue for a less than it is worth."
"I did not know there was a price on a lady's virtue," Meisar remarked sarcastically. "Unless you're one of the girls in Bree who lodge in the houses with darkened doors."
"Not one that can be measured in coin, no," said Emli. "But it is, at the end of the day, a lady's most precious possession. And what dwarf gives away what is theirs so easily?"
"Then who are you to suggest what it is worth? Or to presume that I am anything less than... maidenly?"
Emli stared back defiantly. "A dwarf I may be, well-versed in what value things have."
"All that is to my name, is either on my back, or on the back of that pony. You have likely adjudged me quite worthless in that regard; appraised me well I'm sure you have."
"Naturally," Emli said. "But only those I care about."
Meisar crossed her arms, still unmoved. "Then you will see I've nothing to offer and nothing to sell. There's no story here, Emli. Leave it be."
"You are quite ignorant your worth if you think it lies solely in your worldly possessions, or lack thereof. It's about time I sat you down right here, and now, and spoke with you plainly of your worth, as a woman, as a king's woman. It is high time you recognized it, and demanded of a particular dwarf king what you are owed, for that worth."
"Me? Make demands of a king?"
"Yes, you. You are the only one who is entitled to make them."
"I would not be so imprudent I'm afraid."
"Whatever happened in that grove last night was imprudent if you ask me. Could hear you moaning Meisar the shepherdess like a wolf howls over yonder. The eyes of a hawk and the ears of a fox, my lady. I know a plucked rose when I see it and I'll not have you tossing yours to the wind to scatter as if it were a dandelion gone white. Not with a king, my lady."
She sprung up, a bit edgy. "My mine is untapped. My pearl has not been plucked from its shell. I have a fire in my forge but no hammer. Must I put to you in simpler words, Emli?" Meisar was exasperated and sullen.
"Do not be cross with me, my lady. I mean you only well. And if that is truth, and I am inclined to believe it is, then I am quite tempted to have Freyda forge you a fine chastity belt. I'll put it on you myself, to make that point. Give the king the key when he has done the rightful duty he ought to toward you."
"I am capable of protecting what is mine well enough."
"I know," Emli acquiesced more gently. "You are strong enough to bear this, this king. That is why I tell you what I tell you."
Meisar sat again, resignedly. "This courtship of yours will be a different game when you come to Erebor with the king. All of Durin's folk will know and behold you."
"I know as much. I can handle it."
"Can you? I should think you would handle it far better should your position become a bit more… solid. It is high time Thorin makes a decision, and you do your best to sway it."
"A decision?"
Emli eyed her, calculating as always, but with an invested compassion. "You know of what I speak."
"I do, and how could I ask such of a king? Not exactly a question for the supper-fire to be discussed over hot stew."
"You let him know exactly what you are worth," Emli said stoutly then. "You have more value than ever you will know, and it lies here," Emli pointed to her heart and jabbed her finger there to make her point. She eyed the hands that were clutched tight against Meisar's lap and appraised, always appraising, that Emli. "And here..." Emli's eyes cast down and seemed to jab at her there.
"This goes beyond you. It is not for yourself you may play your hand, but for all of us. Maybe you do not know because you were not there in the days of old or beneath the mountain after the dragon's death as my husband was. It is a thought that haunts me."
"And what is that?"
Emli cast her sharp gaze behind her and toward the Lonely Mountain. "Dragon-sickness. We all fear it. Did it die with Fili and Kili and all the rest? Frighten him away from looking at the likes of its source ever again? I do not know. But I know one thing. You are all that stands between him and despair. Despair will kill him. And without him we are leaderless. I fear what would become of Durin's Folk then. So when I tell you to play your hand, you play your hand." She folded her hands tight over Meisar's in her lap again, enunciating every syllable with a tight pat.
"I will do what I must," Meisar replied quickly. "I am strong to bear it. He is beloved of me beyond measure, Emli."
Emli smiled again after a long contemplative silence between them. "Well then, now that we've established the importance of that, let us speak freely as kept women. You know, intimacy is crucial," she expounded, prattling on her way. "You know, when Gloin and I were well into our courtship, we found ourselves not always contented by gifts and chaste kisses, and sometimes-"
"I will hear none of this," Meisar insisted gruffly. She mounted Jenny and took off south along the river, back to the caravan's path, and for once, Emli seemed to know better than to follow.
.
"Oh! Oh! Mahal why!"
"Our lamentable kin have joined forces it would seem," Eda grumbled.
"Seems they've nicked a boat off the River Running. The dogs lost them down at one of the Lake-Men's barge docks," Meisar came in and sat.
"A boat!" cried Dori. "He can't steer a boat! They'll both be drowned!"
"Siv can. Taught her how on the River Lhun when she was a girl," Eda murmured gently. Dori put his hand on her shoulder, apologetically. She clutched it there, eyes welling up with tears. "Oh Dori, he won't… dishonor her, will he?"
"No. No. I think not. His greatest dishonor though, he's only just now repeated," said Dori sadly, glancing at Ori. "When last he left, out from the Blue Mountains with a bounty price on him, Ori was right devastated, the poor lad. Missed him very much he did."
"Surely he is on his way to the mountain, Ori. You'll see him soon," he heard Gyda consoling his youngest brother.
"He'll reach a pair of stocks in Dale, that's where he will!" Dori lamented more audibly. Ori frowned.
"Oh he won't. He's quite a skillful thief. I'm sure he'll never be caught," reassured Gyda.
Dori eyed Gyda accusingly. "Not the only one of my kin to have their reputation debased, I pray."
"What on Earth do you mean, Dori?"
"Oh girl, don't be coy. Even without my scoundrel brother's aid this young man is a magnet for corruption!" Dori put his hands on Ori's shoulders, protectively drawing him away from the confused young dwarrowdam. "Back in Mirkwood I saw those bedrolls moving about all funny! Don't think I don't know what you want! Well, you'll not have it. Not again!"
"What are you talking about Dori?" Ori said.
"Heard the sounds you were making. Crying out like a wounded beast!"
"Had a hangnail. She pried it out." Ori held up a bandaged hand and shrugged.
"What?" Dori clucked like a manic hen.
"Sat on me so I wouldn't jerk about and rip it too quick," Ori explained, big eyes ever unsullied.
"But… the tree? The dust! The dust!"
"Came out of Eda's wagon looking for a topical elixir, saw the lot of you dancing about in a yellow pollen like you'd walked into a nest of bees. Did it bother your allergies, Dori?" Ori asked, so innocuously the elder of his brothers stood with his lips moving and making "pithing" noises for a moment.
"No!" Dori's voice came out high and thin at last.
"Dori, what did you think happened?"
"Nothing!" Dori chortled. "Nothing at all, to worry yourself with. Forget I ever said it. Now let us have a look at this finger. I'll not have it get infected on account of amateur medicine." He shunted Ori away as the dwarves about the fire began to laugh, first nervously then with calamitous amusement.
"Mahal," said Gyda at last, exasperated, as the dwarves around her dissolved with laughter. "What in the world do you think happened?"
.
Dwalin drifted away from the commotion and clatter of the camp, in search of Thorin. After her, he wondered? Find her and find his way up her skirts again like in that forest, the wee maid. Good then. Make him happy it will. Thorin and a lass. Strange days these are. He walked for awhile half in a daze along the edge of the water, watching out for ruffians and lippy lake-men with longbows.
He found Freyda first. Down at the rocky banks of the River Running, she was sharpening an ax on the surface of a stone.
He made a sound like a bullfrog out in the muddy waters along the shore might, when he saw her. She turned around at the sound. There wasn't another soul in sight. He tried to say something but the same sound came out of him. But she was smiling, unconcerned. "Come sit, Mister Dwalin, if ye wish. Got water skins to fill yet."
"Aye, lass." He approached, put off by how casual her tone was toward him. Did she remember the forest? Perhaps she didn't. Good, that would be better. He studied her strong hands, strong but womanly in their dwarvish way. Her pale beard and long pale hair all loose down her back instead of in her usual studded plait. Her shoulders when she bore down on the blade with the stone. No, maybe she ought to remember...
He chided himself inside losing himself in his own thought feeling her eyes patting him up and down, first shy then impatient they felt on him. My king, my brother back from the dead and I look upon a lass. Fool. Umzum.
"Are you afraid then?" Freyda asked more gently when he stood there staring a long while at her, at a less than comfortable distance.
Dwalin didn't answer. "Sit down," she coaxed.
Eventually, he did so, sitting across from her, gazing into the water.
She smiled, with a peacefulness, but with intent. "Put yer trust me in me for a moment. I beg ye."
"Ye should know better than to beg for anything, lass," Dwalin tut-tutted at her ditheringly. "Alas, here, ye have it, for the moment anyway. Now that I trust ye, what now?"
"Close yer eyes."
"For what?" He drew back, eyeing three-hundred-sixty degrees about for any creeping lake-men. Put it my skull ye will before ye touch a hair on her pretty pale head. He looked back at Freyda and swallowed hard.
"Just for a moment. I promise it won't hurt."
Dwalin did so reluctantly, half expecting a hard knock against his forehead. A moment later he felt a pair of cool hands scrape through and then settle over his wiry beard and touch the bare skin on the peaks of his cheeks, holding him steady. Then, a pair of lips against his own.
"Lass?" He licked his lips, tentatively, when she had pulled back and gave him a determined gaze.
"It's called a kiss, Mister Dwalin. A lass gives it to one she's… fond of."
"I know all that," he said again, stiffening.
"I have thought of nothing except ye for many days. And what happened... in the elven forest."
"Aye, I remember," he said cautiously, avoiding her eyes. "What of it, lass?"
"I heard it said that the forces in Mirkwood enchanted folk to be as they truly are, better or worse. Did I see the dwarf ye were when ye… touched me? Or was it some dark spell, making ye wild and dark? Tell me. I can't bear this no more, not knowing."
"I was curious," he stammered. Dark spells, aye. Made me weak for a lass when I'm to be strong for my king. But what a fair lass she is...
"Curious? You?" She crossed her arms with a bit of a mocking bearing about her. "So that's it. Never been with a lass have ye. All that gabbing about the campfire 'bout rearing to charge over a strong-shouldered lass? What was all that about?"
"Saving face with the lads. As you might expect any male to do," Dwalin relayed a bit sarcastically.
"Ye told me I had pretty shoulders in that forest. I thought ye meant it."
Dwalin bristled. She sounded so wounded. "I did mean it."
"Give me one honest answer Dwalin, and I shall appreciate either that ye give me. Do ye care for me as... look at me as... the king looks at his lady there the shepherdess? If ye do not, I have no bitterness in me for it. Or do ye just find me agreeable company? I would be happy all my days to know even that... that ye... do not think me a nuisance."
"Yer not a nuisance, lass. I appreciate yer company. Ye have a stout heart."
But she had been a nuisance. A nuisance when he was bare-arsed in a summer stream catching a glimpse of her strong legs and bottom on the shore. Aye, he had felt in then. Felt it when those strong hands had pinned him, shoulders flexing against him when his arm was set back in its place though he had hissed through his teeth at her like a beast. Felt it when she offered him her Southron swill as bitter as mud and drunk it anyway. Never before. Not for tall lasses of the looser kind in roadside taverns and inns over years. Not as a lad coming of age in those awkward years, peeping on the lady-dwarfs when they bathed in the mountain streams in the summertime with his mates and ribbing, gawking, making big-eyes and a flippant remark or two 'bout the prettier ones with fine beards all over. They had done nothing for him. Only her...
He had no words though, not for this.
Freyda drew back and pulled a distressed face. "Mahal's' sake Dwalin! I let ye touch me. Let ye grab and squeeze all over and them fingers... them fingers Mister Dwalin."
She saw the flush come about his face and seized the moment. She took his hand with the knuckle-duster and it was limp, then rigid, when she ran her fingertips over his scarred knuckles. He closed his eyes and seemed to be affixed by the contact; she dropped his hand thusly and it landed with a flat thud upon his knee. "I'm a lass of good and stand-upright virtue and I've shamed myself, wanting ye the same. The least ye could do… oh, won't ye say something, anything!" Her voice started to break with her indignity.
Dwalin grabbed her then and kissed her. It was a messy affair and he bit her lip and wobbled his tongue crudely against her teeth and lips and seemed to envelop her whole mouth in his so that his heavy beard she thought she might find strands of caught between her teeth when all was done. But she kissed back, trying not to smile, and end it.
"Is that what ye wanted, lass?" he asked, a bit brusquely when he had pulled back. His eyes were all black and blown.
"Aye, that's I wanted."
II
"He's kissed me, dunininh!" Freyda announced to Meisar jubilantly. She lowered her head toward Thorin in a swift bow, acknowledging him.
"That is wonderful news. You look so troubled by it."
Freyda sat in a heavy heap. "Will he ever court me properly? Isn't that the way of it? A dwarf ought to ask your hand in a proper courtship before if he's kissed ye. I'm so confused."
Thorin shifted to speak with Freyda more closely. At the moment he felt she needed his assurances, if anyone's. "If he intends to, you may have to wait. He's very slow to trust, Freyda. It is a commitment, to court another."
"Yes, and so is-" Freyda blushed and stopped herself, before announcing aloud in her hazy contentment what had happened in the forest, to the king himself. "If a man trusts a lass enough to kiss her, shouldn't it be the same for a courting?"
"I have never known Dwalin to trust anybody, except for his own brother, and perhaps myself. If he cares for you, he will be slow to show it. He must do so at his own pace, or be frightened away."
"Him? Frightened?"
Thorin smiled delicately. "You would be surprised, Freyda. Women are of a far greater formidability than war. They can break a man worse than an ax in the head."
"Emli says ye will always know, at first sight the lot of the time. Well it's been a long while since first sight. Perchance I am a dastard fool what I've done."
"A married woman's perspective is a different one, and her pride speaks louder than her rationale sometimes."
Brynja and Bofur joined the circle cheerfully then. Bofur patted Freyda's shoulder comfortingly. "Aye, it was first sight I loved this lass. Outside her father's door I saw her with a bucket o' coal on her back and her clothes all sooty, aye, I remember. Beautiful lass." He embraced and peppered her with kisses languidly while the other dwarves waiting impatiently for him to make his point. There was always a point with Bofur and usually a good one; with or without Brynja it was always a ways to get there.
Bofur looked up finally and grinned. "But ye see I was far too shy to court her in the Blue Mountains. She was such a beauty, I feared she'd never take my hand! I brought her gifts; I stopped by her home to bring toys fer the wee babes amongst her kin there, trying to work up my courage," Bofur recalled.
"While I spent many a night lamentin' and wailin' to me 'amad over whether he fancied me like that or no," grinned Brynja. "Put ribbons in me beard when he came about hoping for a courtship braid all them years."
"Took surviving a dragon's wrath and an army of darkness to make me see it was right after all," Bofur concluded. "So all ye have to do now, Freyda, is let things take their course. Something'll come about to make him realize."
"Surely you are aware that you and Dwalin are of slightly different dispositions," Thorin reminded, amusedly. "Slightly different."
.
He sat with Dwalin when they had made good time north toward the mouth of the River Running and the shores of the Long Lake all of the afternoon. They made an early camp, again. In the morning the barges would be there.
Dwalin was wordless, mumbling and rubbing his head and rolling a stone over Keeper's blade that was too dull to sharpen it even remotely. When he and Meisar had come to find him for supper, they sat briefly only together there at the water's edge.
Thorin gave Meisar a reassuring smile. "Would you give us a moment my darling, to speak as males would amongst each other?"
"Aye." She bent her head lightly to graze his shoulder with a faltering nuzzle in departing. Dwalin's eyes on her suddenly were not rigid and suspicious but quiet, observant and absorbent. "I shall be up the River my king. Negotiate a barge-price if one of the Lake-Men are at dock." Thorin twisted his neck back toward her, her hand still rested on his shoulder, as if caught in some trance-like moment of musing. He seemed to startle her when he brushed the tip of his nose and his forehead to hers, caught her lips in a kiss over his shoulder, where her chin was lightly rested.
Dwalin took in the way he took her upper lip in both of his, lingered at it, and the way she seemed to savor his lips. Some taste on them like ale? Freyda's had tasted of smoke and metal. Dwalin tried not to wonder aloud if there was any difference. After all, he had never kissed the king's mouth. Nay, but had any before her? It was like seeing some mythical creature, the king's lips on a woman's. He had given her caresses and his marks, his dark marks on her neck, in the presence of the companies. But he had never kissed her before in the presence of any of them. Something was different. Very different now.
Thorin remained for so a long a moment lost in this woman Dwalin, out of his less-than-sterling instinct, was brought to clear his throat. Meisar broke the kiss, quickly, in her awkward albeit stoic way. "I shall be at the River, my king."
Dwalin grinned after her, finding himself more amused than hostile, for the first in a long while toward that peculiar orange-haired lass. She was flushed a deep rose shade from her cheeks down to the base of her neck. When she was gone Dwalin let out a long, contemplative sigh that was as always, his darkish smirk, alone with Thorin again, the first familiar thing he had known for days. "Never thought lasses would be o' either our concerns in a time like this. Strange months they have been, these," Dwalin remarked with a halting smirk. A long, awkward silence followed.
Thorin's eyes pried him for some information. He would never ask, never aloud. Some things didn't change.
"I don't know what drove me," Dwalin said at last, cagily. "Suppose I felt fond of her in the moment."
"In the moment? This banter between the two of you has gone on since summer. What will become of it is the question."
"Become of what? How should I know? Lass fancies me. I know. But I don't know… don't know what to… think of it." Dwalin shrugged vaguely.
"I never thought I would know either," Thorin confided quietly. "Then it simply is."
He curled his fists, in the way he had tendency to do when his head was cluttered. Never could tolerate too much going on there. "A lass? What am to do with a lass? Ye need me. Got no time for a lass."
"I will always need you, Dwalin. You are my truest friend in all this world. But now, it is time you take something for yourself, if you desire it. You are no less loyal to me for any cause, no the least a lovely iron-smith."
"Desire makes us fools," Dwalin bristled.
"Am I a fool?" Thorin asked.
"At times," Dwalin responded, a little lighter. "Aren't we all?"
"How can your strength sustain me if you take nothing for yourself?" Thorin asked pointedly. "It is time you... tried something you didn't imagine you ever would, if it feels to you like... it has felt to me."
"Feelings? Feelings. Never thought I'd be talking about the likes of feelings with you, feelings for lasses."
"Nor did I, but we are now." He rubbed Dwalin's shoulder.
"Do ye love her, Thorin? Would ye spend all the rest of yer days with her?" he asked suddenly, and his eyes demanded an answer.
"I do and I would. She is... a saving grace in this world I would not for all the world have expected to find. I held her in that esteem from the moment I saw her. I... loved her, from the moment I saw her." The word struck him in the head like a slap that made him dizzy.
"Been scarcely several months since ye first laid eyes on the lass. How can ye be certain?"
"Because I am. In these times enough is uncertain. That is all I know for sure."
"Fair enough," Dwalin shrugged.
"Well?" Thorin repeated. "You didn't answer my question. Do you care for Freyda?"
"Care for her? The way I care for you? The way I care for this ax? The way you care for her? Not a question I expected to hear outta the likes of you."
Thorin considered his words silently for a moment. They had never had any words, the two of them, not for this. He still didn't, not in the ways Dwalin might understand. But he would try, he determined. "Does she… arouse in you something, which none have before? That would be the first indication, Dwalin." He smiled, an uncannily light, almost teasing, smile, at his friend.
"A lass," he snorted, nervously. "S'pose she is a fine one. Fine ax she wields. Pretty shoulders." His laughter became more nervous, and then it plateaued out, calmed, and finally sighed long and deep. "Never looked at a lass and thought one so fair as her."
.
Thorin found her not long after. Thorin always found her.
"Possessive are we?" Meisar laughed sardonically soft, catching his eye in her own reflection. She put her hand to her sore, marked neck and smiled. "You would think me the gems of Lasgalen. The way you possess me against all odds."
"Aye, but I am not an elf, and you are precious to me beyond that," Thorin muttered low and reluctantly. He sat beside her and took her hand in his and kissed it, all to chastely. "I meant what I said, Meisar."
"You didn't really say much of anything," Meisar retorted, a hint of a flushed grin in her eyes, a flushed grin that seemed constant these days. She was not the solemn lonesome woman he had met upon the road west of Bree anymore. She was beautiful. And alive. A source of life he drank from like a cold stream to parched lips.
She laughed softly but her eyes were serious again, in the way they were in those days. "Where did you learn to pleasure a woman like that?"
"A young prince engages in some dalliance," Thorin grinned halfheartedly, suddenly embarrassed for his own sake. "Or should I say, a young blacksmith in exile."
"Perhaps princes, and blacksmiths in exile, are different from most dwarves then," she observed quietly, noting the flattening of his tone. Her hand still clasped in his, he ran his thumb nervously over the ridges of her knuckles, palm to hers, her warmth palatable and giving him a sudden ease of countenance within.
He thought long and still hesitantly, then began. "We were taunted once by a woman in a village where we were smithing, Dwalin and I. A woman who sold her body for coin."
"You? Taunted by a slag among common men?" Her eyes were bright with pity.
"Perhaps you underestimate how low we were brought."
She relented with a bow of her head. "No, no, I'm afraid I do not."
Thorin went on. "She hounded us for days whilst we stayed there trading food and board for repairs and for smithing work. Dwalin and I rejected her propositions so many times it must have angered her, and she said thus that a dwarf could not bring a woman to fulfillment, or more of us would marry. Or we would at least accept her offer. Insulted our women she did. Called us impotent."
"And such a wicked woman taught you a thing so... exquisite?" The word stuck on her tongue like a sharp ripe berry.
"Dwalin accepted first, forsaking the ways of our kind so not to be put out in a challenge. He tried but he didn't even know where to put it. Put it somewhere I suppose and she squealed like a sow. Called him a simpleton and threw him out laughing, said he'd best practice on pigs if he'd make 'em squeal like that instead of screaming for a better reason."
"And what better reason is that to a woman of such disrepute?"
"There is a peak in women I suppose, the way there is in men. A... physical peak." He demonstrated by making the shape of a mountain with his hands. It had a sweetness, an innocence to it, that gesture, she almost had to stop herself from chuckling. "A summit I suppose," he concluded, shrugging.
Meisar shook her head, an enthusiastic, flushed yes.
"A barmaid overheard our ordeal and offered her advice on how the challenge could be won, in my favor, if not Dwalin's. She told me what to do."
"You mean to… bring a woman about?"
"Aye. So it happened as such. She lay down on my bed at that inn, and put up her skirts, and I did as the barmaid advised. I suppose it was a skill I did not know I had." There was a hint of a smile, a youthful zest in that little motion of his mouth, that showed both a distinct male pride for it, and a dwarvish shame.
Still holding her hand, he rested both theirs against her lap. "A woman is a sacred ground there, truly. Even that wretched hussy. Who called our women hideous beasts while I was at my duty, so I bit her hard on one of her lips thinking I would teach her a lesson about insulting a dwarf, but it only heightened her pleasure…"
"Her lips?"
"Her lips."
"I see," Meisar half-sighed, half-gasped, remembering the touch of teeth and beard on her own, teasing the smooth inner skin.
She lowered her head, clasping those small pearl-like teeth about her bottom lip in a subtle flustered way. "The way you touched me… made use of your mouth, I… have not known such pleasure there, or anywhere."
"Have these fingers not?" He took the tip of her middle finger into his mouth and inserted it to the knuckle, suckled and bit on it gently.
"For shame, my king! What a question. I could never have conceived such lewd thoughts to have crossed your mind."
"I have never derived much pleasure from it, thoughts, or actions, not that either crossed my mind oft in this life. I did not even think to have a mate, whether the mountain was reclaimed or we went on to live in peace in the Blue Mountains."
"No?"
"To care for one's people is an arduous task. It leaves little time to consider other things. I imagined that my nephew Fili would have the privilege."
She put her hand on his arm and held him comfortingly. In the distance the Lonely Mountain loomed clear. She didn't want to look at it, not then. She eased Thorin's head to rest on her. He felt much heavier suddenly as he settled into her.
"I imagined… he would find a suitable bride, and would rule when I was gone, and his heirs after. He was a handsome lad, my blessing, so handsome. The finest lad you could ever imagine, he was. Golden-headed, a finely decorated beard at his age, and a heart so good... so good." He drew a sharp sigh. "Dwarrowdams in the Blue Mountains spoke openly of who would have his hand in marriage and some clattered for it I am sure, though he was years away from a suitable age to marry. I would not have permitted it until he was a hundred at least. A dwarf needs time to mature before he is wed, even a prince."
"You speak of him now with greater ease than I have heard."
"Time does not heal these wounds, my lady, and there shall never be ease any time I say his name, or Kili's. But I try to remember them in better times, and it has come to comfort me as it could not some time past."
"This is the first I have ever heard you say them aloud," she murmured, carefully.
"Indeed?" He smiled, a bittersweet smile, and rose again to bring her to him for a long, wanting kiss.
"I imagine some said the same of you, my king, and would have liked very much to be your bride. For your cantankerousness, you are as admirable as any. To the mind and to the eye." She tried to soothe his troubled winkled brow with a pepper of kisses.
"It has not crossed my mind." He looked into her eyes, her eyes pleading wordlessly for some answer.
"He swallowed harder. "Well now I find myself every bit a dwarf in that matter, with a fervid passion for my craft."
"Your craft?"
"Not all beautiful and necessary things are made in forges."
"And what do intend to make of me? Tell me, what is the nature of this craft you say I am? What is the finished piece?" She averted her eyes from his just for a moment, catching sight of the Lonely Mountain far to the north in the clear gloaming of the afternoon. Emli was right. Learn to be like Emli and take what worth my heart, my body.
Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe and her eyes had begun to sting with the oncoming rush of something so powerful she could not bear it, or explain its source.
"You speak as if I could describe it, as if you were but a jewel plucked from the earth or a cauldron of molten steel to be forged. A woman of the most precious substance, of steel and of fire, you are inside, yes. But I could never compare you to a substance which does not live."
"Nor can I you. You live, my king. I will see to it that you have a reason to turn away from despair always."
"Aye, I have known you far too intimately now to turn back. Not that I would, delving in unopened halls or not. Meisar, dearest Meisar, I would wait a thousand years just to kiss you. I would have you always, even if I could never touch you, just to hear your voice... just to know your presence..."
"Aye, and I am merciful I suppose then. You have waited but a few short months to do… what you did."
"Is there a name for it?" Thorin wondered aloud without thinking.
"I don't know!" She flushed high again, laughing. "Your imprudent dwarf tongue has delved into these matters quite enough for the day!" she said, trying to sound serious but laughing. She kissed the bridge of his proud nose, his cheeks. She kissed him feverishly with her arms set about him tightly and she tried to imagine him with a whore as his body seemed to lurch and quake at her closeness. A body that could serve only an urgent, primal release voided of any affection or familiarity. Dwarves did not make use of whores, especially not humans, and the majority in fact would remain utterly chaste for the duration of their lives. But that had been the days of Erebor, the age of peaceful, prosperous mountain halls when they did rarely stray far from their underground homes. When Erebor fell it all fell apart, their customs and practices and the very essence of their interactions with the other peoples of Middle Earth.
"Was she the only one?"
"I have experienced a woman's company but twice in all my life. There in Dunland, and once in the Westfold, with a stable girl who desired me more than I did her, and I think out of curiosity more than desire. It is not the ways of our people," Thorin sighed. She did not doubt Thorin's honesty in that matter.
"You are bold, my king, regardless."
"I have been many things, among them a pauper, with only my tongue to save my pride."
"Aye and that tongue has been for good use. Am I believe you pleased a woman so skillfully though?" she chuckled sweetly. "I suppose I must. That dwarf tongue has an apt sense of direction, if its bearer does not."
Words strangled at his tongue, so unused to uttering them they would not form in his mouth. He struggled not to choke on the words he longed to speak. He had not uttered such things in years and had a general distaste for them.
"To please a woman, it is... different still, than what we have known, my king... Thorin. I have never felt this for anybody before. Tell me, have you ever known it? Does it make you weak how it makes me weak? Could you explain it, it somebody were to ask you to put it to parchment, this that is between us?"
Yes, she would demand this of him. An answer to a question he had never asked even himself.
But they came, without fumbling or obvious haste, throatily and quiet. "No. I have not loved another before you, nor will I after."
It took her a moment and then she realized. Eyes wide snapped upward to meet his, pupils blown in disbelief. Had she heard this from his own lips? No. Her heart shifted in her chest. No. Lips trembled silently and could not ask him to clarify if he truly meant. Yes. Thorin…
Awkwardness panged in his eyes. It comforted Meisar slightly; he was probably as unused to such a thing as she was.
"I have felt for no other what I feel for you. The moment I saw you I saw that there was a light in you. And you have illuminated my way home. I am lost without you."
"And when we come home?"
"You will be at my side. You will be honored as the king's lady."
"Will I? I suppose… I wonder what will become of me then. If I am with you, it certainly cannot be for the worst. I never wish to be without you, Thorin."
He gazed tightly into her eyes, trying to read them. Was she asking him something?
Her face tightened when the pause between them had gone on for a long moment. "To be your lady, your… it is an honor I could never dream nor ask for." She twisted the end of her courtship braid nervously and passionately on her finger. "Once they said I was doomed to grow old a maid because no dwarf would have me, for my beardless face, for my… everything. Now they call me the king's whore. Perhaps they shall beneath the mountain too, all of Durin's Folk. After all, what is a woman of my status in this life, doing by your side?"
Thorin caught her face between his callused palms and held her steady, not allowing her to look away even as the tears glazed over her eyes. "Nobody calls you that, my darling. And they will not. Never. You are by my side because I have chosen you. I have chosen you in my darkest hour to be my light. Meisar I l-"
He held her face in his and she shook her head against his steady hold. "They look at me as if I have seduced you by some dark magic. When I have done nothing more than to fall-" She buried her face into his palm and kissed it, wetting the hard skin with a warm dripping sensation.
She laughed so self-deprecatingly it did nothing anymore to hide the pain beneath. Thorin raised her face to his when she tried to turn away and hide that raw hurt, stroking her chin with a rough fingertip. Tears long un-wept flowed down her cheeks in such heedless streams they stained the collar of her tunic.
"Meisar…" He cupped her face in his hands and kissed away her tears. "Do not weep, adyum. Light of my heart. I love you Meisar. I love you so."
Adyum- My Blessing
Umzum- Brute