A/N:
Id-Amdân = The Threshold
He had told her he loved her. His words, uttered in all sincerity, burned in her head. He sat by her side now, holding her, her head still spinning, her eyes still clouded with tears.
The rawness and fullness of that emotionality had ebbed a bit then and enough to bring her back into a solider sphere. When she looked into his eyes again they looked strangely at peace, and his shoulders were raised up, as if some burden had only thus been lifted from them.
"Do you Thorin? Do you love me truly?" She took up his hand with a certain intensity about her, a fine taut tremor in every one of her extremities, and prying open the tight fingers pressed it to her cheek and kissed his palm over and over, moving from the hard peripheral to the side, and trailing her lips up along its edges to his thumb.
"I am sorry," she breathed. Hesitant fingers of his unfurled against the tears that whetted them, finding her cheek with them, palm pulling away from the kisses she was raining there to cradle her face. She kissed the little dip of it when he drew away and pulled her into his arms wholly.
"What are you sorry for, my blessing?"
"That I ever doubted you." "If I once thought your affection for me madness or grief, I regret it so. Alas, if it be that, I am mad for loving you in return. But I would choose it with all my heart, over your absence from my side."
Balin came pattering in intently. Meisar stood, acknowledging the kindly, if oblivious, old dwarf politely. "I should light the way for the bargemen to see us. The fog is coming in," she smiled tautly, hiding her wet cheeks behind her braids. She went off and left Thorin with the sage dwarf.
"There are tears in your lady's eyes. Might I inquire?" Balin's white brows shifted at Thorin, less suspiciously then they had in times past, but no less demanding of an answer.
"Good tears, Balin. I have overwhelmed her is all, I am afraid."
Balin looked hopeful. For what, Thorin could not quite read. Balin's face looked tired, even wearier than what his sage years could fully account for.
"I told her I loved her, Balin."
"Oh..."
Thorin noted a hint of something crestfallen in Balin's eyes. The old dwarf shrugged quickly, smiling again.
"Were you expecting something different?"
"Took you long enough," Balin remarked crisply then, but he was still smiling, with an auspicious kindness.
"Spoken as a dwarf who had never wed nor loved in that way," Thorin chuckled sardonically in response.
"Perhaps I have not, nor have I cared enough to, truth be known. But I am observant in ways that would surprise you." Balin motioned for Thorin to sit. "This journey comes so near to its end, Thorin. Could I have ever believed I would make it twice but in this slim epoch?"
Balin's old bones making a creaking sound when he adjusted himself upon the hard surface. "I find myself quite tired. These years of my life past… I have seen a lifetime within them it seems." He smiled at Thorin and nodded his head at the lights across the Long Lake. It no longer seemed as forsaken a sight, that weathered pod of fisherman and tinkers on the lake. Balin put his hand to the small of his back, wincing; between the soreness there and in his feet the journey's nearing end was more than a relief. "A warm bed is most eagerly awaited my king, wouldn't you say? Even if I do not expect the Lake-Men's hospitality to be overwhelming toward our kin."
"A warm bed, a bath. I might say a good hot meal but we have eaten well with the company of Bombur's kin by our side." He ran his tongue languidly over his upper lip and mustache. Do you have any idea my friend, how well I have eaten?
Balin grinned under his beard, ducking his head. His king was nervous or something of the like; his face was flushed on the naked part below his eyes, above his dark beard, and his hands were twisting under his cloak, adjusting Orcrist over his lap.
"At Laketown we may be parted, for your lady has agreed to bring her company as far. I shall miss the company of these dwarrowdams I do say. Good ladies, all of them. A blessing I say."
"Who says we shall part, Balin? I do not intend to go to the mountain without Meisar beside me."
"Of course, of course. And perhaps that lovely iron-smith by my brother's. Imagine! Is he fond of her, Thorin, truly?"
"That has yet to be known. I could make no more an adequate prediction of Dwalin in a courtship than I could the weather several months from this day."
Balin shook his head, slightly amused, made a placid sighing sound. "But you are, Thorin. You are... in love. I am happy for you, laddie."
Balin's eyes had grown red at their edges with tears though. "You weep now too, Balin?"
A hand clad in wool came up and gripped Thorin's tight, one hand then both about his. "I have seen life in you as I have not seen in many years, Thorin. Did I expect it? When the raven came to me in your nursery whilst I wept for you, half-deluded, rocking your cradle back and forth imagining you in it, a babe, with your life ahead of you rather than cold and gone? And to tell the news that you lived? I did not think I would find you… for any good reason intact. Not like this."
"Nor did you expect me to love a woman, I am sure, in these times."
"Nor any. But I have seen its goodness. As we stand here in the shadow of the Lonely Mountain, I see it more now than ever." He took the small emblem on twine that was about Thorin's neck and held it between his fingers, achingly. "Oh laddie. She is a gift, to each of us. And here, you will need her now more than ever. For all of our sake, love her, lean on her, surrender your heart to her in every way and let her care for it. Your strength will be tested. That mountain... our kingdom, it is... you will need pillars of steel to brace you laddie. But perhaps a softer touch would not be so unkind either. Now that we have come to the end of this journey." He pressed the stone back against Thorin's chest and patted it. "What new one shall begin my king?"
.
The bargemen of Lake-Town came in several shifts over the day- at sunup, at midday, and at the westering of the sun. There had been a bridge once that led directly from the shores to the town itself, but it had been destroyed in Smaug's wrath and the construction of a new one was still at progress. For now, the bargemen down to anyone with a row-boat and an entrepreneurial spirit, reigned on the lake. Meisar came up the shores of the lake and stood buckling upon the rocks, slick with rain and waves. A sliver of sky behind the Lonely Mountain spun thin and orange in the sunset, all the rest clouding over, and to the south and to the west, the skies grew umber and heavy, pregnant with cold rain or perhaps snow. The peculiar little town, perched right in the lake's very center, was beginning to come alight in the arriving evening. Lanterns from the buildings glowed densely, the torches on the bargemen's boats coming closer now. She had sent a message with a young fisherman of Esgaroth who went about his business near-side the river's edge, to send three bargemen; a large heavily-packed company of dwarves were coming through and could pay well. He had obliged and not unkindly for the several coins she pressed into his fish-oil smeared palms.
She lit a torch and waved it, guiding them there toward a newly-built dock, in a small cove of shallow water, kitty-corner to where the mouth of the Long Lake met the River Running. The men loaded them, draft animals and wagons and all, into flat-bedded boats. Soon all three of the barges were loaded to capacity and the company of dwarves had climbed aboard. Meisar tried to squeeze Jenny, and Thorin his Minty, onto the last boat but it was full wholly, and dipped so deep into the water with the added weight of just the two final dwarves the bargeman would not oblige their board.
"The barrel-bringer is coming from the Elvenking's wine cellars as we speak. He will pick you up," the bargeman assured. He handed them two flares. "Stand here on the dock and alight them. He will stop."
Brynja came over the bow and stood on the rungs to peer over the side at the king and his lady down on the shore. "We've not said our proper farewells my lady," said Brynja sadly. "Will you leave us here now?"
"I obliged to take this company as far as Lake Town. Fear not, I will meet you there soon. We shall not part in haste."
Dwalin kept his eyes on them tightly as the boats pulled away and he was still squinting through the fog when it had finally swallowed up the bows of the boats. They moved slowly across the Lake, choppy and freezing ahead of a storm; the wind was coming in, a harsh breath of ice.
"This journey is nearly at an end," she sighed, happily, but with a wistful air.
"No," murmured Thorin gently, but with a peculiar stoutness, and came about behind her to stroke her dampening, fraying braid. "This journey has only just begun."
His eyes were fixed and distant when she tried to meet them with her own. So deep and stoic and melancholy those eyes had been when she first looked into them, on that day west of Bree, offering her bent knee to him. Now they were no less tense, but with some other purpose written behind them, too opaque, too secretive it seemed in the moment, to bear pondering upon.
"My darling?" She touched his face with her cold fingertips and he flinched. He looked as if at any moment he might be nauseous.
"Might we sit whilst we wait?"
"Aye." She put her wool cloak to the wet wood of the dock, against one of its pillars sat and leaned, and put out her arms beckoning Thorin into their shelter. Raincloud and Red-Coat and Fred skittered out of the way, burrowing into her skirts and cloak as they were there in the cold. Thorin petted Raincloud with his free hand, resting his head solidly against Meisar's warmth. Never have I such a pillow known as her bosom. Her travel-messed braids fell over him and he smiled, that air of intensity about him seeming to lift if only for a precious moment. He ran his finger along the ridges of one, studying it, seeming so lost in either his contemplation of the braid, or perhaps something deeper. For the moment, she dared not ask.
Nervous perhaps, she reasoned silently. She had seen once what it was like for dwarves in Lake Town after the dragon's wrath. The tales of refugees at blockaded gates had made for unkind banter, even amongst their own, in the days that followed.
When she had last come upon these shores the town was dimmer, the smell of fresh-cut pine omnipresent, and everything on the Lake seemed half-built, tarps of canvas and animal hides on the roofs of the people's homes, some of which still lined the shore, scarce huts against the coming winter. They had hissed at her and thrown insults, the pitiful Lake-men, toward her dwarvish company, as they waited for passage. They had chased them to the shore and she was afraid they would be maimed, robbed or drowned, until a sympathetic ferry-man offered his boat- for thrice the coin but it was worth it at the time. For his just rewards still he muttered under his breath of dwarven murderers, dragon-bringers and gold-hoarders. With eyes full of unmasked venom and hate his oarsman had threatened to dash the head of a dwarven babe in its mother's arms against the side of the boat and toss it over to drown, in the name of Lake-Town's children lost in the fires of Smaug. Only the ferry-man and Meisar together coming between the mother and the oarsman, had averted a bloody showdown, for the dwarf-mother had risen with an ax in one hand and her baby in the opposite, a dwarven company at her back similarly armed and baying. (He should have known, the foolish man, how easy it was to make a murderess of a mother-dwarf).
The mother-dwarf cradling her squalling baby afterward had seethed at her, called her a woman of no great loyalty to her race. Meisar Bintarg. Beardless Meisar. The dwarrowdam's coin had felt poisonous in her hands afterward.
She pushed the thought from her head and concentrated on rubbing Thorin's. He had rested in her arms like a babe in its mothers and craned up his head now, adjusting himself across her. She rested her tired cheek into his hair, also misted now, taking the thick loose plait in the back of his head and twisting in gently on two fingers. His long hair smelled heady, like earth and rain and his inexplicable essence that had made her weak from the first time the space between them had closed.
He let a high sigh and took her hand in his and kissed her wrist, eyes closed, for an eternity lingering there it seemed, beard tickling the delicate skin. "Beauty and joy my heart, I love you so."
She sighed happily into his hair. "As I have you, my beloved."
Through the fog did not see the bargeman row neatly into the dockside, lit flare perched on the end of it.
"You there!" They jumped a mile from each other's embraces as a man's voice rumbled impatiently through the fog. A lantern on a long stick was thrust in their direction. "Are you awaiting a boat or a have found a quiet place to indulge yourselves? Speak quickly!" he asked gruffly again.
"Awaiting a boat," Thorin replied quietly. He stood and helped Meisar to her feet beside him, sword in one arm, the other wrapped about her shoulder, protectively. She shivered into the misted fur at his shoulder.
"It is only the two of us and a few small dogs. Would you oblige us passage?"
"Well, you dwarves don't take up too much room. Suppose I've space there in the back. Climb aboard." When they had boarded, she could see he was a rough though not unkind looking man. He wore a tall fur cap well weather-beaten and an oil-stained coat, and with bent, arthritic hands steered a huge singular oar from his height on the stern. Barrels rattled all about the bed of the old barge. Everything aboard smelled of wet wood and strong wine. Dorwonion, a distinct sharpness to it even in empty barrels it left. A favorite of a particular Elvenking whose penchant for strong wine had once been a saving grace to captive dwarves. Thorin kicked one of the barrels petulantly. They were alone amongst those wine barrels nearly taller than they. At the bow of the boat in a corner sheltered from the coming rain, he set his pack and his cloak down while Meisar squinted across the waters toward Esgaroth. When last they had arrived, amid the frenzied rebuilding of the town before winter fell, dwarves had not been so welcome. The dead of Lake Town had not yet all been buried; more bodies were still drifting up on shore from the lake.
Now Esgaroth was mostly rebuilt and sturdy. So many merchants were coming to and fro the town this dwarvish company seemed of no special significance. Dwarves were coming in droves to the Lonely Mountain and with them, much coin and commerce, so to give the Lake Men and their compatriots in Dale a renewed breath of prosperity that was ongoing and showing no signs of abetting. Money, and all that it made possible, had a strange way of placating the hardest of folk, who had lost all but their ability to draw breath for a long spell it seemed. Men, she thought, they were not like elves or dwarves in that way. Their memories seemed mercilessly short, their hearts so easily changed but for the passage of time and better fortunes.
She shivered in her damp wool cloak, her many layers feeling suddenly inadequate, and perhaps they were. Winter felt early-coming and bitter outside of her clothes. Her body ached lowly and dully all over.
"You are shivering my blessing. Sit here with me," Thorin beckoned quietly. "I will keep you warm."
He was shivering also, but he shed his great-coat and wrapped it tight over her. He closed the fur-lined coat insistently about her shoulders, the edge in his blue eyes daring her to do otherwise.
"Thorin," she shook her quietly and disagreeably. "You will catch your death, if I do not." She opened the side of the coat to wrap him in it beside her. He obliged, and coming close to her side kissed her, his wet hair stuck to her cheeks, a hungry, sensuous, possessive kiss, as wanting lips parted reflexively. It was a kiss he seemed to lose himself in for a long while, and she obliged to most willingly. If she had no need of air, she would have been kissing those lips always.
When she required urgently said breath, she buried her face into his open collar and his bare neck and rested her face to the cool skin there. He stroked her hair languidly.
"I should love to see you draped in jewels. I would cover you in sapphires and emeralds, make a diamond crown for your hair," his deep voice rumbled in a long, drawling croon.
He pictured her in as many jewels, in ermine and damask. Yes, yes. She would be beautiful, radiant, HIS. Now, or never.
"What a sight it would be," she acceded, nervously.
She felt the skin of his neck, once cold, grow suddenly hot.
Tugging her closer and raising her head he leaned his forehead against hers keenly. "You will live well under the mountain, Meisar." A lump in his throat formed and stayed, the laryngeal swell pulling in and tightening. His eyes fixed at hers but restlessly, some storm beneath them gathering strength like the one that was in the sky above. "Not just for the love I bear you, but for your courage in bringing us this way. That alone deserves a rich reward." He seemed to falter over every word.
"Emeralds," he whispered then again, thoughtfully.
"Emeralds?" she repeated gently, her soft breath warming him, head tilted slightly upward. His lips danced in place on her forehead, the tip of her nose brushing his throat where it met the underside of his chin.
"No, not emeralds. White gems. Starlight gems. I would make you a circlet for your head made of pure starlight." He shifted and bent forward and took both her hands in the fingertips of his, delicately, and dotted kisses over her knuckles.
Nay but she has been crowned in starlight all across these lands for many a night. A dwarf should not be crowned in the sky, but safe in halls of stone. I would make her a crown of sapphires, as befitting one beneath the mountain beloved of Durin's son…
"You jest my love. I have never been much for pretty things." She could see the boats far ahead of them in the gloaming light, arriving at the town's watery gates. She stood up to make sure they were passed through without trouble and Thorin stood then beside her. He turned her to face him, his grip settling at her upper arms. She palmed the fur at his chest with one hand as his right arm slid back to brace her about the middle of her back, rubbing over her there, back and forth, with such nervousness her lips could only part and small insignificant sounds come out.
"Thorin?" she said finally, quietly, more of a question. But what was she asking?
"I have no words to tell you, to what end I love you. And treasure you… above gold. Above all things." He took the hand that had rested on his chest and slid it to the side, to rest over his breast. "Do you feel this Meisar? You are the only reason I will it still to beat."
"But your kingdom, my lord, your people, your sister. Is that not-?"
"My kingdom. My home. What I have lost in its pursuit..."
"I would forsake my kingdom to have back what it has cost me. I would lay in my tomb, so that my sister's sons would not lay in theirs."
"We can no longer look to the past, my blessing. It will tear you apart. It will tear us apart."
"Nothing shall tear me from you. Nothing." His hands came up to rest on either side of her neck, draw her close and kiss her forehead again and pull hers to his, his breath taut and tense against the tip of her nose.
The clouds roiled overhead and a light, cold rain began to fall.
He did not move to cover himself or her with cloak or coat. They stood shivering together on the bow. "I have been so lonely these years, Thorin." A fragile confession, it had rendered those harsh eyes so vulnerable staring into his own. He followed her jawline with the calloused pad of his thumb. "And to see the way you look at me now, my king."
"Beautiful," he murmured. "I look upon the most exquisite creation Mahal has forged in all his ages."
Her lips pinched to avoid the oncoming smile, so bashful, like a young maid's. "You are mad, my liege. T o think me so fair?"
"And what would I love in a comely spring maid that I would not in you? There is something to a woman whose years have marked her, but not brought so low. I see your strength in this face, these eyes, and it is a thing of beauty." He grazed a light kiss at the bridge of her freckled dwarvish nose. "I would ache for none but a stout maid anyhow. You are beautiful all over, and as finely bearded as any, wherever it is your beard adorns you."
She blushed scarlet, and laughed her quiet, soothing laugh that was like salve on a wound. "Do you lust for me or do you love me?"
"I love you, with all my heart. And with my body, should you allow me."
"Aye," she said softly with a vague nod.
"Is it not the kind of love I bear you that would make it so? It is not the love after all that I bear my kin, or my people, but you alone." For once the words had not escaped him or lingered on the tip of his tongue the way the taste of her did. "I want to worship you as you deserve, in every way."
"Worship is a dangerous word," she muttered, the high flush fading a little from her cheeks.
He sighed, sadly. "I have known the joy of loving something that is real, and would honor and cherish you in all ways. Is that better?"
"Yes." She bent her head up to kiss him. "And you shall have it in return. You already do..."
She lay her head against his shoulder and sighed. He stiffened again.
"I wish to make you mine, Meisar, until the end of my days. Would you stay by my side until either of us draws our last breath?"
Meisar's eyebrows knitted bemusedly. Take what is yours. Let him be reminded of your worth. But dear Emli I cannot measure it. I cannot…
"And what if your council arranges for you a marriage? To a dwarven ally? A dwarrowdam of some value on this chess board of royal prerogatives." She blurted it suddenly and was ashamed of herself. He cooled the burning of her cheeks with cold hands coming to grasp them again. He looked a bit stunned.
But he realized. It was far past the time for that. He should have, a long time ago. It had been his plan all along, and resolved in firmness the moment the boats had left, and left them, this precious time, alone…
"That could be a problem. Dwarves are quite the jealous type," her melancholy voice disrupted a frenzied, swelling train of his thoughts.
She rested her head to his chest, and felt his heart quicken madly. "Your heart beats faster than a thrush's wings."
The time had come. It would pass before they reached that town upon the water.
"I love your hair," he exhaled suddenly and with of a hint of something deep and quavering and sharp altogether, nervous even. It colored the edge of his voice in a way that made all of the hairs on her body stand up simultaneously. She clutched her fist around one of her long braids sheepishly, Thorin taking up the end of it and plucking the bronze clasps that held its end. It was of a greatly abundant length and felt luxuriously heavy in his hand, her flame-orange hair. "Might you let me loosen it from these plaits?" His cold, severe blue eyes pleaded to her like a frightened child.
"It is near to my feet, adyum. When we come to the mountain and I've time to care for it, then I'll oblige you."
He seemed to ignore her purposefully and tug a long strand loose still. "Will you oblige me only this lock of it for the moment?"
She swallowed harshly and whispered her softer obliging. "I would."
He began to plait the loose strand, on the right side of her temple he began, opposite the root of her courtship braid on the left. His silent, nimble fingers so industrious in their task, he gave neither pause nor particular gentleness, pulling her plaited hair taut with every weave. Those thick thoughtful fingers so careful in this task, as if he wanted (NEEDED) this simple plait to be perfect.
When he had braided it halfway down her chest he pinched the end between two fingers. He had sworn his love. He had TASTED her, made her body his own as much. He would take no more of her (even if his body tremored to his death with want of her). Without this. Without THIS it was for nothing…
With her head bowed before him and eyes rested closed and heavy as he went about his braiding, she did not see him reach up at his own temple braid and stealthily snatch the silver and sapphire bead from its tip. She opened her eyes feeling his rough palm cold and quavering against her face.
"I will belong to no other except you, and have you be mine and mine alone," he proclaimed, stoutly if quietly.
Meisar frowned a little. "I am no one's possession, not even yours."
"Not a king's possession. A king's queen." Thorin clasped the silver and sapphire bead from his hair at its end.
Meisar's eyes flew to his and her hand to her newly made plait, clouded, rolling the bead between her fingers. "Thorin… this is your hair-bead, your Durin's bead. I could only wear it if…"
"If we are betrothed? Yes, I do believe that is the custom still," Thorin smiled to her achingly.
"Are you asking me that, by Mahal's sight, are you?" her voice trembled on the edge of tears. He braced her tight about her upper arms, supporting her, looking deep into her eyes with all of the surety he had ever known in all of his years. He anchored her firmly and supported her with one arm at the small of her back, and stroked the side of her face with the opposite, that hard callused palm never so gentle as then, if intense.
"I am." He curled the plait about his finger, kissed it where the bead held it. "Take it as a token of my devotion, even if the answer is no. But know that a king needs a queen, and I will have no other except you."
"Thorin..." She threw her arms around him and clasped a hand to the side of his neck, bringing him in to kiss, her lips at his jawline rubbing frantic half-kisses all along it with no words in her throat to say anything more than a series of half-strangled keens. She held tight onto him lest she fall. Every bone in her body was as dust. Ash where I should be fire. In this moment, THIS MOMENT.
It was he though who sunk down upon both knees before her, taking her hands in his. "I ask you to be my wife and my queen. I beseech you here on my knees the honor of your hand in marriage."
"There is no need for you to beseech me that. You know the answer is yes."
Her knees gave way beneath her and Thorin sprang up again to catch her before she tumbled down in a heap. He held her so close; she felt limp. "My blessing speak to me. Are you well?"
"I shall never be unwell again, my king."
"Nor shall I, come what may. My queen." He liked the way the words felt on his tongue, aching to speak them so long. "My queen, my queen." He repeated it in half a daze. He held both of her hot, flushed cheeks in his cold palms and kissed them back and forth again and again. He felt her weight drop again, into her feet, and embraced her securely.
"I have you my blessing. I will not let you go..."
"I do love you so, Thorin Oakenshield," she croaked. "And I shall love you until there is naught a star in the sky." He bent to kiss her again on her lips. "I love you so I cannot bear it Thorin." Her tears came in hot slipping into the crevices of his fingers and his palm where they clasped her face lovingly still, and stared for a long spell intent into her eyes from which every trace of their previous harshness and burden was rinsed away, so ironically, by those tears. His smile, which had always seemed to taut on his lips even in his better moods, was full of mirth and joy. "Why me? I am only but a simple, lone woman."
"And I a lonely dwarf and a pauper all the same, crown or no crown. Your strength, your resolve are mine also."
"And yours is mine."
"But inside there is a lady. I can see her shining through, Meisar, through all this cold grief. And that lady within is your vulnerability. You think her your weakness, don't you? She longs to be adored, protected, and cherished, by one who sees that her heart may lay fallow and cold on the outside, but there is an undying summer within, is there not? There is something still good left, when everything else is gone."
"You're talking about yourself," Meisar remarked, amusedly. "And more poetically than I have ever heard you speak."
"Perhaps I speak for both of us then."
"If the Shepherdess is also a Lady, then the warrior king is also a bard."
"Indeed, and she will be my queen."
He kissed her in the sight of the mountain. Even in the darkness its eye lay upon him, and look upon it did, he felt with some measure of gladness, for all the grief and sorrow that lay within it. I shall bring back this Lonely Mountain its true heart. Lost so long ago I bring it home again...
She stood when she had the strength and solidness in her legs to stand again, there in his arms with her one undone braid trailing loose, haphazard, tangled and tossed by the wind. He pulled her head tightly to his chest and kissed her head. For many tears un-wept then had flowed from her eyes in half a daze. She let herself sink into the strength of his body around her, his protection. His love. If nothing else was solid beneath her feet at that moment, he was.
"Mahal I thank you. Thank you for bringing this king to live again."
"I owe it to the Creator that I breathe. But to you that I live."
"Aye, and you will, beyond all sorrow and grief you shall find your peace, if it is only my arms, my king, my... husband."
"My queen," he resounded quietly and with sharp, unyielding bliss, but the essence of the words seemed well-used already. He felt a sudden need for a purer vocabulary. Queens were queens but she was more…
"My wife," a soft satisfied hum crept into her hair and caressed her everywhere. "My wife."