A/N:
Mazarbul- That Which Is Written.
A big thanks to The Dwarrow Scholar for providing a huge cache of ideas for a dwarven wedding and the lead-up to it. And to Black Beloved for the feedback. I know I write SO MUCH banter and I will definitely go back and make sure it's clear who's talking. I used to think saying "said" or "replied" or what have you after everything had a tendency to clog up the page but going back and re-reading, I can definitely see your point :) Thanks for the review!
Filled on bread and meat, Meisar retired with a certain languor that could only have resulted from such a meal. For the desire to lay beneath the warm blankets and settle, sleep ill came. It should have comforted her, she thought, the sudden sensation of safeness, of something so solid it felt eternal. The way Thorin had kissed her goodnight before her door that night had left her cold. Terse, he had turned on his heel and seemed to pull the darkness around him like a cloak as the lanterns in the corridors were snuffed one by one in his wake. Through his unnerving quiet at Bombur's home, through rounds of ale and boisterous children eager to receive him at their table, he held up. He always did. She admired him for it and feared it the same. The mountain itself had an ethereal feel, almost as if it were a sentient being in itself. She felt as if its walls had ears, ancient beings that absorbed hundreds of years of prayers and secrets and lives lost. She longed to, with Thorin, to heal the walls from the sting of dragon's breath and un-live that feverish passion for gold which had poisoned those lost generations, replacing it with a passion purer, more primal. The thought of it had calmed her enough in the night to sleep at last.
In the morning hours, Freyda and Gyda had arrived early to her chambers so they might dress together and prepare for the ceremony that would see the making of their marriage contract. Dwarven witnesses were to attend, and yet it seemed a great deal of fuss for something Thorin had promised her would be a small, intimate assemblage. "I'm not even going to leave my chambers. Do I need shoes?" Meisar inquired.
"Yes! And pretty ones are better," Gyda insisted with a girlish enthusiasm, taking Meisar's leg upon her knee and lacing her foot into one too-small court shoe, green brocade with little embroidered black beads. Griet was sent to her and Bertha remained in Dis's service for the morning. The young maidservant held out her mass of hair in wonderment, and taking up her comb, draped the ends over her shoulder so her hair would not spill and drag upon the floor behind her, seated as she was there on the dressing stool. "Beautiful," Griet sighed dreamily, and it brought a warmth in Meisar's chest, half from being unused to flattery and half in remembering the way Thorin's eyes had devoured the sight of her that night at the welcoming, to have beheld it all bare and loose then, her orange hair. Was he imagining what she might look like cloaked only it before him? Less than a fortnight would tell now. She felt a pang of modesty in her semi-diaphanous shift and still-unlaced bodice. The seamstress had made some quick adjustments in a fur-trimmed evergreen dress for her. She slipped into it up to the waist and realized she needed the bodice laced from behind.
"Per tradition the dwarf comes to the home of his bride to make the contract. Or at least, these present chambers," said Freyda, assisting with the back-lacing of Meisar's bodice and finding herself of little aid in that matter. Griet took over. "Until you make a home with him, and... well, you know," Gyda chimed in and covered her blushing face with fingers like a fan. "Live together," she hastened to add, still giggling.
"Well have ye?" Freyda asked more bluntly.
Meisar's eyes darted about the room and up toward the wide, curious eyes of Griet above her. She cleared her throat. "The close quarters of the road did not dissuade my san, nor the mountain halls," she answered with a certain airiness. She raised a brow at Freyda. The iron-smith pouted back at her. "Least you have to look forward to then, knowing you won't linger a maid into feeble old age. Not like myself at this point," Freyda muttered the last of it under her breath.
She had only just finished dressing and fixing her hair when there was a knock at the door and Balin's voice beyond it. She summoned him with a firm voice. Balin entered and was alone; Freyda searched the hall behind him with a certain lack of discretion that Balin himself took note of, and seemed to smile.
"He is with Thorin, dearest Freyda. He will be along soon," Balin assured her quietly with a grin. He turned back to Meisar and she was silent and staring ahead, her lips making small twitching movements. Balin touched her arm gently. "Are you troubled by something my lady? The contract ceremony will not be long, or taxing."
"Thorin was strangely melancholy last night at Bombur's home. Even for him," Meisar confided out of the earshot of Freyda or Gyda, the two of them fussing over their hair in the mirror. The dwarrowdams wouldn't understand what kept her awake at night, for all their good intent. Balin alone, at the moment, could be of any comfort.
"He visited the tombs and remained quite late," replied Balin succinctly.
"Balin," Meisar began cautiously. "Am I a fool to love him as I do?"
"No. Far from it," assured Balin.
"Should I fear for him?"
"Yes, as should we all, but before that, you should care for him, and you will have no reason to fear for him." Meisar touched the elaborate braid that trailed down her side. "Is it that simple, Balin?"
"Hardly," the old dwarf mused. "But it is the base of all good things. My lady, learning how to love is something you will have to endeavor together. Neither of you have loved another. But that is why fate has joined you. It was always destiny."
"Always?" Meisar repeated, sounding a bit unsure. Always had been a strange concept to her; nothing had ever lasted, not even the bonds of love the way she remembered it. Safe on Taras's shoulder in the marketplace, her mother's feet as she bent to pick her up from a cool terracotta floor, the warmth of Bombur's hearth.
"Do you know the concept of it, Meisar? As was put forth by Aule himself," Balin replied. Meisar nodded a vague no, and Balin gathered her hands in his, worn from a lifetime of exile, battle and hard work, but so gentle she could not imagine him in the blood and muck and visceral fire of battle. He continued. "Thorin, Thorin was not even conceived when Aule looked upon his peoples and whispered your name unto the earth. Thorin took in his mother's belly with your name on his lips the moment they were formed within her womb. You were destined for each other, always. All of this was meant to be, the good, and the very worst."
"Would you know your destiny if it were staring at ye in the face?" asked Freyda, on the edge of something nervous. She swooped in behind and sat.
"Not all dwarves are meant to marry. In fact very few are. You see, the Great Smith is a great smith. A matchmaker he is when he is inclined I suppose. Nay, but destiny is understood to him in a manner of speaking beyond that which can be forged in a furnace or plucked and cut from the earth. That was the destiny of the dwarves, to take up that mantle, as creators. But we must as a peoples be fruitful if we are to survive. Therefore, some are meant to marry, and He is very selective of those who are," replied Balin, the answer not seeming to satisfy Freyda. "Why Freyda, you too wear such a dour face upon this joyous morn," observed Balin.
Freyda let out a frustrated exhalation and taking Balin's hand, pressed a round wrinkled thing of a soft leathery exterior into the old dwarf's palm. "Dwalin gave it to me. What does it mean?" she pleaded with Balin.
"He's had this ugly trinket since childhood, lass," replied Balin, holding his monocle to the wrinkled token. "It's his lucky boar snout it is. I'll be a elf's kakhaf, that he should part from it voluntarily."
"Is it a sign for ill or good?" Freyda pleaded once more.
"Not easy to get a dwarf to part with superstitious trinkets. It's the kind of gift a dwarf only gives a dwarrowdam when he trusts her enough to see it well kept," replied Balin.
"Is it a courtship gesture?" asked Freyda.
"Well, lass, only a courtship braid is a true gesture. But this, lass, you can find no truer an emblem to declare his affections for you."
"Do you think-?" Freyda began with a sigh.
"Good morning my lady!" chirped Brynja as she entered the chamber, Eda on her tail. "The making of the marriage contract. What a wonderful occasion!"
"Is it even necessary?" asked Meisar.
"Of course it is necessary! It is one of the most sacred traditions of our people!" came Emli's reply as she strode in through the door behind them. "A good contract is the foundation of anything that is well-made."
"It's not that. It's just… I have nothing to offer him," Meisar sighed. "Except my love I suppose."
"And nor did Bofur have anything to give me, or I to him," reminded Brynja sweetly. "Except our love." "And to swear that you would wear a diamond band in your hand someday," Meisar corrected her with a suddenly serene smile.
"A promise well-kept," blushed Brynja, her braids falling into her face. Neatly plaited, they rested over her chest in front of her, her head bare except for a silver-silk bandeau.
"Nothing to offer him? You offer him your love and with it your womb to carry his heirs and continue his line. Nothing to offer? Lasd!" snorted Emli.
"Indeed," Dis agreed suddenly. Her entry was like that of a ghost; her feet made no sound when they slipped in through the open door and she took her seat beside Meisar in the cherry-wood and vermillion chair that Aroin had carried down and followed her in with. "And you offer him something through your womb, and through your heart the same, that no amount of treasure might match. He understands that now, more than ever, believe me," Dis settled with the train of her dress swirled neatly about her feet. The sleeves of her austere black gown ended at the elbows, trimmed in fur there, and her arms were covered then in fitted under-sleeves of bright patterned silk damask. That she was not garbed in full mourning seemed a monumental progress, however subtle its external expression. She patted Meisar's shoulder gently. "My brother was a pauper prince once. He will not hold it against you, dear sister," Dis said gently. "Had he made you his bride in leaner times, he would have it written that only a hammer should he offer you, in your keeping. My own husband…"
A reverent hush fell over the room and Dis pulled an awkward expression at the sudden silence. "…was not nobly born. A product of exile was our marriage. But…" she said, fingering her large ruby on its gold chain. "It was a happy marriage, for what was brought into it. What was taken out of it, even more so…."
"What became of him, Uzbadnatha?" Griet the maidservant asked precociously.
"An imprudent question!" scolded Aroin, her entrance, as accustomed, unannounced. Griet shrunk back and so did Meisar's ladies, all except Emli. "She meant nothing by it," Gloin's wife protested, moving protectively beside the trembling maidservant.
"Let us keep to our own business, my ladies, and prepare for this wedding in peace," Dis intervened, hastily.
Aroin smiled broadly. "Indeed," she agreed. "While you were trifling about, I found the time not only to select your fabrics." The choleric dwarrowdam plunked the swatch-book deftly against Emli's palm. "But also to see that the future queen is well-protected. Will you come in now Oliada?"
The dwarrowdam who entered was like none Meisar or any of her ladies had ever beheld. "Meisar, meet Oliada, nathu Varin. She will be your personal sentry from now on," added Aroin. "After all, you are to be queen and these are delicate times."
Oliada, black of hair and even blacker of eyes, eyes that slanted in a peculiar way she had not seen on any dwarf and only in men far from the Eastern lands, an elegant appearance but a fierce one nonetheless and even stonier a countenance. She had stern pressed lips under a heavy full beard, also black, and on her forehead were several dark blue runes inked into the skin. "A Blacklock," Emli whispered. "The fiercest and most enigmatic tribe among dwarves they say. They dwell in the lands far beyond the Iron Hills to the East. In places where even men fear to tread."
Behind her, Aroin smiled at the Blacklock dwarrowdam and she bent her head courteously in return, not speaking. Meisar made a small welcoming gesture to summon her to her. "Welcome Oliada. I am glad for your service," said Meisar with quiet grace, studying the Blacklock dwarrowdam with curiosity. "Your majesty," Oliada bowed and withdrew and said no more words after that. She wore heavy furs about the shoulders and lining her long outer coat down to the elbow. The coat was a muted yellow but an exotic shade nonetheless, patterned at its edges in a strange foreign script that mimicked neither Erebor's geometric styles nor even runes. Circular beaded laplets with burnished gold hung beside her ears from the tall pointed cap. Her beard was fully un-decorated, quite unlike the other dwarrowdams of her fledgling court who attended the making of the marriage contract, a small private ceremony by all measure, with their best jewels woven in their beards.
Emli puffed up again once Oliada had fully withdrawn. "Well Lady Aroin I have seen to it that several silhouettes be drawn for the queen's bridal attire and that Dagny bring three of the most skilled seamstresses from her guild to assist in the making, once a style is settled upon of course."
"Without consulting the queen in wait? How imprudent yourself!" Aroin shot back. Emli stepped forward with her jewels rattling.
"Aroin, let us leave Emli to see to Lady Meisar's household. You and I will have our hands full, to prepare my garments and many other things," Dis intervened with haste. "I shall be occupied to assist my brother in his own duties, and would be grateful for your good service, my lady."
Aroin's eyes made a regretful shift toward Dis. "I defer to your will in all things, my lady princess," she relented with tight-lipped reluctance, her reverence for all but the princess thin.
"Let us make the marriage contract first and then set to work on that, as it tradition after all," smiled Emli tautly as the first of Thorin's cadre arrived. It was Ori that entered first, with his pristine parchment and nervously checking the sharpness of his quills. His sweater was replaced with a fine gray wool doublet, and someone, probably Dori, had taken the time to even the crooked lines of his pudding bowl haircut. Dori was the one who came next and then Gloin. He first kissed his wife on both her cheeks, their red beards mingling, one elegantly bejeweled, the other bushy and clasped in burnished gold. Gimli at his side, he greeted his mother the same. Both and then Oin embraced Aroin against Emli's silent glowering. After several more had come, Dwalin and Thorin were last to enter.
To see him was a joy to her. There was a edgy quality about his countenance; nerves perhaps? He had always been an isolated figure, hardly the kind to carry out any task with an audience. Her heart sensed something else afoot if not that alone, but thought better than to inquire of his wellness even in the tenderest most secret of whisper or gesture silent altogether.
"Ah," beamed Balin tautly, taking a position beside Dwalin and facing Gimli, Oin, Gloin, and Aroin. "The fruits of Farin all here together at last."
"Aye, and the fruits of Groin I see have borne the gentler faction," Aroin replied, and eyed Dwalin with his scars and tattooed cranium and knuckles haughtily. "Alas, the berserkers serve as important a place in this gentle kingdom."
"It takes all kinds. No gentle kingdom would ye have without the muscle protecting it outside and in," Freyda seethed as politely as she could seethe. Gyda shrunk back behind her from Aroin's surprised, then tempestuous silence, and Emli suppressed a squeal of approval and squeezed Freyda's arm lovingly, while giving Aroin a triumphant glare. Freyda ignored Emli wholly for the small approving grin that broke discreet under Dwalin's beard.
Freyda wore about her waist a small chain girdle like Dis's with a leather pouch at the end. She put her front teeth over her bottom lip and grasped it in her hand when she managed to meet Dwalin's eyes. Dwalin's lips moved in quiet acknowledgement. Even then the grin had not fully dissipated, a gesture not lost on Balin, or Thorin. He edged closer to Dwalin and whispered something in his ear that none could hear but seemed to make the fierce dwarf uncannily nervous. Freyda gripped the pouch and whispered something under her breath.
"Are we late?!"
The door swung open with such a whoosh it was more a crack in the crowded chamber, a sound that made the sentry Oliada draw her spear, only to stand down, the expression in her sharp almond eyes utterly unchanged from one mode to the next, when she saw that those who entered were but a very large dwarrowdam and a trail of very portly dwarflings. Bira's good dress had the morning's bread-flour patterned in handprints large and small across its front and sides, her hands still white with it. Her face flushed scarlet and paled as she caught her breath. She and Urdlaug patted the heads of the youngest daughters and grandchildren, straight-shouldered in their dresses with the velvet pinafores, to hush them.
"No, you are just in time," Thorin assured as curtsied on cracking knees to him and he kissed her head gently, careful not to spoil her elaborate coiffure. "Bombur sends his love," she said. "To both of you," Bira winked at Meisar.
"Then shall we begin?" Balin's smile was beginning to grow impatient under his white beard but still had that omnipresent hint of amusement in it, and eyes that seemed to dart more frequently between Freyda and his brother than the business at hand. Meisar sat upon the giltwood stool with her ladies standing at either side of her, and facing Thorin, who remained standing, flanked by his own cadre.
"My king, would you make your offering at this time?"
Thorin came on one knee before her and pressed a leather pouch into her hand that jingled distinctly. Gold. "For you, my bride."
"The acquirement sum, to be offered to the bride before the contract is made, reaffirming the sacred bond of the betrothal," explained Balin. "A sum which in other times or other lands might be called a dowry, and given to the father of the bride for keeping, but alas, you are bereft of him, and thus, it is your keeping alone, to do as you wish."
"For you and your ladies in these days to come," Thorin kissed her hand and withdrew, stiffly, under the watchful eyes of all the dwarves.
"You join this dwarrowdam to your house and within there keep and cherish. What do you offer her there?" Balin continued.
"My home and all that is within it," replied Thorin. Ori copied dutifully.
"Let us be more specific," harangued Gloin. "I've drawn up a series of suggestions on the part of monies and the like, if you wish to discuss." He let a long length of parchment unfurl; it hit the floor and rolled to the edge of Thorin's feet. This was going to be a process, he groused silently, suddenly impatient for something he could not fathom entirely. Numbers, all numbers, he thought, bored, as the first sections of the contract were haggled out, hammered, debated, finalized. She had no need of gold but a queen's keep was what it was, and she was worth no less. This rough-palmed, weary-eyed woman, winsome in her own enigmatic way. She sat squirming in her green figured silk gown with the fur trimmed sleeves that so complemented her hair, even with only the courtship and betrothal braids left uncovered. A hastily made garment, it was simple in its construction but no less elegant. The two small crinkles at the side of her neck when she turned her head endeared his eye in the moment and shut out the sound of Gloin and Balin trading suggestions over the amount of her annual keep as Thorin's purse would pay.
The parts of the contract that followed seemed a dizzying series of the same. Numbers and weights in precious stone, that which would provide for their children. The thought of dwarflings made her dizzier than the debated numbers for which gold and jewels would provide for their care. On this Gloin hammered out the numbers with a fierce efficiency. She wondered what he must have been like at his and Emli's contract ceremony. Their words all seemed to conflate in her head, treasures and royal duty and all the things that would perhaps forever remain odd or unfamiliar to her, these queenly things, she thought. Only her king had brought her any comfort or familiarity during the contract-making. She followed the lines on Thorin's face, the border of black beard and fair-ish skin, the set of his jaw, always somewhat tense but with a gladness about the way his lips rested, un-pursed, his eyes never once leaving her.
"My lady, what offer you forth?" Balin asked gently, stirring her from the sedate, swimming sense of being she had gazed upon Thorin the past moments with.
All of the eyes in the room bore down on her expectantly but to her own unexpected serenity, she had no fear of their judgement. "I have no jewels, no coin, and no home to bring you. I bring to this marriage only my love, and my loyalty," she articulated quietly. The words had been practiced until her tongue was benumbed, in her bedchamber all night, but on her lips that morning they spilled forth with indubitable love.
Ori smiled under his chin as he scratched the pen along the parchment after her, the elegant length of the parchment falling over the makeshift writing desk like a pale waterfall. Emli nudged her. "And my body I offer you, that I may bear your children within me, and… comfort you as a wife," she hastened to add, blushing. Her velvet calotte and chignon edged in emerald and pearl that confined her hair seemed to dwarf the whole of her head and make it wobble with every move of it she endeavored, holding it delicately in one hand when she thought it might loosen and fall.
"Thorin?"
Balin's voice jolted him from his own drifting thoughts. "Are there any non-momentary obligations you wish to speak of, my king?"
He looked up at the gathered dwarves, their eyes unblinking with anticipation. They made him feel as if he were suffocating. But when he turned his gaze to Meisar and Meisar alone, there was peace in his chest. He sighed lovingly.
"That I shall love you until my last breath." The serenity that had occupied his face but for that brief, and wanting, time, ebbed into something of a deeper melancholy and distance. It darkened something in the back of her mind to see his expression shift the way it did but surrounded by the gawking dwarves, could neither reach out and embrace him to her nor offer a word of comfort.
"And should you die whilst the throne is yours and without heir of your own body, what then shall you declare for the queen's keeping and the succession?" Balin went on. It broke the opaque silence between them.
"I leave my queen as regnant, with the closest kin of my fallen cousin, Dain, Lord of the Iron Hills, to inherit the throne upon her death." The words sat like a bitter taste on his tongue. "My queen shall be kept perpetually as I have so decreed by the first part of this contract. In the event of my death…"
A strange hush fell over the whole of the chamber, some even lowering their heads in the sort of reverence reserved for an actual occasion of death. It felt all too weighty, too deeply familiar, like slicing open an old scar.
"To complete the contract, let us have our betrothed couple join their hands and seal it together, with this royal sigil," Balin instructed with a cheerier tone, and Ori stepped forth to pour a smooth circle of wax thusly. Their joined hands pressed the wax seal firmly against the parchment. Ori folded and placed it delicately in Meisar's hand when the wax had hardened. She looked up at Balin with confusion.
"The contract stays with you, dear sister. If at any time you wish to alter it, it is your choice and yours alone, and it will be honored," said Dis.
"We dwarf women are powerful in that way," trumpeted Bira, a rabble of agreeing murmurs going up among the dwarrowdams. Bofur and Gloin nodded heads toward each other with knowing half-smiles. In the corner, Oliada still stood like a statue.
"Aye, and now that the contract has been made, and entrusted to the queen in wait's care, let it be known that Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror, as bridegroom, shall now go forth and prepare his home for his bride to dwell in beside him."
"My brother being a dwarf unmarried so many years, lives as one. I should think my assistance in that matter might be required," Dis remarked with a broader smile than ever Meisar, and indeed many of her ladies, had seen grace the finely-aged face of the princess, since the return or long even before. It soothed a certain tenseness about the room, that while brief in the course of the day, was much appreciated by all.
.
Emli remained in Meisar's room long after Dis had taken her evening ales and retired to her bed before the sun had set in the world of men above. Emli used the footstool to plunk on the bed beside her. "Aren't you going to open it?" the older dwarrowdam gestured to the leather pouch resting on the opposite pillow.
"They say it is a secret gift," Meisar replied, jingling the contents with some curiosity.
"With me there are no secrets. Haven't you learned that already?" Emli countered more bluntly. Meisar withdrew the drawstring of the leather pouch, pulled out several coins of high value. Twice a dozen more remained in the pouch. She stared with blinking curiosity, Emli counting the sum more efficiently. "A fine keeping for a queen in wait," Emli remarked giddily. "We've got much work to do on you, mistress. Not to say I do not find you the pinnacle of good company, just that... well no more walking about in tatted stockings and old boots, that's all. It's going to be a different life."
Meisar put the coins back in the bag, to Emli's slight but ever-visible annoyance. "Let us use a sum for the wedding costs, and put away the rest for further use. I would see my household well-cared for," Meisar told her firmly. "Present and future."
"Like Queen Lotte herself," sighed Emli.
"The one who didn't let her women outside the women?" Meisar chuckled.
"And Thror," Emli said wistfully. "Cared for his own even in the darker of times. The darker of his own mind. Still something good was at his core."
Meisar wriggled her hand in the leather pouch and felt the stinging edge of a sharply-folded parchment on her fingertip. She withdrew her hand, wincing, a square of it clutched in her palm.
"I would sleep, for we have much to attend in the morning," she begged off. Emli set Raincloud aside and slid off the bed. "Emli!" Meisar called after her. Her quick, eager motion making it seem half-instinctual, Emli adjusted the pillow behind the small of Meisar's back, as if she were a feeble old woman, or a small child. "Oh no, Emli. I didn't need... thank you." Her face flushed with embarrassment.
"What is it my lady?"
"The damask, the white and gold. I think I like this one the best." She held out the swatch-book and pressed it gently between Emli's two outstretched hands, patting them over it. Emli smiled giddily.
When she left the door shut so swiftly it snuffed the larger brazier on the wall, leaving but a dim candlelight. She opened the tightly-folded parchment in her hand.
My beloved Meisar,
My blessing I fear you are cross with me, or fear worse that you think me cross with you. I have been solemn as of late and owe you greater than my grief. What use is a drowned man you say? I weep and I much deserve to drown in my tears. Let them wash over me. Let them carry me to the Halls of my Fathers.
It is said that the battle came to us from a darker place than the throes of my corruption. The wicked nature of these forces would compel me to believe that, and drive me as they did to put aside old hatreds… alas, those I trespassed against worst of all I never got the chance to make my amends. I pray Mahal that now my sister may heal, and see that I am, in my grief, at the mercy of her forgiveness. You have been her grace. And you Meisar… light the way home. The shepherdess who leads my wounded soul through the valley of death and up the mountain again. You have brought me this far. You are my chamber of light, my fire in this cold world whose endless winter I have myself brought. You are the jewel of my heart, the jewel of all jewels that have shone upon me, mizimel. I ache for you. I watch the sunrise and sunset awaiting the dawn when it will rise upon our wedding day. And when it sets… I want to kiss your heart and lower still. I want my name on your lips. I want your heart in my hand.
Until I Am Stone Again,
Thorin
Lasd!- Preposterous!
Kakhaf- Butt