A/N:
AZLÂF- Refers to the betrothal stage of the marriage, literally "time of preparation."
"Diamonds or pearls?"
Emli had already made up her mind as she held the veins of precious stone aloft; her face always betrayed it no matter how strenuously she attempted subtlety. But she stood before the cache of dwarrowdams with their head all pressed together squinting at the choices, in want of an opinion.
"Diamonds!" squealed Gyda.
"No, no, the pearls!" Brynja countered, the docile warmth of her eyes suddenly afire with opinion.
"What do you think, Meisar?" Dis asked finally, turning around slowly in her velvet chair by the fire.
Meisar looked up from a careful study of the choices and smiled abashedly. "Never thought I'd answer such a question in my life."
She put her hand out gently to touch along the edge of the luxuriant fabric that was laid before her. Her wedding dress; it was but a pile of messily-undone bolts strewn across the table before her- the white and gold patterned damask, the gold so pale it shone ghostly against the white. Only the skeleton of her stomacher had been fashioned in any meaningful way. Emli held the diamonds and the string of pearls up to the front of it.
"The diamonds I think, maybe with some pearls right here," Meisar suggested timorously, her rough hands opening to hold the precious stones in her palm, which was used to handling wood, stone, ash, an ax or a thresher. They felt foreign, cold and distant on her hands, but like the stars, beautiful. She drew her finger in a delicate curve down over the front of the bodice, indicating where she might like the jewels.
"A most excellent suggestion," trumpeted Aroin, strutting through, setting before Dis a strong tea. Their households had come together that morning, her own and that of Dis, in the sitting room of Dis's quarters, along with four maidservants and what seemed like half the seamstresses's guild. The enclosed space echoed with the thick hum of their chatter and activity. Braziers, bright lanterns illuminated the once grim space to a livelier ambiance. It seemed a fitting change, for even Dis's gaunt appearance had improved in the whisper of time since Thorin's return. She was plumper in the slightest way and her skin not so gray and sallow. She blushed when Gloin praised her complexion the night before, the first time a glow, a separate hue from her pallor of any sort, had colored her face. Gloin had seen far too much of her in the dark recesses of her grief to take any small sign of her contentment for granted. Now, as the wedding attire which tradition extolled them to complete lay in sheets and bolts before them, the princess mustered her energies for necessity if not plain desire.
Two dwarven maidservants struggled open the door to the antechamber. "Careful now, dear, those are damask," Emli cautioned. The bolts were laid out across the great sewing table that had been lugged down to the chambers- more damask, and heavy eggshell-white velvet. "Beautiful," Emli clapped her hands in delight. She placed the white velvet beside the damask that would be Meisar's wedding dress, smiled broadly with satisfaction. "For the bridal cloak, my lady. So beautiful, and it matches!"
"Aye it is. I am grateful for your help in selecting it," Meisar answered. Emli unwound the bolt and spread it, the velvet like snow on the table. "In the days of old a dwarven bride under the mountain would be attired fully in gold," Emli explained. "Looking back, it does seem rather... garish."
"Yes, I do recall you wore gold on your wedding day," snipped Aroin.
"I prefer the white anyway," Meisar interjected quickly with a peaceable grin. "Yes, yes. White is what the girls amongst men wear now when they marry. It is a pure and beautiful shade," agreed the seamstress Dagny. The head seamstress, immaculate in her saffron apron, was a plump older dwarf woman with a constant cheerfulness about her countenance. She told Meisar stories in a sing-songy voice made for storytelling, while adjusting the boning of the bodice tight about her. In Ered Luin, after the dragon, she sewed plain and practical clothes for the miners and refugees, sometimes as charity, but she longed for the day when she would once again richly garb the dwarves of Erebor, who had always loved sumptuous clothing so.
Dagny pulled tight on the stays and Meisar's breath squeezed out dramatically. "Loosen it a bit," ordered Emli. "A king's bride shan't have her bosom pushed up like a hearty wench in a town of men."
"She's got a bosom like a tavern wench I do say so myself," remarked Aroin haughtily. "Work with it I say. Don't try to flatten it out as if she were some gawky girl. On the wedding day, I say give the king a hint of what he has to look forward to when sun and moon rise toward their togetherness..." The other dwarrowdams squirmed as her forwardness.
"Very much to look forward to yes," said Emli through pinched lips. "Unless the queen in wait has already been properly rehearsed," Aroin raised a brow at Meisar and wagged a beady eye toward Emli. "I have heard rumors, if you forgive my impertinence, of romps in Elven sheets and the king having a softer pillow than a stout log at night upon the road. Can't have that being trifled about..."
Meisar shrunk wordless and mouth dry.
Emli spun about girded for battle, a grin making itself known in Meisar's direction out of the corner of her mouth. "Why, when Gloin and I courted he kissed and touched me aplenty, even on my breasts." Emli looked both proud and ashamed of admitting this, her head held high. "Yes, he put his hands in my bodice once and squeezed them, like melons." Meisar shook her head, amusedly, noting Aroin's discomfort and defeat with shameful satisfaction. Emli's face went taut again and deadly serious. "But when I married I was as chaste a maid as one who had never laid eyes on a man before. That is the proper way. Thank Mahal and Yavanna both that our queen has guarded this most sacred property as any stout-hearted dwarf would a precious possession in their keeping," trilled Emli.
The older dwarrowdams nodded vigorously with their approval. Emli turned again on her dainty heel and held the string of pearls to her chest and then the diamonds in their long transparent placket, measuring again. "Perhaps some diamond brooches down the sides, and little strings of the pearls between them?" suggested Emli, her eyes all lit up.
"Yes, I think I would like that," Meisar felt herself blushing for the way in which she answered, as if she were deciding what to have for supper. Never had something so fine been laid out for her consideration. She found herself grateful for Emli's tastes at the moment.
"Aye, you shall be the most radiant of brides then," Emli chirped. "I cannot wait for the moment when Thorin will first behold you. I shall see him weak in the knees!"
Griet and Bertha and two more handmaidens returned with armloads full of bolts again. Marigold and moss-green brocades, velvets in of deep purple and crimson red, and coral and lavender silks and a sea-green bolt for Freyda, powdery-blue velvet with silvery trim for Gyda and hunter-green satisfying Lulia's preference for a sturdy, understated style. "Let my bridegroom's gift to me be mine for you," Meisar said with a small, proud smile as she watched the dwarrowdams swarm over the sumptuous fabrics that would be their wedding garments. Seeing Gyda and Freyda, Eda and Brynja, all dwarrowdams of little material consideration in the world, hug the luxuriant fabrics against their bodies and rub their cheeks against it, warmed her. She would dress them always in fine clothes and jewels even if she had little consideration herself for the fripperies of life. She stood in the center of the chamber with the seamstresses poking and podding and measuring every part of her, fabric waving around her like banners, the anticipatory chatter and fuss like a foreign tongue but speaking kind words nonetheless.
"So little time!" sighed Emli dramatically, directing the swarm of seamstresses about. "All of these garments must be completed in time. Thankfully we have resources at our disposal in addition to your own, my queen." She deposited coins of fairly sumptuous worth into the palms of the seamstresses, the women of the guild at once giddy and then set and serious as they measured each dwarrowdam for her clothes.
"Silly woman," Emli teased Meisar gently. "You think such garments could have been completed with only the work of these hands and three seamstresses alone? I have brought in a few extra if you don't mind. We are going to need them."
"I have no idea how I could possibly repay you, Emli," Meisar gushed, making sure Aroin could hear. Her sister in law pinched her mouth and returned to bossing the seamstresses around quickly enough.
"It is a gift," assured Emli. "To you and to Thorin."
Meisar sat back and finished her morning tea. "I would spend these final days with my bridegroom. I ache for his company."
"You'll have plenty of time to get to know each other after the wedding," Eda tut-tutted. Gyda and Freyda and the younger of the seamstresses buried their blushes and giggles in the back of their hands, the elder and unmarried of the dwarf women passing about stern looks.
"In the times of old it was forty days," Elsa hummed. "Forty days of no work, no visitors, no troubles, only each other. Is it any wonder so many little dwarflings came nine months to the day of the marriage ceremony?" The dwarrowdams giggled again.
"A king is not so fortunate. Far fewer will have to suffice. But they shall be days you will cherish for all your life," Dis assured her with a smile. Aroin circled her. "Up and ready for your measurements, my lady princess," she dictated with her usual purposefulness, a voice that expected and was used to being obeyed, even by a princess of the blood. Aroin picked up a meager bolt of midnight blue velvet. "This is all? Barely enough to make a layer of under-skirts! Good lady," Aroin turned on her heel to one of the seamstresses. "Would you be so kind as to visit the textile market and select a full bolt this time?"
The seamstress stood goggled-eyed for a moment and then turned and trotted out on her heel as if spooked by that stentorian voice that seemed born to order people around.
"No, I am in need of a brisk walk. Will you accompany me, dear sister?" Dis announced abruptly, rising briskly from her seat. The gown she donned for the day, black velvet again, would have been utterly austere had it not been for the shimmering silver embroidery about the stomacher and on the tips of the sleeves. Aroin nodded deferentially. Dis pulled on her heavy furred black boots, her cloak and gloves. She took Meisar's arm with a caring almost maternal tenderness.
"I rather dislike that shade of blue. Too somber. This is a wedding, not a funeral," Dis commented to her aloud as they departed.
"Where are we going?"
"To the textile market. I much desire blue but I am particular about my shades. Only certain hues may properly match my rubies, you see." Dis smiled painfully. "And I would much like to… breathe again. Out here I see my kingdom come to life again. It infuses me with a sense of purpose. Otherwise, dear sister, it would be futile, the things my brother, and my sons, have fought for."
They made their way from the quieter corridors of the royal quarter and out into the bustling fortress city. Erebor was filled with activity from the time the sun rose above the mountain and well beyond the time it set but this hour of the day was one of the busiest except for the mornings. On every level there were great common baths and some had common kitchens too, the baths cavernous with many pools and steam that tickled high ceilings. Others were modest and intimate in size and contained small, shallow pools where mothers could bathe small dwarflings or afford the more modest kinds the desired privacy. The wealthier and mightier amongst the Erebor dwarves might have small bathing chambers and saunas within their quarters but even they were drawn to the common baths. All through the corridors and mezzanines and stairs the air hung heavy and fragrant with various soaps and the mineral scent of the waters from the baths. They passed the open door of a kitchen where a gaggle of dwarves stood around a great table kneading bread and laughing uproariously though clouds of flour. The baths and the common kitchens were lively places of social life, always full of laughter, kvetching, trading goods and gossip.
Merchants and those seeking work clamored for space and attention from the great foyer where smaller stalls, carts and wagons were set up, down to the bottom-most cellar where the main marketplace was installed for the time. Dis linked arms tight with Meisar to navigate crowded marketplace. Dwarves haggled and bartered. They walked amongst the people in their bustle and toil and the white noise of their chatter and hawking, virtually unnoticed. Oliada followed at a discreet distance. Those who did recognize Dis bowed to her humbly or offered her a kiss of fealty on the hand that wore her mother's sapphire ring.
The stonemasons, merchants and the survivors of Smaug's wrath were not the only dwarves coming back to Erebor. There were miners and laborers and cooks, guards and sentries, clerks and scribes, dwarven merchants who sold their crafts and those who sold foreign items they had traded for over-land, money-lenders, coin-masters, tailors and weavers, chambermaids and laundresses, dwarves who maintained the lanterns that kept the whole of the fortress city alight. They moved amongst each other with ease and civility. Erebor was alive. Dis's eyes took in every sight with a serene satisfaction in spite of the weightiness with which she walked, every step proudly taken but in an unreadable way, pained.
In the textile market they found a dwarf called Ruthgar whose wagon and rented stall were each stacked tightly with fabrics from the plain and practical to the most exotic. He smiled under his heavy bejeweled mustache at them, bowing to kiss Dis's hand, charmed. The dwarf was garbed in garish silks and brocades in a shade of tangerine that made him look like a great fruit, had it not been for the purple cape.
"I wish a shade of velvet to befit the Line of Durin."
"Uzbadnatha!" he bowed again with giddy pride. "These are the finest I have to offer! Here, let me show you!"
"Only the finest will do I think. I would like one to match this," Dis dictated calmly, a swatch of a more vibrant midnight blue offered. "Thorin's wedding doublet will be made in this shade. I find it prudent that we match. Blue is almost sacred to the Line of Durin; our house colors if you will," Dis explained with tenderness to Meisar as Ruthgar hunted through his cluttered stock. Dis's blue eyes looked up at Meisar with intentness, their robin's-egg blue not quite like Thorin's. "Our blue eyes have been remarked upon for generations. Among other things less fortunate, it is a strong family trait."
She thought of Thorin's blue eyes, how they looked at her, how they would look upon her as they never had before, and in such a short time. Her heart had begun to flutter with the thought of it, the future too near for her to speak of it without melting into a useless puddle. Only the orotund, excited voice of the textile merchant snapped her thoughts back to the matter at hand in any meaningful way. The budding blush of her cheeks turned back toward him as he presented Dis with a fat bolt of her fabric. "My lady princess, anything you need is mine to give. I give you all and anything! And the queen, should she visit me and honor me so!"
Ruthgar kissed the hand that pressed several silver coins into it, Meisar's pink cheeks feeling hot again. They departed and took the dizzying maze stairs upward toward the foyer. Blinking into the afternoon sun, Meisar laughed. "So much for subtlety my dear sister; only the finest."
"Better for subtlety yourself, dear," clucked Dis, holding tight again to her arm.
"Didn't even recognize me; suppose he wouldn't though," Meisar shrugged. "I am rather... ungainly, aren't I?"
"You are like the beautiful fabric you have selected for your dress. Difficult to ascertain its true beauty from a distance, but up close..." Dis gently took Meisar's face in her cold hands, soft at the tips, harder in the palms. "Up close, it radiates like a thousand suns. The true jewel of a king."
"Your words touch me, truly," she bowed her head reverently to Dis.
"You haven't let many people get close to you in life, close enough to see. Nor has Thorin. Nor have I for that matter. Besides my sons and my brother, I let only one tunnel into my heart and settle there in true. Like my brother's One, it was not the One anybody expected."
"What happened to him?" Meisar asked quietly, feeling alone and uncannily, intensely focused on Dis, their own private world there, as the dwarves streamed around them on their way to do this or that; they took a seat together on a small stone bench on the landing, looking over the marketplace and the sliver of wintry sky that came through the open terraces.
"He was killed in a skirmish long ago, in the villages of men, some disagreement over the price of smithing work that ended badly. Fili and Kili were so small when it happened they never even remembered him. And I thought, perhaps it was better that way. Before you can learn to love somebody, they are gone. It's less painful."
She reached across and placed her hand on Dis's. "Thorin was always around. If he were not their uncle I am certain they would have started to call him father. They adored him so. Besides myself, they were the only ones who could... open Thorin. Bring out the true tenderness he bore in his heart. No matter how hard the external shell got. And like a wall of stone he was. I think our people overestimated his strength. How much he could really endure. But he never let them see that."
"Was your husband like that?"
"No," Dis answered plainly. "He was of a hardy exterior but he was fire where Thorin was ice. He had a temper about him when wronged. Hence, what might have been a mild disagreement among certain others, was like a fire with oil tossed upon it. And so ended his days." Dis bit her lip. "My sons now sit in that great hall with my One. I take comfort in all my grief to know that they are together, wherever they are."
"Your loneliness and grief is much undeserved, dear princess."
Dis's watery eyes looked up and were tender and alight again. "I am not alone, Meisar. I have Thorin, and I have you. I have come to love you with such tenderness, Meisar, though we have been acquainted only these scarce days."
"As I do you, my dear sister."
She raised a ruby-studded chain from her waist where it hung low from the thin girdle. Hanging from it were two small portraits contained in lockets. It was much like the thin girdled belt she herself had begun to wear, keeping the first gift that Thorin had given her, and Ori's portrait, safe within the silken pouch. She opened it and showed Meisar the two portraits held within. Young dwarves, one golden-headed and cool-faced, little mustache braids beaded on either side of lips that almost seemed to smirk. The other was tender-faced and to her surprise, nearly beardless but for stubble. Kili, she said, her younger. The smirking blonde was Fili, the heir Thorin had carefully helped to raise.
"I do not know what would have become of Fili had he been king. I feared for him. Don't think my grandfather's fate never weighed on my mind whenever I looked at him." Meisar gazed at her stonily. Dis smiled a small wise half-smile. "My dear sister, the heart of this mountain was torn from it. The Arkenstone lays in the tomb where I believed my brother did, where it belongs, the shelter of stone again. For it, I believe Erebor is at peace again, but it is not the same. Only love of something purer will truly make it right again. The mountain remembers the corruption of those who came before."
"I have been told I should fear this... curse."
"No," Dis insisted with a staunchness about her voice that had not seemed so ardent before. "I do not fear this curse. No longer. Yours and Thorin's love is so pure. Look around you. Do you feel it?"
Meisar felt nothing for certain but she nodded in vague agreement. "The mountain," said Dis. "The mountain knows it and feels it. That is why it lives. It is why Thorin lives."
They trod on, heavy in their clothes and holding hands, up the stairs into the great foyer and its bustling marketplace. Ahead, heralding the delicious aroma that embraced them, was Donbur. He steered a great pushcart through the bustling crowds, hung with strings of sausages, a great cauldron of cheese and onion soup and loaves of bread that were cut to individual servings with a hand-cranked slicer. Anchored to a cushioned seat wide enough to accommodate him and tooting a horn toward the crowds that hadn't parted in his path, he peddled toward Meisar and Dis with a broad smile. Nearby, Urdlaug sold her ham pies, scones and blueberry butter cakes from a similar perambulator. She looked like a sliced kiwi in her new green velvet kirtle and full-length vest of brindle fur.
A chestnut-haired dwarf with a full braided beard and donning the black apron of the blacksmith's guild approached Urdlaug's stand with hungry eyes. Turning away from the warm salutations she was greeting Meisar and Dis with, Urdlaug chased the blacksmith away from her cart.
"You reject my love, you reject my pies!" she reminded him, waving a great bread knife in jagged whooshes around his cowering form.
"Please, Urdlaug! Mercy!" the blacksmith howled. He covered his head with his arms as the dwarves of his guild standing nearby laughed uproariously for his misfortune. "Hroth, you heartless scapegrace! I would spare your life only so that you should grow old and decrepit alone as I will for your cruelty!" Urdlaug hissed at him with primal, throaty hatred. Hroth. Meisar might have felt a twinge of pity in her heart for this dwarf who would never live this public shaming down amongst his own, but she remembered Urdlaug's light when that blacksmith, once young and handsome, had come about to the bakery in Ered Luin and sung praises of her pies and scones. How that light had gone out one day in Urdlaug and never recovered. She hadn't understood it as a youngster. Now she did. And she felt nothing for the scoundrel. She laughed behind her hand.
The blacksmith, in slinking away, caught the eye of Dis. He staggered low again to bow before her. "My lady princess," the dwarf Hroth offered humbly, hands to his chest, eyes downcast. "I am Valgr, son of Nalgr, of the Blue Mountains. I knew your sons in my youth."
"Indeed?" Dis entreated with her eyes suddenly taut and slightly narrowed.
"Aye," confirmed the blacksmith. "You have my sympathies and my deepest respect, for I know no courage or valor would have matched theirs in all this world."
Dis mouth pinched, ardently controlling the line of tears that crested at her eyelids. How often had she done this, Meisar thought, sadly. Too often.
"Might we take the air on the balcony?" she whispered thinly once the blacksmith Hroth had risen and returned, grudgingly, to his jeering guild.
Dis blinked hard into the sunlight high up on the terrace; she had surfaced but twice to take in the outer world since she arrived at the Lonely Mountain, she told Meisar, shielding her eyes with a pale hand. "Before the fire-drake, we dwarf women never left the mountain halls. Had it not been for the dragon, I may never have seen sunlight," Dis chuckled, self-deprecating. "Imagine my luck."
"It rains and snows enough out there you'd find the mountain preferable after a short while."
Dis gazed over the balcony and squinted her eyes southward. "When I was a girl I stood on my toes to look over this very balcony. How I wanted to run off into the world outside and see what was there." She smiled grimly. "Well, I suppose I got my wish. It wasn't quite what I expected."
.
In the evening, they took their supper alone in Dis's chambers, Thorin and Meisar and the princess. Dis ate little but drank much ale. Thorin pushed another bite of turkey leg on her; the smell of it was wonderful and simmering. But she seemed repelled by it, even surly.
"You are thin, my sweet sister. Eat, won't you?" Thorin cajoled gently.
"I have no appetite this evening."
"Nor did you last night," Thorin quipped quietly, his eyes dark with concern.
"Or at any time for many months," Dis snapped back suddenly. "I'm sure you understand my reasons, Thorin." Then she lifted her gaze up to Meisar, ashamed. "Thorin, let us speak as family, but for a moment. Walk with me. I need air."
"I shall return my love," Thorin sighed, bending to kiss Meisar's cheek quickly from behind. Thorin and his sister exited with a briskness about their manner, a swift wanting of aloneness, and left Meisar in the chamber with Oliada. The Blacklock dwarrowdam stood by her side so silently and unmoving it finally unnerved her too much to bear. "Will you eat, Oliada?" Meisar offered. She filled a plate of turkey-leg and bread for her, and a bowl of soup, and pulled out a seat.
"Your majesty is generous," the dwarrowdam replied, a polite smile emerging across the thin lips beneath her beard. She pulled up the chair and sat heavily, ate with her hands all except the soup, the knuckles tattooed like the sides of her face in blue links and runes. Her red spear lay against the chair, alert-looking.
"Oliada, where do you come from?" Meisar inquired finally, long wanting to ask just this but finding it more than awkward to have spoken with her in the presence of any of the other dwarves.
"The East," Oliada answered crisply. She spoke in the Westron tongue falteringly, and Khuzdul with a strange accent. She had heard of the dwarves of the Iron Hills in the East spoken of as further-flung from the centers of civilization than any other kingdom in the whole of Middle Earth. Of the tribes further in the East, whether they be dwarf, mannish or of a darker nature altogether, she had heard little more than exotic, if foreboding anecdotes.
"What brings you to Erebor?"
"Come to Erebor as refugee," she replied, tonelessly, even as she continued on. "Orcs slaughter my tribe. Orcs and Easterlings. We small House, only survivors myself and the two you see on Ravenhill with the black beards and spears. See, Blacklock have eye like hawk. Throw spear, hit target many yards away. Many dwarves wield ax; Blacklocks have spear. Mister Gloin make us fine offer for service when he see this."
"A refugee in these times?"
"Once we traded with them, the Easterling kind," she confided, grimly. "Father always warn me of them. No trust. Tread careful. So we do. Then, no warning, no provocation they run us down on giant beasts, slay us with the spears we sold them." Oliada leaned in, dark almond eyes lethally focused, like a bird of prey. "The night they attacked, I saw a mountain far to the south and to the west beyond our land, erupt. Put fire in the sky and down its sides. It turned the sky red. Nargubraz."
"Nargubraz," Meisar parroted, hazily. "Red and more red."
"Yes, like blood."
"From the south?" Meisar repeated again. "From… Mordor…?"
Oliada bristled, eyes stiffening straight ahead. "Blacklocks fierce warriors," she said quickly, rote. "Now we serve our king. I serve my queen. Mountain protect us all now."
The door opened suddenly, causing both Meisar and Oliada to jump back from each other. Thorin returned, alone. "My sister will be along soon. Aroin cornered her in the halls, her usual nagging requests. She is tired," Thorin sighed, his eyes off in the distance. He turned and smiled at Meisar gently. "My duties keep me, my love. Alas, I have thought of nothing else but your company," Thorin bent and kissed her hand.
"Take my leave?" Oliada asked Meisar quietly; it was Thorin who nodded affirmatively to her in return. She withdrew, the door closing gently behind her.
She drew close and buried her head against Thorin's shoulder, holding the tip of his temple braid between two fingers. His embrace surrounded her with the tenderest of his warmth, as familiar as it was achingly absent for a day too long for her to bear. "Your letter... I am touched by it. It has given my heart great joy to see your words," she said quietly when they were alone. "Think me not cross with you, my darling. I could never be. I love you so, Thorin. I love you..."
A kiss that had begun with ardent tenderness was parted as Dis came in with her nursemaid Elsa trailing and threw off her cloak with a hint of irritation, disappearing into her bedchamber. They heard her fully clothed body hit her bed with a long thump. The nursemaid pattered in, trying to hide her worry, and left the door thinly ajar.
"Come my love," Thorin sighed. "I shall escort you back to your room."
.
She was sleeping when a warm light spilled into her room from the outside. The sound of the door rubbing on its hinges, undoubtedly opened by a hand set on remaining unseen, stirred her from a light sleep.
"Comfort me, sister." A hoarse whisper in the dark rattled her. The bed dipped and someone fell in heavily beside her. Meisar wriggled beneath the covers in alarm as heavy sobs rolled through the dark chamber in long woebegone waves.
"Oh sister, comfort me..."
"I am here." She fumbled her arms in the dark and over the heavy covers to embrace the heavy sobbing lump that lay atop her bed in a ball. She found Dis's wet, warm face and fumbled to wipe away the tears. She withdrew for but a moment and Dis clung to her in the bed; Meisar lit the lantern beside her bed and struggled to sit up. Dis withdrew from her.
"You think me a poor old drunken wretch, don't you?" Dis mumbled through her sniffles. She buried her face into her hands.
"If you were such a thing, I would not blame you," Meisar sat, scooting across the bed to her.
"I think perhaps I have been unfair to you, Meisar."
"No, no… you have shone me such kindness, as I never could ask from anyone. Sister..."
Dis sat upright and took a stuffy breath through her nose, wiping it messily on her sleeve. "I have not been plainspoken with you. Between myself and Thorin, what this grief would do to anyone who got too near. But it's too late now. It's already a part of you. You'll never escape it."
"I take your sadness into me, and Thorin's. I take it into me, for that is my love. And I am strong," Meisar said, clutching Dis's hands. She meant every word.
"Your love has saved him. It has saved him. And I have my dear brother by my side, and I am not alone. But a part of me wishes he had died on that battlefield." Her eyes were so full of shame and tears she would not even look in Meisar's direction. The candles flickered and dimmed as if they knew.
"In place of your sons?"
"Aye, or alongside them the same. The dead we need not fear for," Dis sighed.
Outside the chambermaids knocked quietly and slipped into the chambers. They went about several duties at once then as if they were used to such middle of the night tasks. In the half-light of the lantern Bertha then lit the braziers and kindled the fire again. Griet served Dis a strong tea and made sure she drank it.
"A wretch you see. These two fine lasses know it well enough," Dis remarked dismally, acknowledging the two chambermaids with a pained graciousness.
"Your highness is no wretch," the younger one, Griet, assured her with a gentle humming voice, a tender girl, wide-eyed, sweet-faced. "You are strong, highness. Were it my children, I would have long lain in the tomb beside them."
"Kind girl, so kind," cooed Dis sadly, doubling over at the waist with a sudden motion and hugging the chambermaid tight around her neck and shoulders, sobbing into the top of her head. Griet sat with helpless eyes and held her hands.
"Oin provides this bitter tea so that I might sleep these terrible dreams away," she explained to Meisar as Bertha took away her empty cup. "It is why Gloin knows the intimate nature of my grief. And Emli I am certain. Just like Aroin. And half the kingdom if not all."
"They each care for you," Meisar insisted with a firm but tender staunchness.
"Yes, yes, I know. I know their hearts, and they are good. It is only that… I have wished to be alone in these times. I want to shut myself away from the world and never re-emerge. When I am alone, it makes me feel closer to them. I can sense their presence, in the way only a mother can."
"Were I a mother I would know," Meisar sighed.
"You will be. And it will bring you much joy. But similarly and as life is wont to bring, you will also take all this pain into your heart and carry it the rest of your life. Are you willing to accept that? Is your love that strong?"
"It is."
"Good," cooed Dis, her smile hazy but serene then, somehow. Her eyes were heavy with poppy-tea and ale.
"Then what shall I do?" Meisar asked quietly.
"Love Thorin. Care for him. Be his tender queen. That is all."
She nodded yes uncertainly. Dis forced herself to smile. "Good, then I will teach you everything you need to know. I need some task, some goal to distract me, for I have been absent the everyday of living so long."
"I have made a vow to Thorin, a sacred promise. And I make it to you thusly, sister," swore Meisar.
"Spoken as a true dwarf," Dis groaned. And when her head hit the pillow a moment later, she was already gone.
II
Freyda and Brynja slithered into her chamber in the morning and woke her, flinging back her bed-covers and shaking her eagerly, both drawing back in surprise and with their awkwardness at the sight showing, when they realized that the dwarf sleeping beside her was Dis. A great lump, she snored and did not stir from complete unconsciousness, save for her heavy breath.
"Your betrothed," whispered Brynja, giddily, "he wishes you dress yourself warmly and meet him at the first landing, down at the stair."
Meisar dressed quickly and donned a heavy cloak that Freyda brought her and covered Dis again tenderly before departing her chamber. She went to the stairway and was relieved to see Thorin waiting already, also heavily-clad. "Thorin..." she called, her curiosity weighing at her. The wedding was so soon and their clothing was yet to be furnished; Aroin, Emli, might search for her sick with anxiety. But it seemed a distant priority to the dwarf who waited for her there; she ached for his presence more than any obligatory duty to her women. Beneath her sturdy, modest cloak, heavy dark brown wool trimmed in goldenrod fur, she was clad the pink beaded gown with the high-necked shoulder cape she had donned scarcely three days before. It clashed with her hair, drawn up impeccably in her courtship braids as it was, and in spite of it, he was at once filled with love.
"Come. Let me kiss you my jewel." He lifted her and spun her lovingly, kissed her lips again with her arms clutching at his shoulders, his hand at the bottom of her back and one in the middle, pulling her tight to him. He placed his hands firmly about her waist and lifted her over the cracked bottom stair. And he held her then and spun her around, her arms clasped on his shoulders. To feel every give and bulge of his strong limbs beneath his clothes as he held her and squeezed her to him, and wonder how they might spend their first night together; she kissed his mouth caring not for Oliada's taut observation from the top stair. Tenderly, he placed her back on her feet.
"I wish to have a semblance of a private moment with you. Come above the mountain with me. There is a place we can go without distraction. The Blacklock will keep a close eye on everything around, except us."
They went above the mountain and out of it altogether, a docile pair of black ibexes waiting for them just beyond the gates ready and saddled; uphill they road along one of the great spurs of the mountain and stopped where it was still grassy in spite of the winter's chill. They walked up and stopped behind an overhang of rock. Thorin removed his cloak and set it upon the cold grass. He sat and bid Meisar come to do the same beside him. Her skirts pooled around her in heavy billows. Thorin withdrew from the small pack he carried a pair of cups and an insulated thermos of something that smelled hot and spiced. He poured mulled wine from it, steaming dramatically as it met the cold of the air, into both cups and offered her the first. As she drank, he lay sideways with his elbow crooked and his head tilted at an angle, resting his cheek upon the back of his hand, and watched the way she sipped it with practiced if imperfect grace, transfixed. "You are so beautiful, my queen. Radiant. I will ache for you all these days I am without your sight." He leaned up and toward her and offered a tender kiss to her plump, wine-stained lips and nuzzled the cold tip of his nose to hers as he drew away.
"Aye," she breathed with a orotund bittersweet wistfulness, before she pounced upon him with little of the stealth she had so desired in her heavy clothes, peaked with laughter kissing his lips, nose squished haphazardly to his. His wine cup rattled and spilled on the grass beside them, and neither cared anything for it.
"Then kiss me before the sun is risen again, my king. My Thorin..." She felt the heat and musk of his body radiate in the cold harsh light of the day that blew about them and lifted their hair and the hem of her skirt around her ankles. He sidled out from under her and pulled her upright on the grass. She was more beautiful to him in the harshening light of late autumn that ever she had been upon a summer's eye. The wind left her skin rosy as it had been when he first beheld her on the road. Dis and the dwarrowdams of the household dressed her well now, in velvets and good furs. But she was always his own, encapsulated forever as the dwarrowdam his eyes had first beheld that day upon the road.
"Kiss you I would, and never stop," he extolled with a gentle aching curve of a smile. "Soon I will not be apart from you for all my days, and soon... you will know the love I bear you fully." Meisar flopped back haplessly on the cold, winter-stiff grass in a state of bliss while he reached around under her skirts. Thorin kissed and clutched his hand against the bodice-girded midsection, stiff, but with the heat of her radiating stubbornly and with a primal determination through the layers of her clothing. His hand fumbled down, from the haphazard curve of hip in her bodice, to feel the outline of leg, and finally the hem of her skirt. A hand molded itself to a stocking-clad calf that quivered under his touch and thrust upward, like an awkward boy rolling in the hay with his sweetheart. "Just like a dwarf to tunnel under a mountain, even if it is a mountain of velvets and brocades and linens," she sighed.
"The most difficult of all mines to penetrate correctly," Thorin smirked hotly. His hand thrust upward again and stopped. A trembling warmth grazed the very tip of his one finger and he shuddered harshly, with her.
"Thorin Oakenshield!" breathed his queen, her cheeks aflame.
"I shall cease if you wish to wait... wholly," he apologized quietly, the hand withdrawing to caress the naked sliver of skin just above her knee. "I know the ardency of your ladies to see that there is no... true consummation... before the night of our wedding."
"As is proper they say," she sighed with a little smile, stroking his chin, the coarse hair static on the tip of her finger. "I give my very self to you, Thorin. I give you the only thing that is mine alone…"
"I will care for it tenderly, I swear it." While he kissed her chastely then still he craved to part the lace and velvet and lay kisses across her fair and hefting bosom, virginal in a partlett of pale Lake-Town lace. He settled for a rather unsatisfactory squeeze through the fine outer clothing and boned bodice beneath. He rested his head against her chest and relaxed in sync with her quieting, serene breath, the tender slowing of her heart beneath her clothes. She stroked his hair. "It is one of Mahal's mysteries, how we are guided to our Ones. But I know the nature of secret names now. I know that mine was Thorin. And I have carried you with me all my life, nameless. And I know mine was whispered to you, before you were born. I know it was. "
"Aye," he murmured. Safe in Tania's womb two centuries before, had her name penetrated that wall of flesh and blood? Meisar. The Creator himself had molded her in her own mother's womb to be his queen, to make her an orphan and a refugee as he was, who would come to Erebor's throne all the same.
His hand found its way beneath her heavy skirts again as he returned to plundering at her mouth with his own. He nearly bit the bottom half of her lip off as a jesting voice came rumbling in from behind.
"Thorin Oakenshield, I do believe your stubbornness may have saved you this time."
He sprung up and half flung Meisar away. Standing over them with one hand on his hip and another on a gnarled wooden staff was a tall figure clad fully in gray robes with a pointed matching hat. A wizard. He focused one eye at Meisar unthreateningly, gray beard long and knotted from the wind. "I trust this is the lady," said the wizard, more a question than a comment. He looked at Thorin and his expression seemed to expect an answer.
Thorin's face curled up petulantly. "Gandalf…"
"Gandalf..." Meisar looked upward at the wizard whose name she had known only through woeful anecdotes.
"Well, I do believe this is the lady then," echoed the wizard, a wry observatory quality about him. Gandalf nicked his lips like a pony gazing down upon her, as Thorin's hand slowly, provocatively, withdrew itself from beneath her skirts. "So the rumors are true then," he sighed, seeming satisfied, to Meisar's relief anyway, to have had these suspicions confirmed.
Thorin stood and so did Meisar, looking up at the rangy figure of Gandalf. His neck craned down at them. Thorin stood tautly. "I welcome you to my halls an esteemed guest... Gandalf," he offered. "You are of course, most welcome, at our wedding. Which shall be in a week's time from this day."
"I intend to stay at least as long," Gandalf responded jauntily, as if he had been well aware of his answer all along.
.
When night came and the merchants had shuttered their stalls, driven their carts away and retired to their hearths and homes Thorin walked quietly with Meisar on his arm through the quiet stone-buttressed sanctuary that was the Gallery of Kings. Their heavy shoes made the lightest of sounds of the floor, its once liquid gold hardened to a surface that seemed too perfectly smooth. For a dragon having burst forth from it anyway.
"My forebears. What would they think of me?" he mused with a definite somberness.
"I imagine they would be glad of your sight. Instead of a wicked dragon's. Did Smaug not once stalk through these halls, proclaiming himself king under the mountain?"
Thorin's arm withdrew from hers and reached upward to take the crown from his head. He tossed it disdainfully; it skipped twice across the gold floor with dispirited clinks. Meisar stooped and picked it up from the floor, her opaque reflection in the barely-illuminated gold like fire. The crown was heavy in her hand, unbearably so, and it seemed fitting, she thought. But when Thorin turned to walk away she turned him around by one arm and placed the crown back atop his head, adjusting it tenderly. He looked down upon her with a weighted gaze.
"You are a king and this is your kingdom. Our kingdom. Never forget that."
"Even if I wished it, I could not. My head felt the weight of this thing even in the Shire." He adjusted it again but made no move to take it off. "I am glad that you will bear this beside me, even if I wish I could shield you from everything that has brought its darkness onto this world."
A shadow seemed to move with stealth somewhere in the forest of stone that lined the tunnels and corridors about them, the shadows of great kings all gazing down. The shadow that moved was long and lean. Thorin sighed, knowing full well who shadowed them amongst the living at the moment. He turned to Meisar again, held her hands, kissed them. "My queen," he murmured. "My queen... how shall I live without you for these days to come?"