AUTHOR'S NOTES:

ABKÂN- "Awakening."

When Meisar woke again she was wrapped in the fur coverlet and more tenderly in Thorin's arms. She could feel warm breath in her hair traveling upwards to make a languorous tingle on her scalp, and a lumbering arm draped over her. The roll of Thorin's half-snoring breath resounded lightly against her back. To wake by his side was not so jarring in itself; nights on the road had accustomed her to his warmth, his smell, a protective arm draped across her. On the road there had been layers and layers and clothing, damp ground and the grobbling of the other dwarves, never this tranquil quiet, a soft bed, their nakedness and the low, ebbing soreness in her intimacy that seemed to smart again with every small move she made. But Thorin had stayed true to his promise, and their first night had been gentle and passionate. She moved so that her back rested closer to the dwarf's chest. There was a slow intertwining of limbs, a close embrace that he endeavored and seemed to ardently reach for, even in his sleep. Yet there was still a rigidness about her, even in her sleepy-headed bliss. He was still too new to her, his bareness. Thorin slept and groaned and stirred beside her as she curled into him. The hardness of him that had taken her had softened, and its languid heat lay pressed firmly to the crest of her bottom.

She had emerged into a semblance of fuller consciousness in the brief cessation of the clangor far below when the miners rotated shifts; it started again and let her know it was nine o'clock in the morning above the mountain.

"Is it morn, my jewel?" Plumes of hot breath warmed her again and the thick slats of the bed groaned lightly but amplified in the quiet morning. The air was fainter with the scent of old smoke, the fireplace all black and dormant on the other side of the room, leaving a chill in the sanctuary of stone. She turned her head toward his slightly and felt the warm bristles of his beard on her cheek, kissing her sleepily there from behind. He began to lay feverish kisses down her neck. He had held her like this in the night as they fell asleep, together, and safe, and warm. A soft, sleepy moan slipped past her lips, as Thorin bent to kiss her sleepy eyelids. She clutched the arm draped over her to her torso, her bottom that was as round and fat as a pumpkin pressed into his abdomen. The burn from his beard was all over her body, though it still tingled, like an itch newly scratched and soothed, rather than the irritating chafe she had half expected seeing the state of her skin, all pink and pursued. His seed felt sticky on the insides of her thighs. She studied the unfamiliar fluid, laced about her like battle scars long healed over, pearl-colored and searing. Their marital relations, if pleasing, were also quite messy. A messy business, as Emli had called it indeed; at least none had gotten in her hair, all wild and strewn over the bed as it was.

"It is morn, my darling," she laid back and sighed, happily snuggled against sheets and velvet pillows that smelled of him, his hair the day after a good wash and light sudor and a gentle ambrosial soap that had a hint of pine-tar to it, and smoke, leather and iron that seemed permanently ingratiated into his skin. "Aye it is morn," she repeated, but was utterly content never to leave their bed again.

He could not be sure what time it was in spite of her surety, but they would have a few days to themselves now, unmolested by the outside world. In the dwarven tradition, forty days were set aside following a marriage for the newlyweds to join themselves and learn each other as husband and wife, and they would perform no work and have no guests during that time except in times of great necessity. A reborn king did not have that particular luxury. A few days' time would have to do. He would not leave her side for a moment of them.

Between Thorin and their warm bedding she felt little chance of ever being cold again, until he rolled onto his back and pulled the heavy top-cover back from them, the sheets speckled in blood underneath. A drying ribbon of it on her inner thigh. Her nipples proud and curled in the light chill of the morning, brush of beard-burn all about their peripherals and down her torso. She furled inward under his close study like the withdrawing figure she had once been, and would always retain a hint of, he imagined. Her nakedness and the tangible scarlet emblem of their oneness still felt raw and surreal to her. There was no road whore to speak of now, not from anyone's lips, now that she was Thorin's wife. But there was nothing to prove, not to anyone. Whether Thorin had been her first or her hundredth, he was hers and she was his. Laid on her side again with her back to him, his fingertips circled the little dimples that dipped parallel just above the curve of her waist. He patted her bottom, so delectably fat it was. He rested his large, heavy hand on her hip, cheek turned up slightly toward him begging to be kissed. She extended a hand to play with the end of a lock of his long hair that fell over her cheek with his kiss. Their fingertips grasped on the other hand, his arm bent over her head and index finger extending, running across the inside of her knuckles, her own languidly stroking the calloused skin between his fingers, swooping up and out along their lengths.

"Could it be just like this forever, Thorin?"

"It will be," he promised in a deep, serene murmur, the caress of his baritone indicating the level of his usual seriousness, and to such a promise no less. "Hikhthuzul."

She turned over and rested her head to his bare chest, her hand to his heart. The latter he wrapped in his own and caressed the knuckles lightly again, the dry warmth of her palm penetrating the coarse covering of his chest hair. Snuggled under his chin, he buried his face into her hair and exhaled, serenely.

"I would experience you with every fiber of my body and soul, again and again, just like this. I am yours now, Thorin, and you are mine, in true." The dwarf whose battle-hardened body had treated hers with such tenderness and consideration that night even a trembling bard amongst men could not compare.

Her fingertips wandered up his jawline and stroked the dark, close-cut beard. "Will you let it grow now, my darling?"

"So long that I will tuck it into my belt, should Mahal should give me as many years."

"A hundred more I would have with you. And your beard." She kissed his shoulder, and they shared then the first deep kiss of the morning as husband and wife, his tongue wrapping itself idly with hers, like a pair of lovers dancing to a torpid viol. She moved so that her body was pressed to his side even closer, her leg bent and thigh draped over the top of his, shifting from the place she had lain in the night, and Thorin divested her of her maidenhood. He eyed the crimson flower on the sheet, rueful. "It is a woman's special burden," she assured, the smile on her heart-shaped mouth coy but giving a particular prominence to the flushed apples of her cheeks. "Worry yourself not for it. You made me very happy last night."

"Did I hurt you?"

She kissed him sweetly at the juncture of his earlobe and his jaw-line. "Only a little."

"I would take a flogging myself before I hurt you, even a little." He squeezed one of her hands in his and lifted it to plant a lingering kiss on her fingers.

"A flogging? Oh, let us have no more of those. Or wargs. Or orcs." Tracing the scar on his chest with a finger she kissed it lightly then. She read the pain and the fierce blood-boiling essence of war, not here or now but in a distant past that pooled in his harsh blue eyes like an endless winter. He would always be wounded, and she might never be as open as she ached to be sometimes, even now, but they would be happy with each other, and that was worth fighting for.

"Promise me," she implored, rolling onto her back again. They both lay as such now, supine, quietly studying each other's uncovered bodies, familiar, but entirely new now to each other. "Promise me that you will never apologize for loving me. You have brought me the truest happiness I have ever known, or could have expected. To be loved at all as I wanted to be loved all these years, much less made a queen in the process. And to love you as much in return.. I do with all my heart."

"I will promise you that," he smiled. "An easy one for me to keep. If you will promise me that I will never know another day without you."

"Indeed. Though I am afraid, adyum, that you may soon find me insatiable." She was stretched like a tomcat and grinning, parting her legs just a little.

"Insatiable?" he repeated, nipping her bottom lip.

"Yes. I want you beside me always. I never want to be apart from you."

They rested together again with her head against him, the hair at his chest tickling cheeks. Her fingers parsed through and parted it like waves in a grain field. "I have longed to love for so long, Thorin, and longed to be loved. Did you ever stop to think of it, in all those years? I have thought of little else though none would ever know or suppose it."

"Not often," he confessed. "Life was a fight in those days and all the days since, for sustenance, much less ardors of the heart. Did I think of my Firebeard princess? Sometimes. But all along I was waiting on the wrong one of those. I knew it from the moment I laid eyes on you, my beloved, my sweet, sweet ursul, ghivashel."

"We have spent the better parts of our lives fighting, in grief for those we loved and have lost. Now comes a new time. Gamlith."

"Gamlith," he repeated, agreeably, but with a dark wistfulness. Restlessly she circled a finger over his right nipple, drawing down to press back the covers, to discover the source of the stirring beneath them. His manhood glistened with their shared wetness and a thin scar of her blood. She studied the sated length laying heavily up upon his belly.

"It is strange to know another this way," she sighed, placing a single fingertip into the hard skin of his sternum and moving downward slowly. "Strange but wonderful."

"Jundal-Dum," he murmured, hooded eyes dipping to her womanhood, the warm place pressed to his hip drawing away. Opened Halls.

"Yes, but there is plenty more to delve at, is there not?" Determined to find all of his sweet spots she nuzzled into his chin. She decided she would work him over one delectable region at a time. He was quite sensitive at a spot on his throat just under the chin, where beard was sparse over skin and oft neglected thusly. The first night of their marriage had shown her aptly enough that males were easily pleased by the smallest of touches, to the most intimate. There were many small ridges and peaks about his skin, and she was determined that none would be left unexplored. She made her way down his broad, hairy torso and trembled with a deep, feverish heat the closer she came to the juncture between his thighs where he was stirring aptly. It took him by a pleasant surprise to feel a palm slide with a pluckiness to her touch down his belly and over the coarse hair between his legs, an open palm becoming the grasp of fingers, distinctly female in their softness, around the base of him, pressing downward against the heated skin.

"Is this… right?" she said, not quite sure how to touch in the metamorphosis from sated to hard. He felt hot on her palm, so thick and heavy. She had never touched a male before, never experienced the surreal manner in which the pliant flesh made itself hard in her hand. It was so large and thick she scarcely comprehended how her body had sheathed it fully that night. She stroked it again and again, almost gleeful in her ministrations. He guided her hand over the shaft, cleaving tight his fingers over hers. She grasped close to the tip and watched the sheathe roll back and forth with every motion of her hand, the skin of it taut, and then ruched once again. Smooth blue lines trailed up and down the velvety, thick shaft, translucent beneath the pinkish skin.

"And these…?" She moved her hand away from the hardened member to the round, heavy sacs below it. His jewels felt sensitive to the point where painful lust fired in them when she reached a palm down to cradle them, and with a fingertip circled the sphere of one, and pressing into the little divide between them made him quiver. "Mizimûnh."

"Aye, they are very sensitive," he exhaled sharply.

She had sought to learn the intimate geography of him, as he had, in the valley of her womanhood, its forested ridges aflame. His was a starless night, a forest scented in sharp, clean musk and virile longing. As it had quenched and coated her fiery topography, now his forest was dusted in a wet snow, a most formidable place to slip, and fall.

It jerked and pulsed in one frenzied motion and ejected an opaque pearly substance all over his belly and he let out a sudden sharp groan.

"Oh... I am... sorry," she gasped, drawing away with a suddenness.

"Do not apologize my queen. It happens... quickly sometimes, with males."

"Yes," she fumbled over her words, sitting up, with her legs tucked under her daintily. "Yes... I was so told. Emli said... you would always be ready to go delving."

"A small amount of rest may be required between delvings but yes, it is the truth of it mostly." He exhaled sharp and almost breathlessly again. "Shall we share a bath, my queen? This has been a messy pursuit."

They emerged from their bed however reluctantly, Meisar wrapping herself in the fur coverlet but Thorin being unmotivated at the prospect of any covering at all in the moment. He stopped before the full-bodied mirror near the bathing chamber door, pressing her shoulders and her back into his chest, dormant member curved lightly to her spine, the pebbles of his nipples at her shoulder blades, lightly brushing her skin. "Look at us," he said, half a command. "It is a splendid sight. You and I."

Meisar looked at them in the mirror, their bodies proud and standing and pressed together, starkly naked; she had let the fur drop to the floor. Meisar was plump and strong and supple in all the places where he was rough sinew and thick bone, hard and cut like iron. Much smaller she was than he, but perfectly molded to him. Pale and freckled where he was swarthy, composed of charmingly stubby legs where his limbs were slightly lithe for a dwarf's but no less powerful; his forearm alone was as thick as her calf, and she was not a slender dwarf-woman by any stretch of the imagination. All of her hair slung messily over one shoulder, curling around her knee like a vine. And his beautiful dark locks, covering broad shoulders, the way the ends of it curled just slightly. "Look at us, my darling. We were made for each other." His fingertip circled the bumps of both her hipbones simultaneously from behind.

"Aye, we are a ravishing sight together, aren't we? I like how we look when we are together." The way her eyes roamed up and down his body, so coy in the mirror, was intimidated a bit and fascinated together by him.

He led her into the bath adjoining their bedchamber, where the springs flowed deep from in the mountain, steaming, into a sunken tub in its center. She waded into the water after him, its rich mineral scent rising in steaming plumes. The heat of it electrified he soreness between her legs but quickly soothed it. Thorin dipped himself quickly over his head into the water and buoyed back up, all of him dripping and gleaming with little droplets and rivulets suddenly. She walked to him with hair trailing and fanning out behind her on the placid surface of the water, coming to stand before him. Placing her hands on his shoulders, their torsos brushed in the hot water.

"Is a hot bath soothing to my bride?" Thorin's hard fingertips ran down her sides gently, watching the way her nipples softened then tightened up again, mahogany to rose and back again.

"Very much," she nodded.

His big hands ladled hot water over her shivering body. And found that her fingernails had left crescents in his shoulder-blade, from holding so tightly to him when she was laying under him in the night. "Have I hurt you, my king?" She kissed his bare shoulder and rested against it, taking a step backward to stand just a little higher; the tub was comprised of several stairs on its far end. His skin was dwarvish iron and Elvish silk, where it was not claimed by that goodly thick hair. His upper arms were smooth, and his shoulders, and most of his back. The thighs that she now sat astride were lightly dusted at their strong tops, and his collarbone up to the middle of his throat was smooth and bare, until it met his beard at the upper part of his neck. Long wet hair clung to his neck and shoulders.

"Your braids," she murmured. "They've been frayed in the night." She threaded the wet strands in her fingers; Thorin closed his eyes and savored the nimble work of them. Her chest brushed against his, all the thick whorls of hair drenched. She finished his braids, re-clasping them, setting them in front of his shoulders and running her hands down his chest slowly, her eyes wide like a doe's.

"Might we relax a bit? We can sit, just over there," Thorin's hands came to place themselves at the small of her back, ripples of water cascading around them as he drew her over to a submerged bench on the far side of the tub. He lifted her chin from where she had lowered her head, studying the lapping of the water around them, the rush of it between their bodies in the otherwise tranquil pool. She turned and settled her back against his chest, immersed in the water together. He dipped his hand into the water and caressed the soft ridge above her navel that formed her little belly podge, grazing the tender bud with a fingertip, and when he came to her taut entrance, his fingers drew a thin sigh from her. "Are you sore, mizimel?" His lips were on her shoulder, beard tickling her skin. His fingers found the tender grove again, parted the soft folds and made tiny, careful circles around her pearl.

"It is only a little tender," she assured him.

"I promise it will never hurt again, my jewel." He paused and kissed her shoulder lightly. "Among men they say, where things grow, that the sweetest fruits must ripen on the vine a long while before they should be plucked. I think, my lady, last night you were at the zenith of your sweetness."

"I rather thought myself a withering old maid, or at least I did. You have showed me it is not too late after all."

"Last night was the happiest of all my life," he whispered. "It is never too late. Any fruit that still lingers on the tree is edible, my treasure." He reached for the brick of sandalwood soap that was set on the side of the tub, and a great concave shell. "A gift from a merchant who traveled by the sea," Meisar explained, holding the shell like a scoop, pouring a light cascade of water down Thorin's chest, watching the droplets cling and wring out of his chest hair. "It was given to me when the dwarves came to call upon me in my chamber, last week. I asked Dis to bring it to your bath." Thorin lathered his palms in the fragrant soap and ran his hands over her shoulders, her neck, massaging each. He squeezed her lathered breasts in both hands and pressed indelicate lips to the curve of her neck, tasting the bitter soap. Her nipples between his fingers tightened and grew dark.

"And the happiest of mine," she keened. He stood and let the water cascade down the broad expanse of his back, out of the ends of his hair which hung just below the wings of his shoulder-blades wet. He summoned her with a polite nod, taking one of the fluffy towels to set about his waist. He eyed her emerging, squeezing her long red hair one section at a time; such beautiful abundant hair, he wondered how she had ever cared for its whole length by herself, determined that she would not wrangle with it alone again.

When she emerged back into the bedchamber, he set a warm, dry blanket around her shoulders and wrapped it tight about her. He had swiftly rekindled the fire and pulled her over to its side. Meisar opened it stubbornly and drew him quickly into its warmth, resting her head against his neck, their slick bodies once mercurial from the heat of the tub quickly growing cool and damp. After their bath she sat him before the fire and slicked her palms with fragrant oil, combing through his damp, tangled hair with her fingers to give his tresses a fine sheen, before combing it all, one strand at a time. She kissed the marriage braid that she re-plaited reverently.

"Your turn," he nodded, pressing her by the shoulder to turn her back toward him. Meisar wrapped herself in the fur-lined blanket again and sat down before him. "From the moment I laid eyes on you I adored your red hair. They say it is lucky amongst dwarves."

"Lucky?"

"A warrior with flaming red hair is said to be the fiercest in battle. You didn't know my cousin Dain but I think he proved that legend true, in his time."

"And a dwarrowdam? What luck is there for a redheaded lady in this world?"

He separated the strands and started at the bottom of one, with her jeweled comb. "More likely to wed and bear the new generation," he smiled, gently chuckling.

She thought of Emli, of Bira, and of Lagert, who had a head full of chestnut hair with highlights like a red sunset, and could offer no protest to his assertion at the moment.

"Shall we eat or... relax a bit?" Thorin queried, when he had finished with her hair, braided it in a loose plait.

"I feel I should make a brief visit," she suggested in a sigh. "To one who has shown me more kindness and comfort in all this process, in spite of her own hardship of mind."

"Aroin will surely be buzzing around her chambers. A hornet, that one," Thorin persuaded her with a gentle laugh.

"Yes but I should see Dis. I want to," she countered with a small grin. "I shall return to you before you even know I am gone."

"Every second I am without you I am loathe, my queen." Meisar hugged the fur around her and searched for a set of suitable clothing, chemise and stockings tugged out of the armoire, with her backside presented and playfully bent toward Thorin as she went about her task. "Let me help you," Thorin offered with a youthful eagerness. "With the... stocking part, and your... contraption," his eyes panned to the bodice lying across the velvet seat along with his clothes, its stays all in disarray, the loathsome thing.

"I shall be in no need of the bodice, or the wretched contraption as you say. No, I prefer something I can slip easily in and out of," she grinned. She pressed on a long loose gown of brandywine velvet, a gift from Freyda and Gyda. "Would you put my stockings on for me, love?"

Meisar sitting on the bed, he lifted her foot so that her leg stretched at the knee and wiggled her toes as his beard touched them. He kissed all along the top of it, nuzzling her ankle bone. Finally he put the stocking on with an uncanny delicateness, sliding the practical dark wool up her leg, both hard palms squeezing and caressing her calf, and fixing the top of the stocking just above her knee with its little leather ribbons.

"I promise I will come back in a moment." She stepped outside the chamber door and was startled by a singular presence rising to attention from a chaise lounger she was resting on just outside the door.

"Oliada, how long have you been sitting there?"

"Since last night. Protect my lady anywhere she goes," the Blacklock replied. "Aroin insist."

"Yes, yes, I should have not been surprised. Well… I suppose stone walls are thick… pray I did not disturb you."

"I hear everything," the Blacklock said quickly, tight-lipped.

"Oh…" Meisar blushed hard, Oliada entirely without jest as usual. But the dwarrowdam raised her narrow eyes and sighed, looking down again with a pang of uncertainty, then up, meeting Meisar's eyes with an uncommon familiarity. "My lady, my queen, sounded-"

"Every bit the inexperienced bride?"

"Happy. My lady sounded happy."

.

Meisar called on Dis in her chambers while Oliada waited in the antechamber, in the company of no other than Aroin, who praised her dutifulness fawningly and was already prying her for details before Meisar was even out of earshot.

Aroin answered the door and put her hands on her hips and lowered her head with lip put out arrogantly. "Ah, what a surprise, my queen. I did not expect I would see you outside your chambers until the end of the forty days, or in your case, four. What a pity. The flowering days of marriage are a beautiful thing which should be prolonged."

"Aye they should. Alas, my lady Aroin, a king is not afforded so great a luxury. Is the princess awake?" Meisar asked.

"Yes!" Dis called her in happily from the other side of the ajar bedchamber door, a drunken tinge about her voice. She entered Dis's bedchamber to find her still in bed in her nightgown, her dark hair all loose over the bedclothes. "Come sit by my side, sister."

Meisar sat on the bed.

"I did not expect to see you this day. You were only married but a few hours past!"

"I wanted to see you, Dis. To thank you. To... tell you how loved I feel by both of you."

"Pray tell me then, how do you find marriage so far? It is a different love that we as dwarf-women bear to each other, if I am not mistaken." One thick black eyebrow arched itself, demanding an answer.

"A thing I could not express the happiness of, dear sister. Not in words."

"It was done then?"

Meisar blushed away from Dis's curious, maternal eyes. "Oh Meisar, when you make that face you are every bit the spring maiden, in spite of what anyone says. You have the look of a blushing bride if ever there was one. Indeed, there is something different about you. You look... happy. Your skin glows with it."

"Yes," Meisar sighed. "I am so very happy. And yes, it was... done."

"And it was…?" Dis was smiling girlishly, a light about her aged, weary face returning some semblance of the joyfulness of youth to her. Her stubborn beauty had survived all the woes of exile, the dwarves of Erebor always said. How radiant she must have been, as a bride, a mother twice over.

"It was… it was…"

Hikhthuzul- Always

Ursul- Fire

Ghivashel- Treasure of All Treasures

Gamlith- Era that is New

Mizimûnh- The (Male) Jewels