Snow fell upon the mountain in the morning, closing the road from Dale and coating the terraces of Erebor several inches deep. The children of Dale played on the slopes close to the gate on sleds, dwarven children coming up onto the terraces to rend the sticky snow into balls and toss it about. Children of the latter days of exile; such moments in Erebor were in no danger of being rendered trivial. Their mothers, bundled tight in their winter cloaks, cupped their hands about hot drinks and kept a watchful eye.
Ribbons of black and white smoke from the forest of chimneys at Dale rose and knit together in the air. A mixture of wood smoke and the acrid thickness of coal scented the air. A train of dwarves newly arrived from Ered Luin had arrived before the snows, a wagon train a hundred wains deep queued outside the gates of Dale, each bed filled to the brim with Blue Mountain coal for the furnaces of the city. A few dwarven merchants braved the icy roads and billowing snows with their trading carts, determined to offer hot food and drink and provisions to their dwarven kinfolk downhill. Up along the facade of Erebor, masons retreated into the city from their posts as the scaffolding and stone grew slick with ice, and the sentries, in their full armor, buckled at the knees trying not to slip with every step they took.
"You were right," Dis smiled, the contrast of her skin to her black winter cloak stark. But she was smiling into the snap of the air, taking in the smell of the snow, and the weeping rings about her eyes had retreated for the first time in several days. Though she wore her rubies in full and the same cumbersome headdress and veil, underneath the cloak she donned a gown of cobalt blue with a petticoat of deep violet. The folds of her skirts moved with her like the rolling waters of a cold sea. Meisar had begun to interpret her color choices as an indicator of mood, and felt confident of accuracy as of late. Blue was erratic, but purple was good.
"Was I?" Meisar asked, bemused. The air was numbing her face along with her mind. But Dis's morning walks were important. She wondered if Thorin might take to the cold with her one of these mornings but had not summoned the will to broach it.
"You were. You said it would snow," reminded Dis. "Gandalf did tell me you had a strange knack for predicting the weather. An odd trait for a dwarf but a useful one."
"Suited better for a time of exile I think, not when we're safe under this, oh!" Meisar yelped as the wind swept an gargantuan bloom of snow toward the mountain, whipping and coating all on the terrace. The babes huddled against mothers' skirts and the sentries braced. Meisar and Dis held close to each other, descending down the stairway back into the foyer of the city. The sharp smell of apple cider was omnipresent there. Everyone was selling it before the apples in the stores exceeded their viability.
"Waste not want not," Dis observed with a wizened grin, her black hair entirely white with snow. With a dearth of coffee in the marketplaces, apple cider was the drink of choice to warm the innards in the first biting days of winter. Variances on its recipe were sold in every stall- ciders peppered in cinnamon or mulled with strong spirits, or poured in savory sauces over pork kebabs at Donbur's cart. They ate and dwarves came and greeted them, three haggard fellows mulling by the king's emerging retinue bowing before them. A black-headed dwarf with a missing thumb kissed Dis's hand and Meisar's in turn.
"Ye shall be written in the great histories of our people, mother to two of the bravest that e'er there were, uzbadnatha," he praised.
"Never was there a mother whose pride and grief were woven so together," she managed a gracious smile at him. "Nay. I suppose I am amongst many mothers who lived through such times as we have. But for their sacrifices do we make a worthy effort of this life. Otherwise all is in vain."
"Mahal keep ye, good princess, and my queen the same," the dwarf, called Vestri, enunciated, rising and bidding his gang to bow to the dwarrowdams again, shifting on their feet and watching Thorin's retinue.
"I am sorry," Meisar murmured, discomfited. "It must be a terrible burden to hear it so many times."
Dis squeezed Meisar's bare hand through her glove. "We dwarf women are especially defined by our losses- of home, of our possessions, our families. Our strength is our ability to endure."
"Do you believe that?" Meisar asked.
"No," Dis answered quickly. "But I am still here. And that surely must count for something." Thorin's sister gave a smile suddenly. "Look and see now. My brother comes from council to take the airs."
"Aye, he does." She hid her face except for a sliver of her orange hair under the hood of her cloak, grinned at him from across the broad corridor. He dipped his head to her, so regal in his dark extant robe, even with his head bare of the crown. Dwalin and Balin were with him, and Ori with his parchment, struggling to balance a well of ink in his elbow. Dwarves swarmed about them from their carts and stands, offering baked dough filled with apples and glazed and samples of their ciders, meat pies and hot soups, all of which were graciously accepted by a hungry retinue.
A sudden desire for his presence, alone in their chambers, piqued. A swelling and dense wet heat and a feeling of fullness in her lower parts almost made her sway from her stance, feigning a slipper spot in the stair to hold tighter to Dis's arm. The look of Thorin from afar, his regality, his handsome quiet strength, even were he not her husband and herself still a lone woman of no standing, would have weakened her legs beneath her.
.
Thorin and his synod had reached a balcony overlooking the bottom-most cellar by the time he realized three dwarves had been following them all the way from the doors of Thror's Hall. He spun around to face them, soberly, all three bowing unevenly. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Dwalin's mouth twitching.
"M'king, we wondered if we might borrow Mister Dwalin's company," the stocky one with the missing thumb proposed. By his side was another with a sliver for a forehead and two thick straw-colored braids hanging over his collar, an oafish quality about him, the least of all threatening. The third however could match Dwalin for the minacious quality of his demeanor.
"Do you know these fellows, brother?" Balin's white brow arched tentatively at the trio. Vigg glared back at the old dwarf, daring him to offer insult.
"Aye, I do," Dwalin answered, plainly.
"We'd like to invite Mister Dwalin to our place for some... talk," Vigg addressed Thorin directly.
"Talk?" repeated Thorin.
"Aye," gulped Vestri, the de-thumbed one, sending eyes from one of his company to the next. They bobbed their heads in agreement.
"You will keep in your mind that any unnecessary violence is not permitted within the laws of this city," Thorin reminded them. The one with the beaten nose had a glowering look to him.
"O'course, m'king," the rudest-looking one, Vigg, assured, bowing dramatically.
"We are Dwalin's friends," added the blonde, Lofar, stupidly. "We'd not do nothing."
"You must be kin to Freyda then. Brothers?" Thorin inquired with a polite suspicion.
"Sum'fin of that likeness," Vestri replied, smartly.
"And you require the presence of my first lieutenant?" Thorin questioned again, in earnest.
"Not require, majesty. Just invitin'," Lofar came back.
"Dwalin," Thorin said at last, offering a permissive nod. "If you wish."
"Aye, shall return soon though," Dwalin assured, reaching to give Thorin's shoulder a pat. He could see Dwalin's nostrils struggling not to flare in frustration, the slim line of vein on his neck beginning to stand up with worry. Lofar and Vestri both looked impressed by their familiarity, king and soldier; only Vigg's expression was unchanging in its daggers.
Balin summoned a sentry to him as soon as Dwalin was out of sight. "Follow them; see that there is no funny business."
"Aye," Thorin agreed, waving off the sentry to his duty with a flick of the wrist suggesting he be quick about it. "Just to be certain."
.
The nook behind a line of the smaller forging stalls was stocked with gaudy chalices reminiscent of Thror's tastes, steins and wooden cups all scattered over a table as if a whirlwind had dropped on it. Small barrels of mead and cider were stacked haphazardly in one corner, beat-up chairs covered in hides. The air sweltered from the heat of the great forges nearby and left smell stagnant and distinctly male- sweat, burnt hair and skin, boot-mold, drying beer painstakingly vaporizing and far staler gasses yet (and worse yet than he had known even Donbur to issue). Hepti sat picking a blister on his thumb, cursing.
"Ah, ye brought the lad," Hepti boomed, smiling at Dwalin, welcoming. He belched a noxious offering of hospitality thence. His chair issued a grating moan under his weight.
"This is our private establishment. Make yourself at home," offered Lofar, making a beeline past him for the cider barrel. "Sit anywhere you please. Rest those feet. Gotta be tired pattering 'round the king all day."
Dwalin sat in the shabby chair that was behind him, prickly with its boar-hide upholstery.
"We don't see you down in these parts much, Dwalin," Vigg observed, taking a seat across from Dwalin, putting his feet up on the equally beaten ottoman that was between their two chairs, stretching his legs against it so that it almost touched Dwalin's knees.
"King's lieutenant got more important things 'an our neck o' the mountain going about," Hepti grunted, and it wasn't entirely discernible whether it was meant as a taunt.
"So you've not got the hand for smithing work then?" questioned Vigg again, the vertical scar on his lip twitching.
"These arms say otherwise," Lofar remarked, flicking Dwalin's bicep.
"M'a soldier," Dwalin murmured. "M'not unknown to an anvil though. Kept these arms hard in exile," he gave the motley quartet a standoffish glare, crossing his arms so they flexed. Only Lofar seemed the least impressed.
"Good then. Need a strong arm ye will to handle Freyda," said Vestri, steepling his work-scarred fingers under his chin, the ragged beard un-plaited, the stump of the missing thumb glaring.
"No dwarf woman needs handlin'," Dwalin countered.
"Oh but they do," said Hepti suddenly.
"S'pose ye'd know," Dwalin replied sarcastically to the potbellied dwarf, his body odor an onerous thick haze in the still air.
"Get 'im one of the good steins, Lofar. And fill it up nicely," ordered Vestri. The blonde dwarf did as ordered, bringing Dwalin mead in a chalice studded in some exotic stone or another all over. He drank it thankfully against the oppressive heat in the room.
Vigg stuck his feet out again. "Question is now, what are YOU going to do, Dwalin? Are you goin' t'wear the ax on yer back or the bodice laces?"
"'Do 'bout what?" Dwalin asked, ignoring the last part purposefully, to his own chagrin.
"Freyda. Are you daft, son?" sneered Vigg impatiently.
"We are courtin'," Dwalin shrugged, stiffly. "What else of it?"
"Everybody knows that," Hepti shot back. "But see, we've known Freyda far longer than the likes of you. She could best Lofar in a fight were she in one of 'er moods."
"Hey!" protested Lofar in a indignant hiccup, already stiff-drunk.
"Alas, she's a lady all the same," Vigg went on, before Dwalin could protest. "Lady-dwarves are different than us, even one with a mean handle like your darling smithy there," Vigg went on. "Been watchin' you. You've got to do better, Mister Dwalin."
"You don't know what yer talking about, lad," Dwalin folded his arms, defensively.
"Ye kenning to marry 'er?" Vestri demanded suddenly.
"Aye, should it come to the time. Not that it's any business of yours."
"The time is sooner 'er than later," advised Hepti more gently.
"Freyda's been a bundle o' nerves worse than that old wound up brother of Nori's. Got a feeling it's not her duty to the queen keeping her on 'er toes so," Lofar said.
"How do you know Nori?" Dwalin asked sharply. No dwarf east of the Blue Mountains (or west or south or north of them for that matter) had ever met Nori under virtuous circumstances.
"Does it matter?" whined Lofar.
"Enough!" Vigg finally snarled. "Whatever's gnawin' at Freyda's mind it's your doing. Don't know how but I know, and when I say I look out for Onar, I look out for Freyda too. All or none, ain't that right?" Vigg leaned back in his chair, looking to the others for agreement, which they gave, heartily, staring Dwalin down.
"Aye," Dwalin almost swallowed the word.
"Onar is my best of friends. He likes you. But I'll be the one to tell you the truth."
"And what might that truth be?" Dwalin sat back again, meeting his eyes, unblinking. Vigg was smaller and narrower than him in body by inches and then some, but in that rude sort of gumption wholly made up for it. A quiet meanness like a wolf glared back at him.
"You, Dwalin, best of company to Thorin Oakenshield himself, would know what it means to be a true friend. Hard to be a true friend to a king, 'specially..." Vigg began after a silence that a match lit in the air could have detonated it lay so tensely over the small nook.
"King of stone indeed. And gold," Lofar remarked behind him, to Vigg's annoyance. He backhanded him across the jowls, Lofar retreating like a kicked hound. The steins he had emptied kept him assuredly on the floor.
"To see the worst and the best beside each other, aye, and keep our faith," Dwalin muttered, the memory of a dark throne hall and the lashes of war-cries beyond the stone entering his head, unwanted. He dug his nails into his palms.
Vigg put his arms behind his head, showing more scars on the underside of his triceps in his tunic with the sleeves hacked off. He ran his finger over the middle of his top lip. "Do you know how my lip came to be like this?"
"Freyda do it?" Dwalin shot back, unflinching.
Vigg's expression was equally as unmoved as un-amused. "Onar gave me this scar for stealing his cake one night. Back on the road West o' Dunland or so, years far before now. Split me lip right to the nose wi' the knife he was kenning to slice that cake with. Yet still I bear him the love I would a brother, or close as it'll come, seein' me own brother long dead."
Something in Dwalin's chest eased toward Vigg, with his clobbered nose and lowering eyes. He understood one thing, bless the brute for that.
"What sorta cake was it?" Dwalin inquired, no hint of jest to be had.
"Apple cinnamon. Honey glaze."
Dwalin leaned forward on his metal-girded knuckle. "Then ye got what ye deserved," Dwalin said, the laughter of the other three sputtering to life and then ringing out from all five of them for minutes afterward.
.
Meisar retreated to Dis's chambers where she helped her smooth out the strays of her snow-strewn coiffure, set her rubies again.
"I am having teas and cakes brought this afternoon. Bring your ladies. I welcome you all," Dis offered, a brightness returning to her eyes in the slightest flicker.
"Of course. I will summon them."
"Please," Dis repeated, her eyes suddenly raw with need again. "Don't forget. I much desire the company."
.
In her own chamber Meisar let her hair out in front of the vanity mirror, her fingers losing themselves in the tidal wave of falling tresses, tangling, to her irritation. She plucked her fingers loose and went for the jeweled comb, the one Thorin had given as a wedding gift, and loved to painstakingly comb her hair at night with.
"Oh, let me! Let me!" pleaded Brynja giddily. She hadn't even seen her come in. Brynja pattered over, her neck wound in a bright green scarf, too rustic a piece to have been worn with her canary-and-pear-green patterned gown with the exaggerated blooms of sleeves, the circlet of diamond set atop messily braided hair only slightly off-color from the shade of her dress. She still chewed her nails but when she took Meisar's comb up, she could see her hands were white as pearls even at the tips of her fingers, the coal dust not even several layers of skin deep holding, it seemed.
"You are looking well today, Brynja," Meisar said gently. Her better clothes, her good living, had granted her a new sort of glow, but her earthiness, her winsome youth, would not come away as easily as coal dust. She held the comb in her hands, contemplating the extensive length of Meisar's hair in her hands. There was a dull pain in her stomach and in her head, but Brynja's company she felt glad for, even if her mind was somewhere else, a thing she could not say, not even to another dwarrowdam also married.
"How ye blush, my queen! Yer skin is glowin'," cooed Brynja suddenly, the knowing grin of female knowledge and kinship written into her kind, innocent face.
Meisar sat up a bit straighter as the pain in her middle inexplicably dulled. "I truly thought it might be the time. I felt it," she told Brynja with a sheepish grin. "These past days, weeks really, have been... active." The words came out of her like a dam overwrought.
"Active?"
She met Brynja's bright, girlish eyes in the mirror, her own utterly lacking their usual harshness, all coyness now, more akin to Brynja's way of expressing. "I never thought I could be so enamored in sharing another's bed. I suppose you might know what that's like."
Meisar touched her face, the lines at her forehead disagreeable to her. "I am afraid my king did not marry a maid in the flower of her youth though," she lamented quietly. Meisar gazed up at Brynja's face in the vanity mirror again. So young, her beard fluffy, her eyes still childlike in their earthy, trusting gaze. She ran her fingers in close examination through the heavy sheaf of hair she was holding. "Not a white hair to be found," Brynja said sweetly. "I think you've plenty of time still."
"I hope, I felt... oooh..." Meisar bent at the waist with the familiar unpleasant tinge in her stomach, sharp and immediate this time, then the first viscous flood.
"'afâna?" Brynja murmured awkwardly, drawing the comb away.
"Yes. It is."
"In mine me'self. Feel like a babe in swaddlin' all wrapped up," admitted Brynja, awkwardly, as Aroin, the last person either wanted to see at that particular moment, strode through the door as if the chambers were her own.
"Milady don't feel quite so well," Brynja stood to explain, timidly.
"What do you mean? Speak clearly, girl," demanded Aroin. Brynja's eyes lowered themselves to the floor, picked back up only when Meisar shot Aroin a glare of sudden disapproval. Brynja shuffled over and whispered something to Aroin, to Meisar's dismay.
Aroin only smiled crisply. "I've come to invite you to afternoon tea with the lady princess now. But I suppose we'll be going to her chambers anyway," she said, crossing her arms with a matronly authority about her. "By the average measurement of the moon time did the tradition come to be. It is the way of things. It is written by the tongues of a dozen generations of dwarf women, as good as stone," Aroin prattled on stoutly. She opened the door the linen bunk carved into the wall and plucked a bolt of flannel that was tucked in its back, handed it officiously to the arriving chambermaids. "Come now, majesty. It is the tradition. I promise you will not mind having but women about you in this time," she still went on, turning to Brynja dismissively again. "Bring the queen some moon tea if you don't mind."
"I can get it myself," Meisar protested, groggily. "Brynja has been of enough good service in fixing my hair," she glared accusingly at Aroin, in a sour mood already for the pain in her belly, signaling its emptiness. Aroin ignored her languid displeasure and wrapped her extant robe and cloak efficiently about her shoulders.
"Her highness shall be happy of such constant company. Bring your ladies if you wish. It shall be a fine time of sisterhood amongst us for these seven days," trilled Aroin.
"Seven days? I should think it not necessary," Meisar objected, miserably. "At my age it seems to come far more lightly and leave as swiftly," she said to Brynja as they trod down to Dis's chambers. "I won't be a week separated from Thorin. I won't."
Aroin led the way to Dis's rooms and flung open her door. Dis didn't even flinch at the intrusion. "Good news, uzbadnatha. Your company this afternoon shall be an extended one," announced Aroin, swiping her papers from Dis's table. "The queen's 'afana is upon her," her secretary said with lesser joviality.
Griet and Bertha followed with the tea set and small frosted cakes one could eat by hand. Griet set a separate cup and nodded a kind reverence toward Meisar. "Moon tea, my queen," she half-whispered.
Dis looked over and smiled with a maternal gentleness. "The 'afana is the time of women," she said. "We prefer not to let the menfolk meddle in any business of it. Let us each be sisters to you for this time, and speak of what women will speak of with only each other's company."
"Might I lay down? I don't feel well," Meisar begged upon returning. Dis flung over the heavy coverlets of her bed enthusiastically and patted the sheet. "Come now, share mine and be comfortable." As soon as she was under the cover Emli plopped her book and a hundred other loose sheets down right over Meisar's belly. She winced at the resulting sensation.
"A few of my notes for the coronation," chirped Emli. "Gloin's too. Seeing as he is secretary of the treasury and opens the purse, officially, to all endeavors."
"Indeed, my brother has overseen, on his own, many a grand occasion and put the coffers to disciplined use toward them," Aroin added, emphatically.
Emli's brief commas of a smile formed, sharply. "Alone, or with the careful guidance of his wife, of course. When it comes to the finer details, it takes a dwarrowdam's eye. Gloin merely doles the funds."
"My brother is a very shrewd sort. Always a careful handler of money. It is a family trait of ours."
"Indeed it is!" Emli agreed with an edge to her cheeriness.
"An inherited trait to be certain, not one that can simply be married into or what have you. But I suppose some are capable of learning from the best," Aroin hummed, never looking up from her work.
"And teaching it," replied Emli icily.
"Your squabbles again," Dis groused, darkening her eyes toward them. "Enough of it."
"Apologies for all things, my lady princess," simpered Emli. "What a pity Aroin has no husband to badger, so she must nag at you all of the day and night and well into the grave perhaps."
"A dwarf woman does not coddle," snapped Aroin. "Neither her mistress nor her child."
The accusing glare made Emli pluck herself up indignantly from the chair. "Your implication is a gravely mistaken one, which I would not utter again if you wish to remain on your feet much longer."
"Imgil!" Dis scolded at last.
"Like old molasses," Eda chimed in, sweeping through the door with Freyda, Siv and Gyda. Aroin and Emli ceased and glared and Dis looked up with brows perked, seeming content for the added company.
Emli flipped open the leather folder crisply, spread the sheets out on the coverlet again. "Fifty-thousand candles will light the city on that night. They are sending the coin by the barge to the candle-makers down on the shores of the Long Lake. Widows once in rags shall live in perpetual comfort all their lives now, no more to toil, but for the service of this one night. Afterward they shall be distributed to those here in the city most in need of household goods, and to those still dwelling on the outskirts of Dale."
"Yes, I think that is a fine idea," Meisar agreed quickly, wanting sleep and rest more than duty, her eyes stilted against the paper.
Awhile later there was rattling and squeaking of wheels outside and a knock at the door.
"Lanzablâg!" exclaimed Emli, delighted. "Oh doesn't this work up an appetite now? All this strategizing?"
Urdlaug rambled through the door, her cart and her width each a tight fit for the door-frame. "Potato soup, wild boar belly with pepper sauce, and only the best for afterward, my blueberry butter cake," Urdlaug rattled off as she put her back into lifting a big iron pot of soup on Dis's desk, and the women set out plates and bowls and cutlery from Dis's bedroom cupboard so she could put the rest of the food out.
"A good simple hot soup for the queen, good for that condition," clucked Emli.
"Are you sick, Meisar?" Yrsa mounted the bed and put her spoon-hand to the queen's forehead, wrinkling her nose with realization before quickly switching to the opposite, intact hand to check her temperature.
"You'll learn soon enough, girl," Urdlaug guffawed, suddenly understanding.
"Can we stay?" pleaded Anbur.
"If you'd like," Meisar offered, wearied but with gladness. The dwarfling was already comfortably tucked under her arm. The other followed soon under the opposite, like fat little pigeons roosting under a farmhouse roof. She craved the comfort of the children, uncannily enough.
Several empty flagons were already stationed at Dis's bedside but the life had come back to her countenance, with the women all gathered.
"Eat well, milady princess. I'll not see the king's sister go to skin and bones like an Esgaroth lass in worse times," Urdlaug urged Dis. She set a plate before her generously heaped.
"Yes, uzbadnatha, you must. Mistress Urdlaug's cooking is far too delightful to pass a bite of," Emli implored, coming to attend Dis more closely. She looked sideways as Dis refilled her cup to the brim from the small barrel by her bed. "Khashâm ganagifôn 'uglakhul ya zull mi binzull," Emli relented with a nervous smile. "Do you prefer to eat at the table or take it in bed as well?"
"Hmm... the latter I think," answered Dis, brightly. "Let us keep our queen company and worry not for spills and stains, if only for one evening." Aroin's affronted expression only made the princess smile more broadly as she climbed back onto her bed balancing her plate in one hand, sitting against the headboard to use her top-cover as a place-napkin. The other dwarrowdams followed, giddily. Dis laughed at their clumsy jockeying for space on her bed, half her plate gone in a moment's time. Urdlaug tilted her head to the ceiling and whispered a quiet thanks to an unseen but omnipresent guest.
"Will you not stay, Urdlaug?" Meisar asked, watching Urdlaug pack away the empty soup pot and her supplies.
"Me father's needing his supper and his bath tonight," she declined with a self-pitying grin. "Afraid I'm going to pass."
"Will you send him my love, and your mother too?"
She smiled one of her rare genuine smiles. "With certainty my queen."
Aroin butted Emli aside to help Dis remove the rubies from her beard, plucking them out as she ate, giggling like a small girl, and Aroin unclasped afterward the heavy clot of a jewel from her neck on its thick chain. There were tiny rivulets of reddened skin where she had worn it all day. "Shall I store them for the night?" Aroin inquired.
"Yes, and come and join us, my lady."
"I shall prefer to return to my own chambers," Aroin answered officiously, arranging all of Dis's rubies in their case. When she was finished Dis set her plate to balance on Anbur's head and pulled Aroin onto the bed by her arms. Gloin and Oin's sister yelped with surprise and a hint of indignity.
Dis took her plate again and wicked the pepper sauce on her finger. "You work far too hard Aroin not to enjoy yourself somewhat."
Glaring her displeasure, Emli climbed daintily off the bed, piled her dishes on the table, set her cloak on. "You're leaving?" Meisar frowned, a groan coming in her throat with a wave of more pain.
"I am a married woman," she answered. "I ought be getting to my husband's stead, and bring him supper while it's hot. And my son. I am certain a hot meal is not a coddling gesture now?" Her decorous brow shot out and up over her shoulder at Aroin, still unhappily sprawled across Dis's knees struggling like a fish out of water in her heavy dress to upright herself.
"The way you speak to me, your kin now by marriage, one would think we came straight from The Pits, or were on our way there now," her eyes glazed over Freyda and then landed again on Emli. Freyda wriggled her toe aggressively under Aroin's chin, tickling it.
Aroin gave Freyda more congenial smile when Emli had gone on her way. "No offense to you, Mistress Freyda. I hear your father is one of the famed fighters of all the city. My little fireflies all about this kingdom tell me he speaks highly of your beloved, Mister Dwalin. That is always a spot of good fortune."
"Aye," Freyda agreed, her enthusiasm as leaden as her affect.
"Dwalin in love," Dis thrummed. "What a treat, truly. I never imagined, less a chance than Thorin even I thought. But look what he has now. What a fair dwarven beauty."
"Thank you," Freyda murmured with a polite smile.
"Freyda, look how you mope again," Meisar whispered to her, patting her forearm, the strength of the limb acute beneath her own hand, rendered to a jelly-like quality in her languid state.
Freyda's anguish surfaced quickly in her eyes and spilled loudly. "Is is true? Did Thorin tell ye? They say they took Dwalin this afternoon, down to their lair."
"Taken? By whom?" Meisar sat up toward her while her belly howled. The women all sat up attention. "Taken" and "Dwalin" rarely belonged in the same sentence but Freyda was gnawing half her top lip off, too concerned to be ignored.
"Me da's faithful hounds," Freyda shook her head ruefully, taking Fred up in her arms and resting her head on his back. "They'll scare him off they will. He'll rescind his courtin' of me. Save me beard, oh, they probably took him down to their hideaway by the forges. Ye never did smell anything as ripe. Hepti's worse than a thousand Donbur's after a bowl o' cheese curds. Were I a male, I'd forsake me hand before I went back there!"
Siv grunted a slow laugh next to her. "Since when did you become a faintin' maiden, Freyda? Thought you were a lass quick with an ax, not a lover's lament."
"Put mine in Vigg's skull he sets Dwalin off o' me," Freyda declared irately.
"He won't," Siv assured, shirking her plush extant robe, stretching out her legs, bare to knee in her rumpled chemise.
"How ye know?" Freyda's brow quirked.
Siv grinned. "Nothin' can stop a dwarf in love. He's put that braid on your head now. No goin' back, lovie. Might be the king's right hand but his eyes are only for you now."
.
When the women were all asleep Meisar nudged Eda just before the old healer drifted off, careful not to wake Dis, who was closer by her side, buffered only by Anbur, curled up, her snore lightened to a rambling buzz. Dis's arm was over the girl, patting her hair in her sleep.
"They say there have been several children born in the city this past week. Did you attend on any of the mothers?"
"One of them," Eda smiled, whispering. "The others I sent Virta out with the healers' guild. The babes are doing well and are very doted on I assure you. As all ought be; they are precious beyond words."
"And the mothers?"
"Fine as well. Quite overcome with joy dare I say. But I think I need not say it."
"No, it would be very apparent, wouldn't it?" Meisar said, dully.
"What troubles you, love?" Eda's warm hand covered hers in the dark.
"I thought it was a magic sort of time, in me. I felt it. I am crestfallen a bit is all. Maybe I should get used to it. I'm not... young."
Eda laughed quietly in the dark. "Oh, ask Balin sometime of his lady mother in the time Dwalin was born. Why, she looked far more like me than a dwarrowdam in her prime, white headed and all. And look at the strong boy she yielded, for all her wrinkles." Eda eyed Freyda affectionately, blond hair fanned across the pillow held tight in her arms, her sighs echoing in her sleep.
"I love him too much to see his line end with me."
"You are but a newlywed, Meisar. What would possibly bring you to worry over such a thing now?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'm overreacting," she relented, with far more reluctance than she let on.
.
In the morning Freyda was still holding to the pillow, a leg draped over the bottom half of it. Siv tickled her cheek with a feather she had plucked from the pillow, watching her expression smile and twitch, her form undulate against it. "Dwalin..." she let out a snore and his name, dreaming. The pillow came to be squeezed far closer in her sleeping arms, and the other dwarrowdams held their breaths with laughter. Meisar covered the young dwarflings' ears with the smaller pillows lest they wake to the sight.
"Come to grasp ye and keep ye mi'love," Siv sent her voice down several notches as she tickled Freyda's back and molded to her from behind.
"Dwalin... ye have me," garbled Freyda in her sleep. She grasped Siv's hand to her breast when Eda's bark of displeasure woke her with a start. A swift backhand from the iron-smith missed Siv by inches. As Freyda flung the pillow full on at her the dwarrowdams were alternately roaring with laughter and grumbling with the sort of disapproval unmarried elders were akin to taking. It woke Dis up with a start when Freyda rolled over her feet.
"Naughty Siv makin' mischief again," squawked Yrsa, crawling out from under the covers to poke Siv with her spoon-hand. "Why you teasin' Freyda?"
"Thought this was a ladies' gathering, not sittin' in on the babes," Siv grumbled in her direction, accusingly. Anbur was still tucked comfortably under Meisar's arm, fishing a flattened bit of cake from underneath Dis's pillow to break her fast.
"Well what do ye say, m'queen?" Siv reiterated smartly.
Meisar looked between the two sullen dwarrowdams and sighed. "We're not poking and groping you whilst you sleep, Siv. Best not meddle."
"Nori's been doing enough poking and groping, I'll wager," jabbed Freyda.
Siv glanced at her, flippantly. "Dori kicks me out every time I try to stay past supper. Shows how much you know. But I know where you've put me hand thinkin' me yer lovie."
"Burgu Dunland!" Freyda shot back, with another pillow. It hit Siv in the chest and she rolled backward off the bed, launching Elsa from her trundle bed. Her sleeping shift went over her knees, showing her drawers, and the nursemaid yelped fraught with embarrassment yanking her skirt and then Siv down to give her a further drubbing with her feather pillow, the white fluff storming about as if in a tempest.
"My court, my regal ladies. I apologize if it offends your idea of what that should entail," Meisar murmured under her breath to Dis.
"No," Dis nodded, placing her hand over Meisar's. Her eyes were creased with smile lines, the robin's-egg blue serene. "No, dear sister. They are wonderful."
.
Two days passed with her tucked into Dis's bed most of the time, the dwarrowdams being strenuously insistent upon her resting, wrapped from belly to knee in thick flannels and taking strong teas to ease the belly pain and constant feeling of fullness. A blemish erupted on her chin the second day, which Eda slathered in a minty ointment to disperse. Were that I had a beard there, it might conceal it. The women came and went but mostly stayed long spells to keep company with her and with Dis, who kept to her chambers most of the time still except when Aroin roused her to march her about to keep the blood flowing to her limbs.
On the third day she had already left her wrappings clean and begged to be released. The women commiserated out of her sight, all very officiously, but came back in agreement that the time had well-passed. "Before you are returned to your husband you must take to the baths. We all must. Tradition," Aroin insisted.
"I could use one to be honest," Meisar agreed, sluggishly. Together they took the ladies' common baths a few steps down from the royals' quarters. Bathing pools of varying depths were divided into a mishmash of shapes, each pool sunken in, separated by stone. Steam rose from the surfaces, inviting weary bathers, encouraging indulgent relaxation. They tossed their clothes off, wrapped in towels and separated their baskets of soaps and hair potions, offering each other pickings of each, with their heads all pressed together, considering the aromas, as they took to the waters. The dwarrowdams occupied them two or three to a pool, single outlets pressed on the far wall. Meisar unwrapped herself at one of these, waded in to her neck. The heat of the water was welcome to her body after days of soreness.
On the stone deck, Aroin and Emli stopped before each other, took a long moment to eye each other's unclothed bodies critically, before slinking off to bathing pools on opposite sides of the chamber, not a word between them. Dis gave them an approving glance, dipped her beard and her whole head to soak.
Pots of cold water were stationed at the corners of each tub, which the dwarrowdams occasionally splashed over themselves to alleviate the heat in the chamber. They flicked it at each other, exchanging soaps and exfoliating creams, helping to scrub each other's backs and lather hair. Heavy round chandeliers of sturdy iron and finely wrought holders haloed them overhead with their lanterns' light, the steam from below fogging up their glass. Meisar stared up at the determined ember of one in its cloudy case, cool washtowel at her forehead. She had only just leaned back onto the stone brim to let the waters undo the tightness of her muscles, when Freyda lumbered into the pool beside her.
"Bored already with the lasses?"
"Tamahi karâth masarranul," Freyda scoffed.
"And I am more sufficient company?" Meisar laughed, self-deprecatingly.
"Aye, ye are. Rather I speak to a married woman like yourself about now," Freyda confided, scrubbing at the back of her neck with a cake of rose petal soap. "Next time the back of me hand won't miss," she grumbled, eyeing Meisar. "Think better than to tease me, that one." Siv was surreptitiously keeping her head above the water in the tub with Eda and Gyda, both eagerly flicking it every direction.
"Told Gyda to dunk 'er," Freyda grumbled, crossly. She settled again and issued a dark sigh under the water.
"You ache for Dwalin's presence as I do for Thorin's I see."
"That's why I came over," Freyda glided across the pool to her side. "By Mahal's grace, I love him," Freyda pronounced breathily. "I do. Meisar, I do. Ye don't see the side of him I see. Maybe not even Balin sees. Or Thorin. Ah, lass, ye know what it's like. Ye see things in Thorin no one else will ever. 'Tis what a One is made for."
"Then what is making you so melancholy, Freyda? You've been standing on pins lately."
Freyda squeezed the thick pale rope of sopping hair over her shoulder. "D'you remember when you told me I ought be honest and speak plain to him what I felt in my heart for him?"
"I do remember."
"Well, thinkin' I might owe it to you that I've got this braid and pretty clasp in my hair now," Freyda smiled, her crooked teeth over her lip. Her skin flushed even rosier in the oppressive heat of the baths as she spoke, broad shoulders and perked chest all darkening pink. "But I don't know if he loves me like I feel for him. Enough to be puttin' up with the sort of badgering from those louts."
"I am sure they would do nothing to cause your unhappiness, Freyda. Nor would Dwalin be so easily undermined. Do you forget who courts you? Not a sort who buckles at the knees for many," Meisar counseled.
Freyda exhaled dramatically.
"I will," Meisar offered quietly. "See if Thorin might speak with him and seek the truth of it."
.
For the better part of the afternoon they relaxed and kvetched in the hot baths, ornate in their cavernous quality but somehow warm and intimate to their purpose.
"All fresh and clean for your king tonight, milady," swooned Gyda when they finally decided to emerge and break for the day. "He'll have missed you so."
She patted her back dry with the warm, fluffy towel as the others gathered in their towels and with their own hair still wet to comb a veritable river of red hair and braid it again. "M'queen's got so many little freckles here. Like stars in the sky," said Gyda, studying the shape and little spots of Meisar's shoulders.
"Oh, like stars," Dis repeated, a moony dirge of a sigh.
.
II
Meisar closed the door of the antechamber quietly behind her, from the other side of the bedroom door springing to action the scratches of canine feet, and Thorin's impatient growl at the curs quickly becoming a relieved sigh. Meisar stepped into the bedchamber, shutting Fred and Raincloud in the antechamber.
"My queen is released from her prison of clucking hens," noted Thorin. His thick, loose mane of hair hung lazily over his shoulders, dressed in a dark bed-robe.
"You are a dwarf under a mountain. What would you know of chickens or the babble they make?" She smiled, still pink and warm from the heat of the baths.
"As much as I know of dogs," he replied, scratching Redcoat behind his ear. "To that effect I say, I did not expect to learn so much. But life has held many surprising turns as of late. I should be used to it by now, no?"
He came up out of the bed and clasped her hands in his own to quickly and eagerly kiss, before sinking upon his knees and wrapping arms around her waist and trailing hands in a path from the back of her knees up to squeeze an ample globe through her clothes. He rested his head snugly in her torso, stroking the line of embroidery on the front of her dress.
"I confess I felt your absence far too keenly. I like it not," he confessed. He breathed in the scent of warm water on still-moist hair and the clinging cedar-chest scent on her clothes and the honeyed spice smell of lily soap on her wrists.
She touched the top of his head lightly, pressed his hair back and kneaded the strong line of his shoulder underneath. "I told my ladies I would rather be by your side, but they never listen."
His hand wandered underneath her skirt to feel for the tie of her stocking. "You are the queen. They must defer to your wishes."
"Aye, and they are dwarves too." The wool came away first, and the padded slipper-shoe with it. She placed her hands underneath his elbows and urged him upward to stand. The top of her head tucked itself briefly under his chin and found the small, strong groove between his nose and cheek. Orange hair dusted his eyelashes, nose finding a path over the prominent plateau of cheekbone, finding the rugged pathway of beard's-edge.
"I have so missed you also, my king." Fingers grasped into and petted his hair on the opposite side of his face, pushing back the heavy locks from cheek and combing through them, rubbing the dense silk of hair to the bristled surface of beard, finding both to be an exquisite pleasure to her touch. He moaned quietly into her touch, her need. The underside of his jaw smelled of Redcoat's warmth and his own together. She plucked a strand of the dog's coarse auburn hair from the collar of his robe. She let her fingers wander down the embroidered line of the dark bed-robe on either side of the split in its center. A meek offering of naked skin somewhere along that line assured her that his own clothing would not much impede their reunion, this plush layer standing alone.
"My dress, Thorin. It's an easy fastening at the back," she murmured, raising eyes to meet his, a plea she had no need of issuing with any more clarity. She turned and the slack laces came open with a convenient swiftness and a hard, warm palm touched the expanse of her back, sliding in between the velvet and skin further and further until the whole of the simple gown was easily shed. She turned to face him again, a kiss meant for his mouth finding his chin instead. He slid his fingers into the opening between the tiny buttons of her shift, her arms bare. The breast that his wanting hand found was still tender but never had she welcomed that touch more.
"I have missed you so, Thorin, and I need you."
Thorin shrugged his robe off as eagerly; she found confirmed, to her delight, that he had no layer beneath it and was swiftly naked thence. Her embrace came swiftly to replace the touch on his skin and warm him again. King and husband. The latter still felt a strange, uncommon word on her tongue; to say it gave her a thrill on the tip of it, one that echoed into her throat and down into her stomach when she stood before him just like this, his heart hammering a deep patter against her ear.
He felt his knees hit the rim of the bed and sat.
"Will you come to bed? It has been so very empty without you."
He reached and pulled open the linen of her sleeveless chemise down to the small button of her navel and lay his face peaceably in the warm valley, scented with lilies as if it were a summer day, ripe, in some other place. Not here under the mountain but a nourished valley on the languid edge of August, the smell of pony hair and dandruff on his coat and the grass in her sternly braided hair. When she was clad for a day's journey in fraying calico and patched boots and not the gentle touch of good linen that was pulled as crudely away from his favorite pillows as those old clothes could have been. All that soft skin underneath a hard woman, his alone to know and to cherish every inch of. He stroked the outer swell of a breast, thrumming a deep rumble of satisfaction, watching the rise and fall and teasing thrusting forward and up of the ample bosom. He stared a long while at the array of freckles on their peaks. A fingertip walked from the night-sky freckles to the fleshy rise below, halting at the furled bud in its center.
"Do you like them so much?" she thrummed, her amusement agreeable.
"I do."
Her fingers traced the line of his skin from his elbow down to his hand and grasped it tightly to the full mound, opening his fingers, pressing them against the smooth, naked skin and guiding his hand beneath the left breast to cradle it. "They are yours only besides mine then," she said, the happy clouded passion in her eyes gentle again.
"Your skin smells like lilies," he rumbled into her. He pushed the flimsy material of the shift up to her thighs and over the zaftig curve of rump, squeezing and letting his hand run slack and squeezing again until it was pink from hindquarter to the small of her back.
"I have missed you, jewel of my heart..."
"We had a fine day in the baths, my ladies and I."
"Oh?"
"A tradition of dwarven women," she explained away, flustered. "A messy business anyhow. You shan't want to know." The weight returned to her eyes for a brief moment, pressing at the eyelids to become heavy again.
"Are you melancholy, my love?" he asked, his eyes, as they would always tend to be, somber but warm with care. She eased herself off of his lap and placed her hands both on his shoulders, comfortingly.
"I thought life would take in me, is all. Not so this time," she lamented in half a murmur. "I shan't burden your mind with the mechanics of it all. Only that it is a disappointment to me."
"The time will come, my jewel. I have missed you in the meantime. So very much." He massaged the voluptuous shape of her through the light chemise.
"Do you propose we keep up trying then?"
As his throat muscles tightened again in anticipation, she wriggled her shoulders vigorously free of the chemise and discarded the garment beside the bed at their feet, a wordless answer that came in the swift meeting of lips again, mercurial and ravenous once more. Beard rashed her lips and left the tip of her nose pink.
With one hand still firm on the small of her back the other returned to squeeze the rosy globe again, pull her toward him. How could this solemn, stubborn king have given such loving attention to each part of her body like this; squeezing her every curve in work-hardened hands, kissing the dip of waist and lingering in its curve, moistening her skin with his breath in a lusty trail. Perhaps Freyda was right after all. Ones had purposes, secrets, sanctuaries that none would ever know save for themselves. She wondered if Dwalin had ever been as reverent in his lust as Thorin was for her. She pressed his head into the soft sanctuary of her torso, silently chastised herself for even thinking of anyone else but the two of them in that moment.
He found the soft groove where globes and the peaks of her thighs met, tugged her forward again, urging thighs to part and straddle over his own. "Sit my darling," voice rumbled, pulling her forth, burying the mack of beard once more to her breast, kissing the full mound from peripheral to center with teeth finally meeting the still-tender nipple and drawing away swiftly at the stiffening of her entire body.
"Thorin, do you know… how, to do it this way?" She traced a thumb over his top lip, found his chin between her fingers and rubbed his beard between them and watched his pupils dilate at the friction. His swell of want stirred and found its way to the furred shell of her lower lips, tracing a slick line at their center part.
"We will learn."
Her breath made pithing sounds against the skin of his shoulder when she shifted to find his want with her own and settled over him. He pressed back, navigated her with his hands, palm from collarbone to breast and belly with frantic want, moving over the top of her thigh to tug her closer over his hardening self. She grasped his hand to steady her at the waist, his kiss falling wild upon her collarbone, biting and suckling the hard line across from one side of her to the other and crossing in a wide arc up her neck. She cradled his head into the lily-scented shelter of her there and took in the eager, careful migration of his large hands to her globes to lift and guide their way back to each other.
"Meisar..." He pressed her back from the kiss so to look upon her face when he slid up into her, stretched and seemed to find a place both found desirable. He steadied his hand on the right side of her bottom and hers in his hair, the temple braid an anchor against the mattock of his maleness. The ruddiness of her cheeks was no longer a dry windburn but a rush of hot, pure blood, so pointed he could almost smell her desire through the pores of her skin there. She brushed back a lock of hair from his neck and traced the seam of the cartilage down to his shoulder, grasped on again with both arms, and began to move.
"My jewel of jewels," he gasped, taking her braid in his fist where it hung down her back and tugging hard on it to bring her down again onto him. His length had a slight curve to it upright and with its fullness she jerked unsteadily and swayed back with the first thrust. Thorin's strong, steady hands rushed down her back to anchor at its base, steadying her once more, and pulsing inside her, grasped at her broad cushioned hips. "I've got you. I've got you..."
Her thigh muscles clenched against his own as she powered herself up and down to sheathe again, knees digging into the sheets, finding his angle buried deep into her belly and against the enigmatic shelled-nut within her that his fingers had found now several times. Both hands eventually found their way to the small of her back and then her bottom again, lifting and separating, kneading and thrusting with the slightest shift of angle causing her to cry out. By the time they had tumbled down together into the undone bed they were facing each other, a tangle of entwined limbs pulling closer and undulating, grasping thighs and arse simultaneous to pull themselves deeper into each other. Rutting, he thought, like farmhand lovers in the hay stocks when there was a break in the day's toil. In the farms of Dunland and the stables of the Westfold they had been so wanton, the most rustic of the peasantry, too crude of birth to deny themselves what simple animal pleasures might chance upon them in a life that knew only hardship. He had been dumbfounded by the source of their energies then, the true heart of their desires, and only now understood it.
Hairy chest and strong back and thick limbs had welcomed her back into their embrace and left her gasping when the coupling was completed. In the afterglow her parted lips showed the pinkness of her mouth inside in the low candlelight, lips that seemed plumper even for their natural fullness and not just from the incessant plundering he had already given them. Compared to his own slim mouth, they beckoned a long suckle, seeking what nectar lay within. If he could have spent a thousand years just kissing her, he would have. She liked to be kissed, he found. She liked his mouth, the sharp taste of him and the urgency of his tongue and his beard touching the neglected spaces around her mouth and under her nose.
"Thorin," she whispered against the thick, sated dark of the air between them.
"Kurduh-uh..."
"I want there yet to be magic in the world. I think I may need it."
.
-'afana- It literally translates as "ladies' moon cycle" and is likely self-explanatory although I'm quite certain Tolkien never elaborated on that. So I'm going on a pure headcanon here combined with harkening toward the Jewish tradition of mikvah and the seclusion of women during the "moon cycle."
Imgil- Calm! Cool Down!
Lanzablâg- Dinner
Khashâm ganagifôn 'uglakhul ya zull mi binzull- Worries go better with ale than without
Burgu- Brat Of
Tamahi karâth masarranul- Making runes dance (idle, useless chatter)
Kurduh-uh- My heart