UZBAD- King

A/N: The BOFTA EE funeral scene was a large inspiration in trying to capture a particular ambiance to the coronation. I liked the idea of a fully candlelit Erebor and a procession through the city. Trying not to sob uncontrollably during that entire episode is not easy in itself either but is really is a beautiful scene. I think there's something to be said for building on that particular theme. It's a bit like coming full circle. The past and the present are never fully separate. The same light guides a king to his tomb and to his throne all the same. And the memories of dwarves are long- they of all races perhaps, cannot afford to forget what came before.

Also wanted to give a shout-out and thanks to any new followers. Remember, reviews are most welcome.

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"Thorin, how can you enjoy this so?"

He hummed softly into her, barely acknowledging her inquiry or her sudden quaking. His hair tickled and warmed, the thick dark tendrils splayed across the pale plain of her belly.

"How could I not? You are sweeter than a summer morning."

Warm breath tickled her as he exhaled lightly against the heated channel. Thorin lay procumbent on the bed before her, as happily prostrate between her thighs. The rough-hewn definitions of his form moved lazily under the twist of covers that was left stubbornly around his hips. Her channel swelled apart of its own accord to greet the touch of his lips there, his parting, paying worshipful service to the inner lips and veiled nub until it could not be measured whose wetness was slickening her so for him. The sudden, stubborn clenches of a peak approaching too fast halted him for a brief spell. He lifted her leg left-ways over the top of his head and exhaled raggedly, and pausing, rested his head to the side of her knee.

"There is nothing that pleases me more," he assured, a hazy smile. "Were it not, I would not have endeavored to pin you against a tree and tear your skirts open to do so. You recall, don't you, Meisar?"

Her hesitation, lost in the thought of it, seemed to stir his impatience. He parsed a hand between her knees to coax her open again and she made a sound of unexpected surprise when he made a prick of electricity over her thatch with his beard, it being far coarser in its texture than the burning-bush over her nether. He tugged a few wiry hairs upward from the skin and made her gasp suddenly once more.

"I do recall, my love."

A kiss raked over the palm that was cradling his cheek intently, and he brought his mouth down again upon the rise of fat and bone, engulfing it fully before his tongue plunged into the swollen folds, and claimed her again with no intent of restraint. Squeezing her thighs simultaneously as his tongue drove deeper and quicker, he held her there in a vise to tame her writhing. She let her slide into his tangle of hair and tug gently in a futile attempt to guide his movements, though the steady command of his hands suggested he bore a certain determination all his own that could not be moved astray. He placed his hand flat on the sensitive patch of skin just above her mons, a touch that seemed to penetrate into her inner parts beneath the skin and stir them, making her skin flutter and jump and engorge her further below.

"I do not think it yet my morn mizimel," he said.

"I have no concept of time. I'm afraid I've lost it," she chuckled gently, clenching against the will of her own bodily desire. Thick fingers petted languidly through the orange hair between her legs, his eyes alight, amused, sparkling upward at her. He stroked the soft plain of her belly and paused. "The ceremonies will not begin until sundown, my treasure. We have time."

She arched her head backward, his long hair tickling her belly and falling over her hips with the slow movement of his head pressing kisses to the inner plain of her thigh. Hair and the rough commanding grasp of fingertips and hard palms holding her at the hipbone and stroking his thumb up and down just below it, a neglected flat of skin that took his touch so eagerly the bumps like chill-pimples were raised on it. His nose glided along with his mouth in tandem, opening her, taking her leg over his shoulder again to steady and anchor against him. He felt the muscles in her leg tense.

"And if our households must wait for us on this day of all days, still there is time?"

Without an answer, he made an abrasive path with his beard; it tingled and glided and stimulated up toward her intimacy again. He tested the skin with soft bites, digging his nails in under her knee. An odd finger found and rubbed the pearl over its hood, pointedly.

"Yes, and if you do not wish them to wait upon us too excessively, I suggest you let me finish."

Halted sighs and short, grobbling cries of pleasure issued raggedly. Eventually she tilted her head up to gaze down at him, attentive in his task, his tongue and his harsh, gleaming eyes flicking upward together, as his head dipped reverently back into his previous place. In that moment she felt an intense happiness, in her heart, throbbing as wildly in her chest as her arousal did betwixt her thighs. The way that his long dark hair looked splayed across her freckled skin, over her belly whilst his face was anchored firmly to her. Languid strokes, assured in their friction, treated her pearl with diligent passion. Time had been lost indeed, leaving only this ubiquitous act, her need un-easing in its intensity, a language his tongue spoke in silence to a part of her that could not hear.

The rough, callused thumbs joined and parted her folds and his tongue pressed itself inside of her and at the very core of her inner self.

"Then let others worry for it," half-growled Thorin. She twisted at the hips to writhe up on her side and grip the sheets in her fist, Thorin still holding her bottom firmly on the sheets and her hips in his grip, tormenting the sensitive, aroused flesh still relentlessly. A growl of frustration when his hair tumbled over his cheek vibrated into her and almost unmade her. She reached downward and pushed the curtain of hair that was distracting him back from his face, and in one sharp movement the strong line of his nose pressing against her rose-diamond one time again unraveled her into his lips.

The ravenous movement of his tongue in her became a slow flutter in the afterglow.

His hand slid beneath and lifted her under the small of her back, pressing her torso up to him to spread kisses over, soothing the ecstasy into a gentle dizziness. She could feel the blood flow upward again toward her head, a flow that came like tilting a wine bottle sideways and shimmying it back and forth so that it sloshed and rushed and bubbled.

Determined he would soothe the waves fully in time, Thorin relaxed against her torso, sideways again mid-writhe, his head on her stomach. He placed kisses into the dainty hollow beside her hipbone, pulling her to his kiss with a hand grasped against her right globe, drawing downward over her thigh when he had steadied her. His entire body curled into her and raised his knee to rest under the bent of hers, her knees brushing over the abrasive hair at his chest and belly, making tiny sparks.

When she lay on her back again he rested his whole weight into the same favored space on her torso, its softness the more welcoming pillow than any on the bed. Her head was tilted sideways on the velvet, resting against the back of her hand. Hair splayed around her in every direction, a sea of flame uninterrupted even to each side of the bed, where it tumbled over in a fall. Thorin grinned upward at her dramatic pose, her flushed cheeks. Mahal bless her, she still blushes the same when I look at her.

The day of their coronation had come and she did not wish to leave their bed. The anvils were clanging down deep in the mountain and going quieter hour by hour. Soon they would all be silent and the dwarves of Erebor would gather in the great city to see their king crowned then feast and drink for days to follow.

Exhalation hot along every inch of skin from the crook of her thighs to her lips, he rose to press flush with her eventually, a steady hunger drawing out their joining a long while.

Thorin smiled, murmured something in Khuzdul into her skin. She let a small "hmm?" rise out of her, hazily.

"It reminds me of the days of yore, when I was young."

The quiet of the chamber amplified the sounds of the mountain around them, the sentries scurrying, the throngs arriving, even the chaos of the great kitchens with hours to go before the coronation feast would feed a thousand or more. "The liveliness of this mountain, in my grandfather's reign," he shrugged; his fingertip traced a line down over her skin, pensively. "Those days are gone. But my days with you are ever coming, and I am glad for it." A kiss pressed into her stomach just below the ribcage, making the muscles flutter and jump.

"We shall find that happiness again my treasure. Even if it is not the same."

There was deliberate stirring in the antechamber that made him rise suddenly and reluctantly from the shelter of her warmth. "I suppose we shall start now," he grumbled, a hint of a smile. He threw his bed-robe and breeches on.

In her nightgown Meisar stood by the fire and tried to warm herself. The chatter outside was intent and busy. Thorin came behind her quietly and wrapped her bed-robe around her shoulders.

"Your ladies will be eager to help you make ready and dress. I suppose I should let them, and myself find my proper robes."

"My king..." she sighed. "You shall be properly by sun's downing. Though I think you have been all along."

"And you my queen. From the time Mahal forged you in your mother's womb have you been a queen, and my queen no less." He kissed her cheek lightly from behind, slipping the dense jeweled chain with its descending bib of sapphires around her neck and clasping it firmly. The queen's jewels were cool against her skin.

"I wanted to the honor of putting them on you today, of all days you should wear them."

When he finally relented and greeted the day and its guests, it was with Emli raining swift knocks upon the bedchamber door. In Dis's chamber where the ladies would ready, all of the dwarrowdams were dressed already and relentlessly primping the final details of their coronation ensembles, as richly as any of them had ever dressed themselves it seemed, and proud they were, for it.

In the corner of the room, Dis was quietly opulent in her way, her gown patterned gold all over on a ground of indigo trimmed in a thick V of ermine that showed the cloth-of-gold kirtle beneath. A collar of diamonds with a grand center set of a single enormous teardrop sapphire was worn at her neck with great chandeliers of matching earrings. A thin circlet of mithril sat over her forehead and anchored the tiara which was fitted at the base of the dramatic bulb of hair set just behind it, leaving only her braids free. There were no rubies, not her blood-clot necklace on its chain that was like a shackle around her neck, only the regal glitter of her diamonds and the watery mesmerizing quality of the sapphires, the sharp glow of the mithril like a blade.

"Dis," Meisar said. She bent before her low and kissed her ring. "My sister and honored princess, how beautiful you are."

"As you shall be soon, I hope. Come now, athune. The hour is late," she grinned. The sickly pallor had drained from her face into something slightly rosier, her beard immaculate and bare of all adornments.

Meisar shed the robe from her shoulders and reached for her hated bodice only to be hurried out of her sleeping chemise and into a new gossamer one by Aroin. Dis's secretary so intently divesting her of the only garment she was wearing at all made her redden with a sudden modesty. She covered herself with her hair but the women were too occupied wrangling her garments from their rack to make any observation of her nakedness too closely. It was only Thorin's to behold, she thought with a heated wistfulness, brought to a sharp halt when the bodice tightened intently around her midsection. Two starched underskirts later the kirtle went on and then the over-gown. All of the dwarrowdams dramatically switched to fussing over her hair and she could offer no objection to their tugging and ripping at her scalp in their haste in the heaviness of her clothes. Even her wedding dress had felt manageable in comparison to this ensemble. Cobalt-blue velvet made the over-gown, worn open and the front stitched all over in painstaking filigrees of gold thread. The kirtle beneath was all white silk damask identically embroidered in gold thread, the fitted under-sleeves visible beneath the long hanging sleeves of the over-gown. The neckline was broad and nearly left her shoulders uncovered, but to her relief (or not, considering its weight already), would be soon draped in the ermine cloak of the coronation ritual.

Meisar looked over to Dis with her hands cupped around a mug of beef-broth and not ale, to her immediate relief. "You do not wear your rubies today," she observed quietly.

Dis's ethereal smile turned to her in an ephemeral way. "I do, of course. But by my heart," she touched a hard, round rise under her kirtle. "Today I wear sapphires, for those of my house who have lived to see this day." She reached across and touched Meisar's hand, her palm warm from the cup. "I wear them always, Meisar. At my heart, and here," she said, raising the thin gold chain on its girdle that blended so seamlessly into her dress. The two engraved lockets clinked together toward her. "They are never far from me."

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The coronation gown with its long train felt like dragging a sack of rocks across a field. Freyda and Emli carried the train closest behind her, Eda and Siv, then Brynja and Gyda, with Urdlaug bringing up the rear, resplendent and resembling very much a ripe yellow apple in her silk gown and neck cluttered in garnets. Bira walked in the procession behind with her four youngest daughters bearing their candles and the ceremonial scepter and finally Aroin the crown of the queen of Erebor in a crimson velvet case.

They had descended too far into the mountain to be on the path toward the heart of the city and the throne hall by the time she realized it. By the silence that followed between Thorin and Dis and their tense exchanges of glances she knew exactly where they were going.

Dis slowed her pace so that Thorin walked ahead, kept her step with Meisar's instead. "Now of all times we must remember," Dis said. The gates and then the heavy doors of the tombs were opened before them by a pair of sentries.

"Before a king is crowned, he is to honor his forebears, and ask for their blessing. He is to swear he shall honor their memory," Dis explained solemnly as they descended down the final stair into the royal section of the necropolis. "I crown my brother today because I will hold him to that oath."

The necropolis was dark except for their candles and the lanterns that had been hung in anticipation of their visit. They illuminated a path, down to the mausoleums for Durin's Line, where Thorin and Dis knelt together in silent reverence first before King Thror's tomb, brother and sister, the last of an unbroken line, paying homage to a solemner row of those who came before.

Thror's tomb glittered in gold and white marble. It was cool to Thorin's touch. "Grandfather," he murmured almost to low for Dis to hear; she lingered at her sons'. "I loved you in spite of yourself. Let me to govern with the best parts of you. Your love. Your generosity. Your pride in your kin."

"Nadad, you gave me the will to protect all that is good in this world. Even if I could not protect you." Frerin's tomb, like his, was empty, but his young brother's ashes had long been scattered to the winds of an unforgiving plain. It had been a reckless charge into a line of orcs three deep but not a muscle on his body had hesitated in rushing forth toward them. "I would have protected your innocence for all times," he murmured. Dis's hand in his suddenly was cold and shaking. They moved to Thrain's tomb.

"'Adad, your love formed in me the capacity that I might love also. You gave your life for your people. May your courage make a fire within me if a time shall come that I must also. As your grandsons did, with such a fire that it may be seen for all times from the furthest reaches of the sky."

"Keep careful watch my sister-sons, that I may rule this kingdom justly. Your loyalty Fili, and Kili your joy, may I have the privilege to know." He kissed the sapphires on each of their tombs facades. "Everything I do I still do for you."

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The procession rose up from the necropolis into the light of the city, a preternatural light, ten thousand candles aglow. How so many had assembled through the city with their candles in such a short window was a baffling process, but the sight, jarring as it was to emerge back into from the windless dark of the tombs, was a welcome radiance. Dwarves lined the path of the procession in rows three to four deep or more, all kindling candles in their hands. Every level of the city flickered, as if the roof of the great halls had been torn away for the night sky itself to shine through.

"We rise from death back to life," Dis said serenely to Meisar as the gates of the necropolis were ceremonially closed behind them. The forges had been cooled, and every workshop in the deep lay silent. No miners descended down the walls but lined the ones above from one corner of the city's heart to the last. Dwarven miners and Esgaroth fishwives stood shoulder to shoulder with the nobler of their kind in circles and in rows kindling their candles in their hands.

He closed his eyes for a moment as he walked the long lined Gallery of Kings. A memory of being carried aloft, so powerful a sensation that not even the heaviness of his boots or his black-and-ermine robes could disrupt the thought. He reached through time and linked his arms around Thror's neck and buried his face against the warmth and shelter of his great beard. His grandfather's neck and his robes smelled of a sharp, musky pipe-smoke like incense. An Eastern specialty, he would say with a wink over his pipe; the markets in those days had been filled with the exotic crafts and strange spices of the Easterlings.

Thorin, he said. At once the voice echoed in a deep baritone lilt across the walls and high ceilings of the Gallery of Kings, and the same, issued toward him in a gentle soothing coo, one a child might be soothed by. Thorin closed his eyes again and raised his head from the shelter of his grandfather's embrace. There was a queer pinprick of light glinting off the gold links dividing his beard.

"Do you see them Thorin? Look up, my lad."

He looked toward the cavernous roof of the throne hall and saw tiny swirling balls of light, flickering on and off seemingly of their own accord, dozens of them, maybe even hundreds.

"Fireflies," Thror said. "They make their own light. Much like we dwarves in these great dark halls of stone." The fireflies flew up and down and some even dipped far enough from the ceiling to race in frenzied circles around the throne itself. Thror had carried him here; his beard drenched Thorin's tears, whom he had carried all the way from his nursery to the throne hall to show him, when he was fussy.

Dwalin's arm resting in the crook of his made his eyes flicker open again and raise up the stair before him, where there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of lights that seemed to float on the air itself. They moved, slowly in long shuffling lines, as their bearers did, a procession that under a different circumstance might have been solemn and made the air itself feel entirely too heavy to bear.

Meisar trotted ahead of her entourage as best she could in the weight and bulk of her clothing, urging them to drop the long train of her gown briefly, as Balin stumbled in front of her. He nearly lost his footing on a step, with the cuff of a sleeve seeming to swipe clandestinely at one side of his face. She held him by his elbow to steady him, and walked by his side for at least several paces more before she saw the crystalline gleam pooling at the corner of one eye and falling at once in a swift line to duck into his beard and disappear.

"Balin, are you unwell?"

He patted her hand with his own, damp from wiping the other side of his face. "On the night of the funerals, the whole of the city- or what was a ruin of it- was lit just like this. It is like seeing a ghost again, but one that still lives after all."

They gazed up together toward the great hall ahead, filled with golden light in a thousand or more tiny coruscations of light, in pools that almost seemed to blend as one where the candle-bearers clustered and in lines that stood awaiting, one minuscule orb to the next. She wondered how silent this vast chamber, quietly clucking with the chatter of its guests, must have been, in bearing a king and his heirs to their tombs.

"And yet for a coronation it is the same?" she asked Balin quietly.

His gentle, recondite smile brought a serenity to her. "All is light, my queen. Born in darkness we dwarves, but for the light of our kings to illuminate these vast halls and bring light where there was only darkness and stone. And in the end, the same light to guide them from the black of the tomb, to reach the doors of the Fathers' Halls without stumbling in the dark."

A tear glistened in the candlelight in the corner of his eye, catching, like a diamond.

Before she knew it, and winded from the long walk, they were at the doors of Thror's Hall, the high doors closed to the outside. Behind them the lights had been like waves on water, as the attendees bowed and rose again toward them as they passed on their way.

Balin walked with her when she was summoned to be at Thorin's side. His eyes fixed at the still-closed doors that awaited only a signal from Dis to open them and let the final procession to the throne begin.

The doors to the throne hall bowed open with an echoing groan. A dwarf blew his horn from the high terrace above the doors, calling all to attention.

"Are you ready?" Dis inquired, her smile, as ever, bearing a melancholy if truly serene expressiveness to it.

"I am."

"Then carry the light and go forth. For now my king," Dis said, taking her place at the front of the line, after placing her candle delicately in Thorin's hands. "Those who came before you call you now to bear yours."

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Dis led the procession with her shoulders square and her head raised. Every dwarf rose and lifted their voice toward her in unintelligible chants that eventually formed "Mazannagûna! Mazannagûna!"

She who continues to show courage. They chanted it over and over again, even the men and elves who did not understand the language and would be chastised for using the dwarvish tongue under most other circumstances joined, a chant that became a hum like the low meditative devotions in some ancient temple. The candles of all fluttered on even as the chanting dimmed, dwarves and men and the rarer elf stationed on every walkway above and below and in every window looking down upon the throne, taking turns to peer between the shoulders of their stone forebears on either side of the hall to catch a glimpse. Dori, Nori and Ori carried the train to Thorin's robe, and Meisar's ladies hers, while the rest, who flanked them front and back and on either side, carried their candles.

Once he had been just like this, with six candles on either side and three at his head, three at his feet. On a flat bed of stone, lifeless. And Bilbo Baggins weeping so vehemently two of the flames were drenched out beneath him.

But he lived Balin reminded himself. And by his side were not the lifeless forms of his heirs anymore but his bride and queen, and before him, a sister that had shown more courage in all her days than half of the soldiers he had known over a life combined. He held back the acute swell in his throat that was rising at the sight of Dis, her proud carriage, dragging the unbearable weight of her heart with her robes, facing the thousands who had come to see this night. How bravely she has done.

Her voice rang on and comforted Balin in its stentorian pride. "In darkness we are born, in halls where sun did never know, and from Aule's fire and his love of creation did he lay the first in their mountain and await for them to wake and make their light in dark places." Dis's voice rang out from the ceilings and halls of the manse in an echo, treating each syllable of these ancient words with careful reverence. "And from darkness ever do we make light. With chisel and hammer and ax and fire."

"AYE!" the cry went up once and silenced itself almost in perfect unison again from all gathered.

Meisar's sarcanet sleeves glinted on the light of the many thousand candles, as she made the pilgrimage several paces behind Thorin along the stone bridge to the throne. It was a journey that seemed to last a thousand years, the sudden quieting of the dwarves and men and elves that gazed down (and up from below) upon her not speaking the language either of reverence or chill. Gyda, Eda, and Bira and her youngest daughters carrying the heavy velvet train of her gown and extant robe were stand-pat and stone-faced in their task. Up and down the echoing galleries she could hear the idle chatter of the dwarves crowded on every level, peering out of every overlook down onto Thror's Hall.

Dis stepped up onto the platform where the throne was fixed and put out her arms to welcome Thorin to his final stead. She would perform the coronation rites as the last living descendant of the Line of Durin save for her brother the king, the first of any dwarf woman to have done so. She stood steps above Thorin, positioned between him and the throne. He placed his foot on the first stair toward it and stopped.

"Who are you, dwarf, and why do you come here?" Dis asked pointedly.

"I am Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, and I come here to claim my right as king under the mountain to be crowned, as my father and my grandfather before me."

The swords of all the sentries drew and raised along the corridors that surrounded them, in salute.

"Thorin son of Thrain comes before you. Do any in these halls dispute the the identity of this dwarf? Do any in these halls raise an opposition to his right to rule?"

The longer the silence carried on the lighter was the invisible weight that joined the heaviness of the fur on his shoulders. Tradition called for half a minute. The sneezing and the occasional impatient wail of a dwarfling or mannish child made him jump inside his skin. Dis finally calling him to rise made a breath dart out of his lungs and his heart pound as the oxygen rushed back in at once. Before him Dis was resplendent if slightly unnerved in her robes, her beard unadorned, and thousands more sets of eyes upon her than would have comforted her in the least. She put out her pale hand to be kissed in gratitude.

"Kneel and swear your oath my king, before your forebears and your people that yet live. And may they live long and prosperously in your reign."

"Hail! Hail!" they cried out as Thorin carefully went to his knees before Dis. The way he knelt before her had the look of contrition, a figure on his knees begging forgiveness. Dis placed the end of the scepter on his left shoulder. "Do you Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror swear to uphold your duty as king and protect your people from all harm, even if it is at the cost of your life?"

"I swear it."

"Do you swear to honor your forebears by ruling justly and fairly? Do you swear to the virtues of industriousness, generosity, and above all, loyalty?

"I swear it."

"Then in the name of my forebears, I grant thee the crown of Durin's House, which shall endure and guard this home. Do you accept this crown and its office of the king under the mountain? The sovereign and rightful heir of the kingdom of Erebor?"

"I do."

"I crown you then," Dis began, Dwalin moving forth with the crown on a blue-and-gold velvet pillow to be placed upon his head. Dis fitted it with gentle hands, but hands that were shaking nonetheless. "Thorin son of Thrain, who shall be king. Long may you reign over us in prosperity and peace. May the Fathers and all those who came before us bless your oath."

Dis smiled down upon him, for the first time so pink with pride her lips curled into tight lines against the swell of emotion. "Now rise a king. King under the mountain, let all the lands behold."

He came up from his knee to the thunderous roaring applause of every voice that gathered in the hall and in those far beyond. Baiin's tears did not longer hold themselves in but flowed freely and with as much joy as with the doleful memory of all that had come before. The ladies all wept also but Meisar held back the tightening of her throat and prickling of her eyes, vehemently, for her time was coming quickly, and she thought, in an anxious way, that a weeping queen might impart an ill omen to those who witnessed her crowning.

As Thorin kissed Dis's cheek in thanks she passed a a whisper to his ear. "They will walk with you always. Whether in darkness or in light."

Her smile descended down toward Meisar at the foot of the platform and then back to Thorin, with a kind of playfulness coupled with aching pride to it. "And do you, my king," she began, her words silencing all of the rabble. "...offer any consort, to rule by your side and in your stead?"

"I do," Thorin responded stoutly, in a voice louder than even had seemed to swear his oath. "I present my wife, who shall be queen. Come forth and be crowned, my lady. Meisar..."

There was a sharp hush followed by anticipatory chatter. They all stood eager and peeping over each other's heads, to behold the woman who had unlocked the heart of Thorin Oakenshield. She was sure they had beheld the most unexpected figure of all save for a king risen from a proverbial grave. Balin and Dwalin, Dis and Emli, Gloin and Gimli and the thirteen of the quest's undertaking to reclaim the mountain together smiled upon her. In the upper galleries closest overlooking the throne she could see Bard and his three children, Lord Elrond, his daughter, and the restive elf that waited closest upon Lord Elrond. The faces of the people though were blurred and tinted strangely in their candlelight, and for the moment, she was glad for it. She knelt, clumsy under the weight of the robes. Thorin took both her hands by the fingers delicately, raising them up toward him aloft, and her on her knees before him gazed upward with a stoic reverence about her, an expression he had thought he was used to when she was Meisar the shepherdess, withdrawn and serious in torn stockings with her dogs, who now knelt before him as his queen, the ermine mantle being draped across her shoulders.

"I took you as my wife of my own volition and great love. I will crown you as my queen the same, if you will swear by the same oath taken by the king himself. Will you hear it and be sworn to it?"

"I will be."

"Do you, Meisar, take up the mantle of queen under the mountain, to honor and cherish your duty as the queen of Erebor, as was consecrated by your marriage to its sovereign?"

"I do before Mahal swear it so."

"And if it comes the time when the king has ascended to his Father's Halls, or cannot by his own rule, shall you be the light in that dark place and take up his stead?"

She drew a breath against the new blanket of murmurs being passed thickly through the crowds above and below, concentrating on Thorin's intent gaze and his alone.

"I shall, my king, always."

Queen Lotte was its previous bearer and none had ever beheld her in these halls, not even her own. They just need to get used to this idea. It will be natural to them soon. Soon...

"Then come forth," Thorin commanded, and turning to little Anbur, bowed his head in asking, "and bring the crown so that my wife may be my queen in true."

Anbur brought the velvet case and curtsied dramatically to the wide murmured charm of all who beheld her. Bira's eyes swelled with tears from her pride but hers fell freely while she patted Bombur's dry nearby.

The box creaked on its hinges, opened for the first time in over a century. From the dusty velvet was plucked the crown of the Queen of Erebor, and fitted gingerly upon her head by Thorin himself. It was a heavy curved piece, not unlike her bridal crown, but clustered ever more densely with as many jewels as could be fitted. A ground of white diamonds curved up in a delicate arc, the visages of ravens laid in in a line of three in blue diamonds. It seemed thrice as opulent a piece to Thorin's own and she felt a brief, heavy pang of guilt to wear it, even ceremonially. Its weight was giving her a headache already.

"Rise my queen, and let all behold."

Standing before the throne he joined her hand with his and raised theirs aloft together. The trumpet blew on the balcony far on the other side of the halls and swords were rattled, shields beat on every sentry's front, and the candles of the peoples rose in jagged waves of light all around them. The horn silenced and with it the entirety of the great hall itself when Dis descended and raised the scepter.

"Under mountain and under stone," her deep proud voice called out again, almost musical in the way it wavered as she tried to wrestle the emotion from her throat. "Behold your king. Behold your queen."

"Matarzûn! Makalmûna!" the dwarves and then the men began to chant out two separate words, eventually separating them more clearly. But the white noise in the hall had blurred and bottled in Meisar's head, overwhelming her. She squeezed Thorin's arm. "What are they saying?"

"Matarzûn! Makalmûna!" the rallying went on.

"It it us, my queen. They are calling for us," Thorin replied.

"Us?"

"Matarzûn. Makalmûna," repeated. "He who has risen. She who has been crowned."