Thank you again to all reviewers and new followers!
To answer your question Weliann (which is a very good question by the way): Meisar is not a pauper queen by any stretch of the imagination but like a great number of medieval and early modern monarchs for example, it was not uncommon for a king/queen to rely upon their nobles to provide a great deal of the funding for "big" projects so to speak (like wars). Nobles put up valuables, gold, plate, etc. and could be expected to be rewarded in the future for it with titles, good marriages and the like. Not that they had much of a choice really. Here, much the same, Emli and Gloin are a wealthy power couple who have the resources and the wherewithal to acquire whatever is needed. This is, compared to war, probably a smaller scale project, but the same applies I suppose. Hope that answered your question.
Also I actually pictured the hanging gardens as being A. a bit more sizable than you're probably picturing and B. sufficient for the time simply because dwarves are probably not heavily reliant on fruits and vegetables. They utilize them regularly I'm supposing, but the main staple will still probably be meat.
A note on ghuregbuzramerag also: The Dwarrow Scholar has it as a feast on the lunar calendar which would fall anywhere from very late spring to mid-summer. It's known as Deep-Ale Fest in the common tongue and is basically a celebration of dwarven work ethic. Between the Blessed Green Fest earlier in the spring and this one, dwarves will work as hard as they can and then celebrate equally hard at Deep Ale Fest with (what else?) lots of ale, feasting and games.
I can scarcely believe you would send me on such a mission Dis
Meisar pinned the veil to the side of her headdress, so that only her eyes were visible above it's jeweled masque. She mused to herself in a sort of dark amusement at her own predicament, a predicament she had agreed to nonetheless.
"You've a better… common touch than I," Dis had sheepishly assured her. "I would enter such a place and be as foreboding as a foreign traveler, skulking through such merry halls with my widows weeds sopping up the spilled ale? Oh Meisar, you know you are far better suited."
Or you mean you simply don't have the stomach for it.
Meisar had been down the way of the forges on plenty of occasions, never flinching at the heat or the thundering of the great machinery. Disguised as a Blacklock dwarrowdam, it would be a different visit. Beyond the guild-halls, the dwarves informally ruled their private social clubs and laid claim to whatever nook in the stone was comfortable to them. Such life took in these halls, life proud of its rough edges. The halls had been newly-cleared in the time of Smaug, but before his conquest unfinished, seams of stone now running long into the darkness of the mountain's unclaimed innards. A place known only as The Pits lay just beyond. Down here, everyone carried a skin of ale in one hand, sometimes both. Good-natured insults rang out at every makeshift pub-counter and dice table. On sparring floors marked in chalk and the occasional weathered pallet to cushion a hard fall, dwarves practiced at wrestling and bare knuckle fighting.
The daytime regulars were sparse that day, two weeks ahead of ghuregbuzramerag, with dwarves all in their forges and workshops sunup to sundown. Now, at a midday break, they gathered in more sizable klatches for leisure and drink.
"Stay close," Oliada cautioned, a hand on Meisar's arm nudging her out of the path of a volley of game pieces flying from a nearby table. Bemused gazes landed on her from all directions. The only female dwarves about were the no-nonsense barkeeps, pie and stew sellers, and the occasional female crafter who blended in seamlessly with the menfolk, strong enough to take down a fully grown man, the lot of them.
Vigg, Vestri, Hepti and Lofar, she repeated in her head over and over, until she came to a dwarrowdam tending an ale-counter, and asked aloud.
The older dwarrowdam laughed nervously. "None but Liwizuthak and Longbeard ruffians down these parts. What are Blacklock women doing about in search of those four? To place a bet on Onar the Golden Boar in the fighting ring? Your coin will disappear into their tankards, lassie, I assure you that."
Meisar unpinned the veil for the dwarrowdam-barkeep's view only. She dipped a subtle curtsy and a swift nod of the head in the direction of the lantern lights percolating out of the nooks along a far wall. The dwarrowdam leaned in close.
"Furthest one down is their hideaway. Filthy hive. Just what does Meisar the Queen do in these parts? They say you've a common touch, but this is no place for a royal bride," she scolded lightly.
"A diplomatic mission, you could say," Meisar informed her, Oliada issuing a stern gaze that said she ought ask nothing further of it.
"Follow the trail of spilled garg and your nose," the barkeep relented, with a pitiful laugh.
.
Meisar pushed back the boar-hide curtain that rendered the space private to them, laconic laughter like the snorts of pigs rolling out in languid spurts. All four of the dwarves reeled back from the sudden lantern light, grunting.
"My good masters, I do not mean to intrude, certainly," Meisar said quickly.
"Lads only, mistress," Lofar belched intently in her direction. "Private social club."
She unpinned the veil from the side of her face, its beardless visage rendered stark to the four of them. "Vigg, Vestri, Lofar and Hepti, close kin to Freyda, a lady of my court. I am pleased to meet you."
The dwarves all blinked until finally one punched the one next to him in the shoulder.
"What did you do to yourself, Freyda?" the corpulent one weighing down a boar hide lounger seat gasped.
"It's the queen, you soft-boiled egg!" the dwarf with the mangled left hand hissed.
"We welcome you to sit, majesty," the youngest, Lofar, offered, fumbling for a chair and falling backward over it, breaking a leg off it in the process.
"Here, m'queen. Ye can sit in mine," Hepti offered, rising up from his sagging seat. Meisar declined politely when the wet spot became apparent in the half-dimmed light of the nook.
"So... erm, how can we be o' service, m'queen?" the thumb-less dwarf scratched nervously behind his ear. His tunic was open to the chest and she could see it was bruised, along with his arm. The younger was patching him up with bandages and a herbal solution that was noxious but better than the foul aroma that permeated the rest of the room in a thick haze.
"I seem to be of little help to a lady of mine. Courted by one you have met I am certain, Mister Dwalin. I have heard it said that he has a rapport with the four of you."
"Aye, not like the king's own, but we know 'im," Vestri, the thumb-less, piped up. "Good lad he is."
"We look out for him," a fourth dwarf, slouching in the corner darkness, added, dryly. "Keep a fair watch about him, for Freyda's sake more than our own."
"You are kin to her?"
"Not by blood you see, but her da would hide us for drum-making if we didn't act the part," Lofar laughed. Vestri shushed him vehemently.
"I thought as much," Meisar said. "Perhaps then you know her even better than I."
"Since she was born," the dwarf in the corner acknowledged quietly, rising into the light. When he stood and faced her, he could see Meisar sturdy herself against flinching at the sight of his face, his nose beaten flat, the split lip and the spirals of scars spattering outward from it. "Mister Dwalin courts her I see. I find him plodding and stupid in the art, personally."
Meisar took a seat quietly at the table across from Vigg. Vestri rushed to set a full tankard in front of her, bowing so low he almost tumbled forward in his own inebriation. "A woman wiser than myself told me, it is up to male dwarves to give each other the correct sort of guidance. We womenfolk have our limits. I would ask Thorin also, but this wise woman also told me that closer friends may be clouded in their judgments. Besides, Thorin doesn't know Freyda nearly as much as the four of you. It's as much about her as it is him, it seems. They are at a stalemate. It renders her... somewhat aggrieved. Perhaps you could help one of them make this move, and end it."
Dwalin is also right terrified of at least one of you she thought in silent amusement, but for Dwalin's sake, said it not. "You could be of service in the fine art of communication."
"Communication? What is that?" Lofar the Young inquired daftly.
"Shut up!" hissed Vigg.
"Talking. Something women do, I hear," the fat one, Hepti, interjected cheerfully. "Bring me another bowl of soup, will you, Vestri, while you're standing?" A tremor, churning, muffled itself into the seat he was in, his face twisting in shame. "Or not, maybe."
Vestri shot him a look and he squirmed side to side in the seat, a bubble buoying back up into his stomach rupturing inside with a low growl that all could hear the stewing grate of. He winced, as did Meisar, when the escaped part of it reached her. She pinned the veil back over her face, to the offense of none of them. Vestri sailed an empty clay plate across the room at Hepti, nailing him square in the nose.
"Apologies, my queen. Deepest ones," Lofar groveled.
"Many. Forgive me," Hepti squeaked out.
"None needed, " Meisar assured, trying not to retch. "I am well acquainted with Mister Donbur myself. I know his hot cheese and onion soup. Even in its final form."
"I think I know much what my queen is asking of us," Vestri piped up. "I think we may be able to be of service."
"After all," Vigg said darkly, sinking back into the corner. "Anything for a friend."
.
On petitioners day it seemed the representatives from every guild- the healers to the jewelers to the makers of miners' candlesticks, had queued even before dawn to be heard. The dwarrowdams, and the fishwives and weavers and merchant-wives of Dale, queued before Meisar and her ladies. Steel was wanted, ever more spindle needles and sewing tools, as could be expected. The healers guild needed more linen for bandages, more herbs from the terrace gardens. Dwarven jewelers were many scrolls in backlogs ahead of summer weddings on the Long Lake and in the city.
Across the chamber, Thorin stared impatiently at the three dwarves bumbling and shoving each other in awkward silence before him, when the sentry called them, thrice until they answered forth.
"M'king," one bumped the other and then the next in bowing.
He could see Dwalin sullying his expression toward them and cleared his throat. "What petition do you bring before me?"
"Yes!" Lofar answered quickly. There was silence after, glowering from the other two.
"There are many petitioners today, masters. If your business is not serious, I will have to request you take it elsewhere, or save it for another time," Thorin warned.
"We've come with only a simple request. A set time, soon coming, where you might free Mister Dwalin to our company, majesty."
"It would be rude of us to be skulking around at random times seeing if he is free of duty, after all," Vestri added. "Thought it might only aid your majesty's convenience."
"Dwalin?" Thorin nudged.
"Aye!" Dwalin barked at attention.
"You may take leave if you wish. We have enough sentries for the time to keep the peace."
"If these lads are kenning so hard for my company," he relented, reluctantly. His lip curled clandestinely toward Thorin with lack of enthusiasm.
"However, I will require you back in half of an hour, perhaps less. Do as you must," Thorin said, a small wink with a bowed head that only Dwalin could see. His chest went in, in a modicum of relief.
"We can hold out without him for a few I suppose," Balin relented. "Doesn't seem very enthusiastic."
"It is not for no ill cause," Thorin said under his breath. "At least, I trust a particular few that it is not." He regained himself as the next of the petitioners came forward.
"It is two weeks to ghuregbuzramerag. The guilds are running through their supplies faster than we can work. There is a glut of iron-works at the moment. But I can hardly advise them to slow their production. Tradition," Thorin finally muttered when the queue broke for midday, amusedly.
"Aye, but not a shortage of demand on ale-barrel rings, and steel rattles are selling faster than we can make them in the toy markets of Dale. Seems the month past has brought a boom in births to the city," Balin added. "In addition to others newly added."
"Wonder what happened nine months ago," Ori wondered aloud. Dori shushed him with a smack to the arm.
"The king's return, amongst other things," Balin hastened to remind him. "And many feasting days and merrymaking that followed; seems the world of men did not go unaffected by the mirth."
"Fortunately the fruit and vegetable stands of city are relatively free of dwarves. The queen's gardens have freed up the resources of the menfolk, somewhat."
"As long as the barley and hops stay at keel, we should be fine," Thorin smiled, the first he had managed all day.
.
"Fine company, Mister Dwalin," Donbur remarked with an uncanny sarcasm when Vestri made a stop in the foyer against the groans of the others. Dwalin hung back as Donbur filled two cast iron pots with hot cheese soup and sprinkled chips of dried onion over each when they were poured to their brims. Dwalin's glare put Donbur more swiftly to his task, submerging thick slices of bread in each of the pots before covering them to stay warm.
"Onions from the gardens of our own. Bless Queen Meisar, the tenacious gardener!" Donbur chortled. Vestri hung the lidded pots on either end of a rod across his shoulder. "Let's go then, lads."
"You should have gotten three. Hepti's going to eat a whole one!" Lofar whined.
"I've only got two pots on me, and you've stuffed your face right in kielbasa and Mistress Urdlaug's goat sausage already," Vestri snapped in return. Dwalin winced, anticipation turning his stomach green with dread.
In the lair down below the forges Hepti waited in gleeful anticipation. He set a tray across his lap and raised the lid from the steaming pot, greedily. The aroma of the soup briefly overwhelmed the stale sweat and moldy mead stench in the space, but Dwalin groused inside, knowing its eventual morphology, as Hepti dug in, slurping it from a ladle bigger than the one Donbur had dished it out with.
"Come, have an ale, Mister Dwalin. Dark ale. The last of the winter sort," Lofar offered. He overfilled a tankard, spilling it down the front of his tunic. The others sat at the table and quibbled over portions of the remaining pot of soup. Lofar plucked the bread off the top with grubby fingertips, dripping liquid gold over the table, only to have Vigg slap it across his face like a wet fish. A splatter of warm cheese lightly grazed the back of Dwalin's hand.
"So what is yer business, lads?" Dwalin cut to the point, impatiently, flicking his afflicted hand back at Lofar. It landed on his cheek and he licked it off.
"We thought we might be of service to you, Mister Dwalin," Hepti answered. Cheese spilled in an inelegant crescendo down the front of his tunic; he rested the whole pot on his belly like a table in itself.
"Oh?" Dwalin's brow perked, less than amused.
"How do you find Freyda these days?" Vestri inquired.
"A very good lass. We sup together, walk now that it's summer, by evening. Aye, she does enjoy it I think."
"She does quite like having a strong arm like yours in her own I can say that," Vestri chuckled. "Hers these days could snap my neck like a chicken's. Have you noticed?"
"She's 'a bonny touch," Dwalin admitted quietly over the rim of his cup.
"Indeed? Well, just how bonny?" Hepti smirked. "Come on, lad. It's just us. We won't tell Onar."
"Why do the four of ye beleaguer me with this nonsense? It's not the business of yers," snapped Dwalin over the warmed up ale. It tasted like old sweat.
"Well it's Freyda's business and we're very akin to her. And her da," Lofar nodded sharply in Vestri's direction.
"Do you think Onar's got a chance in this bout coming up?" Vestri inquired nonchalantly in expression, stifling a smirk.
"Judging from the hooks he's throwing down in the sparring floors I'd say a yes to that," Hepti answered.
"Heard he put Flor son of Glor's nose all the way into his face last," said Lofar.
"Aye, and he's got a big nose too," Hepti hastened to mention.
Dwalin guffawed sharply. "You lads cajole me with yer talk and now ye try and intimidate me. Won't work."
"Not trying to intimidate!" Lofar insisted. "Trying to help!"
"Don't need yer help."
"I think you do!" Vestri exhorted loudly.
Dwalin sneered at him. "Never had a woman have any of ye? How would ye know?"
"We know!" Hepti half-belched. "Well... sort of."
"Had well enough," Dwalin grunted, rising to leave. Vigg's arm dropped itself heavily in his path, blocking the doorway entirely. The dwarf had risen like a shadow, stealthy as as a ranger. Dwalin flinched when he found his mangled face inches from his own. When he took a step back in reluctant enough surrender he could see the skin of his bicep was brutally scarred in several places also, one gash so deep it had been rendered a trench of torn flesh, the scar old but not even whitened from healing, like even the worst of his own.
"I did," Vigg declared gravely, locking eyes with Dwalin.
"Aye?" Dwalin's brows lowered at him.
"Aye." His eyes held to Dwalin's as hard and cold as ice. "Do you know what it feels like to lose the only person you've ever really loved?" His hand gripped itself over the side of the doorway so hard the knuckles turned white.
"I'm afraid I can't stay no longer," Dwalin said sharply, his stomach silently dropping into the pit of its own cavity deep inside. He ducked under Vigg's arm to make a hasty retreat. "I'm sorry."
.
II
"The fresh air is like a cup of cold ale," Meisar harrumphed in Dis's direction, albeit playfully. "After what I've experienced."
"Thus I brought you a small token of my appreciation." She handed Meisar a pair of flat sturdy shoes with a soft linen lining. "You've worn out the others already."
"A box of potpourri might be more appropriate next time," Meisar ribbed back at her, scooting over on the stone edge so Dis could sit. She was dressed in, easy for summer, uncannily light for her. But it was the gardens after all. In the afternoon they were the most peaceful of all.
"I ask you to trust me that this is a good thing. I have known Dwalin all of my life," Dis reminded. "He can be moved. His heart is not so stout it will not surrender, if he knows what is true in it. Sometimes he needs to be… shown is all. Not pushed, but gently guided."
"Why not go to Thorin then and have him talk that sense into him? Will he not listen to his closest friend than to a pack of virtual strangers?"
"Sister, you do not see. It is not a lack of love between them. They want what they want. It is a matter of getting one to tell the other before it drives either mad. Women cannot speak to men of this and close friends may not always speak what is plain."
"So you send him to the ruffian kin of his lady's father, to do so instead?"
"Naturally," Dis said, self-assuredly. "Besides, Freyda needs to stop laying about your floor in her underlinen constantly, mooning over him so. What if Thorin walks in on her that way? Not proper at all."
"Are you saying there's a lack of discipline in my household since I've spent my days here so often?" Meisar intoned.
"Hardly. Siv's up to covering her shoulders, even her decolletage nowadays. Well... at least an inch or two higher, her necklines."
Meisar laughed and leaned into Dis's shoulder; it felt solid, the tensity of the muscles slightly abated.
"Ah, here comes my brother now," Dis stood and embraced Thorin. He looked down at her bare feet, white as milk. She avoided the brambles peeping out from the strawberry crop but not the dirt. She rubbed the point of a toe in it and laughed. "Have you been up at all to see your queen's gardens? Look at her feet. Perhaps she will be the first to taste the summer ale!" Dis crowed, her eyes light with mirth.
"Sister," Thorin bowed his head stiffly toward her.
"I will leave you two alone I think," Dis winked.
"You have been up here since morning," Thorin observed. "And now you have so few to share in your labors." He turned his observation down toward the lower terraces, where a few dwarves still meddled around, sprinkling water over the emerging leafy tops of the carrots. "Will my queen not take some rest?"
"Khuzd tada tazrali kuzru undu 'abad zud mahtagnani d'agnud," she said. "Besides, watering was the main task today, and I think it shall rain anyhow."
Thorin turned his head toward the sky, still blue overhead, cloudless and still.
"Over the spur," she explained. "Swift rainclouds. I can still smell it on the air before I can see it, a summer rain."
He kissed her warm pink cheek with the freckles startling to spiral out in little waves over her nose, the peaks of her cheekbones and the peripherals of her forehead. Her ruddiness was coming back a bit.
"I said the same once to kin of mine, over other halls, palaces some would say. In mind, we are akin to each other, truly, mizimel," he said. "We build beacons, from the ashes."
"I hope and pray it shall bear dividends, for this kingdom, for us." He detected a faint melancholy beneath the serene, creased smile.
Did Dwalin feel this for Freyda too, this ardent adoration and ineffable strife, together and the same? Maybe Dis was right after all.
"Are you happy, my love?" he murmured into her hair, redolent of sun, of earth.
"I am as happy as the day we were married." She kissed his hand. In her chest and in her stomach she was filled with warm, unwitting joy. "As happy as that day and as the night."
Rolling low, the clouds breached the spurs and cast a shallow shadow down into the valley between the mountain's arms. The rain came something fierce and the dwarves scurried down the ladders and called to the sentries at the bottom to be leverage to the mining buckets they used as lifts.
"Shall we go into the mountain out of this deluge?" Thorin inquired. It was soaking his skin already.
"No. Let us stay here, just a moment. I have not felt the rain in so long."
She was faraway, somewhere else entirely, her face turned up toward the coal-gray sky, letting the warm summer rain pour over her. She twisted her ankles so that her feet shimmied back and forth in the soil. She wrapped her toes around it, felt the very essence of the rain, nourishing, momentarily worshiping its ability to create life. It rolled from the surface of Thorin's hair and pooled in its ends, fat droplets squeezing themselves out. His tunic clung to the broad breadth of his chest.
"We should get inside, and out of these wet clothes," Thorin said, finally, thunder coming swift again, startling them both.
"Yes," she demured. "I rather like that idea."
.
III
"Ah, there is Dwalin; we did not think you would return," welcomed Hepti.
"I came back because... I find my manners lacking in leaving so," he half-lied.
"Sit down," Vigg ordered, with an uncanny gentleness, from the table. "Should tell you some things it might benefit you to know."
"A wife?" Dwalin muttered quietly, a careful question.
"She died in the Blue Mountains. Rock slide," Hepti cut in, loudly. "Shame about it. Truly a shame. A very good woman she was."
Vigg quietly rose and in a single bound crisply crossed the space and decked him in the head. Hepti groaned and slumped over the chair, knocked out cold. His cheek rested against a pillow of the bread loaf he was noshing at. Vigg returned to the table without breaking a sweat; not a vein on his neck stood up; calm as death, he took his ale once more.
"She was. Miss her very much you see," Vigg continued. Vestri went about refilling all their tankards quietly, himself remaining at a distance into the corner of the room. "A good woman. Leaves a bleak place in here when they go like that," he thumped a fist against his own chest. "Her name was Jutta."
"I am sorry for your wife, in true."
"Oh aye. She was a… savage… woman. A right hook on 'er that could'a burst the gut of a burly man, a temper like a dragon. My, she was beautiful when she was angry." Vigg poured himself another porterhouse ale from the pitcher. He left the cup on the table, steepling scarred thick fingers under his chin, the eyes over it patting Dwalin up and down, inside and out, more contemplative than predatory, which unnerved him for a moment. "So you have this woman. A good woman. A good dwarf woman. She rends her heart here and there for you. Do you do the same, Dwalin?"
"Much so," Dwalin muttered.
"Really?"
"I think of only her! Day. Night. She is… good," the confession twisted his insides. But on his shoulders, something, instantaneously, felt lighter. "She is so very good. I can say no more."
"Aye, she is. M'a war-dog much like you, Dwalin. Seen my battles. But I loved once too. I love Freyda as I would a daughter of my own, had I one before Jutta's going up to the Halls."
Dwalin studied Vigg's face again, more thoroughly than he had ever done, and making so secret of it the way he met his eyes every few seconds to see that his attention was still rapt. His beard was down to his chest but over his mangled lip and up his cheeks the skin was pocked and scarred and bare of facial hair. The portrait of Jutta he carried in his belt showed a comely dwarrowdam, eyes that leapt from the fading ink and yellowed parchment under its glass, beard fluffed gently outward from her jawline the way Freyda wore hers, except she was swarthy. He must have been handsome in his youth, Dwalin assumed quietly, not letting his face betray the pity. A pity he had known maybe for himself once.
"You see, one day she is here, as fine and healthy as could be, carrying on a goodish life than what we'd known past, and the next day, she is gone. Given what this mountain's seen, you never know, do you?" Vigg mused.
"I'm nary a reader of portents, so no," Dwalin relented.
"Well she cares for you, Dwalin. I cared for a woman once too, and I know that you do to. I don't need you to tell me. I'm not a reader of portents either, but you, you, Dwalin, are not as hard to read as you think. I know you care for her the same. Am I mistaken?" The last sentence came with a warning glare.
"I'd like to be with her always," said Dwalin. "I don't... I'm not ready."
"Ready for what?" Lofar demanded, irritating as ever, that one. Dwalin's fist curled around his ale so not to punch the lout right flat in his spacey visage.
"I know! I know... it," Dwalin sputtered, irritably. "Just not... how. It needs be done right."
"Ah, so that's the problem," Lofar concluded, triumphantly.
"Well, we can help with that," Vestri piped up.
"You'll do things at your own pace, Dwalin, that's okay," Lofar assured. "But I suggest you try and keep her happy in the meantime. Let her know you think of her so. Now Freyda's not a fussy kind of lass but she has a sentimental side believe it or not. Those wee gestures are lost on her."
"Mahal's sake, I know that by now," Dwalin shot back, annoyed. The thought of his boar snout's current whereabouts flamed his cheeks and his stomach. He squirmed under the table.
"I say you drop upon your knees and surprise her by tossing her up onto yer shoulders and carrying her off to the altar," Hepti suggested. "She's not in love with you for your… gentler qualities I don't imagine. A woman needs a man like yourself who'll show their strength, take a bit o' charge."
"And have your kidneys gouged you dolt?" Vestri spat. "Fool of a dwarf. No dwarrowdam would be content by that."
"Freyda is a kidney-gouger," Hepti relented, shuddering. "But supposing she's got such a bonny touch as you say, I don't suppose you've rubbed her all the wrong way lately. Don't underestimate yourself lad. You're doing fine."
"What is this, a klatch o' the hens, all pourin' their hearts in together? Ye talk like women," Dwalin remarked.
"Trying to teach you how to talk to one!" Vestri retorted.
"Keep your rubbing a little less bonny if you don't want to be afoul of Onar now. The man's got a reputation after all," Hepti cautioned. "Of course, there is a solution to all of that, and the rubbing is very bonny indeed when you get the gall to do-"
"Well I've got a very good idea for you, Dwalin!" Lofar boomed in.
"You four are impossible. Ye know nothing of this." He shoved his chair back irritably from the table.
Lofar flexed his knuckles out with a smirk behind him. "I happen to know where to acquire coffee."
"In the East, where the warring clans are sparring, they say?" Dwalin replied acerbically.
"No. Right here under the mountain. Got my sources," assured Lofar, that smirk so self-assured.
"Aye? How and where?" Dwalin turned back.
"It so happens I'm in the know to a very clever thief," Lofar replied.
Dwalin grinned thinly. "You don't say."
.
He came to the guild hall late the next afternoon, where the iron-workers held court and mediation, put in orders for supplies. He stood outside the door until the last had left. When he heard her laughing inside, it let his stomach finally rise up to its usual place. He treasured and loathed what that subtle baying sound did to his heart, a tickle like a feather on its very surface.
"We've been hearing petitioners all day," Freyda said, cheerily enough, welcoming him with a light embrace. Her beard on his own cheek when she kissed is chastely was soft.
Siv stopped writing and flexed her hand, flashing in the lantern light with rings. "Well, Mister Dwalin, what brings you about?"
He hated the way her smart black eyes twinkled like she knew everything already.
"Come to see if you've finished for the time, lass. I would like... for us to sup, or..." he offered.
"Nearly," Freyda answered. "The iron workers guild is very hard at work these days. I am even hopeful one of our own might be the first taster of the summer ale." She went behind the desk and showed Dwalin the huge stack, giving Siv a grateful glance of credit for the paperwork.
"I, er, came in bringing ye something, speakin' of tasting," he seemed to stammer out. He plopped the dense bag of ground coffee down on the table, so strong its aroma filtered through the bag, sharp and dreamy at once. She held it to her face and squealed into it.
"Oh... Dwalin, where came ye by this? Hasn't been on the marketplaces for months now!" She sprang out from behind the heavy stone desk and threw herself full flush into his arms. He lightly brushed his cheek over the top of her head, the tickle of the flyaways coming up static from the hold of her braid. Iron and lavender.
"Friend of a friend," he said vaguely, setting arms awkwardly at the upper part of her back. Over Freyda's shoulder he could see Siv's knowing expression, comma at the corner of her mouth in a gleeful smirk. How he made Gyda blush. The girl was good, bless her. Freyda gave a giddy squirm in his arms that made him urgent all over with need, rapidly. Freyda felt the rush of blood in the crease of his forearms, a bulge against her belly that she stood stodgily against.
"Turn about, Gyda. Siv."
"She knows, lass. They know," Dwalin all but growled, taking her quick by the back of her head, pulling her into a hungry kiss.
"Will ye hear these petitioners long?" he inquired into her neck. He felt her heat and his own rose against her, again.
"Nay," she said. Gyda winked at her from behind. "I think Gyda can handle the last on her own."
"Better idea. We'll start again tomorrow, early," concluded Siv, flippantly. Gyda's mouth parted in mock indignity as Siv folded her inks and papers and pulled Gyda's seat out for her, still in it. Siv's arm slipped sharply between Gyda's stubbornly crossed ones and pulled, hard.
"But..." Gyda protested.
"Come on, girl. Time to go. After all," Siv winked surreptitiously over Freyda's shoulder. "Some thins' not for an un-courted maid to be a'viewing. Or a betrothed one for that matter."
.
IV
"He does adore you quite ardently, that is for certain," Dis quipped with a smile over her embroidery. Brynja, Aroin, Siv and Gyda sat at her feet helping thread the edges of the tapestry in tassels and averted their eyes, stifling giggles, at the dark tinges of flesh ringing Freyda from the dip under her ear to the well of collarbone and neck.
She snorted at them defensively but the glow of her face exuded her pure pride. "He brought me coffee he did. Been a rare find in the marketplaces. Would I be so unkind to deny 'im his amours?"
"When he touches me it's like a wolf," she sighed. "Like I'm to be devoured whole. But it feels a very loving intent. Maybe he is hungry, starving even. Oh, I would feed him from me own hand like a baby bird and its 'amad."
"You do know they regurgitate their food to their young?" Meisar pointed out brusquely. The dwarrowdams laughed uproariously.
"What would I know of birds?" Freyda snorted. "Other than ravens and the portents of the thrushes."
"Seems a very rough sort of affection," Aroin observed, pointedly. "There are other sorts which you might not wish him to be so rough at, if things proceed."
"When the time comes we'll see," Freyda answered coyly. There was a serene confidence to her that made Meisar silently well inside with satisfaction, even the rawest of hope.
"Love is love," Dis hummed, serenely. "Wherever and whenever it is true."
.
Dwalin went to the lair at the time that was set. Late in the afternoon, on the evening before the the first night of ghuregbuzramerag. All of Erebor was sharp in some places with the smell of the alehouses over in Dale, the fires of the dwarves below the gates in their small villages, the foreboding cackle of gunpowder. Inside the city it was meat crackling and juicy on the bone, spicy with seasonings of every exotic sort, from saffron to plain salt and pepper. Bread and cakes baked so sweetly in the great kitchens even the sweat of the laboring ones was elated in its misting on the air itself.
"Taking a break from your labors?" Lofar jabbed at Dwalin's clean tunic and polished coat of mail. He was sweating into the new linen underneath already, in the heat of the nook, even though the sundry bellows of the forges nearby were slowly cooling as the dwarves prepared for ten days of merriment, no work, or sleep.
"Aye, and you as well, I see," he came back, sarcastically. The way it smelled in there one couldn't imagine they ever left, even for a run to the toilets. Hepti rolled his hips to the side in his chair, cracking the stiff bones there, stretching legs, sinking back into the groaning seat.
"Been Onar's spotter all day," Lofar shot back, wincing. He opened his tunic. Bruises came down his chest in black lines, his knuckles swollen and black also. "I hold the bag while he punches it."
"Big fight coming up. Third night. Maybe ye ought go and have a reminder of that one's gall," Vestri suggested, slickly.
"He tells me Freyda's been delighted as all, lately," Hepti clucked.
"We've seen the jewels you give her," Vigg snorted, whether acerbically or not it never quite surfaced enough to reveal itself.
"Jewels? No, no jewels…" Dwalin hastened an answer. "Yet. She's not a lass for the baubles and-"
"Seen the amethyst you give her… that she wears about her neck," Vigg interrupted sharply. "Amethyst and even onyx."
"Ah, he likes her, don't he? Aye he sure does," Hepti boomed.
"No wonder she's been having her hair all down," Vestri clapped his palms with roaring amusement. "Well then, what say you to that, Mister Dwalin?"
"I should like to show her her a tend'rer liking. A gesture of it," Dwalin muttered. "No good at the softer arts."
"Simple things she likes. It'll keep her well akin to you. Until..." Lofar encouraged. Vigg pushed him back with an arm across his chest, shoved his chair in the way so that he faced Dwalin close on.
"Do you love her?" Vigg demanded suddenly.
"Yes!" specks of spittle flew from Dwalin's lips with the ardency of the reply. He wiped his mouth the back of his hand, embarrassed.
"I know you do," Vigg agreed. "Because you've lost someone you loved, haven't you?"
"Have not we all?" Dwalin said, curling arms up again around his chest.
"What does it feel like?" Vigg's meaty hand twisted the tankard around in a circle, grinding it into the table so hard it left white marks in the stone.
"A blackness," Dwalin all but choked a breath of a reply. His pounding heart slowed into the languorous rhythm of that dark nostalgic that crept over the back of his neck like the fingers of death itself. "In the day, and the night... the tomb."
"I sat by Jutta's all night and sobbed. Wouldn't you know it?" Vigg grumbled, caustically. His white knuckles turned around the tankard again. The other hand made a muffled squeaking sound just below the table. Dwalin spied a quick glance and the chain from his burnished locket dangled off the edge of a thumb, clutching around something in the heart of his palm so tight it was going red from the white.
"Memory is what we have. It's what we treasure," Vigg sighed finally after a tense silence. "What you remember is a very precious thing. But what you have... it is worth more than all the gold in the mountains from here to the sky and worlds beyond. The memory is a curse. The present is a gift. The future... we never know."
"I would be Freyda's own, present and future; I mourn only the past didn't yield her company to me also," Dwalin grumbled.
"Your face is getting all red under that wiry bush upon it," Hepti cackled from across the room. "What is it now, Mister Dwalin? Got you flustered?"
"It's bloody hot in here. Don't you ever crack this hide open a bit? Maybe a box of flowers someplace," he harrumphed in amusement at the last of his words, watching the four of them flinch at the thought.
"Heat don't make your foot tap-tap-tap like a hummingbird full of that coffee drink," Vigg sneered.
"Leave him be," Vestri waved an arm up toward them, shooing them from Dwalin's close peripheral. Reckoning it's just a soldier's thing. You've not got a hard heart. There's just a... thing around it."
"They're called ribs," Dwalin replied sarcastically.
"Your sarcasm is a very fine defense mechanism. I wonder, lad, what do you have to be so defensive about? Are you too proud to admit to me that once you wept at the foot of a king's tomb and his princes?" Vigg questioned, earnestly. His scared lip twitched hard.
"I did." Bile pumped through his belly and into his very veins it seemed, it was left stinging so at the memory. His vision went black and came again into a white light; the lanterns outside all being lit at once.
"Your pulse is racing. I can feel it from here," Vigg grumbled. "So what is it?"
Dwalin sat back in the chair with arms tucked behind his head, his chest feeling altogether lighter, but feathered still, from ribs to the squirming tips of his toes inside his soaked boots. "You'll know soon enough," he answered, smiling over a steely gaze. "By certain, I'll see you at The Pits third night."
.
"You look worse for the wear, nadad," Thorin observed. Dwalin's face bore a greenish tinge, his eyes bleary. He sat on the chair by the fire in Thorin's chamber. Dwalin glanced back at the unmade bed and felt a tightening of his chest, the feathery sensation again. It made him dizzy by the heat of the fire.
"Seeing your face, I would think a plague afflicting the mannish race to have befallen you," Thorin continued, sitting in the opposite seat. Meisar was taking a late supper with Dis. The chamber seemed bereft without her, and Dwalin read it as much in Thorin's face. Somehow, he knew, without the words to say it even in his own head.
"I would smell onion soup and dark ale ever again and be as ill," Dwalin grumbled.
"Yet you go to them of your own accord this time? Does Freyda truly have so much of your love, to endure that?" Thorin reached down to pick up a whining Fred at his feet. The gray hound looked at Dwalin and chortled.
"Aye… oh, and they care for her, and follow her da about so, I owe them a minor courtesy I s'pose."
"You were gone awhile today," Thorin said cautiously under his breath.
Dwalin curled his fist on the armrest, irritated. Fred buried himself into Thorin's lap. "What do the four of those louts know of love more than we have learned ourselves, never having the gall to think we would, far as lasses go? And still, ignorant, sorely lacking that gall… I am…"
"So that's what this is about?"
"Suppose so."
Thorin pushed the dog off and reached across the table between them toward Dwalin. He flinched away briefly.
"Does ignorance earn such loving tokens?" Thorin took the crossed axes around his neck and rubbed them between his fingers. "Or the courtship bead she wears in her hair?"
"A custom any dwarf could name. Even a warrior knows."
"It takes far more strength to love than to fight," Thorin assured. "What is a warrior who does not have something precious of his very own to protect?"
"Seen enough fighting sorts that hadn't taken a wife," he countered, hands pushed out palms toward Thorin. But those eyes always knew, ancient pools of wisdom, like the lake of Mirrormere itself. Could he see the stars in his eyes now?
"But you are not they," Thorin reminded gently.
Yes, he could. He well could... nadad.
"We know what it is to lose what we love most," Dwalin grumbled. "I would not like to lose anything more. I would find I would regret it deeply, should I forsake the chance at something greater than even... this," he jabbed his finger between them, almost ashamed of himself, the way his eyes lowered, his palms rubbed together nervously then at the heal.
"I laid on the ground for months after ye were gone," Dwalin said abruptly. "I did not rise some days. Losing you was a very great price. I am only glad it has been repaid to me, with ye being here. I shan't wish to be paying it again. I fear... losing... her. Before this..."
"You have not lost her. You have not even begun to... have her. The way that your heart truly desires. Am I wrong to assume what that is?"
"Treasures beyond all sorrow and grief, our lasses," Dwalin sighed in resignation. "Beyond all sorrow and grief... until we are stone again."
.
The feasting began at sundown as tradition held. In the Blue Mountains, leaner times meant the work would go on until that very moment that the time was called out in horns and in loud pipes from every overlook and gallery, and they would come, wearing the sweat of their brow and indeed using the brine of it to salt the meat. Under the Lonely Mountain a day was set for rest until that sundown, except for the great kitchens and a few of the seamstresses, sewing all the dwarrowdams into their summer gowns and the men into something that breathed at the least.
At the Feast of the First Ale, Thorin and Meisar together presided, already seated by the time the dwarves had filled the hall, from all tribes and clans coming. They rose and doffed caps and helmets when the king and queen were announced, together rising, hand in hand to begin the festivities. The heads of all the crafting guilds and their kin were in attendance, in seats of honor at the high dais. It was the second night of ghuregbuzramerag in the mountain hall and in the dwarven quarter of Dale. Fireworks lit the night from the parcels of their hardy dwelling-villages on the outskirts of the city. The work that spring and early summer wrought, hard sweaty devoted work, met its just rewards this night and for nine more to come. Feasts were held in many manses of distinct qualities for their givers, and dwarves of all families were free to drift from one to the next, sampling the fare and the myriad of music from each. The Blacklocks with their stringed instruments that twanged fast and deep of distant lands and the dried hollows of melons filled with coins and shaken in rhythm. The Broadbeams and their fiddles accompanied many a jig.
All through the halls and in the foyer of the city down to the bottom-most cellar, games of horseshoes, hammer-throw, dice and backgammon and all forms of drinking feats were set up and merrily attended each. Toymakers carted out their displays, awarding their wares to the dwarflings who won at their games. Ale-brewers camped in the choicest places to market their drink days on end before the festival, haggling, exchanging fists, for prime spots. Their stands, stacked high with barrels, would all be heavily queued, but only one would be voted the finest at the end of the nine days, and competition was fierce.
Dressed for summer in the lightest silks that could be procured of the marketplaces, the dwarrowdams brought their hand-fans all, entering the halls with them drawn over their faces, coyly, as if in a masque. Meisar dressed in cream so far from white it bore a gold tinge, the shade of a fine summer ale. A cotton chemise edged in lace beneath her gown acted a proper barrier, lest the warmth lead to discomfort, through the silk it breathed the cool summer air more easily than she had anticipated. A thin emerald band was set at the top of her head, anchoring the great wind of braids like a coiled serpent rising from the back of it, and from whose center great cascades of sausage curls were sprung. It was ridiculous but the dwarf prancing garbed and sweating profusely in red felt below, ceremonially pouring the first summer ale down his throat, was equally so, and perhaps they would all be so, on such a feast night.
Already pink-drunk, the dwarf whose privilege had been awarded tried to bow and nearly fell onto his face before Thorin not a few moments earlier, in accepting the ceremonial stopper-remover to the barrel of summer ale, the first of the season, and whose nectar would be imbibed by this deserving fellow, the Harnkegger, hardest-laboring of all the dwarves in Erebor, as voted by his guild-peers, and votes compiled then amongst all guilds to gauge the winner. The losing guilds groused in their seats amongst each other, strategizing for next year.
Drink flowed in rivers, more even than at the coronation itself, and tables were laid generously in all manner of food, to which all dwarves could avail themselves freely. Bombur came in his preambulator, children and grandchildren all in tow, swarming the tables with their empty plates waving in the air, jockeying to be filled.
"And just what you have efforted to earn your place in the Harnkegger feast?" Thorin jibed cheerfully when he was brought to the high table to join him.
"Looking after the children of course!" Bombur boomed in response. "Who's to be up to that when Bira's baking a hundred mince pies a week? How they sell out each night!" Six children and grandchildren at least were dangling from his frame, climbing limbs and shoulders and Nifur's little son sitting on the back of his neck holding his jowls for leverage, as they waited their turn at the feast-table.
"Were it my choice, I would award her the first of the summer ale," Meisar said.
"My dearest little runt, it would not be the first taste for her," laughed Bombur. Below, Bira was well-imbibed and laughing aloud at nothing in particular, Urdlaug and Lulia holding her under her arms lest she fall in a drunken heap. She waved at Bombur, arm like a noodle, and blew him a sloppy kiss. "Well, she has earned it either way."
They moved to Tania's Hall when the official ceremonial duties were finished, where Balin had arranged a continuing banquet for the king and queen's respective courts alone, the thirteen dwarves of the reconquest, and the members of the caravan east upon which they had traveled on Thorin's homecoming journey.
Balin banged his knife against his chalice of ale and Dwalin soon followed in doing so, silencing the chatter of the halls and calling all to sit and observe. He rose and raised his cup beside a seated Thorin and his queen.
"It was this very day but a year past that our king was returned to us," said Balin. "I celebrate that fact. I am glad of it coming upon this feast night of all feast nights, a new beginning, still young, though ever prosperous, a hope that is reborn each day."
"Here, here!" Gloin cheered. He nudged Gimli to raise his cup but his son was eager to finish it before doing so. Balin waited until Emli had stopped scolding him to continue.
"I celebrate my lady princess's strength, and give thanks that she shall not be alone in these halls now."
"May I say a few words, Balin?" Dis asked gently.
"Of course, my lady. Of course." He put out his arm, genteel, to accompany her to rise. Elegant in blue and white that matched Thorin's own attire, onto the bodice of Dis's blue gown was embroidered a raven in silk bronze thread. The puffed sleeves at her shoulders alternated bluish-teal and the same silky pale bronze beneath the white. She wore diamonds and only her ruby ring at the forefinger, great descending earrings of burnished gold set in sapphires each at he ears.
"I celebrate all manner of loves, to be had whilst we are here to advantage them," Dis said. "I celebrate the good in life amidst in the grief. We must take our joy where it can be found, for it is all the more precious then. I celebrate the memory of my sons. Memory is not like stone, but like diamond. Unbreakable. Precious. A white light from darkness."
She bowed her head as she saw the tears starting to form in some of the dwarrowdams' eyes, and Balin's. "To you, my brother, and my sister that has come anew to me."
Slow claps and heaps of blessings rang out from the small gathering as she sat, elegantly, like a ghost so light on her seat again. Thorin kissed her cheek and himself stood.
"To return to life again, I did not know until I was given the sight of my brothers in arms, again, upon a distant road. We shall always be akin to each other, in protection of this home."
More clanging on cups followed and cheers. Thorin reached down to hold to Meisar's hand, raised aloft, her soft white hands perfumed and clean from the dirt that had accrued on them, charmingly so alas.
"It was also the day that I was first acquainted with my queen, who was called dunininh upon that road. A guide. Toward something greater than I could have expected to know I have been guided, surely," Thorin said. "To have been given life is a gift. To have been given love... an even greater one. And no more splendid a love have I ever known," he turned his cup toward her and gave a quick unsentimental bow of his head, but his eyes shone, ferociously. "My queen."
"Might I be excused a moment?" Dwalin pushed back from his seat and stood abruptly. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, on the dome of his head, and onto the crest of his deep gray tunic, under the polished mail.
"Of course," Thorin abjured.
"Freyda, would ye take the air above with me lass?" A hand was put out for her, kind but urgent.
"I would, gladly so."
Thorin looked down at Dis and she was smiling into her cup over a brim of tears on the crest of her eyes.
.
On the belvedere, beneath a naked sky, he breathed the air and oxygen seemed to come back into his head, cool and delightful to the senses. The air smelled of dying smoke and a soft wind from the east. Freyda donned the same sea-foam gown with the hints of turquoise she had at Thorin and Meisar's wedding, but her arms were bare. In the shoulders of her dress were empty slivers where ribbons would have fastened the separated sleeves, but now in the still-warm night air there only the pale moss of the summer cloak to give any modicum of modesty.
He took her hand and felt the edge of the bandage fraying over her palm.
"Many a day's work in the forges, and a few nights," she smiled under the decor of her beard. "I have made some fine things for our home, and for Gyda to sell at market. She wants a new dress."
"It is what we are made to bear, lass," he smiled, pained. He turned over her palms in his hands, traced the edge of the just-healing wound eyeing him from the heel of her palm. "You have worked yourself into a fine frenzy, lass."
"The spirit of the season only before ghuregbuzramerag," she countered, cheekily. "Tell me then, have I earned my ale?"
"The finest summer ale to be had," Dwalin answered. "It should be yourself in that ridiculous costume, prancin' about."
"I would sweat as hard an elf in Moria!" she exclaimed.
"Aye, and I…" He touched her bare arm. The brawn of the muscle made his fingertips jump and flinch. "Am fond of these summery garbs over felt, anyhow."
"I did not imagine ye would complain," she said coyly.
"I have always thought yer arms to very strong and pretty. And these hands, aye, these good worked hands…" Slowly he brought her bandaged palm up to his face and kissed over it, imagining his own clutching to it, wrenching bone until it crunched, her howl, his roar as Oin set his shoulder back in, flooding hot with shame in its wake.
But she, he remembered, had never let go, not even then.
"How grateful am I to have so strong a lass," he sighed into her hand. His breath was like a flame.
Over the belvedere he looked down onto the fires burning on the city's edge, the quieting whoops of the dwarves still celebrating outside their makeshift homes, some even diving into the waters nearby, in the river and into the great pond beside. Stars sewed many white beads into the tapestry of the sky above. He looked up and sighed, holding her hand a shade tighter.
"They say that when Durin first saw these stars it was at the Lake o' Mirrormere, bein' so smooth and still he could see 'em reflected back, in a crown upon his head," he pondered, quietly.
"A portent then?" Freyda asked.
"Perhaps."
"So do ye suppose they mean something, the stars? Other worlds looking upon us from above?"
"Can't say. I know only the world I'm in. Here, now."
"They say the stars are sacred to the elves. Do ye suppose they would know?"
"Got no care for elves and their blinkin' lights, lass. I belong in the stone. But…" his voice trailed off and he looked out over the darkness below the belvedere. "This was an old tradition of Ered Luin ye know, these feasting days. Broadbeam and Firebeard families competed to have the best ales, the strongest arm at games and in their labors," he smirked. "It was the year we finished the two great naves of Thorin's Halls there that was the greatest of 'em. We worked, lass, tireless, day and night, even Thorin, even the lady princess herself, toting rocks back and forth."
He turned with his back to the stone edge and took her hands into his, resisting the urge that was in them to shake mindlessly. Hers were soft in comparison, welcoming to touch; one would never know the strength the lay under them.
"Whosoever made the greater advances into the stone, carved them halls the finest and the best, would be the first to taste the summer ale. Both were magnificent... lass, the feasting went on for a month, not ten days. I cannot even recall who tasted the first ale..."
"Some called them halls modest, imagine," Freyda chuckled.
"Compared to these, aye, but there's memory there, lass. Those halls, right on the river," he sighed. "We swam in it like they did down on there, Thorin, the lads. Do you remember the Little Lune?"
"I do."
"Kili was right fond of the stars. Loved the sight of 'em. Thorin and I'd walk by night along that river; Kili'd point 'em out to us. He gave the brightest ones names. Odd habit for a dwarf."
"When I was a girl I did the same," Freyda muttered quietly behind him. When he turned her eyes were cast down. "Over Dunland in the summertime ye would see the sky to the ends by night. Me ma showed me how they sometimes lined up into shapes like great hammers or ponies-"
Dwalin embraced her and held her so tight she could feel the creak of ribs shuddering inward. "I miss them, lass."
"I miss my lady mother, and my brother. I know..." she said, tears coming up in the fierce eyes to make them even fiercer in trying to resist their coming out and falling into the elegant arrangement of her beard.
"Freyda... Freyda, my lass..." He kissed her between words. "I miss... I have best of the present now than all the grief o' the past, for yer sake..."
"We have looked at these same stars for years, my warrior. And they... I do believe they've brought us to each other, guided, like the Lady Meisar has guided us home, and Thorin... oh Dwalin... look up at them. They are beautiful."
"Aye they are."
Dwalin smirked into the dark and past her lips, in his own mind chastised for the moment of unraveling pain, memory and grief, and now drawing away to give her eyes a firm gaze again, a melancholy nostalgia. "Once thought the span o' men brief. Truth is, we don't fare all the greater sometimes. It's a short stay however ye wish to spend it."
"I should have told ye before, Dwalin. I wish I had known… how brave and silent ye can be, a One even can forget yer suffering too."
"It is what we are meant to bear," he repeated, stiff as a mantra, a soldier's creed. "I haven't much of an imagination for the lot o' other things. I am sorry for that."
"Ye are very good to kiss for that lack o 'imagination," she sighed. "And I am an iron-smith, raised more a hardy lad's way than a lass so kenning to be kissed and-"
He found the divots at the base of her back, or where he supposed they lay, and circled them with hard forefingers simultaneously, drawing her closer against him. She had not shied from his embrace, as hot and tempered as it was, and fraught with a very peculiar anxiety. She took his hand up and ran her forefinger over the inked digits, one by one, dipping between them gently.
"'Tis a proud thing to be a dwarf. These hands are so brutish a'times of ours, and then like this, they make… a beautiful thing that's needin' gentle handling." She brought his hand up to the bead in her braid hanging over her shoulder, proud. She wrapped his hand around it.
"Do we not work well with our hands at all skill?" he rumbled.
"We may... and learn new things too, if it is... right." She felt the rumble of a low, considerate growl in his chest, finding its way to a surface, first his hands and then-
"It is," he murmured.
She cocked her head as if to say it had been too low to hear. Strong arms came back about her, grasping, kneading shoulders, stroking arms with foreign, hard tips and to her hands finally, grasping them again. His mouth moved but like it had so many times before, made no sound. She squeezed her thumbs into his hands between the pockets of his own and his forefingers, gently.
"For all that I owe Mahal… I should like to be with ye all my life," he grunted a frustrated sigh.
"I would like to be with ye also, Dwalin. I would comfort and stay by ye and be all that I-"
"So will ye be a wife to me then lass?"
Abrupt, it rolled off his tongue in a frenzy. Her hands dropped from his and his own went up in defense. "I have no proper bead to give ye now but I ask… of heart's sake. I wish to marry ye. I ask ye now if ye would. And I shall have a betrothal bead made very fine, the best silversmith in the kingdom to do. If ye wish it…"
"Customs and customs, I know," she exhaled. "But there's no needing tokens to assure what I am to ye now. You ask me be a wife to ye, truly? Do ye now?"
"I do, very. Marry me, I wish it very much. Will ye?"
In his arms he could feel the lethargic bliss come after the tremor inside her, the sigh of relief into his chest. "Dwalin, munus Dwalin, I think ye know what the answer is."
.
Garg- Dark Ale
Khuzd tada tazrali kuzru undu 'abad zud mahtagnani d'agnud- A dwarf who wishes a palace under a mountain ought to start digging
Munus- Loyal