Author's Note: MUNÛS- Fealties
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"Well lass, we're here."
A bantam circle of light bloomed and ebbed with the single candle Freyda had lit, navigating the cramped space and its tools, gray and cold and idle. In her forge it was cold even as the languid summer heat seeped through the city above and unsettling in its desuetude, a vast emptiness to the air itself that had left all of the forges that week of feasting as vacant as they had been with Smaug sleeping above.
"You wanted to come," she reminded Dwalin quietly. In the light the red of her cheeks had gone faint pink again. Betrothed or not, she wore only the braid of courtship and its clasp in her hair. He studied the back of her head carefully, considering where to place the next.
The lantern, which had snuffed the moment they entered she re-lit with the kindling flame of the candle and hung from the ceiling.
"I suppose, Dwalin, we came all this way for some practical purpose."
"Have you the metals to forge us a pair o' beads this night? We should not be publicly betrothed without them," Dwalin insisted with a quiet rectitude. Inwardly, his pride was swelling against his ribs ready to burst; pride, or some other sensation he could not readily identify quite yet. He wrung his hands watching Freyda bend and hoist her scrap metal box, raw in her strength still even in her festival-night dress, blue-and-green summer silk, laced down the back to pull it subtly at the hips. It gave her shoulders a sturdy breadth in appearance that he bit his lip against his admiration for.
"Some may find it in poorly taste," Freyda shrugged. "We could keep it hushed up a few days if ye like." She pilfered through the scrap metal in her boxes and laid the pieces of the most suitable quality out on the anvil, but even the best were little more than pig iron, and seeming to know it, gave the collection a disapproving glance.
"No," Dwalin said more forcefully.
"Thought yer tongue was a steel trap like yerself," Freyda teased lightly, dumping her scrap back into the box, one foot kicking it back into the corner as she came and slid her arms over Dwalin's waist and locked her fingers around the small of his back. "Thorin said ye could be racked by orc filth and never give up yer kin."
"Loyalties are so if they run true," he pronounced, in his assured quiet depth but with a strange demureness. He lowered eyes so that he didn't even peer into the curved well of her chest above the bodice, even so close to her, but entirely downward, as if to his own feet, which their closeness did not allow him to see either.
"I am loyalty to you so," she said with a slight wisp of frustration.
"No silver then, lass?" he inquired, running fingers over the blonde braid like the strands of a beaded praying rope, considering the clasp as its end, gleaming, polished every day and night.
"We would have to wait for the silversmith's guild to return," she answered. She made a face at the scarce selection of metal in the scrap box at her feet. "There's no making betrothal beads with this dreck. I wouldn't put it in a pony's bridle."
"A few silver pence melted down would suffice, if I'm not mistaking the art," Dwalin questioned, earnestly.
"It should, but I'm not so greatly attuned with silver working," Freyda admitted in a sigh. "Horik in the stall two down forges at silver. I might borrow his molds if ye please me to. He'd not mind being of that service."
"I'm no good with forging something so… dainty either," he added in turn, grumbling.
"Then what are we doing here?" she said, the two front teeth turned in, grasping over her lip.
Dwalin pressing her against the cold wall and his hand under the bend of one knee finding wool and skin was the answer that came, pulling her forth at its crook so indelicately she would have lost her balance had he not caught her beneath the opposite one with his right hand, altogether lifting her weight, sturdying it by pinning her between himself and the stone.
He explored the strength of her form with some reserve though, once he had let her legs down to touch the ground again but keeping her between himself and the wall, suckled heated kisses punctuated in infernal breath against the length of her neck.
"Yer mail is denting me, love," she teased. She found the leather ties of his hauberk and fingered them open, wildly. The crumpling clink of the metal hitting then piling at the floor seemed to echo in the narrow space, even fan out. His chest shrunk inward, shying from contact with bated breath, as if the whole of the city above heard that first shedding, the letting of the perfectly polished ceremonial mail to the dust-swept forge floor. His tunic, a shimmering pale fern, remained.
A preposterous layer he thought, Freyda's fluffy jaw in his hard hands, her neck starting to darken a coming mulberry. She rubbed the intense beam of his shoulder until it abated.
"Will we not return to the king's banquet this night then?" Her breathless inquiry made him squirm.
"Perhaps not, lass. Perhaps not..."
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Thorin had begun to grow restless in the hall when Dwalin appeared beside him, and not long in the least before he had it in mind to retire with his queen, Meisar's head rested sideways on her arm mostly asleep herself as her flock of dwarrowdams led by Emli carefully began the process of removing her jewels from her hair, expediting a process, he knew they knew, their small glances familial already in that very intimate way.
Dwalin's exterior was off too, his mail at least, and his good tunic marked at the back of the shoulders with an unsightly smudge of black coal or dust, and it was wrinkled, the leather fasteners pulled from the cuffs as if by force, and the neckline fumbled with, setting the embroidery at it just off center. The way his feet went heel to toe and back again with such swiftness it gave the impression that he was ready to sprint to wherever it was he had come from, looking over his shoulder once and back again toward Thorin.
"Have ye a few silver pence in yer purse?" Dwalin asked sheepishly. He adjusted the collar of his tunic when he realized Thorin was staring intently at it.
"The markets are closed, my friend," Thorin yawned. "Shan't find much a bite at this hour to eat."
"Not hungry," he murmured. Thorin cast a bemused cloudy blue glance up at him.
"You're stiff, nadad. Very. Your hands are shaking. Where is Freyda?"
"A place wi' a touch o' privacy," Dwalin answered vaguely, shifting on his feet.
"Dwalin?" Thorin's eyes patted him up and down, a question more than a demand, but from his king nonetheless. True loyalty makes a demand, like a polite knock at the door. Dwalin made a wordless rumbling sound from inside his chest. "Dwalin?"
"' Tis for the makin' o' betrothal beads," he admitted. "The silversmiths won't return for a few days. Doesn't seem proper to go as long without it being proclaimed or-"
"You are indeed?" Thorin started to rise from his seat with a jolt, smile broadening to reveal the too-white line of teeth that showed themselves in that way so rarely. Meisar stirred and turned over on her own arm, drunkenly foregone.
"Hush!" Dwalin urged. "It's not... it only happened just. We've no beads for it yet. Wounna be proper to make a show o' it now. We're... at her forge, to make... a fine pair, if ye have silver to spare."
"Then I shall keep it a quiet matter," Thorin's smile settled back into a serene line. "Silver it is," he said, extending his hand out with the coins to offer. Fine silver, pure, not sterling. It would do, finely so.
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When he returned the heat in the small forge was oppressive. He could see the light from the bridge like a glowing eye in the dark. It made him shudder without quite knowing what for. Down here they were safe. Alone, together. Inside Freyda stood near the brazier. Sweat glistened on her brow and on her neck, the rim of her dress gathering little drops of dew.
"Silver from the king's purse. He'll stay mum to the matter. Ye can well trust him, and it's a very fine silver, lass. King's own." He fumbled over his words in such a way that her smile cocked itself cheekily over him. She stood and laid her hands against the small of her back, cracking it, stretching. She shook already-sticky hair back from her neck. "It is a might hot in here. Will ye help me with my dress?"
"Yer dress?" The swell of his throat rose and traveled low again with a swift bouncing motion.
"I need it off. I'll not like it to be dirtied."
When he hesitated, she chuckled. "M'a dwarf. There's more layers under, not to worry." The back fastened in a series of small intricate clasps that his fingers worked over one by one, roaming up and down with increasing restiveness to unfasten the ones he had missed. Underneath her dress she was in more layers, a thick calico bodice over the under-linen. With each progress, he made a nervous grunt, stood back, reconsidered, moved again as if every touch were a strategy on a battlefield, the intricate clasps like small, imprudent enemy armies.
"Ye are very timid 'round a woman's clothes," she observed. The dress fell forward stiffly from her shoulder on one side.
"Not experienced to either wearing nor removin' 'em," he rumbled.
"I trust ye either way." She shimmied herself out of the sleeves and wriggled it down from the curve of her waist, taking and placing it by the loop of fabric at the neck onto a separate ceiling hook.
"And this?" he ran his fingers along the boning of the bodice pulling her waist in at a severe clinch, broad as she was through that part.
"Oh, get it off me too." Turning, she let him continue until he plucked the draw-laces of her bodice loose at last, her chest expending a relived breath for the contraption being removed. She swiftly took up two large blocks of charcoal and laid them over the anvil. Black soot covered the pale facade of her chemise, stained her hands. She wiped the back of one across her face and it left a smudge. The chemise fluttered at her knees with the wind of Dwalin moving across the forge.
"Targ Durinul'!" she groused, the fabric too free so close to the fire. She lifted the garment over her head and threw it into the corner of the space, leaving her only in a loose shirt without its sleeves and her matching drawers.
"Doncha see what yer doing to me, lass?" The coiling in his innards, even the tips of his fingers, came like pinpricks, fiendish with desire, the heat of the forge and himself, ready to together combust.
"Bein' quite practical is all. It's hot and I don'a wish to be up in flames for a stray under-gown." She set down the tools and let the sharp quality of her eyes settle into a softer glance over her shoulder back toward him. "But do you like what ye see? Am I comely to ye?"
"I verily do, and very comely, aye." The austere irises of his eyes changed in a blink to something that seemed comfortable with its hunger. She folded her arms demurely across her chest once she had finished winding her hair up. Grinning, she held the flame against the gleaming metal. "Not so hard, is it?"
"I can think o' harder things, lass," he indicated again, nervously. She leaned over the anvil and was illuminated too brilliantly, too diaphanous, in its harsh light. He fumbled the thick belt at his waist lower in quiet desperation for some modicum of decorum.
A lock of hair rolled down toward the flame. He pulled the escaped strand back and held it behind her shoulder with the swiftness of a hawk. "Careful lass."
"A dashing gesture," she laughed, her voice like a salve on a wound he was uncertain he had ever been inflicted with, it was buried so deep inside. He rolled his toes in his boots and anchored himself firmly to the ground behind her, finding every move of her hips, the rough backs of her elbows, her strong shoulders up and back toward him of the basest nature, bringing out something far wilder in his gut and somewhere lower and far more dangerous to boot. The silver went to a dreamy liquid with aggravating slowness against the single flame. Shiny it puddled out, but only slightly, forming into a strange orb. She drained it into the molds and waited.
"Soon they'll be formed and hard," she said, nodding. Dwalin's hand slid into the broad strap of her sleeveless under-tunic and considered the ridge of shoulder underneath his fingertips, the firm-hewed line of it, the slight moisture of her skin at the surface.
"I am glad for this night," he said.
Freyda shook the mold and let the cooled, hard beads fall into her palm. She set them back on the anvil once the charcoal was cool enough to be removed. Dwalin steadied each between thumb and forefinger as she placed them into a pin vice borrowed from Horik the silversmith, and worked a smooth hand-wrung drill into the middle of each, large enough to clasp a braid, small enough to hold it.
"What shall ye put in mine? Have ye thought?" she inquired.
"A bit, I suppose," he shrugged. The bead was like a boulder in his palm.
"Here," she offered. "Ednik. I'll work at mine here and think it ought be finished soon. 'Tis simple, this I have deigned for ye."
He could hear the abrasive scritch of her smoothing it with the rough paper. She squeezed the eye-sockets of her skull eruditely around the monocle, with the carving pin in her fingertips. Hers did not quake.
The monocle of his own he could keep pinned so delicately as she in the socket of his skull. He set it aside, squinted hard against the candle, with a single pin making several marks, the heated head of it glowing narrow against the metal. He knew what he was doing, he thought.
"I've made yers. Shan't rush ye if yer on the work of it still," she said quietly from across the narrow forge. He looked up and was dizzy either from the heat or the squinting. It had seemed for an eternal period that each had been at work on their betrothal beads.
"Finished, lass," he grumbled, shielding the bead in his hand and standing to face her once more.
Her palm opened slowly to present itself to him, a mighty pearl in this pale oyster of her hand, he thought, as delicate, as unbreakable as she.
In the candlelight's percolating yellowish glow he studied the runes on either side of the small sphere. "The art of the warrior, and the art of love. Ye are in both as accomplished now," she smiled.
"Aye?" His tone carried a deeper tenderness than she expected. "Then it is a true art ye have done, and I wish ye make me a braid to place it in."
"Beard or hair?" she inquired, fingering the wiry mane flowing down from the back of his head. "Least the hair ye have here. It'll do well enough if ye prefer it there."
Beard he thought, and said it aloud before he could slip in time to reconsider. A betrothal bead and then a marriage bead, to clasp braids on either side. A prince had once worn his own golden face so regally. It was a warrior's way. He took Freyda's thumb past his lips and suckled at it long awhile until the visage of the boy had gone. A boy, no more, even sturdy grown to manhood as he had been the last time he saw his face. Only the quiet concentration of Freyda's fingers working against the wiry hair and circling a pinky against the naked part of his face to tease at him was of any consolation, any hope. And fine hope. He would be proud to be hers.
"Yer turn now lass," he made the comma half-smile that she had seen enough times in Thorin's lips to know they had learned the expression of it together. He gathered her hair and made a firm plait starting behind her ear. He braided until it was level with the courting bead and clasped it.
"Bunnanûn," she said with satisfaction, fingering the stiff braid she had made at the peripheral of Dwalin's beard, drawing closer to him so that she could compare the two beads side by side. His, again, were two axes, crossed and bearing their initials, the latter being the only difference. He was a lover of symmetry, of some order to the world. She kissed the bead and then his.
"A new braid, lass. It suits ye well," he offered, nipping at the rounded peak of an ear from behind, with his fingers still in her tangle of sweat-misted golden hair. He plucked the last of the moist strands from the side of her neck. The wiry brush of beard tickled her ear almost to its inner canal as the trail made by his lips fell against the outer edge of her beard, just above her cheekbone. "And fealty. My loyalty to ye is as stone."
"I hope ye will like being married. Seems strange still, don't it? But I think Thorin does."
"Aye, he does."
They parted and stood across from each other in stiff silence against the dying light. The candle left a darkness between them guttering then rushing back again to life.
"Doncha know me fingers feel a hurt just wantin' to touch ye again," Dwalin half-growled, closing the space again with swift ardency.
"Then touch me."
Raking fingers into the fleshy part of her upper legs he touched, finding his way beneath fabric again and digging, less furiously, considering the smooth path he was being led on, her finely-haired thighs. Her kiss, like the jaws of a wolf, held and demanded, electrifying as the bite of the sword, the long tooth itself. He pulled away from the hunger of it still holding stubbornly with the tips of teeth to her lower lip. She made sounds of satisfaction, bare need, almost as deep as he could himself.
His wrists twisted and grasped the laced front of her short tunic on either of their sides, growling as he took more of the flimsy calico into his fists. It tore to her navel in a single furious motion, his hands strong enough to break the neck of a man much less this menial task, which had never seemed so weighted in his hands. With an entirely new and separate care it was slipped from her shoulders and wrested down to her waist, stone to skin making her shoulders roll as if to scratch her back against it. Onto the anvil itself the boar snout tumbled out of her discarded clothing.
"I told ye I keep it by me heart at all times."
"And this," he said. He slid his fingers into the collar of his tunic and plunged them in frustration around the front of his neck. The garment was laced up high. In an instant he had shucked it entirely off, the ceremonial light tunic and plain shirt of his small-clothing together. Her ax pendant made a small indent at his chest, just above the sternum. "I keep it too."
"Well, it is good to know where it is kept then," she sighed, dreamily. Brown hair unfurled from a thick center running down the middle of his chest, sparser as it reached the peripherals of his broad form. Only the scars showed over its covering, and there were many, in various shapes and degrees of malevolence. Freyda examined ax and sword and beasts' bite with her eyes and then the tips of her fingers.
When her explorations lowered to the leathery edge of his belly he had taken her arms in his and spun her around so that her back was flush to his chest, his big hands still around her wrists, crossing them, pressing them close against her own chest in a prurient bear-hug. She moved the undulating plain of her belly closer against the anvil, leaning slowly over it, Dwalin still obstinately pressed behind her.
"Lass..." Her skirt was slid up to her thighs when he dropped it, abruptly; she could hear him fumbling his belt off behind her. Over the anvil she laid herself to the waist and moved her hips in a circle against the warm block of it. The ksshhh of calico sliding up over skin was halted again, the still-warm metal on the peaks of her thighs as he lifted her skirt all the way up, and his doleful grunt coming forth with it.
"No, no… lass. Not like this..."
Lifting herself, she twisted to him, sitting herself up the anvil to face him, legs dangling to graze at the still-covered flanks of his thighs. "Will the fire-snuffing blankets there do then, Dwalin? They are scratchy but a finer cushion I think."
"Can't go back to yer father's stead now can we?" a salacious grin unlike any that had crossed his set mouth twitched at her. He lifted her under her knees to link them over his hips and spun as swiftly to deposit her there, pressing her hip-to-hip so she could feel the wordless agreement to it against her stomach. He tugged and set the chaos of the twisted, half-folded wool quilts into a suitable, almost-even cushioning.
"I would have a bed of fur for ye and a pillow stuffed in goose down like ye give me," he sighed over her.
"I would have you alone," she answered, setting her pale golden mess of hair to fan above her. "Even here."
"Aye," he relented. "You are all I ever need." A white orb like the finest jewel ever procured slipped soundly from the cover of her tunic and into his palm as if it were meant to find itself there, uncovering a heart of this mountain itself.
"And you. Our fealties now are as good as if I were yer lady wife already." He lay over her on the blanket and twisted her hair on his fingers like the weave of a loom.
"Here lass, is as good, aye. We are loyal, no matter. Always..." he said, a voice as disembodied as it was primal, pointed with need. Dwalin's hand was on her chest but the kisses continued over her face, clumsily.
Should I squeeze?
"Don'a be afraid if it's what ye want," she encouraged quietly. "I desire what ye do."
Her fingertip on his bicep made him jump. He lifted his head toward the doorway one more time. All the forges, all the nooks were dark beyond the border of it. Not even the light of their candle would penetrate to the outside. As a company in the wild shying from the light of fires to fend off the sight of orcs, so we are now, the same...
"It is," he rumbled, lowering his head to meet her collarbone with his teeth and then her chest.
"Dwalin…" her hands slid over the scarred broad plain of his stomach and lower. His arm wriggled underneath her, the other concentrating on a delicate exploration of her unadorned face, her thick collarbone and muscular flanks that didn't even dip in that womanly way at the waist. Her wool stockings were still on, and the skirt of her small-clothing, ruched about the strong curves of thighs as it was, giving only a subtle, enigmatic glow of the spun-gold that lay just beyond its ragged borders.
"This one grasps yer soul," he whispered, a rumble that was ongoing in his throat down to his chest, sliding a finger just past Freyda's lips. She felt something needful and entirely separate draw closer to her in another place, begging to come past a certain point just as the finger drawing itself around the peripherals of her mouth did, sliding past then drawing out.
"And this one?" her breath went out and didn't go back in.
"This one keeps it…"
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The inner galleries of the city lay dark, mostly. The lantern lights dimmed in perfect harmony with the ending night of the feast days. Come morning, their keepers would be up to light them again. The rains had come outside to quench the usual parched scope of the land late in the summer, to the relief of the world of men, their wells replenished. But they, under the mountain, had not been up even to the belvedere in several days, as the festival days went on.
"The last night of these feasting days and it is a double betrothal banquet we bequeath. A happy season indeed," Thorin remarked. Meisar's hand in his own was cool from holding a frosted tankard. Their chambers had been a halcyon nook in the world, he found, on a belly of ale, and he would not have felt obliged to emerge except on Dwalin's behalf.
Dwalin was seated across from him in tables laid to form a square, so that all might look upon each other. An assemblage of dwarves in Tania's Hall didn't seem as intimidating, Dwalin thought. Celebrations of a homey if epicurean nature had carried on other manses and halls far vaster. But the way the sapphire veined the walls in that chamber, he thought, in the vaguest way, looked like Freyda's eyes. And stood out garishly beside Siv's red gown and white shimmering undersleeves with blossoms of frills at the wrist and bows and jewels in equal distribution across the whole of her ensemble. A gold belt studded in diamond and emerald followed the V-point line of her bodice, severely, if uncannily elegant. If all the eyes in the hall remained on Naughty Siv, he thought, then Freyda remained all the more for his alone, quietly exuding her own radiance in muted green-and-bronze summer damask, her hair loose down to the demure belted hint of waist, with the two braids impeccably positioned over either shoulder.
What a bride she would be he mused within himself, the rim of an ale-cup to hide his mooning. Never have seen her in white before. What a sight she'll be.
Rising with Thorin, he held her hand, and aloft, squeezing fingers with the familiar intimacy they were alone in sharing, secret knowledge like secret names.
"With very great admiration I watch these progresses of life that you have endeavored. Mahal has blessed us with love. I, for one, can ask little more than that," Thorin relayed, sturdy with pride.
"Here! Here!" each of the dwarves in the hall raised their cups in agreement.
"To my comrades, and the dwarrowdams they have vowed to cherish and protect above all treasures, through this life, I give you my greatest blessings. May we feast and drink to your honor, and very best fortune," he offered, finally, giving them all permission to sit again. Only a quarter seemed even capable of standing in the first place at all.
"No greater fortune than to be betrothed," Siv clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "But betrothed and in some comfort, even better."
"If it's yer dream to become a piece o' cake with too much of the frosted top piled on, you've earned it right," Freyda chuckled sarcastically.
"And none could be as sweet as that," Siv chirped back. "Speaking of..."
Plates came around and were brought first to the honorary table where Dwalin and Freyda were seated with Nori and Siv. A dessert was brought next following its spicy-sweet aroma, ring-shaped cakes with a sticky brown sugar and cinnamon coating, richly aromatic with the scent of coffee when cut.
"A gift from Donbur. Says he pours a wee bit o' the Southron Swill into the batter. Thought ye might find it to yer taste."
"Oh aye," trilled Freyda, sinking her fork into it.
"Perhaps a word o' thanks to me betrothed, for his acquisition," Siv said, jeweled bosom rattling.
"Suppose you've got some use, lad," Dwalin jibed in Nori's direction.
"Maybe we ought have a double wedding, twice the fun as one," Siv suggested.
"No," answered Dwalin quickly. He stood as Balin came around, all but stumbling on a belly of ale, his face pink with joy under the white cover of beard.
"To see my brother betrothed. What a happy day," Balin gushed. "It is a happy day, the happiest of all days."
"Wi' a lass as fine as this, I shan't know the worst of dolefulness as I've seen, anymore," Dwalin said, patting the top of Freyda's arm which he held over his. "Makes me glad for this life. She does."
"Come Dwalin! Drink with us!" across the table Onar and his posse summoned him. For that Freyda's father could not have been drunker or more jovial in the moment, the fear in him eased, if momentarily. Onar embraced him full-bodied as the ale itself.
"Perchance I doona lose a daughter but only take on a fine son!" Onar rattled off with drunken twists of the tongue slurring all the words together. "Shall be family and family is... loyalty." Dwalin eased Onar back into his seat when his weight dropped to his waist and then his feet, arms clinging at Dwalin's for support. Freyda grinned over her cups at him from across the table, as Balin slid into Dwalin's seat next to her.
"Do ye think he means it Balin?" Freyda asked nervously. She kept one eye trained on Dwalin sharing ales with Vigg, Vestri, Hepti and Lofar.
"Never seen his eyes so full of light, as when he looks at you, my good lady," Balin assured. "His gladness is never so quick to show itself. For you, it is worn very plainly."
"And what shall be of this one, when you go to make your married home?" chuckled Balin, patting Gyda's arm on his opposite side.
"Gyda shall stay with me da," Freyda answered for her. Gyda looked woozy as she watched Onar stomp around to the fiddle that was playing nearby, flapping his arms like a chicken. The uproarious uneven laughter of his comrades carried wavy on the air itself, their back-slaps and harmless jeers at the unsteady rhythm of the dancing Golden Boar.
"Eda will be alone too now. Perhaps she would like some company in her stead," Gyda suggested with a nervous laugh. Onar's heavy hand landed jovially on her shoulder from behind, making her leap, as both then came to jostle her playfully. He made her head wobble back and forth on her shoulders and her smile, nervously painted-on, queerly unmoving.
"Yes, well, I think we will sort it out and it shall go as it goes," Gyda concluded.
Dwalin came and placed his arm around Onar's shoulder, reverently. "Well, if it is a dwarf's most sacred duty to be protecting and keeping his lady-wife, then my daughter has chosen a fine figure in a soldier by profession to be that protector," Onar warbled. "I trust Dwalin will be an honorable sort in that way, and others."
The muscles in Dwalin's throat tightened at the sides, showing the lines of cartilage.
"Dance with her, Dwalin! You are a very fine dancer for a soldier," encouraged Lofar boisterously. "Well, a finer one that Onar with the chicken wings over here."
His snorting laughter was halted by a fist in the head from Onar. Ale flew in a wild arc above his head as he tumbled to the ground.
"We'll see about that," Onar said, winking at Dwalin with a surly half-smile.
"I have brought a special gift in that case, expecting that a dance of this sort would be had," Balin winked. He placed a green velvet case upon the table and unwrapped it. Dwalin's viol lay polished and ready.
"I shall play a merrier tune than this instrument is accustomed to wringing out, and you shall dance, brother."
Balin threw a reassuring wink toward Thorin, his furs shucked and Meisar's formal cloak too, her hair loose. He raised his cup to toast Dwalin and Freyda's ascending into the center of the squared tables so that the audience could be availed of the scene. Drummers and a piper awaited in the background, for a separate tune that Nori and Siv might share afterward. Nori hated viols as virulently as the slow pluck of a harp, thought they sounded funereal. He sat back and crossed his arms behind his head next to Siv, as Balin began to play a rich lilting tune slowly, a bow across strings inviting intimacy, but a chaste sort.
Meisar and Thorin watched them slow-dance to the viol that Balin played, an instrument that had seemed at once mournful in Dwalin's handling, but in his brother's, slow and lilting, a quiet mirth in its every note.
There was something peculiar about Freyda's eyes that night, Meisar thought, her eyes and the queer glow of her skin, the ease of which she wrapped her arms about Dwalin's waist and moved with him as if they had known the intimate rhythms of each other days, even years, past. Perhaps that was Aule's way, the forging of Ones as links in an eternal chain, a key and a lock to a secret door, which the Great Smith would only ever understand the delicateness of creating.
But there were also things a married woman could read the wordless declarations of, she mused, but decided against saying anything aloud. She drank the summer ale until it was vanquished to its last drops in her cups and smiled, taking Thorin's hand in hers under the table.
"My blessing is at ease this night," he remarked with a serene smile, the subtle lines of his face seeming all at once lighter in their composition.
"We are so very fortunate, Thorin," she raised her glass and drank the last of her ale. "So very fortunate. Look at what has come from the ashes. Only good... only good now."
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Ednik- Use a candle
Bunnanûn- Tiny Treasure