A/N: I've been working on the next phase of the story in increments that will be posted as they're finished. But I thought an agreeable filler in the meantime wouldn't hurt. Can't be amiss of our king and queen's anniversary :)
"The bells," Thorin reminded himself aloud over a great cacophony in the hall. He summoned the standing pageboy over his shoulder. "Call up the engineers, good lad, to ready the bells."
"Is it time? I thought it early still," Dis said over her shoulder toward him.
"It is, but it never hurts to be prepared, good sister."
"For anything at all. Indeed," Dis agreed with a quiet grin. "Thror's Bell has been raised again. Grandfather would approve of that I'm certain."
"The merchants in the foyer used to complain of how it shook the cups and wares right from their carts when it rung. But for their sake it was only once a year."
Tables below swelled with dwarves, serving-maids snaking amongst them with great salvers of meat, bread and cheese. Dwarrowdams clustered and gossiped while the male dwarves jockeyed and thundered amongst their kin. Fathers resounded loud commendations of their young lads, boys with chests puffed up in their best doublets and beards impeccably groomed. But on the New Year, the mothers were always the ones ebullient, full of pride and hope. In Erebor children were still a paltry demographic, more cosseted now than other generations had been, but no less acclimated to duty.
How they pinned all their hopes and dreams upon their wee shoulders.
"It is Durin's Day again," Meisar sighed. "The first sun and the last moon. Tomorrow it is winter." She watched a mother-dwarf below bundle her wee lad into his cloak and kiss his head.
"You look as beautiful as you did upon our wedding day my love," Thorin kissed Meisar's hand to the roaring approval of the dwarves tabled just below them.
"You, my husband, are far too generous." This particular gown she loved; its rose and gold patterned silk petticoat and that showed under the heavier over-robe of evergreen velvet, with its round fur-trimmed mantle in front. Her raven crown was worn without a veil, hair in a single jeweled plait that trailed below her waist with little bells on the ends. Forged in one of Erebor's own workshops, to tinkle in perfect melodiousness, and the sound please Mahal with the careful crafting of the instruments to make their every flinch sweet music.
And would you, Mahal, send your wife to me with fruits in return?
The dwarves' dancing below went on to the merry beating of the drums and the peppy lilting tune of Bofur's flute and Bombur's pipes, dwarrowdams in their best determined to impress, either at the dance or with their impeccably coiffured and jeweled hairstyles. The Durin's Day reels were intricate and hopeful. King, queen, princess and their councils sat on the dais above the great hall, bursting with dwarves at meat and mead and song.
Dis was relaxed in the shoulders and gaily clad in bright cobalt blue beside them.
Today the raven sends seeds.
"Wine and sea salts are coming out of the Dorwinion again. There is a fragile peace at hand, but a peace," Thorin remarked with relief. "I pray by spring the merchants may journey there yet."
Meisar's ring-girded fingers slid between his and clasped his hand over the table. "We ought have some good news once in awhile, don't you think?"
Thorin smiled out of the corner of his mouth toward her. "I had a raven sent to every corner of the land at Durin's Day last, bearing news that on this very day we would be married. It was the happiest of news. On Durin's Day twice now I have come into my home."
"The happiest of days," Meisar concurred.
"Now you know the feeling I suppose," Thorin nudged Dwalin on his opposite side. Dwalin's braids twitched dripping with ale, symmetrically at either side of his upper lip, like Fili's but thicker, tapered at the tips where they were clasped in the sterling beads. "Just now have you chosen a place for your marriage braids and now you must find another for your child."
"Perhaps in the middle," Freyda suggested, stroking the un-plaited section of beard on his chin. "And they can join."
"May Mahal bless you in such ways that… you will run out of beard to braid, in that matter!" beamed Balin, having taken generously of a strong dwarvish cider.
"Aye, that would be a sight, a good sight," Dwalin said. The brows that tended toward drawing together with consistent suspicion were smoothed straight on his brow-bone with bare, un-wrinkled patch between them. With Freyda around his hands were clenched less; he tended to keeping one over hers on top of the table constantly, inked fingers mingling with a careful nonchalance around hers. And by Mahal, she looked happy. Now that the dawn-hour nausea had ebbed a bit anyhow.
"We have been blessed," Freyda smiled tautly. "Save some o' them blessings for our queen and king Balin."
"Aye, Freyda, indeed. And for every one of our people." Standing, Thorin held his goblet aloft and Balin began to bang at his with the side of a spoon, calling for silence in the vast hall. It came, with enough swiftness and reverence in spite of the boisterous mood.
"Shamukh, ra galikh ai-mâ!" Thorin acclaimed unto the hall with cup held high.
They called out their hails in return in one great voice.
"Upon this new year may we be blessed with the loyalty of our kin, with prosperity and good health. As your king I will do all to see it done. May the ancestors bless our kingdom, and ourselves bring good tidings unto each other."
As the masses raised their cups he felt her fingertips graze shyly along the web of his hand between his thumb and along his forefinger, begging his hand into hers. He held hers to the knuckle, a delicate squeeze. Before their people they were one. In her heart it seemed too distant a past to imagine otherwise; there was no past, only a future but a modicum less uncertain now.
"Come, let us greet them then," Thorin continued privately. "My queen, will you do me the honor to accompany me?"
"Gladly," she agreed, taking his arm. He held her right hand in his and with her left she grasped the same arm of his at the elbow. The waiting muddle of dwarves parted and ducked their heads in a veritable sea of bobs as they descended from the dais. One by one the male dwarves placed hands to their hearts and bent forward, the dwarrowdams dropping in dramatic curtsies and prim dips. The women in particular called out Mahal's blessings to their queen. The way her dress was belted firmly at the waist was enough to tell any of them the need was there for such blessings. A year to the day of Thorin taking her for his queen and to his bed there was no baby, and every dwarf in Erebor knew it.
The people were eager and happy to be greeted though. Such holidays were always welcome to them, the flowing of ale and the boisterous communal nature of banquets that went onto into the wee hours and the fiddles and pipes and dancing.
Dis walked with quiet resignation to the task on Balin's arm behind them. The acclaimations for her were loud and genuine, but she didn't seem to hear them at all. Balin whispered something to her and she stood up a little straighter, but rarely looked any who hailed her in the eye at all. Like Thorin's, hers had a way of conveying their far-away place inside.
She knew, and hope was a very precious thing indeed. Meisar stole a glance back and Thorin's sister nodded toward her with quiet clandestine acknowledgement.
By the far end of the hall the crowds had dispersed, mostly in the direction of the mead and ale barrels that were coming up newly filled from the brewery downstairs. King and queen stood in the circle of light beneath the wall sconce, alone. The sentries nearby paid them no notice, only Oliada, at a distance, who had come to know when to follow close, and when not.
"My queen, come with me." His mouth curved up at the corners just a little, slight but contented. In the halo of light he must have seemed a dark, foreboding smudge from a distance, in his great robes of state and his crown. A face that had once struck her as bereft of mirth leaned serenely against her forehead and sighed, his jaw no longer tense, his brow un-furrowed. He took her hands and kissed her across her fingertips.
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere we may be alone for a moment," Thorin answered. He took her hand and led her swiftly from the hall, down a darkened flight of stairs and through a concealed door that was lodged firmly in the leg of a great lord before them, rendered monumentally in stone in the Gallery of Kings below. The small dense clangs of sentries' boots on the gold floor echoed at a distance, patrolling up and down. It gleamed in the light of the lanterns suspended high above.
"Why the urgency to get away from our guests? It is Durin's Day," Meisar asked.
"None at all." His large rough hands on the back of her neck pulling her swiftly to kiss. "Except to kiss you. It is the first anniversary of our wedding day, after all."
"You think I would forget?"
"Never." Thorin took his mouth against hers heartily, a declaration he made with it silently, or as quietly at least as could be endeavored there in the echoing, cavernous gallery, where even the hitch of breath slipped between the stone edifices and ricocheted.
"When you kissed me first," she breathed. "I thought of nothing except for you to kiss me again." He backed her up against the stone and tipped her head up to bury his face under her chin and cover her to the base of her throat in feverous kisses.
"Alas, here we are again, doing the same, in secret, just as upon the road," Thorin recalled. The sentries might have heard the labor of their breathing in the echoing nooks amongst the stone lords.
"Perhaps I should find a lumpy bedroll then, for old time's sake, or Dori to snore two feet away."
Her arms around his neck, possessively dipping her tongue into the well of his mouth, he drew his hand under her heavy mantle, felt for the warmth and breadth of her bosom over her gown.
"Shall we retire then, my queen?"
She could feel his breath and the subtle abrasion of his beard as his lips brushed past hers again, grasping her upper lip and nipping, sliding his tongue into the hollow over hers.
"Only a little while longer, kurdu-uh. Sun and moon are not yet in the sky together. What will your people think if you disappear before then?"
"Our people. Our people might suspect I adore my queen very much."
.
They were in their chambers by the time the resonant carillon of the great bells tolled high up above the great foyer, trembling into the unlit heart of the mountain it would seem. The bells of Erebor, the bells of Dale would ring in jubilation when sun and moon appeared together in the sky, Thror's Bell heralding it first. Bells and fireworks and hardy toasts would entertain those who were still awake or conscious, and there were enough to keep the festivities going with aplomb until there was no more moon in the sky. Muffled beats of feet and drums and song went on beyond, and empty barrels bomp-bomp-bomping down the chutes and lifts to the great kitchens and the brewery, stewards and serving-maids scurrying.
Thorin shrugged off the heavy fur-lined extant robe quickly, shooed out the dogs and the speckled piglet that was growing too swiftly for his liking.
.
Griet had remembered to stoke the fire. In the heat of the room she became aware of Thorin's radiating presence behind her, withdrawing the long pin of her coiffure, lips skimming ear, fingers tracing the weave of her braid at the base of her neck.
The live embers bellowed out in resurrection to full flame and crackled sharply, a cold vortex spinning them up the chimney.
"Winter is upon us, indeed, my queen. They reckon it to be a cold one."
"I have not been cold since the first I came to this chamber," she murmured. "After the wedding."
The fire settled and threw out a wave of warmth. She sighed at its sight and memory, lying close to the heat of that very same hearth fire a year to the day, a warg skin beneath her and Thorin… Thorin. Priming her for something deeper. It was many days before he would allow her to return the favor in a similar fashion.
"No, and I do not suspect you will be ever again," Thorin answered, smiling wistfully. "A moment to ready myself for bed, if you can bear to wait?"
"Obliged. But my darling Thorin, help me with this awful thing," she pleaded, laughing, her mantle and outer robe shucked, tugging uselessly at her bodice.
Straightforwardly enough, he took the dreadful contraption by either of its seams in his hands and tore it efficiently open once he had managed to undo the laces far enough down. The blush and gold silk crumpled with fluid elegance upon the rug along with her richly embroidered bodice, her peignoir next to the skin and left alone.
Except for...
She sat upon the edge of the bed and followed the shadow of Thorin, silhouette shedding robe and pressing aside the drape to mount to bed behind her.
"Let your hair down for me. Let me tend on it," he pleaded quietly. The thick orange waves slid through his fingers like molten lead from a great cauldron, pouring into the long rivulets of their molds. He raised thick fistfuls of it to his nose and took in the scent of her pipe smoke that was impressed deep into the tresses. He kissed, worshipfully, from tip to the crown of her head and pressed her hair aside to lay his face against her neck. The way that he had kissed her in the Gallery of Kings with such eagerness bespoke the sort of desire that was incapable of waiting. But now, with uncanny patience, he brushed the bounty of red hair that ran to her knees, brushed and grasped handfuls of to raise to his face and kiss, until they had trailed up to her head and flushed her scalp with the heat of his breath. He began to braid it again for night only then, stopping halfway, clasping and messily pinning it, his mouth, his teeth swiftly on the nape of her neck.
With his kisses he drew all of her closer against his chest and held her firmly in the powerful grip of his thighs. The swell of his need stirred in the cleft of her backside, burying kisses indulgently against the seam of her neck. Fingertips and an eager palm ran across her chest and buoyed up to find her neckline. A warm rough hand slid between the light fabric and the foreign hard substance where her skin was supposed to be. His static recoil left her smiling inside.
The commanding encompass of his palm came to rest against her chest, growling in his throat in confusion when he did not find there what he expected- the soft full sphere or the little nub that liked to curl into a little hard point against his fingertips' contact. Tiny ridges cut like the edges of finished diamonds on his fingers, and then, gold. He knew what it felt like on his fingers. But for once, he did not recoil. She flexed her shoulders back and rattled lightly.
"What is this now?" he inquired huskily.
"Would you like to see?"
"Now you stoke my curiosity far too much, ghivashel."
"Your treasure? Unwrap me then, my king." She stood before him and bid his thick fingers do their work at her delicate garment. One by one he drew the silken ribbons out from her peignoir until a single sash was left, fastened below her bosom, and this too he slid from its bow-tie and pulled open the lace-edged shift.
Thorin sucked in a swift breath finding what was beneath- hips clad in gold, a thin girdle wound round the smallest part of her waist and clasped in pearls in front, leaving a cascade of similar chains to skillfully armor her mound. Several descending gold chains draped her chest, the rosy nipples even more delicate studs amid the sapphire and diamond punctuations of the strands. Armbands of burnished gold girded either arm, and as she kicked away the discarded underclothing her ankles rang in tiny peals with their velvet cuffs and sewn-on coins of gold.
"Ghivashel..."
"A proper dwarven bride. I disused tradition once. Perhaps it is worth trying." She wriggled her ample hips in the great gaudy jewels that made her feel like a woman of the Harad, solemn and veiled and kept in their strange harems. "Though perhaps I have changed a bit since Durin's Day last."
She looked down at her body demurely, graced in gold and jewels of many hues. "Am I still... has it... diminished? Your need of me?"
"You are mine and there is nothing that will diminish my thoughts of you, never, not an inch or a give." A jagged line of kisses traveled her abdomen, his hands at the small of her back, pulling her close.
"On the contrary; I do believe I love you more each day," he said into the welcoming cushion of her.
Meisar, seated skin-to-skin across his lap, made his skin jump all over with the contrast of metal and flesh pushed to his own. Her fingers found their way through the mass of his dark hair as his hands ran down her back and settled, holding her by the narrow part of her waist to him. His index finger ran across her collarbone.
"We have seen little of each other these weeks," Meisar lamented. "With weddings and harvests and truces to make."
"I am glad at least the wedding happened sooner than later; that one beard plait of Dwalin's was irking me to look at any longer. It was an unsymmetrical arrangement, and rather lonely-looking," Thorin remarked dryly.
"Yours is growing," she murmured, running her fingers through his beard around his mouth, making him moan against her fingertips. She drew her thumb across the moist heat of his lower lip and he kissed it. His beard was less bristled, still wiry but softer as it lengthened.
When it was long enough to plait, would our children too be plaited into it? Perhaps Mahal waits on his beard. The thought amused her, but it was bittersweet. Thorin's lips traced the seam of her uncovered jawline and found her lips. She tightened her thighs over the breadth of his hips and slowly rocked, anticipating, needing.
.
There had been a need then as there was now, to touch every part of her, find the parts that made her eyes screw shut and gasp and writhe. He would never please anyone else that way. Possessive dwarf, hiding and claiming it all to his own behind the bed-drapes. As then, now, the austerity of her gaze had become a soft thing, and left him reveling in her curiosity for his own body, a woman who would have none other but him to become a part of her. And she, she was all curves, soft handles to squeeze and generous in what she had given him to worship. In turn, she seemed to have known from the start that his hardness needed her softness, even if it was only that of flesh, craving her unexpressed, unfulfilled need of tenderness.
"A year my queen. It has been a good year. We will have many to come."
The thick pelt of hair at his chest met her soft rolling hills and belly. His abrasion stiffened her; it penetrated to warm his skin there in return.
"To bed, my king. I wish to give you all that there is for me to give you."
The coverlets on the bed again were furs and winter linens, inviting them to take of their warmth and each other's. At her quiet urging he lay back and cradled the back of his head comfortably at the pillow. She kissed his chin and jaw and the steadily thickening beard over it, her jewels a disarray of small clinks and tinkling.
"You like this part of me the best I think," Meisar murmured with a soft purring humor. Straddling his lap, he buried his face contentedly into her chest.
"You made me wait long enough to have them in my possession," Thorin replied. "We are a mountain peoples, and yours are decidedly not so lonely as this. I may be biased, my love."
"Yes, you had already acquainted yourself rather well with my phoenix-nest if I recall."
The hum he let out into her tickled the roof of her mouth. "Your phoenix-nest? So do we both rise from the ashes, my treasure."
"You ravished me disproportionately I think. Ought I repay the favor, my king?" She wondered if he had craved what he had given her then, a chance, once and last, to be puzzled over, stirred and explored.
"Soft rolling hills and unforgiving plains…" her hands slid over the expanse of his chest, pressing at the hair against the grain. "Like the world itself. We are. We have traveled all of it."
"We are larger than geography, my darling."
"Or smaller," Meisar digressed quietly. "Easier to find our way about maybe."
"So you'd think."
"Then let me try, Thorin."
He moved to sit up with her left breast still grasped in his hand. Withdrawing it from her she kissed his palm and pressed his arm backward to rest above his head on the pillow, circling the quickening pulse of wrist with her fingertip until he was lying prone and surrendered beneath her.
"Let me," she pleaded. "Let me…"
Her fingers drifted from the broad, solid plain of his torso to the half-moon navel and the hard muscles around it. Not like her. She was a very pale pillow there. As her fingertips glided over scarred ribs and the strong heaving hints of their rungs he lay in silent reverie of her touch. She brushed the back of her hand lightly over the base of his stomach, his bumps of hips, the taut hollows, the subtle plateau of pubic bone. The coarse black hair there tickled her knuckles.
Make a feral groan come from deep in his chest and from his throat like the rumble of an army at marching she could, and did, burying her face against the coarse hair and the light musk of his chest. She closed her lips around the hair-ringed button and withdrew. The pink nipple rose at attention as ardently as her own were wont to when so lovingly handled. She traced a fingertip over the outer edge of his ribcage, taking in fluttering skin and the tightness of his jawline and throat.
She looked up at him with her heavy-lidded eyes kenning to please, shy and hooded, voracious the same gauging every give and tremor of his torso beneath her touch, every half-completed breath. She slid the heat of her mouth over the pink, glistening nipple again and shuddered with the sudden jolt of him beneath her from his flinging an arm to grasp the post behind him. He threw his head back and all but howled in deep, guttural half formed words.
To hear Thorin gasp and groan was her greatest victory in the matter of small victories, legs of a journey; she licked a whorl of hair into a little twist over his right nipple and moved with the reverberating quaver.
"There?" she questioned duskily, placing kisses from the dense breastbone down the denser center-line of hair that trailed from sternum to the middle of his stomach. Making his breath quicken with anticipation flamed at her. Thorin had tormented her once with the same pleasure. She nipped at the taut skin just above his hipbone. Blunt nails raked against his sternum, heaving, his rough, almost strangled, gasps for breath and the sound of the wood as his fingers grasped tighter and tighter around it. Meisar's own wide, hard eyes flicked up at him, met with a dark stare whose demand was unclear.
"Wanton woman," he hissed. "You torment me."
She left a drenched kiss in the hollow of his hip, tongue tracing the seam of bone into the little dip. And then she leaned, clinquant, metal on skin, her fingers parsing dense hair and grasping his base, placing kisses from the foundation of his rigid length to its tip. When she clasped the head carefully in lips and then her teeth, she halted, savoring the unmasked hunger in his eyes and the moment her mouth met the tip and sent him into a ripple of shudders and small gasps.
"And there?" she breathed upon his skin. His hips and the cords of his thighs tightened in protest.
"No!" he barked suddenly. The bite of his voice made her sit up stiffly. "No… no… come now. I need…"
His outstretched beckoning arms and impatient summoning had her swiftly spread her ample thighs over his hips and let their ubiquitous heat and pulsations guide them together. She steadied herself by pressing against the hard indentations of his chest with her palms and wriggled carefully against his hips, rising and prodding, focusing on the need and anticipation in his eyes until the slick tip found her channel and coaxed her down onto him. Half-sheathed, he stilled her hips.
She welcomed his hungry caresses, seeking all of her softer parts, her ample hips and perfectly round, fat bottom. He grasped the soft handles of her hips as she bore herself down over and around him. She was so generous of her form, so lush and fertile, in his hands. How could she be barren? What darkness has wrought this?
The joy of that touch made him flex his hips up against her, under her, deeper into her, and she rode with aplomb.
"My wife is so insatiable, is she?" No longer did he resist the animal need to wheal and swell her lips with kisses.
"I want you always with me. In me, Thorin."
He groaned a wordless answer that vibrated with the rest of his form to up inside her. A hand rested on her hip and grasped the soft handle to guide her, up and down, circling herself over him; the opposite skimmed hard fingertips to her breast and kneaded close at it in rhythm to her bearing down, one and then again, and again.
He burst in her after two brief rises and falls but even his waning did not deter her any more. Thorin growling and gasping at the pressure of her walls clutching tight around him in a possessive vise seemed to spur her on. Her heat pulsed and his resigned, when at last every conceivable drop of his desire had been spent in her. And still, her eyes were black and wide and desperate. Her chest heaved against his and pressed her weight hard to him, rocking erratically back and forth over him.
"A dwarrow-maid I have married; a lusty wanton I have now. Mahal is kind." Even as he ebbed he urged her on and up, kneading globe and steadying her with the other hand by the small of her back, and she lowered her face to his to kiss, and kiss, and kiss. Until there was no more breath to be squeezed from either of them. Still, her undulations rolled on, ceaseless and impassioned, his head slightly elevated on the pillow, her body draped over his like a curtain.
"Yea, you married a verily confirmed maid, not a stable girl. But a poor lone lady can become a very happy wife, even to a king. And I have."
I am happy and my heart breaks for the fact. How do I put that into words for you?
Limbs draped across each other on the strewn sheets he found the chafed angry skin on her chest where the jewelry had rubbed too hard. He lifted a gold chain from her skin and she winced.
"They've dug into you. There's welts already."
"Oh," the realization came with the dull sting all over her skin from the irritation. "I suppose I did not notice."
"Preoccupied with other things?" he grinned down at her cheekily, his smile like always, one side of his mouth and smug when it wanted to be.
"You have no idea, husband." She kissed his shoulder in a little peck as he rolled from her and searched his bedside stand, a strong medicinal scent soon tickling her nostrils, then soothing her into a languid sort of desire.
The tips of his fingers slick and dripping with aloe and myrrh oil met her skin in a touch so light it felt as the breath of a ghost. He slickened one mound with it and the other in turn, massaging under and other, finally taking both in his large hands to cup together, press together like molding clay and circle his hands about in repeat motions. The oil made a dense sheen at her skin.
"You are right," he said. "I do like this part of you." His hair covered her face like a soft blanket from above as he settled and kissed her. The silky thick blanket unveiled her face and sopped up the oil from her chest as he moved, cupping again, rolling thumb over nipple and summoning its little point to a mahogany shade, engulfing it in the heat of his mouth.
She gasped and pulled away from him up the headboard.
It should be a babe's mouth there by now. Not just his. (Even if she found his quite agreeable). Full of milk, nourishing a little prince or princess.
"Meisar?"
"Thorin…" she buried her face against his collarbone next to where her hand had already balled itself tightly into a nervous fist. On the steady command of his palm against her neck, fingers leveraged at her jawline, moved her. Forehead to forehead, his strong, proud nose nuzzled hers, prodded at her in want of an answer, to a question he hadn't even asked.
"What is it? Adyum? I beg of you..."
"I only… it is only that I wish a babe were here to like my breasts as much as you do. You have no idea what I would do for it to be."
"I know," he nuzzled the bridge of her nose upward until his forehead rested against hers, his reassurances a low vibration, rippling close to skin, rooting in bone. "I know."
"I have something to confess to you, Thorin. I have begged out for help. I have sent a raven across the lands for Gandalf, to see if there is a remedy for this... emptiness. Today I have heard a reply. He is to visit us here soon, the weather holding."
Thorin frowned pitifully at her. "A wizard's knowledge is rarely so useful to our kind. I doubt he knows anything for the workings of women, of any race."
"If it were a female concern, I would seek a healer's aide. But I think it not. I am not beyond my childbearing years, Thorin. Every moon-cycle I have my 'afana. There is nothing lacking in either of us to bear children. Perhaps it is not us."
"You should have told me, my love," he said, edged in disappointment, maybe even hurt. Her chest flushed with shame and he saw it, reached out to hold his hand against hers there.
"I didn't know how."
He unclenched his hand from hers and stroked her little finger with his. "I do not dismiss your fears, but I am assured too that Mahal did not give you such a lovely bosom merely to please me. And they please me much. You please me."
"If you are jesting to comfort me, I appreciate the intent, but I will do this whether you think it a worthy pursuit or not."
"I would rather not meddle with wizards' ways. I dislike magic," Thorin grumbled. "It takes control from us; I should know."
"It is more than magic. It is..." (Dis, ancient scrolls, a royal graveyard and forces too great to reckon alone). She lay her head to the back of his hand on the pillow. "My love for you will always be stronger than my sorrows, Thorin. If you can be certain of nothing else, be certain of that. You can trust me with this."
"If you insist," Thorin mumbled, more warily than not. "To see you burdened is my greatest unhappiness."
.
Shamukh, ra galikh ai-mâ- Hail all and well met!