GUSBASÛB- Tiny Yawns
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would like to get a few more chapters of pregnancy fluff in, just because.
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Before sun and moon are together in the sky, let us be.
Durin's Day never drifted many days afar from that mysterious cusp of autumn and winter. Some years, many years past, there had been leaves, clinging to their greenery on the thick forests on the hills outside of Erebor during his childhood, Thorin remembered. The next year snow fell from the bells in heavy sheaves when they were wrung amid a storm and the pale winter sun of the new morning had a dull if blinding quality over it.
Would that my child know those forests, their soil nurtured in ash and green again.
Thror had held his hand, Frerin firmly grasped on the other with their nursemaid to blockade the latter from darting off, when they rose and took their leave of the royal dais before the tolling of the bells, and greeted the people in procession. Thrain carried Dis in her infancy after Tania's death; he remembered her blue velvet swaddling trimmed in gold thread catching the light, her head full of black hair that buzzed with static and made her wail every time a dwarf touched her head to bless her and it sparked, and Thrain had jostled her as gently as he knew how.
Thror had greeted each new year with magnificence, bounty heaped upon all, and magnanimously, walked amongst his people, assured of his line and of his glory. He had never held so tight to Thorin's hand as on Durin's Day, when the little prince rubbed his eyes with longing of sleep and began to groan for it.
A prince's duty, Thror said, is here.
A prince's duty, Thorin reminded himself, retreating from the hall before the bells two centuries later. But a king's...
Meisar leaned against his arm and clasped hard to it.
"Thorin," she murmured, out of the earshot of the stiff sentries awaiting on them to pass. "It is happening again."
A king's was to be with his queen when their child quickened for the first time. He would hear nothing else of a king's duty, not even from his own. But Dis had already retired for the evening, and Balin was in no mood to test him.
Members of their own court had eventually drifted down from the dais to mingle and far more casually than in his grandfather's time, allowing king and queen to slip away mostly unnoticed to their private chambers before the bells prepared to toll in honor of the first winter sun. Griet and Niva helped remove all the layers of fine material down to her linen, and Thorin's intense gaze upon the bump of her abdomen sent the serving girls away in a decorous haste. Thorin threw off his robe and inner coat, closed the door to the chamber before Redcoat could scamper in, took her in his arms. She tugged him closer by the borders of his robes, fisting the furs tightly as she drew him closer.
"Am I drunk on too much ale or is this, this wonderful gift?" He stopped kissing her long enough to let his hands trail down to her abdomen and touch her over the permeable material of her nightgown.
"It is, and a fitting one for Durin's Day, don't you think?"
"It did not tire you too much, the festivities?" he inquired with a flint of worry on the line of his brow.
"On the contrary, the festivities have given our babe some moxie," she rubbed the soft blanket of his beard at the chin, teasingly, her other still pressed eagerly to her belly.
"But you, Meisar. You must rest, if not for him," Thorin protested, setting his clothes aside for his linen nightshirt.
"How could I be tired? How could I want a moment of sleep when…?" She held her hand over her stomach suddenly, palpitating eagerly about. "Banzith!"
"I can feel it now," Thorin assured, his heart beating faster against Meisar's cheek.
"Have you had your tea this evening? I made sure Griet left it for you, and hot," he inquired closely. Eda had put her to drinking a fill of the lemon and cinnamon infused tea before bed each night and first in the morning.
"Only this morning."
"Eda says you must evening too. I am the king; I may enforce that order," he teased. "I place above all things my queen's health, and our child's."
Thorin stoked the struggling fire with a poker, letting it come to full light and heat again.
"Am I not in good health? Would you like to scrutinize for yourself?" Meisar intoned quietly. When he had seated himself by the fire he drew her close to stand before him and pushed the ivory skirt of her gown up over her hips and she gathered the fabric up herself then, holding it in a bunch over the curve of her belly for him. She had been of a strong, zaftig form before but the child was turning her body in its own distinct way; the roundest part of her belly carved itself supple and defined between the flanks, and there was already a subtle widening of her hips to be the sturdy cradle for it. Framing the mound of her belly in his hands he rubbed it softly on its sides and to its center, from the slight protrusion of her navel to the soft familiar thicket of hair that was below its eave. He held it tenderly in his hands and kissed it, his beard tickling the tender skin enough to draw a twitching laughter from her.
"I think you perfect in every way, but I wish it to stay that way. Drink your tea, and come and sit here. I will brush your hair," he patted his thigh for her to sit upon his lap on the armchair.
"And if he kicks again?"
"We'll not miss a single flinch," he promised, arms sliding around her from behind snugly and settling against her stomach, like a pair of sentries at a stern watch, making their rounds from her ribcage to the crease of her thigh where it met the growing belly, in search of any sign of life. He rested his face against her neck as she blew into the steam floating over her cup, rippling the surface of the tea to flutter its delicate aroma into the air.
"When I first saw you, I could never have imagined the sort of joy upon your face that I see now," he murmured, swell of breath warm.
She had changed. Since the first kiss, since marriage, bedding together, coronation, she had changed, her eyes letting out their natural warmth, the weary, taciturn face wearing sprightly smiles more than not.
"You shall see much joy, Thorin. I long to see you smile, you know." The moisture rising from her tea mingled with the drops of tiny tears and they blended together in a mist upon her face. His rough, thick fingertips moved sparingly at first and then swift and light as elven feet upon the soft skin of her stomach, tickling the edge of the growing swell. The muscle beneath fluttered at the contact and she wriggled.
"That will spur him, surely," she laughed. The tip of his forefinger traveled upward in a steady line to the center of her swell and eased over the curve to rest in the point of her sternum, circling lightly and beginning a journey down again. Thorin pressed the pads of his thumbs lightly into the hardening shell of her midsection, and gasped as he drew back.
"I should not excite you this way at this hour. We should be abed by now. You must rest, my blessing," he insisted.
"You promised to finish my hair for me," Meisar protested lightly.
"I did," he relented, and retrieved from over her shoulder her braid and began to unwind the rest of it. He took her jeweled comb and boar bristle brush and indulged the abundant mass of hair from the ends up. "Perhaps the baby will have this beautiful red hair. It is lucky among dwarves you know," he laughed and grunted in frustration shortly, his fingers caught and tangled in the orange tresses and she laughed when he pulled his hands out of her mane, still grumbling.
"Very lucky indeed," she echoed, jestingly. "But a child of Durin's House is like to be black-headed, like my Thorin. I think the better luck is to continue with tradition, sometimes."
"Perhaps a few of my grandfather's could be discarded, or at least decorously laid to rest," Thorin grumbled, unnerved against the warmth of her shoulder. "Finish your tea, my love."
She did so, the cinnamon sticking on her tongue, and flakes gathering in the base of the cup in a dark ring. She stared down into it, and at her belly. "I did not expect the baby to move so soon," Meisar confessed, as he started to braid from the nape of her neck, in contemplative silence that prickled at her nerves slightly. The child was a ready comfort.
"Dwarves are ever impatient, and restless. Boorish little things," Thorin shrugged. "My little prince, how strong you grow each day," he whispered, and threaded her long red hair through the hole in the middle of the bead and clasped it tight around the tip of the plait. His fingers were so gentle when they braided her hair, thick and ungraceful as they looked.
"And what if it is a little princess, adyum?" she smiled over her shoulder.
"Then I will leave the hair-braiding to you. Abed now, my jewel," he swept her up in one careful motion and carried her to the other side of the room, leaving the fire burning and the candles alight.
"My child, are you awake in there?" she cradled her belly against the pillows, gazed back at it with pride and longing, such deep, primal longing, just for the baby to be delivered safely into the world when it was time. She reached over to her bedside table and lightly snapped the seal on a parchment, opening it and studying it closely in the candlelight above her head.
"Reading? At this hour? What possibly for?" Thorin admonished lightly, settling down by her side and laying his head up against the side of her chest, his hand on her belly, gently stroking as she petted her fingers through his hair in tandem. He closed his eyes and shuddered an exhausted sigh.
"I want to see if he moves again. I can't sleep," Meisar said.
His eyes fluttered open and he rose to his elbow. "So you trouble yourself with correspondences? My queen, be only for this child now."
"It is only a congratulatory greeting, this from the chieftain of the Firebeards in the Blue Mountains. He blesses our child in the name of all dwarves, and says the dwarrowdams of Ered Luin will gather in their villages and halls to make an offering to Yavanna for his safe delivery and rude health," Meisar recited the letter warmly.
"I think they may claim you as one of their own," Thorin supposed, stroked her outstretched braid affectionately. "And pray for a beard upon his chin as red as flame."
"Do you think he has a beard already?" she sighed.
"He is a prince already," Thorin traced the curve of her belly again, propped on his elbow. "He is creating his own little mountain here, a wee kingdom. But it shan't be lonely like this one, no. His mother is his world entire, and that cannot be lonely."
"Only a hill now, my love," Meisar laughed. "Not unlike the rolling green ones of the west. So peaceful, and merry. And that, I would keep my child within for all time. Ah! There, he is moving again. Whisper your sweet words to him, Thorin. Let him know you are here."
"I can't feel anything," Thorin answered, to her doleful pout. He rested his head next to her to listen, coming to circle the slight protrusion of her navel with his forefinger. "Jewel of my heart, you have given this kingdom all and more."
"This kingdom? Is that all?"
"This," he kissed her stomach. "This is more than I deserve."
"Don't say that," she snapped suddenly.
Flaring at the bare part of his cheeks, he considered the expanse with loving curiosity and in apologetic silence beside her, the belly that would steadily grow for months to come and change with their child, moving again within her beneath the touch of his palm, at last.
"See now," she returned a peaceful smile. "He does not like when you talk like that. He must remind his father of his love."
"It is love, and all I have of it," he assured her belly. "Do you know how much I love you already?"
"He does, I am quite sure."
Thorin scooted up to the pillows at the head to lie behind her, his beard on her cheek as he kissed her goodnight, lingering so that his nose could trace the path of her cheekbone.
"Rest now. It has been a day," he all but commanded. Draped in the careful strength of his arms, the puttering heat of his breath on the back of her neck soothed the ache that had formed there with the cumbersome head dressings all evening. The way his Khuzdul rumbled through his skin, tremoring muscle and bone, like a fire springing up in a cold forge. She closed her eyes and absorbed the vibrations of it on her skin, stroking the solid forearm that lay across her, cradling the little swell of her belly, until sleep finally took her.
Nestled into his side from his chest to his hip, she fit perfectly in the curve of his body, her arm resting over her belly before her, protectively, even when sleep took her. He removed the arm and replaced it gently with his own. With clandestine quiet he let his hand slide over the swell as she slept, the skin-warmed linen soon stirring beneath his touch. Within her it hitched and came again, subtle at first and then a swift prod at her womb, before settling again.
Mahal keep her. He rested his head lightly beside hers on her pillow, took in the scent of her hair- like smoke and her lavender perfume. His heart swelled and shuddered in the cage of ribs, running over with joy into his throat, where it settled in a lump. She groaned a little in her sleep and moved a hand protectively back to the middle of her belly. His slipped over hers and held it there.
Mahal keep them. For them I lay my life as collateral at the doors of your halls.
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II
"I don't understand. He is not kicking today, at all. Last night, the quickening was... it was." Meisar turned to face Eda, seated at the table with a bowl of apples, peeling one for her morning sustenance, in addition to the oat cakes Urdlaug had prepared at her cart and sent off with the maids. Her belly had been quiet all morning, not even a rumble. Eda focused her attention on the apple, to her chagrin, until she huffed involuntarily and made it known.
"It could have been a bit of indigestion. Or gas," Eda clucked, abandoning the fruit and seating Meisar on her settee, and raised her shirt to press firm hands all over her. "Baby's growing as it should; the other parts are groaning their displeasure mayhap. It is natural."
"All night last he kicked, Eda. I swear it," Meisar insisted. She stood and placed her hand under the swell of her stomach, as if letting out a nervous sigh would spur the child to reassure her. The lull held, and she sighed apologetically as she felt Eda's hand on the top-most part of the growing sphere, patting it gently over the mauve silk of her morning dress. She gave a sheepish twisted look toward the healer.
"Oh aye, and I believe you," Eda reassured. "Still early are ye; he won't for another few days maybe even. They are rarely predictable that way."
"I should ask Dis of such things. She had two of them," Meisar suggested. The other dwarrowdams went quiet around them, Emli at her treasury bills, the others at their embroidery.
"The first go of it always tires them out," Emli insisted stoutly, breaking a silence that had Gyda and Brynja holding their breath in the corner. "Gimli kicked for two days when he first quickened, and then, all silence for several more. But when they start, they rarely stop until they are born. Be glad of some peace now."
"Oh aye," agreed Eda. "The strain of this pregnancy will only be more arduous as time goes on. Best you enjoy while you can before the swellin' starts in your hands and feet, and your back hurts too much to move."
She ignored them with a pinched look. "How will I know my child still lives in me? What if...?"
"You will always know, always," Emli patted her hand firmly. "Besides, our babies are not like those of men, so delicate in the womb and delicate in their infancy all through. We are made of stronger stuff by necessity. Now don't you go worrying."
"It is like telling a fire to stop burning when it catches on a dry wood," Meisar said to her. "I will ask Dis, just for propensity. It is her line I bear. Perhaps they have certain tendencies I should know about, I-"
"Not necessary at all, my queen. I assure you," Emli reiterated carefully. She shifted her eyes from Freyda cradling Brundin a little closer to her chest in stony silence, back to Meisar, cooing as she rubbed her belly with a be-ringed hand. "This is a healthy babe."
"I wish to have Dis for afternoon refreshment and tea anyway. Will you relay an invite? She should be awake by now."
Emli delicately put away her work and moved stealthily in her heavy skirts to sit at Meisar's side, her lips tight. A jerk of her head, not as clandestine as she might have wished it, summoned Freyda to sit on Meisar's other side, Brundin's snore like the tugging back and forth of saws on a log.
"My lady, perhaps the princess would be better left to her peace at such a time," Emli began.
"What do you mean?" Meisar asked, the hair on her neck prickling unexpectedly.
"Her sons are no longer here, majesty. Oh, perhaps it... would deepen her melancholy, unintended as it may be," Eda smiled thinly, holding her hand. "She will love this child, I know, as Thorin loved hers, but I would sooner be keen to keep that wound sealed up."
"Do you think? Truly?" the pangs of guilt tugged her stomach and confronted the heat of irritation in her head for precedence.
"She has been taking more of that Elvish wine lately," Elsa said brusquely. "I think it likely she still sleeps. I will rouse her if you wish though."
"And leaving my husband's sister alone to her cups while we prepare for this child is a better way?" Meisar shot back. The indignity made a hard lump in her throat that didn't know whether to be hurt or angry.
"We did not mean to upset you," Emli half-cooed. Meisar bristled from her reassuring touch. "I would be quite honored for you to burden me with your worries, my dear. For I am a mother too."
"I would never hurt her, and this is... rather petty, my ladies," Meisar scolded, crossing her arms tight across the sore expanse of her chest, and wincing, glared accusingly toward them all. Forethought escaped her in her offense and began to spill from her tongue bitterly. "She had done more for my sake in seeing this child conceived at all that I-"
The door opening and Oliada announcing the king stopped her as if it were meant to be, memory clapping her in the head. The dwarrowdams all welcomed Thorin with a quick, purposeful sway to warmth, curtsying and murmuring 'm'king.'
"You come to me again at noon-tide, my husband?" The embers of her irritation snuffed themselves within her, at his sight.
"Do ye miss her so or worry for her so?" Freyda teased lightly. Brundin's chubby, bearded face regarded Thorin the way Dwalin did, with a bit of brusque reverence. Thorin leaned to pat his capped head.
"Both, as always," he responded to Freyda with a reciprocating smile, once Brundin had grown tired of gripping his thumb. Meisar's outstretched hand, stroking Brundin's temple, he leaned to kiss with kingly decorum, her ladies sighing, charmed, about her.
"There is something I would show you, ghivashel. A gift, if you would. I could not wait."
He delicately pulled her to stand, leading her across the antechamber, into their bedroom with the women trailing curiously. On a section of wall next to the hearth he pushed at the carved lines upon the wall, at the edge of the fireplace, until one groaned and moved, the decorative border revealing itself as a door, and bowing open. The cradle had sat below it, unmoved for two years.
"Thorin, what is this?" Meisar asked, stepping into the dark room, the air musty from lack of use, the dust twitching inside her nose. Gyda scampered in with a small brazier to light the space.
"Mibarîn," he answered when the light rose.
"A nursery!" exclaimed Freyda, Brundin on her hip less enthused.
"From times of old, superstitions reigned. It is considered poor luck for air to come into this chamber before the child is safely advanced. It is a gift for the quickening of our child," he considered Meisar's belly with a gentle touch, regarding it with pride swelling up in his eyes.
She looked at her stomach and pinched her mouth until she needed to let out a sigh of both gratitude, and uncertainty. The child was sedate within her still. Thorin stroked the side of the heavy stone door.
"It was mine once, my father's before, and it will be our child's soon."
"A royal nursery to furnish! Oh what a joy!" gushed Emli, sweeping past with her hands clasped in glee.
"We will need plenty of lining for the cradle, the finest linen and velvet, and bright tapestries. I shall order some at once. The child is best to have calming, bright and warm visuals to appeal to him from his cradle," Emli summed, she and Aroin considering the space together, eyeing each other with itching competitiveness. In the light (quickly borne by the dwarrowdams and their candles, the maids scurrying to blow the dust from the wall sconces and provide them with wax), the space was less foreboding. Except for the furnishings of a squat chest of drawers and jeweled chest it was empty, the tapestries on the wall coated in dust.
"It will require some work, Thorin. I think we are good to engage ourselves in it," Meisar said gratefully, to the giddiness of the dwarrowdams.
"As do I, at this time, no doubt," he grumbled, with a sardonic smile. The sentry at the door to the outer chamber rapped. "I fear it is a call to chambers once more."
"So long as you return to me by supper, I think we will keep ourselves occupied well enough." She picked up dusty rattle and shook it, the gritty plume that bloomed catching hard in the light. Thorin rubbed the last of the dust from it with his thumb, considering it wistfully. Dis's name was carved into the handle in runes.
"Capon with rosemary and thyme. White meat is good for the expectant mother," ordered Eda. "I've ordered for two already from the kitchens, to be ready by the evening bells and no later."
"I shall be sooner than that, I pray," Thorin replied, Meisar seeing him out as the sentry cleared his throat with respectful impatience. "If not, do as Eda says for your nutrition, or I shall not hear the end of it."
"I will take their sage advice, so far as our child's wellness is concerned," the commas of her mouth in its corners forming subtly.
The dwarrowdams back in the nursery were clustered and yapping over each other, when she returned, however reluctantly, to their company. Was it premature? Now that the baby laid silent in her.
"Best for the cradle to be here, away from the sconces. The child will be comfortable in a cradle if the light and heat don't trouble him so," Aroin supposed, measuring the distance from wall to door carefully, nudging Emli aside from her station over the jewel-crusted oaken chest, wiping away the dust from the sapphires with her fingertips.
"I would prefer the cradle by my bedside actually," Meisar disagreed gently. The warmth kindled in her again for the thought. She placed herself between the women and the dark wooden cradle outside the door where it had always been.
"Your bedside? How will you get any sleep majesty?" Aroin furrowed a brow in surprise.
"How could I be an entire room apart from my baby?" Meisar responded incredulously. "Do not they cry out for their mother at night? Who but I could comfort him?"
"Bertha is an experienced night-nurse to mother-dwarfs when they are in need," Emli assured. Bertha nodded a proud confirmation.
"Once he is here, I do not think I will ever put him down," Meisar replied, cradling her stomach, eyes downcast toward the little mound, pleading even.
Aroin smiled in surrender, the first such smile to have crossed her broad, austere little face. Emli's knowing smile beside her, for once, steadied her own. "No, my queen," Aroin said finally. "I suppose... I don't suppose you will."
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Mibarîn- places of the cribs