Sorry for the lack of updates in spite of me having things pretty well worked out for the foreseeable future plot-wise. Life gets in the way, "real" writing and other things.
A few things then...
RE: reviewer: Meisar, a Mary Sue? I am a bit disappointed in that assessment but if you think so, I have to recognize there's a good reason for it and I'll keep trying to improve her as time goes on. Regardless of whatever character development issues she might be having at the moment (and I admit, there are some), I just want someone who is going to make Thorin happy, because he deserves it. I wrote Meisar as being the type of dwarrowdam I imagine him being compatible with in personality, in temperament, in age, etc., and I think for Thorin that's a very specific type of woman. She, like Thorin, changes with the progress of their relationship (I think into a much happier, more serene person since marriage but especially with her pregnancy) and that might come off as one-dimensional- but this story is far from over and they have much more to see together, and change with, together, and as individuals.
Though I do agree, more of Dwalin and Freyda is always better than less. I'll try to work some in.
.
"The babe is restless today again," Dis grinned down. "I told you it would be alright, and I will wager you two treasure rooms it will be a son."
Meisar looked at her swollen belly and paused. "I don't know how you can know that, except that the odds are in its favor."
Dis rose from her seat so quietly it didn't creak with her movement, and the gentle shssh of her robes trailing on the stone floor swept quietly to her back, placing a warm, heavy hand on her shoulder. Meisar's remained firmly on her stomach to be sure the movement within did not cease.
"That is true, but sons are different. There is something… you can sense them when they're coming," Dis mused over her.
"You would know I suppose," Meisar muttered quietly. She didn't like to talk about Fili and Kili, especially now. It wrenched in her gut where her own child grew and stirred more each day, and sometimes Dis clasped her hands to her belly when she talked, as if she were young again, carrying one of them. Now she sat down beside her on the settee again and took up her sewing once more.
"After the first, yes. With Fili it was a very curious game." Her needle sprung up through the tiny pillowcase she was embroidering, and she pulled it taut. "I think he was sleeping most of the time. Sometimes I was even afraid he had died in my womb. I did not nourish myself very well then, not as if there was much choice, and-"
"He looked to have such brawn about him, such health," Meisar remarked cautiously. Dis's locket lay open upon the table before them, Fili's leonine visage gazing back.
"Indeed he did. Thorin never let us go hungry, even if it meant he would." The smile at those memories always deepened the lines at the edges of her mouth, where the fine black beard was absent. Dis kept her beard groomed more often than not in the days that had passed since the child's announcement, and with sapphires instead of rubies.
"But it was Kili that kicked at me like a little goat. When Fili was born he was so big and stubborn I thought I would pass out. Kili was the easiest at childbirth, imagine! He slid right out into the world, and when I held him on my breast he looked up at me and smiled. They say babies can't smile when they are newborn but he did, I swear it. His face was meant to smile. It was the sweetest face you would ever lay eyes on."
She wiped her eyes involuntarily on the case she was tatting, sighed in regret. "It was a very cold night when I gave birth to him. Eili was not a few months dead, and here I was, a mother alone. The midwives could not come fast enough through the snow, so it was Thorin who helped me through the birth. Kili slipped into his hands, and it was Thorin who swaddled him and held him by the fireplace next to me all night. It was so cold that night... he didn't want him to get cold."
Dis leaned hard on her while she paused to weep profusely, a few moments and then she snuffled hard back into her nose and wiped her eyes with her hand.
"I was happy to have carried them both. A wonderful and rare gift it is." Dis blinked back her remaining tears. "Methinks he will be strong, and healthy, yours, if mine were so in spite of their mother's shortcomings."
"The others say it would hurt you, how we... take this time together, as sisters," Meisar confessed breathily. "I see your tears and-"
"There is no more important time to spend as sisters," Dis countered, her brows knit with irritation. "When one is to be a mother, no? Speaking of, I brought this for you. A good cream for those spots of yours."
Dis opened the jar she had brought from Oin's apothecary, swiped a thick streak on her four fingers and began to massage it gently across Meisar's temples and the bridge of her nose, where she was troubled since the beginning of the child's quickening. Said baby dwarf in her belly was restless and she shifted, discomfited, at her touch.
"Do you resent me for it, Dis?"
"Resent you?" The fingertips rubbed just a little harder.
"That I bear a child now, when yours have been taken from you?"
Dis's soft-tipped fingers stopped their embrocation of her face for a moment.
"Would I feel better if you were barren? If the royal line, to which I belong, were to fade a generation removed from the re-conquest of our home? Do not be absurd, Meisar," Dis dismissed her with a smirking reassurance, waving her free hand to her right.
"You are not jealous?"
"Jealousy is a curse, a dwarven one especially," Dis answered vaguely; she set again to applying the earthy, tingling cream to the blotches and spots that were appearing on her cheeks, darkish spots like a fine film of dirt that made her want to scrub constantly, to no avail alas.
"That should do it." She settled back with her wine and the thin smile grew placid and whimsical on her face. "I ache for my sons, but I had them in their time. Now I will have another to love, as Thorin was uncle to mine. The circle comes around again. It must. I... we have seen to that, Meisar. I did it for this," she rubbed Meisar's stomach intently. "All for this."
"It is more than all the gold in Erebor," Meisar whispered, a haunting echo of something snapping in the inner part of her ear, like a mosquito.
"What else do I have, Meisar? I have two tombs in the deep of the mountain. What is that to love?" She smiled down at the tiny pillowcase she was tatting again, ran her finger over the raised ridges of the threads. "Soon I shall have a babe in my arms to comfort. Something living. I could use that for a change."
"Aye, and could I." She could feel the heart beating strong and fast in her womb. Her stomach rose and rolled in little heaves now that the babe had quickened. Once they began to move, they never stopped, Emli told her. And the child had lain dormant for days after his quickening and energized once more with a spry routine of kicks and rolls that were so far ceaseless for days, and more comforting than anything in the world.
"A family, and what's more, an heir, is what Thorin needs. If only you had been his bride in the Blue Mountains. This misery could have been avoided..." The tears were blinked back sharply. "It will calm the storm in him, that fighting need, for the times it is required only."
"It has done so to Dwalin it seems. Who is to say?" Meisar speculated. She had crept into the marketplaces in the bottom-most cellar early, before the first shift of miners and crafters barreled through toward their workshops. Dwalin and Freyda and Brundin in the pre-dawn had taken in the quiet, except for the dwarrowdams at their bakery carts who came out to fete the baby dwarf with affection, dismayed he was too small still for their frosted buns. Anywhere they went the dwarrowdams swarmed and the males of their kind congratulated and offered respect to Dwalin above that of even a famed warrior, that reverence for fathers. Dwalin held his son in his arms when he wailed and it reverberated off of the stones above with no care for the softness of his lullabies to his son, even as the miners and the grizzled denizens of The Pits began to shunt and grunt past, Vigg and Vestri among them.
More babes were arriving amongst the dwellers of the mountain hall, as peace and prosperity settled, but so few still, beside the fecundity of men. How precious they were.
Precious. The word sat with her, above all words elevated, and worshipful beyond all words. It was her child, in all ways. Precious. She cradled her stomach protectively without realizing it, constantly, finding the circumference of herself anew and with joy of her growth every day. The skin was so amenable and sensitive about her midsection with her progress, and not just for their child growing and moving a bit more every day. On the outside, when she was greeted in the night with Thorin's rasping kisses and deep, rumbling lullabies against her growing belly, it stirred her, and confounded her. After all, weren't a woman's cravings for her One supposed to be… dormant… when carrying his child?
"My queen! My queen!" Emli fluttered in with skirts trailing, pulling her from the train of thought that was making her head start to swim off her shoulders, away from sewing and furnishings, and needing from Thorin something that a dwarrowdam in her condition was perhaps undue to pursue, or even imagine.
"We shall speak of this later, perhaps," Dis suggested with a small, clandestine smile. "Perhaps Thorin will be less moody tonight, and we may sup in peace."
.
They supped in peace but Thorin returned late and glowering, after Dis had retired and Meisar had gravitated to the fireside to sew by the light.
"You look unhappy, husband," she observed carefully through the half-light of the room as he swept in. Thorin's sour expression hid itself in the shadows in the corner of the room, his broad figure stalking through, shedding cloak and crown with quick impatient movements. He had missed supper in their chambers, though the dogs were happy for a good winter quail.
"A kingdom? A kingdom?" Thorin lamented vaguely. She could see the clench of his jaw beneath the elegant, lengthening beard, the restraint of his fists against balling themselves. "He is gaining a taste for it, isn't he?"
"So this is what ails you," Meisar clucked her tongue lightly at him.
"You carry my child. I would be fool to stress your countenance over so simple a... a... conflict."
"I am not made of glass. Trouble yourself to tell me the name of this conflict. I swear the baby will never know."
Thorin craned his head low back at her, his eyes narrowed to small slits. Suspicion softened to hesitation, his gaze bowing to the swell of her belly, holding fast to it. She cradled the sphere over her bed-robe. Sighing, he shed his black heavy robes, flushed from the fire at his cheeks, chased it with the doublet and vest in a hurry. When he finally seated himself beside her in his own chair he put his hands out in silent request to her, watching her small hands undo the slim leather ribbons that fastened the sleeves down at the wrists.
"Yours is a gentle touch," he relented in half a growl still. "Our child will be grateful of it, I know."
"Our child is untroubled and safe within his mother, I promise," she wrested of him gently, a once harsh-voice that seemed to coo in its ordinary tone by now.
"Bard," Thorin answered. "Dale will be a kingdom or haven't you heard. I should have known. The walls, the easy money for our stone, and this is what he was doing all along. What did he think, it would flatter me? That I shall call him King Bard? He would like that, wouldn't he?"
"I think he would like peace above all things," Meisar supposed, her forbearance strained.
"Peace? Could he not have peace as Lord of Dale?" Thorin
"He is a father, as you will be soon. It takes one to understand."
"A thing beyond your understanding too then, I'm afraid," Thorin rebuked her in a murmur.
"It rattles you so?"
"It is presumptuous," Thorin contended in return, setting his arms across his chest.
"He will hardly cease to call you King Thorin."
"All men are corruptible. Weak," Thorin brooded at the fire again, elbow set on the mantle gazing hard into the flames. "The glory of his forefathers is come 'round again then. Girion at his windlance could not hold back the fire. Let us hope Bard the Slayer can do better."
"Why do you resent him so, still?"
"This child of ours, this child- he wished out of being," Thorin answered sharply, turning around just so. "He cursed the Creator that destined this child long ago. He delighted at your unhappiness. I shall not forgive that lightly, nor should you."
"He has come about, somewhat," Meisar protested vaguely, but her arms wrapped themselves under and across her baby bump instinctively.
"He thinks to bend your will to his is all. Men are flatterers, sycophants. Alas, he knows well enough not to try me with flattery. But he would be a fool to think you... would he not?"
She lowered her eyes with hesitation un-bothering to hide itself.
"You suffer insult far too easily," Thorin scolded in a low murmur, her silence an answer in itself..
"Our lot is suffering insult, don't you think?"
"Not lying down like dogs," Thorin said quietly. "It is unwise of me to trouble you with such thoughts. You needn't have any concern for this. I told you so."
"Other than your pride, how does this perturb you so?" inquired Meisar stubbornly.
"A city that grows to a kingdom expands, naturally. The walls of Dale have gone up further afield and pressed the dwarves of that little settlement off their plot. They are incensed, naturally. But the land, by law, is Dale's. How am I supposed to succor their laments when the law is not in my favor? To favor men over my own? I look a fool."
"They belong here, with their own, not squatting like peasants on the outskirts of a mannish… city," Thorin growled. "How can it be cursed? When," he knelt before her chair and considered her belly in his hands, pressing hers away so that his own could be the protective cover to the inestimable life within. "When… this."
"It is not cursed," she declared, an ardent whisper into the crown of his head, the scent of his hair like snow.
Thorin tilted his head down at the work piled up in her lap in tangles of silver, blue and vermillion yarn. "What is this you make?"
"A cap, a blanket; I don't know yet. Knitting is not my strong suit, sewing only a little more," she stroked his hair on either side of its middle part, the dark flow of it spilling down her lap on either side. His breath, hot, puttered through the linen of her nightgown and crept into the narrow gap of her thighs like a firewind in a narrow mountain pass. She squirmed, hoping her heat would answer what she could not ask without discomfort, even now.
"Ori is skilled in this art. I could send him to you for aid."
"Who shall be your scribe then?" She gave his braid a little tug.
"Perhaps you can send that tawdry lass of yours to be in my service. What is her name?" Thorin raised his head with amusement.
"Siv," Meisar grinned. "I suppose I have put her to less use lately. She writes better than she sews."
"It is a done deal then."
"Would you lie with me abed and quell your mind? I have missed you much today."
To her gratitude, he did not surrender to his usual propinquity toward hunching over his desk by candlelight and ordering her to bed far earlier. Even when he held her in the morning and in his arms before he slept the fire could not be subdued, not even with the baby growing in her at a pace far quicker than the early months had brought. She watched him undress to his sleep-shirt as hungrily as she had watched this titillating process in the first days of their marriage. Grousing under his breath still he threw his arm upward over his head and covered his forehead and eyes with his forearm. Meisar pulled herself up to sit and cast a long gaze upon him. Every time his breath heaved his chest bloomed outward beneath his shirt and as it settled she could almost feel the vibrations of the rumbling within.
"I grow weary of men again, mizimel," he sighed.
"Let me comfort you in such burden as a wife should." Her hand was on the muscle-hardened inner plain of his thigh, warm from holding her tea. The breadth and strength of him there, sinews jumping beneath the hard flesh, begged her, tensed when she began to massage him gently over the length of the muscle and then stroke just the surface of him with a fingertip like a feather.
"Meisar, what in Mahal's name has possessed you?" he squinted up through his arm.
She traced the tip of his finger along the moist line of her bottom lip and slid it past, teasing it with her teeth.
"Meisar...?"
She looked over him bashfully, took his hand and kissed his palm up the down the line of his thumb, sucked his forefinger into her mouth. "Ever since I've known, we have not... I am sure you are needing, and I am I know-"
She leaned over the obstinate swell of her stomach to kiss the hand that was tugging away from hers, squirming with unease. "What, Thorin?"
"In your condition?" Thorin's brow arched high.
"It is an ordinary thing, no?" She slid a hand up the scrubland of his neck and found the thick beard at his jawline with her hands, grasping it tight to anchor him to her, and kiss, possessing his top lip in hers and suckling languidly at it.
"Do not fear for us, my bairn or I. I promise."
"Promise..." he muttered off nervously.
Thorin held himself over her haltingly, his breath terse and short in fumbling for a position. He never took his eyes from the sight of her belly, bare and taut with the growth of the child within at five months. His thigh draped itself first over hers and sharply drew away when his instincts toward mounting her were overcome with a certain reason. He hitched his clothing upward and froze, then, as she nudged him upward to meet her eyes and draw a kiss, squinted back at her petulant posturing.
She stopped her wresting with the hem of her nightgown to press up over her stomach. He drew back, shifting himself quickly down the bed beside her to prop himself up on his side, on his elbow, before resting his head against her bare knee.
"Thorin..."
A paternal smile crossed his face, his body shifting more assuredly to lie between her thighs and with his strong hands on either side of her hips hitch her back up into a sitting position against the pillow. His bare shoulder brushed her knee as he leaned close to nuzzle a sigh to her belly. "You are with child. I would fear for... I should think it unsafe."
"Unsafe?" she repeated, dejected as a child.
He squeezed her thigh over the linen of her gown, his skin warm through the fabric, and kissed her stomach reassuringly, letting his hair spill over the sides of the mound. "I would not risk it. Surely it cannot be healthy for this sacred time of yours."
"I don't see why not," she sighed, miffed.
"I cannot know the risks for certain. I have never had a wife with child before. It is my duty to protect you, both of you," he paused to kiss again, this time arching his head up toward her lips, hard, coarse bicep sliding the fabric of her dress a little further up her thigh, to her surly heat at its touch against the softer skin there. The other hand played consolingly in a little circle on her opposite knee. "From all matter of harm."
"If you insist it," she surrendered, gathering his hand under his chin and stroking it down toward his shoulders, his face still taken with her belly, listening, caressing, murmuring low assurances to the babe with in Khuzdul.
She turned her head from the pillow to rest against the left side of his chest, lashes mingling with the coarse hair upon his skin, but she found swiftly her belly stymied the embrace and rolled over to lie with her back against him, warm beneath the furs and covers, but too hot elsewhere to sleep.
.
"She is embroidering the most beautiful linens for his cradle," gushed Emli, prattling on at length about sheets for the baby's cradle, the third set she was having specially made. "With the edging just like this."
"Tell her they are beautiful, and I will pay her handsomely for her work. I shan't think the babe will notice much of it though," Meisar said hesitantly. The linens Emli was inching across her hands to show her were embroidered in intricate blue and silver links all around its edges.
"The little prince or princess will be cosseted most ardently whether you like it or not. The child needs a cradle worthy of an heir to a throne," retorted Emli.
"If you insist," Meisar relented, tiredly enough, though she was hot and itchy everywhere, needful and distracted to the point that Emli had been insistent upon calling Eda or worse, putting her to bed, alone. When Freyda arrived with Brundin she called her to commiserate privately over knitting to start.
"Ye look a wee... sullied," Freyda observed pointedly.
"No, I... feel good. Very well in fact. It is just that... oh Freyda, would you understand something if I told you intimately so?"
The words intimately and tell sounded an alarm through the room carefully and quietly as she had whispered them into Freyda's personage, bringing all of the dwarrowdams around in a stifling circle. A displeased Brundin began to squirm and then bawl at the close crowd. Freyda handed him up to Gyda to rock and cajole for a moment.
"Well, what's it?" Freyda asked, the eyes of the dwarrowdams unblinking down on them.
"It's nothing, really. Forget I said anything," Meisar shook her head, controlling a flint of irritation.
Brynja rubbed her shoulder from behind. "Perhaps we should let them talk alone for a minute. Might not be our business," she suggested with her dulcet innocence never far from her voice, knowing, wise to certain ways as it was. Her kind brown eyes smiled down smartly. They were the only force that could shunt the dwarrowdams off to the other side of the room and leave her and Freyda alone.
If Freyda was patient with her fumbling words, Brundin's sharp, stern gaze demanded an answer without nonsense. Freyda's child was his father's son is every manner of the word.
She wrung her hands in her lap a final time. "Thorin is reluctant to be... intimate with me. He thinks the child... and I... I don't know what to make of my desire. It is unnatural?"
Freyda held Brundin's chubby fists aloft and kissed them. "T'aint nothing unnatural about it. It'll be the last for awhile after the babe's born, if ye convince him to do it. After the child's come, well, you'll not be in the mood a long while." Freyda regarded her with a little smirk, looking up from her son. "I'm sure ye'll have one as big as mine own if no more. Dwalin n' Thorin are tall for dwarves no forget, up and down and mayhap sideways too, if ye tell."
The memory of Freyda's agony in birth sent a sharp pang of doubt up her spine and through her ribs. She cradled and cajoled her stomach with gentle hands, lest the baby feel it too.
"Brundin is nearly four months old," Meisar said. Brundin began to grow restless, to grunt and then cry.
"Aye, and Dwalin's head must swell right out of that bald head o' his with pride," sang Eda, impatiently swooping into their conversation to take her turn to cosset the grumpy babe. The rest of the dwarrowdams clung around Eda, unable to withstand exclusion even for a moment.
"He does, he does verra much. He smiles more than I ever did see 'im do. Even Balin says," Freyda continued. "A son makes it all the worthwhile, t'be living at all."
"Will ye be making more soon?" Siv smirked. "Can be the gift that keeps on about giving if ye are spry about it." She tapped Meisar's shoulder and winked at her with the familiarity she had grown used to from that one. She knew. There was no use hiding her dilemma from the rest of them now.
"Several months after ye won't be doin' much. Mahal, he canna barely touch me now," Freyda warned, exasperated. "Not that it's yer business, Siv."
"Better to know then," Siv japed back, her grin drawn up sharp and smug at one side.
"Good. If I have to stitch you up again, you'll be a might unhappy, and so will I," advised Eda, shooing Siv from leaning over her with her gaudy necklaces hanging down into her bosom.
"And what about before, when the child was still," Meisar gestured to her swelling stomach. The mothers looked toward one and other and regarded their expressions in tandem, silently agreeing to something.
Freyda offered first. "When the belly's a'bigger than a melon there are still ways, and sure ye will find 'em. Ye just have to be clever about it, and patient."
"So it is not a danger then? To the child?" Meisar questioned, but none of the dwarrowdams seemed to have heard her at all, not with Brundin awake and howling again suddenly, their arms all pleading out to a flustered Gyda, cooing and humming. Freyda and Dwalin's son was consistently passed from one overeager dwarrowdam's arms to the next, sullenly enduring their kissing and fawning. He responded to his overindulgent handling by spitting up a hearty stream down Emli's furs and taffetas or wrenching a nose in his pudgy hands, returned, triumphantly, to Freyda's bosom where he resumed his sleeping and grunting.
"Nay, I think no. My Brundin's no worse fer it." She held him so that he could look upon her face closely, examine it with his chubby, pugnacious hands. "M'babe, this one, I verra do love him." She turned to Meisar with her contented baby dwarf tucked back against her. "Sure did give him a jostle in m'belly when Dwalin was in his… mood."
"Dwalin in his mood? Well then," Meisar shrugged. "We know what turbulence they can endure."
"Nonsense to the naysayers but I do not recommend the sort of turbulence Mister Dwalin can issue, and you, my queen, are not nearly as... brawny to form as this one," Emli insisted over her embroidery. She set it aside and folded her hands primly. "Anyhow, I had Gloin wound up into a thousand different positions right up until the day Gimli came barreling down. So there, you see, it can be done, and with much satisfaction to both parties."
"Ask me ma too. She'll know," Virta piped up.
Meisar gave her an awkward smile, repressing a shudder. Hesitantly though, she looked up in Emli and Virta's direction. "What kind of positions?"
.
II
Bard's emissaries left the following day in the afternoon for good, wintry conditions bringing a slowness to petitions. Thorin, still fuming quietly, rose from the great desk of state and braced his head in his hands over the crown, grumbling.
"Thorin?" Dwalin's air of concerned gruffness relaxed his posture, if reluctantly.
"They will evict them from their stone huts by morrow three days of now. I have secured housing for all of them, here, in the mountain. But their pride does not allow them to be moved by any man," Thorin complained. "Tomorrow I shall have to go out myself into the snows and try to reason with them myself, one of their own."
"Come to my home for a spell," Dwalin insisted. "Unburden yerself with some ales and visit m'lady and the babe, before ye go to yers foul-minded."
Their sentries escorted them to the enthusiastic well wishes of the dwarves that lined their way, feting the king for the heir to come. The few dwarrowdams at their little carts waved amulets of Yavanna in his direction, calling out their prayers for a stout prince. When they reached Dwalin's door he paused and called to Freyda within before they entered. She was nursing Brundin in her little rocking chair by the door, rising to Thorin with Brundin still at her breast, to Dwalin's annoyance.
"Nay, my lady, you need not rise," Thorin reassured her, his hand on her shoulder, urging her gently to sit again. She had an adeptness at keeping Brundin latched to her, his suckling enthusiastic, his feet flexing themselves from it outside of his swaddling. Dwalin laid her shawl quietly over her chest with a protective, quiet pace of discretion.
"His hardiness never fails to impress me," Thorin remarked, ales distributed by Dwalin freely, to Thorin, and to Onar, who presented himself with aplomb and gave Thorin a bawdy congratulations for his "forging."
"We are each of us the work of a Great Smith," Thorin replied, awkwardly. Onar leaned back in his chair at the table, arms above his head, squeaking as he rocked in the wooden seat. Thorin regarded him sideways and irritably. "I have heard reports of unrest in The Pits. Unfettered violence has no place in this kingdom, I should hope you will remember."
"Just a minor blood feud, m'king. Not more," Onar shrugged. "Longbeard miners and Ironfists, as per tradition a few cracked skulls."
"Law and order will be kept, regardless," Thorin countered, icily. "I beseech you use the respect you curry amongst that crowd to sponsor peace, if you would. I have other matters to deal with."
"As ye say," Onar agreed. Freyda returned to the room with Brundin dressed and swaddled, a little cap on his head to keep warm. She pursed her lips silently at the tense disposition of the three, Dwalin's sleeve rolled up and his arm on the table, between Thorin and Onar, the latter giving reassurance of something again, in his drawl.
"Aye, m'king, I give m'word," he said, slugging ale at the last. "At yer service, proudly."
"Bard? Or the Pits?" Freyda asked, one word sufficient if the scowl on both her husband and Thorin's face was an answer.
"We will negotiate an end to this matter, if we must in person," Thorin offered tiredly. He put his arms up with a small humble gaze downward, in asking her permission. Freyda obliged, her turned-in grin a light against her tired eyes. She placed Brundin into Thorin's arms and arranged his head carefully in the crook of his elbow, about to move his opposite arm to same to hold him properly when a flush of realization sparked on her face, and she stood back.
"I asked Thorin's company in our home that he might not go to the queen so moody," Dwalin explained, Thorin touching the edge of Brundin's cheek, framed in the leather lapel of his wee cap.
"This child places me in far better a disposition," he smiled sideways at Dwalin. "He is truly your son. His sight brings me joy."
"Yers will, when he is here. Shan't be too many months now," Dwalin responded. "Does he grow strong in Meisar, ye ken?"
"He moves a little more every day," Thorin answered, blue eyes like a pair of puddles. He stroked Brundin's feet the way he remembered stroking the tiny, stubborn feet and watching them jump and kick away. Brundin's face was dusted in goldenrod more than unbleached silk now, just like Fili's at several months. If he did not have Dwalin's grumpy set look, there may have been a resemblance. "I will not go to her troubled as such. I fear it could be a stress to the child."
Would his child have Kili's inherited swarthiness, his cattail-brown languo, or Meisar's brawny flame? He drew in a long breath, sharp and first and then steady and settled, Brundin's gums closing on his knuckle, hard, then nibbling like a fish in a stream. Fili on the river chasing fish in the shallows, Kili at Dis's breast, asleep on the riverbank. He looked down at his hands and saw them forming the tip of a wooden spear for his efforts with a flint knife, on eye in the water, Fili's breeches soaked to the waist, his howl of shock as the cold water splashed his bare upper half.
Brundin's pink gums flared back and he discarded Thorin's finger with a long string of drool left at the tip, reconsidering the digit with both of his hands.
Someday we will go upon the River Running when it freezes, drilling holes for salmon and pike and wrapped in furs, or Laketown at their midsummer whitefish boils, a prince's obligation perhaps. My child.
Timely enough, Brundin was waterlogged in the same region, Dwalin whisking him away politely at Freyda's silent glaring demand. Onar smirked at the swiftness of Dwalin's compliance, regarded his daughter with smug pride. Thorin jumped a little at her hand on his, her palm surprisingly soft. She was tending to tenderer things, he supposed, her baby all softness in spite of his resemblance to his father.
"So then, will that send ye back to yer wife far lesser terse?" she inquired, the perk of the golden brow a clandestine inquiry. "Pray that me babe didn't... dampen yer spirit there."
Thorin squeezed Freyda's hand kindly, meeting her eyes low. He could feel Dwalin's rare smirk on the back of his head, knowing all, as he always did. "Yes, I think I will, indeed."