'AFNIKH- Arrival Month (5th Month)
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"I return to you in a far fairer mood I am pleased to say," Thorin announced triumphantly as the sun set on the last day of the month. Meisar met him with a few of the dwarrowdams at the door of the council chamber, determined to move in spite of her pregnancy's swift advance in its final stretch. He studied her with a hard, steady gaze, reached forward to fasten her cloak closed as a chill jet of air whooshed under the mountain.
"Ought she be walking so vigorously and so far at this stage?" he eyed Eda suspiciously, and Oin as well, who had emerged from council to kvetch with the dwarrowdam healer over some thing or another.
"Take advantage of it while it's still a possibility," Eda replied crisply. "The final month will be seeing none of it, I'm afraid."
"Any news of the day?" Meisar inquired, removing his crown for the eve in their quarter. The maids departed their company, having put out supper for them on the table in time, still issuing clouds of fragrant steam, her chicken soup with small dumplings and leeks and his rump roast. His mouth saturated with hunger, briefly putting her off in favor of a first bite of hot food.
"The dwarves on the edge of Dale have moved into the mountain at last, and peaceably. On the last day to do so before trouble would stir but... having done so nonetheless," Thorin garbled through bites of gravy-drenched meat.
"Ah then, that is well. What moved them, finally?" Meisar questioned, innocuously as possible, gazing down at her bowl and stirring the opaque dumplings with her spoon. "Threat or incentive?"
"Wisdom perhaps," Thorin shrugged. "We learn to pick our battles I suppose. But alas, they are settled in the mountain, in decent lodgings, and are less my problem than they were a week ago. At least they went quietly, or so I'm told."
So you are told. In time, in time…
"Perhaps they see then how gravely they irritate their king," Thorin surmised, smirking lightly. He felt her belly under the soft cover of her dress, quirking a smile at the hint of movement beneath, as lazy as any of them might be in the morning or late evening. "At such a time, I would rather not be beleaguered."
"Mahal knows what a dangerous game that is," Meisar raised her glass of in tandem, a grotesque green concoction Eda was having her drink day and night to build her strength for the baby. If the child took any notice, it was to offer her violent kicks of opposition when said nutrients presumably reached him.
"A game you say? Perhaps. Gandalf once told me we are but pieces on a great chess board, and we never know when or if we are set. Only when we are moved. I would like to think we have greater control over our destinies than that."
She choked down the last of the green drink. "We do, quite so."
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"How long now, ghivashel?" murmured Thorin in the morning to her heaving belly, ready for his day whilst she was still in bed, languorous. The child was moving in her less sluggishly, turning once, repelled back to the previous position, trying to roll again. A head or a sturdy bum nudged her in the ribcage one more time and gave up.
She would have loved him to lie abed with her all day, to cradle her from behind and offer his warmth and gently stroke her belly and whisper into her neck words of encouragement and affection. But duty was a dwarf's burden, and Thorin was a king. A queen's throne would never be entirely the same.
"A month they say." She rubbed the high mound below her ribs, sitting up with strenuous effort. The child would drop from that height soon and settle in the cradle of her hips before he came into the world, and make her bones ache there. Her dresses could no longer accommodate her midsection except for one. Even as winter's chill stubbornly lingered above, she went about in that particularly flimsy gown, belted just below her tender, swelling bosom, and she wore silken slippers every place. Warm in her cloak of maren over it, she sat down to complete her dressing when she finally rose, plucking her stockings and garters from the bed where Griet had laid them out for her.
"I cannot even bend so far as to put my own stockings on anymore," she complained to Thorin. "Even sitting."
"Let me help you then," Thorin pressed her back to sit on the bed. She leaned back on her arms, bracing and wobbling with her own weight. The baby shifted back like wine in closed jug, hitting her spine and some inner organ simultaneously (fortunately not her bladder, as was wont to happen of late).
"I'll be alright Thorin, Griet will-"
He hushed that with a forceful kiss to her lips, kneeling on a cushion at the side of the bed, pressing her skirt above her knee with both hands and taking her belly from underneath in the cradle of his palms firmly. "Allow me, mizimel. It is not a request."
She acquiesced with a clasp of her arms around his shoulders as best she could manage with her belly still between them. He smiled and relaxed with the small relieved moan she issued, as the soft blue kashimir stocking enclosed her sore foot and Thorin's hands gently rolled it up the length of her leg to just above her knee where the pink indents in her skin marked its maximum height. He secured it gently around with the matching blue garters, careful it was not too tight with the swells of her legs coming at odd intervals now. Her discomfort in any case was cause enough to treat it with characteristic tenderness, caressing the soft curves of her calve back down again over the snug luxuriant fabric, and at her feet, tenderly slid her shoe onto it.
He repeated with the opposite leg while she watched him with tired, smiling eyes.
"Good gracious, I feel like a sow, Thorin."
"You are still the loveliest to me," Thorin assured her with his characteristic quirk of a smile.
"Shamaz," she shooed him off lightly.
"Only these pretty little feet still, no cloven hoofs," Thorin carried on, teasing. "I shall inform you if they change, seeing as you cannot easily view them yourself."
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Thorin's duties kept him long into the day and even the night, especially during the changes of the seasons when the outside world's natural patterns required dwarven accommodation, especially where merchants and tradespeople who negotiated with the farmers and fisherman were concerned. If the seasons did not change the hum and industry of the forges, they brought fresh drama to dwarves vying for marketplace licenses in Dale, negating much with men until they took it to Thorin to settle. If the north was barely beginning its thaw, ambassadors and couriers were resuming their journeys from the lands south now that the weather permitted, taking many audiences in courts from Minas Tirith to the winemakers' halls in Dorwinion, and Erebor eventually, bringing news and exotic gifts.
"Come," Meisar said. "Let us bring Thorin some ale and a few of these honey cakes in his chambers if this business drags on any longer with the menfolk. Besides, the dogs are itching for a walk." She turned to her beloved hounds, scratching the hem of her dress needfully.
"It is far time you took to your chambers, my queen, until the child comes," announced Aroin, stentorian as always. "As is per tradition for the queen under the mountain."
"I am here quite enough," Meisar answered, annoyed.
"And here you will stay, until the child is born. It is the duty of the queen under the mountain to see to herself in the company of her women, in her chambers, where there shall be no danger to her or the child," Aroin prattled on. Meisar suddenly felt an urge to slap her prim, proud face.
"Not to leave, even for air?" she inquired with further woe rising.
"The air is still a trifle cold above. You shan't need it too greatly, lest you take a temperature too close to your time," Eda countered back, in agreement with Aroin. Gloin and Oin's sister folded her arms with prim authority beside her.
"I mislike that much," Meisar grumbled in protest. Redcoat whined and made a leap into her lap, repelled by her stomach back down to the floor, where he slunk away, glaring at Aroin and Eda for thwarting a walk.
"Oysith," hummed Eda, more kindly. "You'll bear it just as hardily as others before, m'queen. It won't be long now anyway."
"You fret like a child, Meisar. Come, let me see to your poor feet. They're very swollen," Emli sat in Thorin's chair and propped Meisar's feet up on her lap, discarding her shoes, and the stockings Thorin had so lovingly helped her with.
Emli gave a dreamy smile, working her hands like kneading bread. "I gave birth to Gimli on a hot summer night in Dunland. I swear they could hear my groaning and crying all the way to Rohan. I cried so I could have caused an avalanche on the high peaks of the Misty Mountains." The women sat around her as she wove her story from memory, Brynja's eyes soon glassy with tears. "Oin helped me to deliver, if help is what you call it. Shouting at me, push, push! What in Mahal's name did he think I was doing, I say. You know, the dwarrowdam's body is a marvelous thing, capable of such strength and willpower. For he said Gimli's head was quite large, and would give me great pains to pass, but I pushed with all my might so eager to see, for Oin told me of that head covered in beautiful copper hair, and I knew. He was my son as much as Gloin's."
"Your Gimli is going to make a place for himself in this world one way or another," Meisar sighed. "He has a rare tenacity, that is sure."
Beaming with pride, Emli's high flush spread and radiated. "He had a stout cry at his birth is for sure. That is how I knew he would be strong. Oh, he cried, Meisar," Emli's proud face took on a dreamlike, wide grin. "He wailed and beat his little fists in the air and I washed him myself, and patted that wee beard dry with my own hands. When I remember Gloin's face when he came to meet him I am ever the more eager to see Thorin's, when he greets this little one."
"That a child of Dwalin's did not rupture her from within and claw his own way from her belly with an ax in his hand is one of Mahal's small mercies. The birth only went to show the stoutness of a dwarrowdam in her labors. I think yours shall not be nearly as cruel. The worst of it is when it feels like a stomachache after a bad meal, or just before you moon-time. That goes on forever, and only after does the real pain start!"
The women grimaced and laughed alternately, but suddenly Meisar's head filled with dense heat suddenly, making her nauseous. Her legs buckled against Emli's knee for need of movement. She felt as if she might suffocate any moment, and the crowding of the dwarrowdams around her all mooning only made it worse.
"I cannot. I must have a walk. I must have… air." Desultory, but still restless, she thrummed her knee up and down in her seat, irritably, once Emli had put her upright and bellowed for water.
"You are the queen. It is your decision," Emli concluded with a long eye toward Aroin. "Tradition does not trump health nor the authority of the queen, after all."
Emli agreed to join, with Oliada's escort. Brynja and Gyda remained, wary of the chill and in need of finishing a few sewing projects. Through the city there was relief, the scent of cinnamon reinvigorating her past a line of food vendors. The dwarves that paid her their attentions gawked, either in awe of her mobility or for the shirking of tradition. It mattered so little now.
She leaned heavy on Oliada's spear as they ascended slowly up toward the crisp air and low light of the terrace.
"M'queen shouldn't climb so many stairs," the Blacklock sentry muttered quietly. "Perhaps we turn back."
"No, I'm fine," Meisar assured. The sound of Emli huffing and puffing on her tail pricked her ears sharply. Gloin's wife bore her task without complaint, but the redness of her face was already starting to glisten with perspiration even in the chill air. She was within a lungful of it herself when she realized how laborious her own breath had become with the pressure and weight of the child within her. Redcoat on the end of his leash urged her forward strenuously, and when the dog had ascended to the top of the stairway ahead of her, he was furiously barking.
A knot of hushed, irascible voices ceased above there. Meisar caught sight of Balin first at the head of the stairway, from behind. Before him and with stiff regard, Dis's mulberry robe was an eerie shot of color in the ragged brown late winter landscape visible beyond, spring still struggling to free itself from the earth, against the cold breath of the mountains.
She caught her breath while Dis held her sudden silence stiffly. Balin leaned on the edge of the balcony, staring onto the movements of the dwarves at the gate far below.
"Odd to see you, sister," Dis remarked through thinned lips. "Just in time however. Balin will join us for supper tonight."
"Yes," Balin smiled, as thinly, shifting his attentions back to them. "Tonight indeed. If the queen is predisposed to company, of course. I know the hour grows late of her carrying."
"Of course, Balin. I shall have any supper you like brought from the great kitchens."
"Kind of you, perhaps raspberry scones," Balin requested, chuckling, with an eye fastened subtly to Dis beside him. Her unsmiling face shifted his own from that easy chuckle to a slow, nervous one, until it ceased altogether.
"If you all will excuse me," Dis cut in, slipping past them with as cutting a momentum.
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Shamaz- Flatteries
Oysith- Skill/Ability of the Wife