As always, reviews welcome and encouraged.
I am so grateful for all the people who have come 2+ years with me in this story. You're the reason I do it- and will keep doing it for as long as I can.
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They took roast quail and spiced potatoes for supper, raspberry scones piled high on a plate in the middle of the table, still warm from the kitchens.
"You are very kind, majesties, to remember my raspberry scones," Balin said haltingly. "I had a slight hankering I admit."
"I am glad you wished to join us this evening. We spend so little time in leisurely talk, my friend, these days," Thorin mused. He did not see Dis's irritated glance his way. Silent and glowering, she had sat, unnoticed.
"I would rather with you than be harangued by Gloin about the gold in our treasuries all the day. We have plenty to be kept running, and solidly for a time."
"Indeed, we seem to have our treasures well-sorted," Balin went on with the same thin smile he had worn upon the terrace. "And well-prioritized. Tell me my queen, how does your child do now that the time comes so near?"
His insouciance as he munched a third scone prompted Dis's clenched-jawed glance at him, and another at Meisar, equally clenched.
"Very well, Balin, though I think all of me shall be bruised on the inside before it is the time," Meisar answered, never taking her cup from her face.
"It is well worth, alas, more than all the treasure in this kingdom, is it not?" Balin said, stroking his fingers through his beard long after the stray crumb had been apprehended.
"I have never had much use for treasures," Meisar shrugged.
Dis's color had gone from a terse flush to pale and sallow again, and neither eating nor drinking all the wearier by the moment. Her thumb dug into the side of her goblet until its knuckle was white though; she rotated the empty cup in her hand, digging its base into the tablecloth until it twisted, and Balin glanced over, met her eyes while straightening it out from his side. She looked away.
"Nor have we, when it comes down to it in true," Balin side-eyed Dis, who put down her cup hard enough to silence him.
"Sister, are you well?" Thorin inquired lightly.
Dis closed her eyes for a long moment, her thin smile resurfacing. Thorin touched her hand and it buckled, resisting a flinch. "I am fine, Thorin. If you do not mind though, I would like to take a bit of air. I feel somewhat faint," Dis announced.
"Let me to walk with you then, Dis," Thorin offered. Redcoat buried himself industriously into Meisar's skirt under the table and curled his tail around her leg, the way he did when he sensed her unease.
"You ought stay with your wife, Thorin. She shouldn't be alone," Dis protested, her mouth going tight again.
"I will stay with the queen, my liege," volunteered Balin cheerfully. Redcoat puttered a little growl against her ankle.
"Thank you," Thorin said, answering for her. Dis all but took him by the arm from the doorway. Balin was still chuckling lightly by the time they were gone, but it trailed off. "It is so soon to your time, and yet you glow with good heart and health, my lady," he said finally.
"Doing anything comfortably, less so, Balin," Meisar said demurely. "Today may have been the last time I could walk upon the outer terraces."
Balin avoided her eyes when they rose from her belly, eyebrows arched. "Alas, it must be a comfort that other mothers have been here to guide you through the process. I suppose there is less fear that way. The lady princess has lamented to me many times the harshness of being alone in a child's birth. For she was-"
"Baiin-"
"But no more," Balin interjected gently. "No more. Is she alone, I mean. Nor are you."
"Dispirited today, I noticed. Is she alright?"
"My lady," Balin rose, circling around her from behind slowly.
Meisar tensed. She lurched forward on the chair and bent at the waist as far as she could, away from his prodding gaze, loose hair shrouding her belly, which she clasped. She held his gaze in a long silence before she spoke again.
"Birai'gil," Meisar half-whispered.
"I am aware of the... actions taken by the lady princess in regards to a particular heirloom. I know that is lies elsewhere than where it was last laid to rest. Imnem. Unearthed, and set back to earth. As was meant to be I do not doubt. For some time I have known, I admit, but only today did I allow the lady princess privy to my thoughts on the matter. And she is rather unhappy with me I think."
"What of Thorin?" Meisar drew her breath swiftly, drawing arms even swifter up around her belly, the child's gentle rhythm settling, curling up.
"Nothing, and that will not change of my volition," Balin assured. "But you knew all along?"
"No," Meisar digressed sharply. "Dis told me nothing. Not until she had the stone in her hand, and me, in the tombs, alone with her, and standing on the edge of the abyss. What should I have done? Would you have wrested it from her hand? I knew..."
"No," Balin answered. "I would have been as glad to cast it away."
"I held it in my hands, Balin. And I felt only sorrow and shadow." The weight of it pressed even now, invisible, a sharp pain in her shoulders shooting down the side of her and prompting her to sit up rapidly and adjust herself to alleviate it.
"As right you should have," Balin said. "It was a harbinger to the things we endured. You were hardly the only one to think so."
"Then why do we speak so tersely to each other now, you and I? You and Dis?" Meisar inquired, straightening herself firmly.
"You are deceiving him, my lady. Surely you know it is deception," Balin said gently. "Thorin should know, sooner than later the better."
She sat up stock still as Balin approached with an easy, but careful, smile. "I came upon the knowledge by honest means I assure you. However, it seems the princess finds my discovery most disagreeable, though I came to her swiftly with my truths, and promised my intents were not ill."
"Does it not seem untoward for such a time, Balin?" Meisar inquired, dipping a glance toward her belly, which she was still cradling closely.
"Perhaps, and I am sorry for that," Balin abjured.
I have no sorrow for my part, she thought, but an undeniable aspect of her being displayed its self-loathing in the way she avoided Balin's eyes, the way she had Thorin's once. "How did... do you?"
"In my capacity, I am ear to many, even when they do not know I am listening," Balin sat down by the fire, warmed his hands. "In this case, I was well aware of the princess's ideas, and of a certain wizard's search for certain knowledge."
"Are you going to tell him, my husband I mean?"
"No," Balin answered. "But I expect you will, in time."
"This is not the time," she said brusquely in return, sliding her hands deliberately over the swell of her stomach again. "This is all that matters. Do you understand that, Balin?"
His lips pursed in hurt beneath the white beard and she drew back her glare, ruefully. "I do. Nothing in this life will ever matter more than your children. The truth is, there are other artifacts I care more for the settling of, than the Arkenstone, but it's history cannot be erased."
"No, but it's future can be steered, and steer ours," Meisar surmised. "Our future can be decided, by our actions as much as the Creator's will."
Her eyes were heavy and melancholy, the strange chartreuse shade blinking in the firelight, as if tears were on their crests and falling back from a fortress wall, repelled by whatever was in her to will it. "You look as the shepherdess I first met in Ered Luin," Balin remarked.
She turned to him, for the first time holding his gaze, determinedly. "I am not the woman you met in Ered Luin, I'm afraid. I am Thorin's wife. I have his child in my belly, so close to being born, Balin. What I have done for this… what Dis has done for this… will be recognized in time."
"You will always be the shepherdess, a protector, my lady. One who keeps much inside, even now. But who do you really think you are protecting? Your child? Thorin or his sister? Yourself?"
"We are one and the same. But of Dis, since you felt it so prudent to speak of it, I expect the two of you will work out what you must amongst yourselves. I must prepare for this child, and have no other cause to meddle in until then."
"Agreed," Balin said. "I can promise for myself, but can say nothing for certain of the princess's intent."
"I would ask the same of her. Tell her that if she loves me, she will choose her silences and her words wisely each."
"It is a hard bargain and a guilty one, but I shall honor your wishes," Balin said hesitantly.
"And yet you castigate me for it now?" Meisar retorted sharply.
"I do not castigate, Meisar. Only advise a modest path of truth."
"Its casting away is the only reason I carry this child in me now. You cannot tell me any of that is coincidence."
"I think not at all," Balin replied.
Again, the door came open in a rush and she expected Dis in a sour mood. Instead, it was Anbur, huddling behind the door, Oliada must have let them in. Yrsa's head tilted sideways from behind her. The clanging sound of clay pots rattling under the elder's arm tinkled in wait.
"Come in. I hear you," Meisar invited. The girls trotted past Balin, jubilantly.
"We brought you mother's soup," announced Anbur, presenting her with Bira's decorative dish. Steam rose from the thin soup when she removed the lid, unobtrusively fragrant. "It is very light, this one, just broth really. 'Amad says you should take very small meals only when the baby is so close, and soups the most."
The girls' easy smiles stopped the churning resentment that was in her chest. "These heavy dwarven fares do little for the burn of the heart and belly. The baby pushes up against both so," Meisar informed them. "Besides, it is right you ought come. I have eaten so little of my supper as is. Perhaps it just feels too heavy right now," she eyed Balin silently.
"I shall take my rest then for the evening. Thank you, my queen. The scones were wonderful," Balin rose, his knees cracking. The girls ignored Balin's silent exit and crowded on her belly instead upon the settee pushing each other out of the way to feel.
"Let me feel! Let me!" pleaded Yrsa, waving her spoon hand in the air. Anbur shoved her intact one off of Meisar's stomach and placed hers there with a territorial growl at her sister.
"Hush now. Don't be so eager to argue. The babe is sleeping. You'll wake him," Meisar scolded gently.
"How'd you know the babe's a'sleepin?" Yrsa whispered. She backed away from Meisar and crawled onto the settee beside her instead, gazing down at the bump with wide, thoughtful eyes.
"Feel, and I will show you," she held Yrsa's hand on her stomach and guided it to encapsulate the great sphere gently. "Because he is not kicking of course. There is a very quiet rhythm to this babe's sleep. I can almost feel him snoring."
"Can I feel?" Anbur pleaded in a whisper, eyes wide and eager.
"Gentle now," she took the girl's hand and placed it on the pale mound.
"I do feel something!" Anbur cried excitedly.
Yrsa shushed her by shoving her spoon-hand directly into her cheek. "You'll wake him, dolt!" the younger dwarfling scolded.
"Pssh, sister. How do you even know it's a boy? It could be a princess," Anbur sniffed.
Outside she could hear the rattling of Urdlaug's cart, the elder's voice rising and calling through stone for them. The girls skitted off of the settee and made a beeline for the door. Urdlaug's tone was slightly tempestuous, never one for patience anyway.
"Goodnight prince," Anbur demurred, whirring back around to kiss Meisar's stomach gently. Yrsa shoved her out of the way to offer her own.
"Goodnight princess," added Yrsa, grinning smartly.
After they were gone and there was silence, her cheeks flushed with anger and shame. How could he, the sage she had trusted with her own heart from the beginning? The child's rough turning reminded her of his closeness to being, ever more pronounced. And Dis, what was she saying to Thorin now? They had been gone twenty-odd minutes.
You are all that matters. You and I and Thorin.
The babe relayed his awakening in her with a quick kick to her navel area. Was he right, though? He would not offer me such insult, no, not unless...
A kick and then a turn.
"Hushabye, sweetling. It's alright," she whispered to the mound. "'Amad would not trouble you, my dear one." She considered the shape inside her, head down, kakhaf up, Eda would say. As it should be. The feet stayed ever the same though. She searched for them, ran her finger over what she perceived as the edge of some limb or another, the way she tickled Brundin's feet when he had been born, swaddled and wailing and bathed in his mother's strains.
Freyda as bloody as Dwalin fresh from a battlefield, beat and panting there below on her birth-bed, holding her amulet so tight. She could barely lift her head to look upon her newborn son. Alas, we all fight our own...
She held the same amulet, a gift from Thorin, carved in bronze with his rune on the bottom to make it hers. She kissed it and began to mouth something slow and wordless, a plea to Yavanna that never rose in her throat it was so tight.
"Are you alright?"
Thorin's sudden presence in the chamber jolted her. She pipped around; his visage was tender, not quite at ease, but softened, more than she was like to see in his eyes after a long day. She sighed, long and considerately, and shook her head. "Mahal make me patient! I'm confined in my chambers constantly, is all, and my little pains keep coming, is all."
"A tradition," he murmured. He kissed her hand that was still clenched around the amulet. "Like this little totem here."
"An unkind one," she sniffed. "Is your sister well? She looked faint."
Thorin's innocuous settling on his chair beside her put her at ease somewhat. "I sense she had some anxiety for your sake. You come near, and birth was never an easy task for her," Thorin replied. "Balin has gone for the night?"
"Yes," she answered, her voice feeling thin, a pip in her throat. "Bombur's daughters came to bring me a bit of soup. He left when they came."
"I would have offered him apologies from my sister, for her shortness. She asked me to tell him she feels ill of late. Perhaps the change in the air has gotten to her too," mused Thorin aloud.
She rubbed the amulet hard with her thumb, staring at how it illuminated in the firelight. "I wish I knew then. She has said naught to me of her feeling unwell."
She stood and quickly was swaying on her feet before him. He caught her by the upper arms.
"Steady, my queen. You look as if you will be faint yourself."
"Perhaps I feel I will be." She sat and caught her breath. Her swollen fingers had long given up on the knitting that was neglected on the little table between them. "When he comes they say it will return to normal, all these parts." She held up her swollen hands and rolled her ankles.
"There will be plenty of time for all of that," Thorin assured. He sat on the floor next to her seat, rested his head on her belly's side while she undid the messy braid in the back of his head and combed through it with gentle, if swelled, fingers, setting his thick clasp with her knitting wares.
"He moves well this night," Thorin remarked, his eyes closed, his lips quirked in a warm smile. "I think I feel him lower than yesterday."
"It happens a few weeks before," Meisar explained. "But he moves I think to let you know, Thorin. He knows his father is here. It is a comfort." She was warm again inside, and not from the quail or broth. Thorin's presence, his warm protective presence, was all that had that power.
"His father," Thorin whispered lowly.
"It is not quite the same, is it?" Meisar sighed cautiously, petting the top of Thorin's head, his thick long hair uncombed but still lustrous. "Though I know you loved them as much."
For the first time in a long while, he smiled at the mention, halting at first but surrendering to the sentimentality of memory. "If I could handle Fili and Kili when they were youngsters, then I am, we are, prepared for anything."
"It cannot be so simple, or easy." She wanted to lean, and rest her head on Thorin's, to breathe in his breath and soothe his head, rub away the worse memories, or at least make him forget for a moment the cost he had already borne. But her stomach halted that motion quickly.
"Nothing will ever replace them, Meisar."
"I never intended to," Meisar murmured.
"No," Thorin sighed. "This is our child. Ours. Mahal's mercy has brought you to me. Mahal's love has given us this child. My sister-sons in their Father's Halls look upon us now with joy, I know it. I must... believe it so or we are all lost, each of us, lost, and as good as buried. This light in you is worth kindling when all others have gone dark, my love."
She nodded wanly, lost again inside her head. And where was Mahal's mercy for Dis? For this child is not Mahal's mercy but her will. And Gandalf's. And perhaps even my own. Will the Creator grant her peace now, for giving what was owed all along? Or grant my love his. Please. I beg of you.
.
He woke later to her fitful movement and small, anxious pips. Asleep, she lay on her side, facing him, legs curled up so far they were trying to fold themselves up into her belly, like a ruffled bird. He touched her shoulder and whispered her name in the dark. How innocent, how vulnerable she looks. She must have been anxious, so close to the child's coming. That dwarven pride of hers was ever stubborn, he thought. Stubborn and borne from too many years alone. We all keep secrets, though, do we not? Rarâk. Things buried too deep to surface ever again.
He had touched Dis's belly to feel the babies moving within when she called, her laughter like the raucous tolling of bells, deep but joyful. But he had never cradled her swell so intimately as he did Meisar's, kissed the taut skin, known the warmth. Pregnancy had been odd to him until then. As he laid his head to Meisar's belly, it was as if nature had wrought the very pillow for him. Fearlessly, he sighed a long hot breath against the flimsy layer of muscle and skin and little stripes that separated father and child. Felt the movement rise lazily and in the form of an elbow, perhaps a knee. He felt the sturdy bum under her ribs, the head nestled down into the base of her pelvis, shying away from the surface of her.
Anxiety had chewed a long line of ragged flesh in the inner wall of his cheek already and he tasted blood again. He rested his head against her stomach. If only his wife did not feel like a cow, being so small in stature herself; he would have loved always to feel two hearts beating inside her. Hers was steady and the baby's was quick and eager.
"I love you my child, more than life itself."
Alas, nay, your mother is your shield. Your mother's womb is as steel and her fibers are iron. Her body and yours are are a shield-wall together, impenetrable. She is your fortress. I am your watchful sentinel.
Meisar grumbled and shifted in her light sleep, and the precious mass of the babe with her. Thorin, withdrawing his head from its soft cove at her side, raised his head and considered her in the dark. Were their rhythms always so joined, mother and child? He ran his fingertip over her belly, following the dark crease in its center. Its precious force gathered in his throat, the harmony of two living things (three…)
"Amdâru Mahal, stay with my child," he prayed reverently over her flesh. "Stay with my queen. Without you I am a ghost again, and better dead."
.
"What say you now? Is all well?" Meisar craned her head up from lying prone against the pillow, Virta beside her, legs curled to her side and sinking into the soft surface of the bed, adjusting herself with a little jerk to consider Meisar's belly in her hands again and silently palpitate.
Virta prodded at her swollen belly another moment in thoughtful silence, cupped her soft hands over a restless bump. "You've a fat baby dwarf in there, strong and healthy milady."
"Strong for sure," Meisar grumbled, ironically. Griet was in the bath chamber, humming her little shanties again, preparing her bath. Myrrh was on the air, and lemongrass.
Virta chuckled. "He's readying to come. Feel here. See? That is his head." Her hand drew back amused at a swift kick that seemed perfectly aimed. "And the feet, I think you know where they are."
"Am I near? Eda said-"
"I think so. I feel a strong baby and an impatient one. The time will come, no more than a fortnight judging how your karh has dilated."
"I see," Meisar said, cringing a little. That her breasts were filled up with milk for the baby already was a supreme comfort in her, sore as it left her there. The karh was a different entity. She could not forget about Freyda after Brundin had finally been eased out into the world. And to think, I was afraid Thorin would have me split in two.
Thorin returned in the meantime, a new young squire trailing him; he wore his crimson cloak and a breastplate with his sigil on it. With him rushed in the smell of cold rain and pony-hair. The squire excused himself awkwardly at her sight.
"Shan't be long now, majesty, a fortnight most like, a week at the closest," Eda rubbed Thorin's arms in a hapless attempt to warm him. "And these stubborn cold days will be warm with mirth."
"So much variance," Thorin remarked, squinting at Meisar's prone, languid form struggling to sit up on the edge of the bed over Virta's shoulder. "How will-?"
"Even if she were to deliver this day the babe would be full-term and perfectly robust," Virta reassured. "Eda and Oin will tell you the same. Oin has even read the portents for the occasion. He says the nest shall be made strong. The rookery has had no duds this hatching. It is a good omen he says, an omen of good health."
"Your bath is ready, m'lady. Shall you need my assistance?" the serving-girl announced, stepping out of the bath chamber.
"No, Griet, thank you. Take your leisure if you wish," Meisar answered, finally wrapping her fingers around a tassel on the bedpost to haul herself up, but it unraveled from its knot and sent her back to lying down.
"I did not say I was not in need of yours, Thorin," she laughed, breathlessly. "To stand, and perhaps even to join me for a warm bath. I think it might please you as much."
"Aye," he agreed, a contented twinkle in his left eye.
Once he had gotten her upright, she leaned back with the heels of her palms braced on the foot-of-the-bed chest, watching him undress layer by layer after his little squire had helped him out of the breastplate. He felt her eyes travel the length of his sturdy body from behind, the warmth of her gaze settling in the small of his back. He folded his under-tunic and set it on the chest beside her robe.
He moved his hips in one vigorous twitch to shed the undone braies and shoo them away with his foot. Meisar's fingers on the back of his neck made every hair there stand and further more than hair rise on him.
"Your fingers are too swollen, mizimel," he murmured. He unlaced her shift in a single tug of the loosened strings.
His warm hands steadied her at the small of her back all the way to the bath chamber, and went so far as to lift her under her knees and lower them together into the tub, her grasping hard on his hair for support. Thorin kept his arm locked firmly under her knees even after she was safely buoyed in the hot water. Sideways she was sat on his lap, one hand on the back of his head, the other bracing herself lightly against the side of the sunken tub. His fingertips tickled her spot in the flank which caused her to twist and laugh and arrange herself in the tub to face away from him, slip the arm out from under her knees and enclose it gently over the peak of her belly in front of her, joining the other.
"If I get any larger, my skin will tear," Meisar laughed sardonically. "See how it stretches so?"
Thorin laid his callused hand to the soft skin, and made Meisar laugh soft and low toward him. His fingers splayed themselves across her stomach, hard on soft, the blunt tip of a nail tracing over the grooves that formed on her skin. "I do see."
"It is from the baby, all these little stripes. Any woman with get them, they tell me. Even elves. Dwarves, we get them earlier for our stoutness."
"It is our child that gives you these marks. They are exquisite," Thorin said, sprinkling water over the middle, which tickled her and caused her body to wriggle lightly back against his chest. The efflorescence of her as a dwarrowdam was that pale pearl of her middle, rutted and striped or not. "Your hips and belly have always been very pleasing to me anyhow. After all, look what they have carried. At long last..."
"It is all I have ever wanted." She rested her back heavily against Thorin's chest in the calm, enveloping heat of the water. Her body ached from the everyday of pregnancy, especially now that she was so close to giving birth. He picked up the sponge and lathered the back of her neck tenderly, working his way around to coat her back and sides, her armpits and tender inner thighs, in fragrant suds. His arms wrapped around her from behind and ladled handfuls of soapy water over the swell of her stomach again.
He felt a sharp, protruding motion at its peak flick up and disappear again. Meisar made a small hiccupping sound, "oh."
"He's lively. Spry babe, sweet restless babe, where are you trying to go in such a hurry?" she chuckled serenely. She held his palm to her so he could feel the tossing and turning of the child in her womb. Could the child know Thorin's hands from hers? His large, noble, commanding hands, so proud. "Are you so eager to know your father?"
"Or his mother," murmured Thorin.
The water covered her belly halfway, little waves lapping up its sides with Thorin's motion behind her. "But he does know his mother. I have carried him, nurtured him. He and I have been one body here so long I think he knows me by now."
"He may not be so eager to leave. He is safe in there," he tapped her belly playfully. "Safe..."
Will any place be as safe, as reassuring? Nay, but...
"I will protect you always, both of you."
"Spoken as a true dwarrow then," Meisar grinned. "I know you will keep that promise."
"Do you?"
She pressed her lips firmly to Thorin's wet, clenched hand. "I have never been so sure of anything in all my life."
"You're wrinkling all over. Stay in any longer and it'll get cold. Can't have that," Thorin insisted, suddenly brusque. He wrapped her in towels and then in her furs, stood her by the fire and dried her head to toe, and brought her nightgown for her, ready to slip it over her head when she grasped him by the shoulders and urged him downward. He knelt before the imposing swell that had overtaken her midsection. Generously, he had given the milk swollen sheaves of her bosoms their due attention and followed the incline below to the peak of her belly until he was on his knees.
"Thorin!" she hiccuped suddenly.
He sprang to his feet, sighed guiltily at the sight of her nipples starting to issue a thin, watery fluid.
"It's no cause for alarm," she explained, even more guiltily, covering her chest in annoyance. "I only wanted you to feel something. You haven't seen this yet."
"What?"
"It only happens very close to the birth." She urged him to his knees again before her.
"Now, give it a little tap, right here," she pushed the tips of his fingers over a spot above her navel, gently anchoring them until she beckoned he rap on her skin with one finger. "And wait."
Something stirred but he could not be certain. He tap-tapped his finger again, and through the barrier of skin, it pushed upward against his finger, a foot, as clearly shaped as day. An inconvenient lump formed in his throat, and he took a moment to rest on his knees, ear to her belly, privy to the life inside her. And when the little first or foot rose again he pressed a kiss against it, the heat of his breath turning her skin pink there he lingered so long in want.
"I have never been so impatient for anything, ever."
"Soon… soon," she murmured. If Oin's portents were correct, she would bear the child within the fortnight.
.
Birai'gil- talk openly!
Imnêm- unearthing
Rarâk- hidden things (secrets)
Karh- Female Genital Organ
Amdâru- mercy of