'ULBATH- Greatest Adoration
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just a quick note, I'm going with film-verse Balin in terms of age. I am aware that canonically he is younger than Thorin but I like the idea of him being an older, wiser figure like he (presumably) is in Peter Jackson's trilogy- because I think he is a great character in that way.
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The dwarrowdams came back into the chamber after a long private respite, bid them sleep and returned by the morning light. There were more linens to cart out, plans to make, the primary duties of motherhood to teach. Thorin winced at the sight of the chambermaids stripping the under-sheets off the bed, soaked in blood and the exertions of childbirth. They made it anew in fresh bedding while Meisar lay on the low trundle bed wrapped in furs and with the babe close in her arms and sleeping soundly. Oin arrived soon after, and well past the time the rest of the mountain had appeared to cease its mirthful rumpus.
The healer laid him in his cradle beside the low bed and squinted his eye about his monocle, studying closely each facet, dictating to Siv for his books. Thorin and Meisar watched as Oin gave close exam of the child, free of his swaddling and dressed loosely in nightshirt and cap in his cradle. His eyes shined up bright and curious toward Oin's face, as he moved his scope slowly over the babe's chest.
"You have delivered us a hearty prince, my queen," concluded Oin cheerfully. "He seems to be in excellent health."
"Thank you, Oin."
"A strong heart beats within him, and strong lungs," he reported as a wail rose and echoed sharply. "Very strong lungs."
Eda knelt beside them and extracted Meisar from the furs, giving her belly a long, gentle massage in circles with her fingertips. Underneath the thin layer of her shift it was still swelled, tender to the touch. Thorin gazed upon her pitifully; she looked as if she had been thrashed in a warg's jaws (and he knew...)
"It'll help the muscles to heal and the swelling to go down a bit," Eda explained. "Help the rest of things to pass."
Meisar groaned at the thought and lazily swatted Thorin's hand away from the dip of her lower back where it was inadvertently squeezing, cradling her bottom.
"She's swaddled heavy as the babe," chuckled Eda. "T'will be a few days before it halts."
"I love her all the same," Thorin murmured, giving Meisar a reassuring kiss on the shoulder, her scent sharp, and sour.
"Cord separated and cleaned," Oin noted, giving the belly where he had been cut of his tether to her an extra slather of minty cream. "See that it is imbued every few hours until the stump heals over, to avoid inflammation."
Eda and Virta took note, and Oin returned him to Meisar's arms. Once again the babe was content and reduced to cooing. His face, which had been rosy from his cries, settled into its natural fairness. He had a grumpy-looking little mouth, no less charming to behold.
"Not like baby trolls," Thorin chuckled lightly against her.
"You would be surprised how tiny they are when they are born," Meisar sighed, the babe's hand rising up out of the swaddling to try and grasp at Thorin's, as his forefinger smoothed the edge of his little cap. "Alas, they grow very quickly if they don't wander off into sunlight too soon. Not like this one." She kissed his outstretched fingers where they had abandoned their pursuit of Thorin's. She shifted the baby downward to lie against her side, on his back, Brynja quick to fluff the pillow under her head. "Little dwarflings take time. I should think he'll be a babe in my arms for a good long while. I would hold him like this forever, my precious child."
He stretched his legs to lie behind her at length on the low bed and peered his head over her shoulder to look upon the child nestled in swaddling and in her furs against her chest. Ineffable love, its purity left a trembling ripple to the air behind her ear with every breath he took.
"They say he will take my milk ten times or more in the course of the day. I should not even bother putting him down."
Meisar turned again with a slight groan, wriggled her elbow underneath her and rested her cheek against the back of her hand. The baby lay in the cozy curve of her middle where he had been so safe, so beloved until that day. Thorin watched the tiny hands wrest themselves loose from the swaddling to grab the slightest handful of her nightgown and ball it up tight in his fist, without ever waking. He hovered over her shoulder from behind, transfixed. Her ephemeral peck of a kiss on the bare part of his cheek brought his attention to her.
"You have not asked about a name, Thorin."
"I have not thought up any," he smirked, a little guiltily.
Meisar sighed. "Thror and Thrain and Thorin… a prince needs a name suited for his line. But all the variations I've gone about are sticky on the tongue, you know. But I wish for him to be named for his father."
"A name will come in due time. Think not of it now," Thorin urged gently.
"I am afraid Thorin," she murmured after a silence, allowing the child's eyes to flutter and close and sleep again, in peace.
"Afraid of what?"
She blinked back tears, craning her neck around to confide intimately. The talk of the others in the chamber buzzed around them, dully. "I know I must sleep sometime but… what if I do not hear him? What if he cries and I do not wake for him?"
"You will not miss a cry, I promise you. Adina and Mizri will stay right outside day and night, and I will be here. This child will never cry long, I promise."
"That is true, my queen, my king. He will never need for any attendants. He'll need a head of his own household appointed in time, and a cradle rocker, a nursemaid, a wet nurse-" Emli was prattling on, as well as in some other universe. Her voice was a morning-whistle, calling the dwarves from their beds to work, the last thing she wanted to hear, and it was ringing, obnoxiously.
"I will nurse him myself," Meisar insisted suddenly, rising up on one elbow and drawing the babe close to her with her forearm.
Emli smiled maternally. "As any mother-dwarf would. But it doesn't hurt to have another at the ready. Feed him from your own bosom and you will need nourish yourself, my queen, and heartily if you wish to keep up." She began to cut the mutton left untouched on the table into palatable pieces, eyeing Meisar's heavy eyes, her peaked cheeks and posturing. "Even if you are not hungry, you'll need it for your milk's sake."
"Aye, best ye never run dry if ye can help it," Freyda added. "Well-fed babes make for a stout mother too. M'keepin' a goodly padding about the belly and hips for the likes o' this one."
"That bosom will hold a fair store, if I don't mistake. Shan't be too worried, m'queen," Siv had to add. Emli sat down on the little stool next to the bed and fed her bits of mutton in onion-and-carrot braise from the fork as if she were a dwarfling herself.
"Adina, who was of service to Freyda if you recall, has agreed to be wash-maid in the prince's service. We'll need one round the clock," Emli sidelined Siv with a glance.
"I suppose I would not mind that, for a time," Meisar agreed. Servants were still strange to her, but she was sore and tender with every attempt to move, and bleeding all too profusely for much use.
"You'll be very glad of the help, especially with that. If it's not chuck, it's the other way out, constantly," Freyda continued, insistently.
The child's thick spittle erupted in a long arc and came down the front of her robe and snaked in a lazy river down her bare chest beneath her shift, widening her eyes in a cringe.
"Constantly," Meisar parroted a confirmation. She looked down and found it was not the only stain on her clothing, or her braids. Griet and Bertha had handled the swaddling linens while she recovered, and had been kept at constant attention by them. She had practiced wrapping the linen around his bottom like they showed her when she was finally able to move again, with varying results. Two of her bedrobes, a nightgown and a pair of slippers had gone to the laundresses along with the linens. She had kept him close all hours, exhausted or besotted more none could say, even her.
"Might we ready you a bath, m'queen?" Griet inquired.
"I would not mind that," Meisar smiled up tiredly at the maidservant. She realized the fetor of the various substances splattered over her head to toe from herself and the babe, and it made her dizzy.
When she was ready and the child ensconced sleeping in his cradle Eda and Virta helped her to stand and limp across the chamber to the bath. She looked as soldiers looked emerging fresh from the battlefield. Was it so different? But they sing no songs of women at childbed who fall in their quest. Not even my own mother, a princess.
Her throated yelp from the bath chamber brought the baby to wakefulness in his cradle again, and he began to cry.
"Will you bring him to me, my lady?" Thorin requested of Brynja, perched over his cradle to keep a steady watch. She obliged, scooping him carefully bedding and all, and set him in Thorin's arms, not withdrawing her own until his were holding the child close on his chest. He could feel the air of his breath through his clothes, warm.
"He is a fair babe, my king," Brynja commented.
"He is my son," Thorin whispered. He reached out from the blanket to grasp the tip of Thorin's finger when it came into his reach. His forefinger was thick enough that the tiny hand could not encapsulate it fully but it didn't stop him from trying.
"The first you make water or bathe after a birth is dreadful for sure," Dis said behind him. Meisar's drawn groan from the other side of the chamber door made them both wince again when they were seated across from each other beside the fireplace. Brynja brought ales in silver cups and hot sliced bread soaked in garlic oil for them.
"Will she be long pained?" Thorin asked his sister, brow creased sympathetically. He could still hear Meisar groaning, the dwarrowdams calming her, calling for lavender soaps to soothe the pains.
"It does not last. And with it, there is such love it does not matter," Dis smiled.
"I love him already, more than life."
"And I as if he were my own child," Dis rubbed the line of dark beard on his jaw with the back of her forefinger. "You did all for mine, Thorin. It is only right you ought have your own."
"I miss them," Thorin murmured. "How can I look at my own and not see them?"
"They are his own kin. From the Halls they are regarding him fondly at this moment I am sure." Dis's mouth set itself in the hard line he had come to know, her stoicism drawn taut as a bow.
"I remember the night Kili was born. I remember the snow, and the... he was quick coming and I thought he was small. I feared... he would be weak. But he was not. He was a strong lad, and good," Thorin smiled tensely. "The choices I made cost their lives. I swear on this child's life I shall not make the same with him. I should never have made them with yours."
Dis's throat constricted and the lump moved from swelling the underside of her jaw to the base of her throat agonizingly slow. "The one that father and grandfather made when they stormed the east gates of Moria? A death wish. Grandfather never listened but Frerin... was so young. So brave. I don't even remember his face you know."
"A folly, all..." Thorin closed his forefinger and thumb about his son's hand, the lump in his own throat passing to belly like a stone.
He felt Dis's hand on his own, no longer cold. "You would not be the first or the last dwarf to go bullheaded into some endeavor and suffer for it. What of father? Will you begrudge him for all times for our sorrows? Or grandfather? There was evil on the mist and he went riding for Erebor. What of him? We would be fools not to gather he has met some terrible fate, somewhere. But brother, we have paid our prices the same as any."
"What if it is our fate? The cost of our nature. That everything we do for love or hate or pride will end in fire and leave us eating ashes for bread in atonement. What if it is our fate?" Thorin speculated, unable to speak above a whisper. The baby's eyes fluttered and closed, and he buried his face against Thorin's breast.
"We make our own luck and our own fates. You said it, always. I do believe we have learned, and I have made my own choices that I may one day bear the weight of but I-"
Thorin smirked and the pale robin's-egg orbs narrowed to slits toward him, inexplicably. "What choices, sister? You never did have a say in anything, a pity."
"I think he may be hungry now," Meisar's voice announced quietly over the restless child Thorin was cradling close in his arms. Her lavender scent undid the stone in his belly.
The bed having been cleaned and made again, the dwarrowdams helped Meisar to dress, swaddle and wrap her braids in a crown about her head and retire to the familiar place. Thorin helped settle her against the pillows and took his place beside her while the babe nursed from her again. He took so greedily of her milk it made Thorin laugh, the little sounds he made. For a moment he was at peace again, and Dis bid them goodnight.
"When he suckles it feels as if we are one again, and always," Meisar sighed wistfully.
"You are, and will be always. We are," Thorin said.
They heard the voices in the antechamber before Bryja's braided head poked itself nervously through the ajar door. "Dwalin and Balin have come. Are you feeling up to visitors?"
"Those two I would never deny," Meisar sighed happily.
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When they entered Thorin was sitting up against the headboard, his arms a protective span around Meisar from behind. Her focus was at the whimpering bundle in her arms, and his, until Dwalin's thunderous grunt of approval rang out and brought him to attention.
"A hale boy ye say?" Dwalin surged through eagerly. Balin held back, letting Dwalin to have the first salutations. His hard eyes regarded Thorin's son with unabashed glee and pride.
"A healthy son, nadad," Thorin braced Dwalin hard around his shoulders.
Dwalin slapped him hard about the back in response, releasing a great rumbling laugh. "Well done laddie, well done."
Thorin took the child into his arms to present him to Balin and Dwalin. When his face scrunched and began to putter little cries Thorin took him close again, in one arm holding above him a gilded chain and rattle. The tintinnabulation spurred the babe's eyes open. The arms wriggled loose from the swaddling and began to bat themselves eagerly into the air above him. Balin leaned over him, tucking his beard into his collar lest the child take hold as strongly as Brundin tended to.
"Do you remember your brother's birth, Balin?" Meisar asked him. Never had he seen her, of all people, so serene. Or Thorin, for so many years. When had he last smiled with his eyes so brightly? Not since-
Not even on his wedding day.
"Aye, I do. Our lady mother labored a day and a half to give him life. But like my brother, she was strong, and stubborn. Even more stubborn than he was," Balin laughed, nostalgically. "He was even larger and ruder than your own."
"And Thorin?" Meisar's eyes sparkled with genuine curiosity.
"I remember that too."
Balin remembered. The memory of dwarves, whether collective, or secret, was always long, for better or for worse. He remembered peering into Thorin's cradle. The look in the infant Thorin's eyes as Thror, coming to greet his grandson for the first time, dangled a chain of gold with tiny gilded charms at its ends above his head, beaming. And he had hid that dark, uneasy prophecy that seemed known to none but him.
"A fine prince, isn't he, Balin?" his mother had said proudly. Hertha had been appointed royal cradle rocker, and cooed to the little prince in his swaddling, black-headed and robust. Thorin, pronounced Thror, a prince named for a king that had come before. A line unbroken.
"Yes," Balin's own voice said in his head, as clear as the day he uttered. "The finest prince I have ever seen."
"Look out for this prince, Master Balin. Care for him proudly as your mother does over his crib," Thror had made him vow. Hertha had been proud, so proud. Of her son, decorous before his king and full of grace, his prince blue-eyed and fixed upon the tinkling chain, only an innocent.
Balin looked upon the baby dwarf cradled lovingly in the king's arms, Meisar holding him protectively under his little rump. Unadorned, in only her loose bed-gown and robe, with none of the jewel-crusted crowns or rings that had adorned Tania, weak from the birth in childbed and having dressed herself with Herculean effort to greet Thror and Thrain. Emli had brought her gift,a gilded rattle and chain of charms, which Thorin waggled over him. But this babe, black-headed and fair as his father had been in his cradle two centuries foregone, smiled, and reached up for his father's hand, flicking away the gilded toy.
And Balin was no longer afraid.