Author's Note: I am sooo sorry this update took so long, but I finally got registered at the Vienna Filmacademy! :D So HERE'S THE NEW CHAP OF THE CHONILLARILLION! ENJOY!

R&R please! :)

Over the Table and Under the Table

One should think that in the middle of a mountain where all walls are made solely of stone it would be cold everywhere, but even in the most remote of corners of the narrow corridor Balin was guiding the two of them just now, they felt like wrapped in thick blankets thanks to the warmth that prevailed there. Their cheeks even assumed a rosy color, which Sandra wasn't fond of at all and therefore tried to hide it by swiping over her cheeks, making it worse in the process, while Natalie wore her reddened cheeks with pride and even accentuated them with a cute smile. That's why the cold in the atmosphere that was prevalent in the hall they then entered hit them like a punch in the face.

"Maybe not so much easy peasy after all.", Natalie whispered in the direction of her friend, desparately trying to keep the smile on her lips, as the many dwarves suddenly fell silent and looked up to them.

It was dozens, sitting here at long tables, with countless plates full of meat and something that looked like some kind of stew or soup in front of them. Those were probably all the surviving dwarves of the battle, and they were not even that many, considering the fact that at the beginning, when Sandra watched the course of the fight from the wall, it had looked like there were hundreds. The marred mood was thus by all means justified.

Nevertheless, Balin tried to put on a cheerful face. "My friends..." His loud voice cut through the silence in the hall. "... these two ladies are Sandra and Natalie."

Both waved in an embarressed manner.

"They are young travellers from Dale, who King Dain just granted to reside here for one night. So treat them with dignity and respect and welcome them in our wonderful home!"

For a few more moments noone moved, so that the two already began to believe that their presence displeased the dwarves, but then they turned away from them, simply attended to their meal.

"Well..." Balin looked at them, his brows raised. "... being ignored means having a quiet evening at least." With the words "Enjoy your meal" he bowed slightly and trudged away towards the tables.

Sandra was about to follow him, when Natalie caught her by her arm. "I think he wants to eat without us for now." She glanced through the hall, as they got under way, in search of two vacant seats. "Look at all those sad faces... You think each of them lost somebody in this battle?"

"Mhm. Or it's because of Thorin."

"Right." Her voice adopted a whiny tone. "I don't want everyone around me to be sad! You know what? Today we set ourselves to make these dwarves laugh! At least some of them." Natalie narrowed her eyes to slits, signalising her friend that she was brooding over it. "We should split, increase our chances to make it."

Sandra raised her brows. "Certainly. Not. Do you have an idea how odd and suspicious it'd be, if we, the strangers here, sat apart from each other?"

The smaller one smirked. "You're just afraid of being alone among strangers."

"Sh...", Sandra hissed in reply. Then she spotted something behind her friend and nodded towards it. "Look, there's free space." Before Natalie could walk there, the taller one held her back. "Listen, you're used to talk a lot with new people and you know that it doesn't bug me normally - nothing you do ever bugs me really - but I'm not sure, if they would want that now. Just promise that if it doesn't work, we'll drop it and go to sleep."

"Are you tired already?", her counterpart asked in surprise.

"Only a bit. The mood kind of bums me out."

Natalie smiled. "And that is what we're going to change. Don't worry, I won't overdo it. I promise." She turned to the vacant seats again. "I'll just be my weirdo-self."

The seating surface of the chairs here were wider than usual and there weren't any armrests, simply fitting for the straddle-legged posture of dwarves, which Natalie noticed in sitting down, and instantly tried to imitate for the sake of affiliation, wherefore she got a shake of the head of her friend and gave it a miss. Balin was sitting a few chairs away, giving the two of them a smile, before attending to his stew-soup-thing. Next to him a giant of a dwarf was eating, standing probably as tall as Natalie, which meant quite short in men-measurements, but imposing for dwarves - Sandra wondered if he was called Mr. Erebor, the mountain under the mountain, which she told her friend in an amused tone immediately and which was answered with blinking and the sentence "You're dead to me." - and opposite to him some more, who they identified as former members of Thorin's company. One of them was the one opposite to Natalie, scribbling into some thick notebook instead of eating, which caught the smaller one's attenion at once.

"Uh, excuse me?"

Round-eyed the dwarf, who appeared to be younger than the others due to the shortness of his beard, looked up.

Natalie gave him a charming smile. "You've got some beautiful notebook there."

"Uhm... Thank you...", he replied restrainedly.

"I looove leather-bound books. The paper in them always smells so incredibly good!", Natalie continued in an enthusiastic tone. "And you also seem to write plenty, I mean, more than half is already used!" She pointed at the object in his hands, whose pages on the left looked as good as new, whereas the ones on the right were worn.

"Yes...", the dwarf brought forth, seeking help in his grey-haired seatmate, who had followed the conversation munching and who gave him the sign to keep speaking with a nod towards Natalie. So the young dwarf turned to her again and hesitantly said: "I... try to describe what I see and experience during my journeys..."

Although he didn't consider it possible, the expression of his counterpart lit up even more. "Really? So do I!" Her hand waved about, almost stumbling over her own swiftly spoken words. "I mean, I haven't been on an actual journey so far, but I wrote about the dragon attack and how Sandra fought in the battle and such. May I have a look?" She took a notebook out of her bag. "Of course you may flip through mine as well! Even though I doubt it's anywhere near as interesting as yours..."

There curiosity and joy flashed up in the eyes of the dwarf and they widened slightly at the sight of the dark red leather the book in Natalie's hands was bound in. From one second to the other, he seemed like a different person, when he exclaimed "Oh yes!", shoving his notebook over the table and greedily grabbing hers, beginning to read in an instant.

"I am Natalie by the way, although Balin already introduced me.", she laughed, holding her hand out to him, which he only noticed a moment later.

"Ori.", he quickly said with a smile on his kind looking face, before concentrating on the words written with black ink, just like Natalie, even if she wasn't able to understand those runic characters, which was why she rather directed her attention to some sketches.

"You fought in the battle?", a deep voice sounded suddenly and Sandra turned to Mr. Erebor, who was squinting at her. "You? A woman?"

A grin spread over Sandra's full lips, as she leant back, her chest swelling with pride. "Yup, I did. Even alongside-" She paused, decided against mentioning the Elvenking in her story and continued: "- alsongside the other warriors of Laketown. And I have to say that I outclassed quite a few males in doing so."

For a long while this colossus of a dwarf simply stared at her, slowly giving Sandra the collywobbles, however, she did her best to maintain her smirk and relaxed posture. From the corner of her eye - she definitely wouldn't look away, not even blink, even if her eyes started to burn, damn it, she would win this staring contest - she noticed Balin looking back and forth between the two.

Then the mountain under the mountain raised his voice again: "Where did you learn how to fight?"

"My father taught me a bit when I was little already and I carried on the training by myself."

"Axe or sword?"

Sandra let out a short noise of amusement and leant over the table, her lips pursed into a lopsided duck mouth. "Do I look like I could fall in love with something other than an axe?" In a sweeping motion she brought her weapon out, thumped it down on the table. "Allow me to introduce you to The Dasher. Or Bob. Haven't decided yet."

Once again the dwarf lapsed into silence, just stared into her brown eyes with shrewd ones. Suddenly, however, he laugend out loud, letting his shoulders hop vigorously, with what some other dwarves around got infected, so that Sandra beamed even more. Mr. Erebor, his hands stemmed into the tabletop, stood up, pointed one finger at the young woman. "I like you, lass." Then to everybody around: "Who wants another mug of beer?"

Together with a dozen of dwarves the two women shouted: "ME!", whereupon Sandra frowned at Natalie. She just shrugged and murmured: "Integration."

Then the smaller one turned to Ori. "Hey Ori, could you transate what you wrote beneath that sketch for me?" Before he even had a chance to respond, she added wildly gesticulating: "You know what? I'll just come over to you." With these words she stood up, knocked her chair over, kicked it under the table and crawled after it. Until she reached the other side, the puzzled faces of the dwarves around were already directed at her, which she ignored completely and talked to Ori, who just smiled and nodded every now and then.

She only stopped to speak when Mr. Erebor, whose actual name appeared to be Dwalin, came back with the beer and all of them took a big swig from their mug. And many other mugs followed, while Sandra and Natalie told their ever-growing audience of their amusing experiences of the last weeks, making them laugh again and again.

"And then..." Natalie pressed the words out, making her by the alcohol already red head redden even more. "... then the dragon fleeeeew over us, the heat of his fire slapped my face like whooosh! But you know what the old fisherman did? Ever so calmly he fiiiiinally got up and yelled at Smaug: 'SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU STUPID ANIMAL, I'M TRYING TO HAVE A FUCKING NAP HERE!'"

Bawling went through the crowd of dwarves, some spat out their beer, some patted Natalie's shoulder, as she was practically lying on the table totally exhausted.

"My damn life was in danger and I couldn't stop laughing!", she panted, squeezing her hot cheek against the cool wood under her.

In the meantime her friend recounted her adventures during the battle for Dwalin and a few others, how she cleft an orc's head in two and cropped some other's limbs - she referred to that one as stumpy - making the dwarves cheer as well.

Only when someone named Bofur climbed on the table, they all detached their gaze from the odd women. Full of enthusiasm they looked up at him, listened as he made everybody in the hall sing with him, hammer their fists against the tabletop and laugh joyfully. When he finished, he bowed low and got rewarded with cheers. Especially Natalie appeared to be thoroughly excited about the performance, which she expressed shrieking. Then she opened her eyes widely and screamed: "Oh, oh, I also want to sing! I also want to sing!" There she already heaved herself onto the table, visibly having difficulties, at which she had to giggle, while Bofur helped.

"What is she doing?", Balin asked Sandra.

She simply shrugged, grinning. "I have noooo idea. She's never been that drunk!"

With raised hands the small one put her audience to silence. "I dunno if you know this song, but the guys in the tavern I used to work at aaaaaaaalways sang it.", she slurred. Once more she took in a deep breath and as she began to sing, she stomped her feet in time with the music, getting Bofur to do the same with glances.

"No gold and only misfortune,

I'm tired and worn out,

A pathetic fool, an unsightly ghoul

know those calls inside out.

So I visit the old landlord,

who's like family to me.

His piece of advice is more than just nice

and I give it to thee:

FUCK IT AND DRINK

TAKE ANOTHER BEER, DON'T THINK

If wenches bug you and hard work does too

Then FUCK IT AND DRINK!

FUCK IT AND DRINK

TAKE ABOTHER BEER, DON'T THINK

Come on, friend, come on, I'll get you this one!

FUCK IT AND DRINK!"

At the third chorus the entire hall eventually sang along, laughing, while Sandra had to wipe the tears from her bright red face, clutching her stomach, and when the song reached its climax, Natalie finally lost her balance, wildly waved her arms, fell off the table before Bofur could catch her and landed on the ground, which let both the bystanders and herself cheer of exhilaration again.