V.
Kili is breathing softly in a shallow sleep – and it slowly begins to dawn on me that the worst is over; he is saved – and she had saved him.
I study her closely as she is binding his wound. She is looking at him – her face falters between focus and concern … and another soft, unplaceable expression; her eyes are lost and far away.
I lean out the open door of the house, looking upon the moonlight as it plays on the water. The Lonely Mountain stands looming in the far-off distance, and Laketown has fallen silent in the late hours of the night. My thoughts begin to stray and fray as exhaustion takes over.
Why had the Elves even followed us here?
Why did Elven guard not go with her Prince, when he'd clearly commanded her to follow?
She joins me outside, looking tired. "He is sleeping now," she says, half to herself. The nighttime breeze whips through the red tresses of her hair, and her face is lit in the moonlight.
I'm not aware that I am staring at her, until she returns my gaze with a questioning look of her own.
"Why did you save my brother?" I ask, not meaning to sound so confrontational.
She lowers her eyes and is silent for a long time.
"I … do not know," she eventually murmurs. "I don't understand why, but I cannot leave him alone. It's as if he carries the light of the world within him … and I have no choice but to seek out this light, no matter how far it takes me." A look of vulnerability passes across her face, and a new, sudden thought begins to dawn on me.
"You –" I begin, but then, a soft yell of pain comes from inside the house.
Kili had woken up and had tried to move his leg – the pain that shot through must have made him cry out.
Immediately she goes to his side. Though her forehead is creased, her eyes are bright as she gently strokes back his hair, and in soft, gentle voice she tells him to lie still.
She is not here because she was ordered to – she came here on her own accord.
She is here because of my brother.
I watch them; they don't speak, yet they do not look away from each other. It's as if the rest of the world had disappeared into nothing, leaving only both of them in it – and I know that look.
A Dwarf and an Elf, eh?
I think, for all my years, there are still things in this world than can surprise me.
And then I think, with a little despair, that this world might not be so kind to them.