It was a warm morning, and Alys was reading again. The same book, but this time somewhere more hidden. She did not intend to run into the bullies again, so she'd found a decent tree (it just so happened to be an apple tree) and climbed high into the branches. The leaves hung around her like some sort of protective veil, and she felt safe. Slightly ironically in retrospect, considering that she was perched on a high branch and one wrong move could mean hurtling to the ground at break-neck speed – literally break-neck speed, as in break-your-neck-if-you-fall speed. However, she held herself well and was well-balanced thus reducing the broken neck statistics.
She turned the page tenderly, taking great care with every movement when something blocked her vision. She blew the leaf from her face without a second thought. Leaves fall. Nothing odd there. But then an entire flurry of them fluttered down onto her and she almost dropped her book. She shook them off as well as she could without falling to a broken neck. And then there were voices.
"You're never going to reach that one!"
"Watch me!"
"Fili, mind that branch – Fili!"
"Oh no." she muttered at the familiar voices and names.
There was a yell and her safe leaf veil was infiltrated through the roof by a falling dwarf. Before he could hit anything and break his neck, his brother caught him by the ankles, leaving him dangling upside-down and face-to-face with a stunned Alys.
"Hey! It's you again!" he grinned. "Kili, it's her again!"
"Who?" he called from the now visible branch above them, trying to get a look at Alys, causing Fili to swing about dangerously.
"Careful!" she found herself saying, earning laughter from both brothers.
"We're fine!" Kili laughed from above.
"Uh-huh," she wasn't convinced. Fili was slowly getting lower and lower, gradually sliding out of his brother's grasp. She felt like she should do something, but what? If she tried to help him down, she'd only knock the both of them over and there'd be more than one broken neck. So that wasn't happening.
Then a sudden flurry of leaves, two simultaneous yells as Kili lost his footing and they both fell downwards. They were tumbling at a sickening pace and before she could do something sensible, Alys was being pulled down with them, as one of the two brothers grabbed the skirts of her dress instead of the branch and all three of them were hurtling down. Then there was a jarring in her shoulder as her hands found a branch only a few feet from the ground, still with the two brothers clinging at her skirt. It began to tear.
"Let go of my dress." She said through gritted teeth.
"Excellent idea."
"I concur."
Neither of them moved.
"You do realise we're only five feet up?" she pointed out. Her arm was screaming out in protest from supporting the weight of herself and two older dwarves as well, the sooner they were gone, the better.
"Yes we do."
"Well if you won't," she sighed, and let go.
In a flash, they were heaped on the floor. She breathed out heavily and untangled herself. She stood up clutched her book to her chest. It had never left her side once since she had brought it out that day, and intended to keep it that way.
Kili and Fili were laughing ridiculously and loudly while Alys picked the leaves from her hair. She rolled her eyes a little too obviously.
"What?" their laughter died down abruptly.
"Nothing, just a near-death experience that is somehow funny to you." She barked irritably.
"Oh, come on-"
"Goodbye," she snapped and turned away.
"No, you're going nowhere." Kili strode towards her and grabbed her wrist.
"Let go of my wrist." She hissed, not looking behind at him.
"Nope," he said with a smile.
"I have to be at home right now," she sighed, "I have things to do." That was true - her family ran the bakery and she was supposed to lend a hand that morning.
"Oh, really? What things?"
"Perhaps you'd like to ask a question that is your business?" she snapped, straining against his grip.
"Perhaps you'd like to stay around for longer than five seconds at a time?" he retorted, perhaps slightly less harshly than Alys's tone.
"No thank you." She looked across at the sun, high in the sky. She was late. "Please, I have to be somewhere."
She was getting irritated at their silence. "I really have to go! I'll come back when I'm done, okay? Just let me go!"
His grip slackened slightly.
"When you're done? We'll be waiting." And he let go.
"Sorry I'm late, mother, something held me up." She sighed, tying her hair back as she walked into the kitchen.
"Oh? And what was that?" her mother turned with brows raised in mild shock.
"Two ridiculously persistent dwarves." She sighed as she tied an apron around herself.
"Oh? Were they . . . male?" her mother suddenly became very interested in the conversation.
"Subtle as always, mother. And yes." She picked up a bowl and set it on the work surface. "I said I'd go back and see them when we're done, if that's alright." She looked up briefly for her mother's consent.
"Of course it is!" she grinned. She seemed ridiculously happy about the whole thing.
Alys smiled ever so slightly, it was nice to see her mother happy for once.
Alys stumbled out of the bakery with flour dusting her dress and nose and afresh loaf of bread in her hands. Her mother's idea.
She made her way to the same place – the same apple tree.
They were both still there, stood with their backs to her. They were each throwing stones into the night, seeing who could get theirs furthest. Kili was winning.
"What are the males in the Middle Earth doing with their time?" she crossed her arms and they turned at the sound of her voice.
They both laughed at her comment, although she was half-serious.
"We were starting to think you weren't coming." They walked over to her.
"Believe me, it occurred to me as well." She handed them the bread. "From my mother."
They thanked her and made their way to the tree trunk. They gestured for her to join and she did so, if somewhat reluctantly.
"This is good. Please thank your mother on our behalf."
Alys was almost shocked at the manners they displayed. She didn't bother telling them that she had made that loaf and burned it slightly, hence why her mother had offered she share with her "new friends". She told her they were not friends, (earning even more excitement from her mother) just ridiculously persistent. She had refused to believe a word of it.
"Where did you have to run off to, then?" Kili enquired, throwing a chunk of bread into the air and catching it between his teeth.
"If it's not obvious from the bread, apron and the small coating of flour on my dress, I was working. Our family runs the bakery here."
"Bakery, huh? Interesting."
"Nope."
"What?"
"Wrong."
"Wrong? What's wrong?"
"You said 'interesting'. That's wrong. There is nothing whatsoever interesting about me."
