Three more chapters to go and then this ends (finally). This chapter may not be good, but here you go. Enjoy.
Chapter 13: How can you tell
Dis had stayed in the same position on the floor with her two boys until well after they had fallen asleep, right up until Thorin had returned home, refusing to let them go for fear they would disappear. She had never realised how fragile life really was until a couple of nights ago.
"Need help getting them off to bed?" the dwarfish woman heard her brother ask. Dis glanced down at the children's peaceful faces and nodded, allowing the older dwarf to pull Fili from her lap, cradling the blonde carefully in his arms so as not to wake him.
"You'll look after them, won't you?" Dis suddenly asked, still staring down at her youngest. Thorin regarded her and his two nephew's for a moment before replying.
"I swear on my life," he said, "You know I will always take care of them when they need it."
"I just couldn't bare it if I lost them," Dis continued, "Not after Rhorin, and certainly not after the-" She broke down in relatively silent tears.
"Let us put the lads to be and then we can discuss this matter more deeply," Thorin stated, making to lift Kili from his sister's lap as well. Dis shook her head.
"I can do it," she said, accepting the hand that he now offered to help her up, being sure not to let her brown haired child fall.
The pair entered their quarries' shared room and begun to prepare the youths for bed. Dis redressed her own charge in his sleeping clothes and laid Kili on the bed, after which Fili soon followed, both still sound asleep. Or at least they had been before their mother and uncle had moved to the door.
"W…what?" Fili said, half lifting his upper body as he fisted his eyes, disorientated as to how he had gotten from being on the floor in his mother's arms to his bed.
"You fell asleep, dear," Dis supplied, smiling. Fili blinked back up at her and then settled back down into the blankets.
"Oh," he murmured, shifting to allow his now awake brother to shuffle closer to him.
"Momma still sad?" the brunette asked in a dreary voice, brown eyes blinking owlishly up at the faces above him.
"Only a little now," Dis answered, allowing a small smile to grace her lips, "You helped to cheer momma up."
"It is time for you both to go back to sleep," Thorin interjected softly. As if on cue, both Fili and Kili yawned in unison.
"Can you sing us to sleep, uncle?" the blonde asked, his brown haired brother looking hopefully up at the older dwarf through half closed eyes. Dis fervently hoped the exiled king would agree for it had been ages since he had last sung the pair to sleep. To her relief and surprise, Thorin let loose a small chortle and sank down next to her sons, the bed creaking slightly as he did so.
"What would you like me to sing to you about?" he asked, his eyes glinting in the dimly lit room.
"Something happy," Kili mumbled, his eyelids now drooping considerably further down than before.
"An adventure," Fili said about as enthusiastically as he could muster while being dead tired, speaking at the same time as his brother. Thorin took a moment to think.
"How about a song about a journey to win back the Lonely Mountain," he said after a while. Ear-splitting grins shone on both boys' faces as they nodded energetically. Dis was not, however, so happy about the choice, for it may be just a story to her boys, but it was in every case real to her. And in a way, she was further saddened by the fact that it was just a story to her sons.
"Goodnight," she said, kissing both Fili and Kili lightly on the head before retreating from the room and the song. Once outside, she allowed her face to fall.
"Far over the misty mountain rise,
Leave us standing upon the heights,
What was before, we see once more,
Our kingdom a distant light…"
Her brother's deep voice rolled through the closed door, only slightly muffled as he sung in a tone that sounded wistful, just as she was feeling. Dis leaned against the wall, both completely mesmerised and longing to flee. Here was yet another reminder of how life could have been much different, how there could have been - and the life that her children could have had.
"Dragon!" she remembered hearing her brother yell on the day which had stripped her and her family of everything save their people and their status amongst them. Many lives had been lost both in the attack and the years that had followed, all of which could have been saved if Smaug had not come and if, being truly honest, Thror had not been so obsessed with gold.
"Fiery mountain beneath the moon,
Words unspoken, we'll be there soon…"
It was all just wishful thinking, something that would take years to achieve, if someone ever worked up the guts to go. Dis knew very well that her brother would one day set out just as their father had, but she was quietly confident for now that he would not abandon her, not with Fili and Kili as young as they were. Still, she was afraid that when the time came, her brother would not return just as Thrain had not. And it scared her to know that one day she might very well be left alone.
"Haven't seen the back of us yet,
We'll fight as long as we live…"
As long as they lived. As of late, it had not been very long. Children, she reflected, were dying at younger and younger ages, and even adults were passing into the halls of Mahal every day for trivial reasons that would not have existed back in the once great city of Erebor.
The faces of Rhorin and the nameless child floated past as her brother continued to sing, as did many more she had barely met or had grown to know and love. Never before had she felt so homesick and she felt the sudden urge to curl up in the embrace of her husband, either of her brothers, or even her father, someone who could just hold her. But three of those four were gone and the remaining one had grown distant, too caught up in his own issues to handle that of his younger siblings.
A thin trickle of tears began to run down her face as her misery over the past few days, the grief she still held for her husband that had developed months and months ago, and the hopelessness she felt about her whole situation in general and the situation of those around her. Thorin, oblivious to this in the other room, sang on and on, his voice never wavering or dying down even after Dis was sure both her sons were asleep. Yet there was that wistful, longing air hidden in each of the words, a profound grieving for something lost visible to every ear, but unable to be picked up by the mind.
It was all Dis could do to keep from fleeing from the house, running until her legs gave way and her body put itself out of the misery that had now overwhelmed it. As it was, she flew to her room, closing the door to shut herself in with the darkness, alone to deal with her turmoil of emotions, envying the supposed strength of her brother. In doing this, she did not hear the last line of the song, nor the way her brother's resolve broke on the last word, unable to keep it together any longer.
So, what did you think? Review and tell me. (and I know it's a little cliché to use the song but I could think of nothing else).