Author's Note: Guyses, thank you so so so much for your lovely comments and follows and favorites, you always make my day and make me happy. Those of you who read my other story, "The Things I Would Do For You", I'm working on it, big promise. I just want to get this right, for you :)

Ok, this one is short, but it's important and strange.

Enjoy!


"Arkenstone". Pencil sketch on copying paper – Dís' apartment, evening

Thorin was trembling. Well, he wasn't really trembling, his hands were as precise as ever, but there was a tremor, a flutter in his stomach, like he was on the brink of falling unconscious. It wasn't vertigo, and it wasn't nausea either. It was deep and utter terror.

How could he have been so stupid, he'd followed the man through half of Manhattan, only to walk away from him after a short conversation – if you could even call their exchange that. He didn't know his name, he didn't know where he lived or anything else through which he could contact him. And it made Thorin sick.

He took a deep breath and gripped his pencil tighter, before letting his gaze sweep over the familiar layout of Dís' apartment. Neither she nor the boys were home, but he always kept a spare key in his envelope, in case he needed shelter. Or just the comfort of a home, even if it wasn't his. And right now he would have given everything for one of his sister's famous bear-hugs.

Thorin didn't know why he was feeling like this. Sure, the man had been beautiful, with his long, elegant limbs and stunning, bright blue eyes. When he'd finally had the opportunity to see his face in more proximity, its clear symmetry had irrevocably burned itself into Thorin's mind. But even though he'd afterwards tried to sketch him, something was missing, and he threw the drawings away, disgusted by their insufficiency. It frustrated him so much, his mind was buzzing with built-up energy, blocking his sight with which he usually perceived things, and it prevented him from drawing anything.

Or, well, it prevented him from drawing things he saw right now. Feeling an idea humming in his fingers, he grabbed a paper. Maybe it was time for some chaos? It had been some time since he'd done more abstract things. He'd about kill for a piece of charcoal right now, but the pencil had to suffice.

He started with a random set of lines to calm himself and added a sweeping ribbon-like symbol that remotely resembled a tree trunk with wild, interwoven roots tangled at the bottom of the page. A thought shot through his mind and colours flashed, but he had to suppress those images. He didn't have watercolours, so black and grey had to suffice.

It was like switching something in his brain off. Maybe meditation felt a bit like this. His thoughts slowly calmed and fell to the bottom of his mind like feathers, until there was nothing more than the scraping sound of his pencil on the paper, and somewhere also his breathing and heartbeat. He was alone, and he was at peace. It was a cold but beautiful feeling. He felt like a shell, a medium through which ideas, images and impressions seeped. They were being filtered by his artistic mind and eventually poured onto the paper like his very blood.

After some time he realised that his eyes were closed, but this didn't keep him back, actually it rather encouraged him to be wilder in his movements.

Thorin soon lost himself in the images swirling in his head. Even though there were no colours – only black and white and all those beautiful hues in between, glittering coal and clouds and wolf-fur – there was a whole flood of symbols. Shards, ribbons, ropes, bubbles and loops. Textures far more vivid than anything he'd ever seen. Sand-rubble, foxtail, velour, veined leaves, wetted silk and-and-and-… Thorin searched, tried to grasp one simple texture that was so vivid in his mind, soft and flowing, living and lush; he desperately hunted for it, almost feeling it slip through his fingers, more gentle than sand, and more solid than water, something perfect merged from both.

Hair! It was hair, but Thorin was so far gone into his imagination that he didn't realise where he'd seen it, who it belonged to and what it meant to him. He combed it with his pencil, weaving oceans of pearls into it, spreading it over bands of shining metal and twisting it around columns of delicate coral structure. Shapes and forms complemented each other perfectly into something grander, more divine than their own simplicity.

When Thorin's pencil came to a halt – without so much as a conscious thought or order – he hesitated for long seconds. It had been a very long time since he'd experienced a rush of images like this, and he feared its outcome. The last time … He didn't like to think about it. There had been … consequences. But whatever he had just created, he felt its glow through his whole arm, spreading and piercing through his chest into his heart, or where his soul might sit. It was a heavenly feeling, one he'd given up on feeling for long, long years. The last time he'd given into the flood of images, he didn't experience this security, this certainty of … success? It might as well be. He just knew this drawing was as perfect as his means allowed.

He took a deep breath and shifted his grip on his pencil. Now or never. He had to see it, before he got his hopes up. And when he finally opened his eyes, blue eyes like cloudless skies stared back at him.

Well, that wasn't entirely true, of course, because there was no blue, only gentle grey. But those were the stranger's eyes, hidden behind shapes and lines as they might be, it was his gaze. The skin over his cheekbones glittered like glass shards and cracked open like bark to reveal rippling texture like grasslands and treetops. And the hair spread like sunrays framed his delicate yet sharp face in gentle waves.

Thorin blinked, confused, before he realised that his sight was blurring because of the tears in his eyes. Tears of joy, mostly, but of anger too. Because he understood now that the man he'd seen in Central Park and followed across Manhattan – only to turn his back on him in embarrassment – was his Arkenstone. And he'd lost him in the anonymous ocean of nameless faces like a jewel in the depths of a bottomless well.


Author's Note: So, what do you think? :)