authors note: this one is a little shorter than the last and not quite as long as I'd like. Please review and let me know what you think!
Without Smaug to keep her company or amuse her with his foreign, draconian idiosyncrasies, Nalene was bored.
Nalene began organizing the jewels, pushing the rubies one way, the silver that way, the emeralds this way, and all cups, goblets, or anything vaguely reminiscent of a liquid container another way. The plates were stacked by size, the stacks organized from most to least favorite, and the gold coins she laid out in rows from biggest to smallest. Every now and then she'd find a ring, and if she liked it enough she'd toss off the one she was currently wearing and fit the new one onto the open rings she especially was drawn too. When she wore the rings they pulled all the attention away her bandages that she hated to look at- they were all bloodied and stained and made her face scrunch up in disgust.
Sometimes when she found a particularly beautiful trinket or bauble she understood- just for a second- the appeal treasure held to Smaug. Then she'd remember that Smaug was insane, and the sentiment was lost until she found another beautiful jewel.
At the moment she wore seven rings, but one of them was a little too big for her finger, and she contemplated finding a replacement for it. Nalene wiggled her fingers with a hum, her eyes tracing over the sharp edges and cold glint of gems and gold. A frown graced her face as she raised her hand towards her face, inspecting her middle finger's ornament.
It was boring. A simple gold band with a shaped sapphire. It didn't match the others at all. Unimpressed and not sure why she'd picked it up hours before, Nalene pulled it off and tossed it over her shoulder, enjoying the far off clink of it bouncing off the rest of the treasure.
Unconsciously, her gaze shifted towards Smaug. Only the top ridges of his spine crested through the mounds of gold he'd burrowed into. Still asleep, then, Nalene thought, lips pursing.
She turned away, jaw tightening as she dismissed the concern that had begun to seep through her. Who cared what Smaug did. She needed a new ring.
Her hunt for a worthy replacement lasted what must have been hours. The mounds of gold were plentiful, obviously, and sometimes Nalene would come across some bizarre trinket that she simply could not figure out- did it have a purpose, what had it's creator been thinking?- and the majority of the treasure she pushed out of the way. So much of it was generic, common-placed in the sea of riches.
Every now and then something would catch her eye, a particularly detailed scepter, a huge gem, and those she would add to her budding collection. Once she even stumbled across what she suspected had been the top of the old throne.
But rings, those were what Nalene was most interested in. Sure, none of the rings she came across were ugly or of poor craft, but very few were enchanting enough to be deemed worthy. Her father had worn rings, sometimes three- four on especially important days when he needed to impress- and Nalene remembered them all fairly well- they'd been family heirlooms, after all.
But family heirloom or not, the memory of her father's rings was dwarfed by what lay before her now. Even her necklace's appeal had dulled. Her hand came to rest against her collarbone, feeling the smooth metal resting there and curling into a fist around it.
A sort of eye-twitching anger pulled her eyes back towards her right where Smaug rested. It was his fault. She could have lived the rest of her life in Dale thinking her necklace her finest possession, cherishing it forever. But it's meaning had been tainted now- now it wasn't her father's loving gift, it was Smaug's fake heirloom. Again Nalene suddenly wanted to tear it off, throw it at Smaug maybe, but the logical portion of her mind told her not to.
She was half-certain the thing was cursed. It killed one princess all those years ago, nearly killed her, and then decided to save her, tossing her into this slowly developing balance of life and death. Nalene's faith in Smaug's word was wavering at best. She didn't doubt that if he became angry enough he would forget his promise, and it wouldn't be until he had cooled down, and her body was pile of ashes, that he'd recall that he wasn't supposed to kill her.
Hopefully the appeal of possessing a princess would prevent that from happening. Or maybe he'd suddenly grow a conscious.
Still... she looked down, scratching at her nuckles, eyes flickering pensively towards the dragon every few seconds. He'd assured her of it twice now, and even when she'd made him mad the worst he'd done was grab her arms...
He made no sense at all.
She remembered him curling around her like a wall of scales and saying that nothing drove dragons mad but gold. Well Smaug had enough gold to drown in, so that was hardly reassuring. He probably was crazy. Just when he started to appear stable- BAM! He did something that very clearly convinced her he was the farthest from stable or safe or nice. Maybe when he slept he seemed peaceful, but when he was awake the man- the dragon- his anger was unpredictable. How else could she explain his mood swings and apparent paranoia.
Her mind drifted back towards the other day, when he'd blown up on her, yelling about some 'unexpected dangers' or something. She still hadn't made sense of that, but this didn't exactly surprise her.
But sometimes he was nice- nicer, at least. Sometimes when he brought her food he would drop the satchel or barrel or whatever it happened to be that time right in front of her, making her yelp and jump from her skin. Then he'd laugh, sauntering off to return to his sleep. At first it'd been annoying, and knowing how quiety he could sneak up on her made her paranoid and uneasy, always looking over her shoulder and making sure he wasn't lurking nearby. As time went by that changed, and it surprised them both. Maybe a week in, she stared adjusting, and instead of scowling or eyeing him suspiciously, one day she laughed back. It'd just been some variation of a smile and an amused huff, but it'd stopped Smaug in his tracks. He'd blinked at her, taken aback, and at his expression her laughter had died quickly, afraid he'd take her giggle as an offense. But then he'd returned the smile with something uncharacteristically not-malicious.
Or there was the time he'd startled her one day. She'd been eating the remnants of the day before's dinner, and out of nowhere his giant head had slammed into the ground beside her, making her shriek and drop her food. Right when she'd intended to glare and scoot away spoke. "I think my field mouse comparison was more apt that I originally realized. When you eat you appear strikingly similar, small and," his eyes had narrowed in thought, and he'd hesitated for a moment before finishing, "...fragile."
Nalene was quite certain that fragile equated with weak and unworthy in Smaug's book, but the way he said it wasn't as scathing as it ought to have been. In fact she'd been considering it a compliment- or at least a non-derogatory statement- when he'd ruined it by telling her that her hair was also similar to a mouse's.
She'd been horrified, and suddenly mouse did not seem kind at all. Mouse hair? She'd thought, her hair? Like a mouse's?
Mouse hair. Nalene shuddered just thinking about it. It was a healthy brown. Hardly resembling a rat or mouse. Just remembering it gave her the compulsion to reach up and double check that her hair was not, in fact, mouse-like. She combed fingers through the the messy mane, double-checking the coloring.
Had anyone in Dale told her that she might have slapped them. She'd of slapped them if they were unimportant enough, like a spiteful servant. If it'd been a man she'd have stomped his toes and kicked his shins during a dace, and if it'd been a girl- Valar pray for that girl- Nalen would have done her best to make the brave girl miserable until her outrage died out. Which admittedly wouldn't take long- one insult wouldn't keep her from believing in her beauty for too long.
But that had been then, and this was now. Smaug was no petty girl or rude man, and under no circumstances would she ever slap him. In fact, if Nalene remembered right, she'd been closer to tears than violence. How odd. She must have been very tired.
Still, even taking all this into consideration, Nalene wouldn't mind too much- that is, she wouldn't be that upset- if Smaug woke up soon. And to her unease, she couldn't even pretend this was because she needed someting from him. She had plenty of food, water...Nalene hadn't realized it as it happened, but the only way to reason it all out is that she must have been talking to Smaug more than she'd thought, or at the minimum, interacting with him, constantly. Things felt very peculiar without him lurking nearby.
If Nalene had to guess the time- and she did, because she hadn't thought to keep track of it and dragons had obscured senses of time, but the only dragon around also happened be asleep and could not offer her the date and time- Nalene would estimate Dale had burned about two or three weeks ago.
On one hand, this meant little. She had nowhere to go and nothing to do. On the other hand, it meant quite a lot. Nalene had survived for three weeks after the attack on Erebor and Dale, something very few could say. Maybe if she could manage three she could manage more, she thought, and it gave her hope.
She was perched on her usual walkway, high enough above the floor that the heat emanating off Smaug was diminished just slightly. She leaned against a wall and idly picked at her hands. The once off-white bandages were now a collage of putrid yellows, browns and reds. They looked disgusting enough that up till this point Nalene had done her best to simply ignore them. But Nalene was bored and alone, so a morbid sort of curiosity had her eyeing the bandages with a new interest. The cuts only really hurt when she wasn't careful with her hands- then she'd feel a slightly exaggerated pulse in her palms and a cruel sting. It was irritating and uncomfortable, and if she was at home she'd have shown her father and demanded a doctor, but since she was here, not at home, the majority of her concern for the cuts on her hands was overshadowed by the lingering threat of Smaug's moods.
Untying the knots in the bandage were a hassle, and Nalene's face screwed in a determined grimace as she picked away at the stained cloth. Slowly the knot came undone, and she began peeling back the bandage, pulling up bits of healing skin with it. She had it halfway off before she gagged and had to stop.
The sight of red, irritated skin and weird...goo leaking from her hands- Nalene shuddered, and quickly recovered the bandage. Disgusting. She couldn't wait for her hands to finally heal.
Nalene had amassed three massive stacks of gold plates, thirty three chained bracelets, seven bejeweled swords, eight acceptable rings, two tiaras, and sixteen strange trinkets that were ostentatious enough to make her smile when it became dead silent in the cavern.
The sound of her own breaths was amplified in the silence as Nalene registered the sudden absence of Smaug's steady, rhythmic breaths.
