Ovila's and Kili's children were going to be beardless.
It was a realisation that Thondi had come to quite abruptly as she watched her daughter and Kili arguing over something in the kitchen six years into their courting. Ovila didn't even have the slightest bit of stubble on her face, which had always been a cause of embarrassment for Thondi, and Kili's beard was a scraggly thing, so he kept it cut to stubble. It would've been better, Thondi observed, if Ovila had decided to pursue Fili instead, because at least Fili had a beard and thicker hair than Kili's thin, dark locks. Ovila, as always, though, had to be difficult and was going to provide Thondi with beardless, Dwarf grandchildren that would no doubt look as though they'd been descended from Elves. It was an embarrassment, because, if Ovila was courting Fili instead, they would produce lovely babes with long, luxurious hair and beards of gold.
Kili's and Ovila's children were going to be beardless and Thondi frowned at the images she had.
"I hope you understand that, in allowing this-" Thondi gestured to the courting couple still arguing over the last cake "-we will have beardless grandchildren," she said to Baltil and Baltil looked up at her from his comfortable spot in his armchair.
"As long as they're happy," Baltil smiled and Thondi snorted and rolled her eyes. "Thondi, they've been courting for six years and I don't think they're giving up on one another anytime soon," Baltil reasoned gently and heard his daughter snort angrily. "You used to joke about them getting married, remember?"
"Beardless grandchildren, Baltil, and you don't even realise the gravity of the situation," Thondi snapped and marched into the kitchen to find Ovila and Kili still bickering. "Haven't you two got work today? Or training? Or hunting?" Thondi asked tiredly as she stepped around them to make tea.
"Kili wants to go hunting, but I don't and Mister Dwalin says that, if he sees either of us in the next week, he'll smack our heads together until they're one," Ovila answered and Thondi was about to ask why Dwalin would do such a thing, but decided against it. "I've got an escort mission tomorrow and Kili has one in three days, but, today, we have nothing to do."
"Then go out and enjoy the weather," Thondi suggested in her most patient tone and Ovila and Kili glanced out the warm sunshine. "Perhaps visit Thorin and Dis in the forge, or Balin and Ori at the Academy, or Bofur and Bifur at their stall," Thondi continued. "I don't care, just get out of my kitchen!"
A moment of silence passed and Ovila sighed. "Mother, if you wanted us to leave, you should've just said so instead of being so rude," she stated with a sly smirk and Thondi eyes narrowed as the girl laughed, grabbed Kili's hand, and left the kitchen. "Father, we're going out, do you want anything?" Ovila asked Baltil and poked her head into the family room where he was sat.
"No, thank you, firecracker," Baltil smiled tiredly and Ovila went over to him and pressed a kiss against his temple. "Just have a nice time and try not to get into too much trouble - you are sixty-eight now."
"Trouble just finds me, Father," Ovila retorted, laughing, and Baltil's gaze flickered to Kili, who was leaning against the doorframe and waiting for her with a surprisingly patient.
They argued like cats and dogs on a good day (on a bad day, people were usually running for cover), but they stuck firmly together and denied those that claimed they wouldn't stick together. Their courting braids were still in their hair, though rather frayed by now, and that in itself was an achievement. The longer the braid stayed in the hair, the longer the courtship, or so the belief was. Baltil remembered that his and Thondi's braids had stayed in their hair for ten years, right up until their wedding when the clasps on the braids were removed from the hair and fastened together to signify their union. So, if the superstition was true, Ovila and Kili were going to be together for a long while and that thought, despite the potential for beardless grandchildren, made him smile.
"Father? Are you alright? You've gone off into one of your little daydreams," Ovila frowned worriedly, laying a hand against Baltil's whiskered cheek, and he smiled at her.
"Oh, I'm fine, just an old man lost in his thoughts," Baltil chuckled and patted her hand. "You two go now, before your mother gets even more annoyed that you're wasting the sunshine."
"She hates it when I'm in the sun, because I get sunburned so easily," Ovila countered, but she was smiling and she kissed his forehead a final time. "Alright, I'll be back later tonight," she promised and left with Kili.
"Look after her," Baltil added to Kili's back and Kili turned.
"I would if she'd let me, Mister Baltil," he laughed and Ovila swatted him across the back of the head. "When are Chalrim, Hilda, and the children getting back? I think Fili's missing his mini wife."
Ovila's giggles made Baltil smile as she shut the door behind herself and Kili and Baltil looked at the window. They walked past with their hands linked and smiles on their faces. He was happy that his daughter was happy and had found someone that accepted all of who she was. He had never thought it'd be Kili, perhaps sweet little Ori, or even steadfast Fili, but not impulsive Kili that she fought with so viciously as a child. It was Kili and she was happy and Baltil had an inkling that she loved him, even if she hadn't admitted it yet. Kili loved her, Baltil was sure of that after the boy had fought those two rangers in defence of her. A smile tugged at Baltil's lips as his eyes fell closed and he sunk heavily into his armchair.
The black cloth was pinned to the door with a long dagger with a worn, leather hilt and sharp, mean looking blade. It was hardly the traditional method of letting the city know of the death that'd occurred in the family. The cloth was usually pinned to the door with simple nails, but Ovila had clearly had a part in it and it was her silent, unsubtle way of telling everyone to stay away.
The usually rambunctious, loud house stood unsettlingly silent and still for the moment and no one quite wanted to approach. It was customary for neighbours and friends to go to the house and offer their respects and condolences with an offer to provide anything they could to be of help. It was their way of showing that they were there for those who had lost and wanted to aid and help them in any way they could.
It was the knife, though, and most looked at it and felt uncertainty turn their stomachs. It was obviously well taken care of and, if she saw fit to abandon that one for the moment, they didn't like to think what others she had at her disposal. Few would brave going into a house they were obviously unwelcome in and few would disturb a mourning family that clearly wished to be left alone. Kili and Fili were some of those few and they'd dragged little Ori into it, as they always did.
"Ovila needs us," Fili said firmly to the scholar and Ori gulped, but nodded. "Mister Baltil's - " Fili faltered slightly, remembering the kind butcher that always gave them free produce, and his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he gulped. "Mister Baltil's dead and Ovila and her family need to know they aren't alone, even if they don't want anyone there for the moment."
"Come on," Kili urged with a deep frown on his face and he didn't even bother knocking. He opened the door, as he was wont to do in recent years, and strode in. "Ovila? Calim? Miss Thondi?" he called and Calim stepped out of the kitchen. He looked uncharacteristically rumpled, his hair and beard knotted and tangled and left to fall messily down his back and chest and his clothes looked slept in. "We're here to pay our respects," Kili said firmly, but quietly and Calim's lips tugged upwards at the corners slightly.
"Most with respect would knock," he replied gruffly and rubbed a hand down his face. "Mother and Ovila are sleeping," he stated tiredly with a heavy sigh and the other three males shuffled their feet slightly. "They haven't slept since it happened."
"Mother will be over later and Thorin too," Fili offered softly and Calim nodded. "We're not much of cooks, but we can help in other ways."
"I can cook," Ori stated and Fili and Kili looked at him with surprise. "You should rest, Calim, and we'll take care of things."
"No-"
"You heard the scholar, go," Kili interrupted with his usual grin, but it lacked its warmth and ease and Calim looked at the three in silence for a long while.
Calim had known Fili, Kili, and Ori for as long as they had known Ovila and that was a good many years. He called them his friends, just as he knew he was counted amongst theirs, but he was well aware that they were there for their Ovila. His own friends had dropped by briefly the previous day, a few hours after the cloth had been stabbed into the door, and had stayed for barely an hour. He knew that they were uncomfortable with Thondi's sobs from her room and Ovila's rhythmic sharpening of her weapons on the kitchen table, but Fili, Kili, and Ori were there and they were going to help whether he, or anyone else, liked it or not.
"Thank you," Calim said simply and gratefully made his way to his room.
Fili went to chop wood for the fire from the logs in the garden, Kili started on the cleaning, and Ori began to cook. They worked in silence, for the most part, but Kili did have a few, muttered oaths when he couldn't find where things went or nearly broke something. Ori concentrated solely on his cooking and made sure the stew had everything it needed in it to make it perfect. Fili was in charge of lighting the fires when the firewood was cut and ready and Kili glared when his brother managed to spill coal dust all over the newly swept floor.
The hours passed rather quickly when they were doing something and they worked as quietly as possible, fearful of waking those that slept. They would need their rest, the three males knew, as the burial was the next day and no one was looking forward to that. Kili shifted uncomfortably at the thought of the burial, as he had been too young to remember his own father's burial and just had vague recollections of crying as the stone lid was slid onto his father's tomb. Fili had held his hand, he remembered that much, and Dis had carefully put braids into his hair the morning of the burial.
"Oh," a soft voice brought all three Dwarves' attention to the kitchen doorway and Thondi stood there. She didn't really look like Thondi with her blonde hair falling messily around her pale, drawn face and her hazel eyes red rimmed and underlined with dark marks. "Would you boys like a cup of tea?" she asked and the soft voice didn't sound right coming from the fierce Dwarf woman that usually made all three cower with a look.
"I'll get it," Fili murmured and Kili stood to guide Thondi to a seat. "Ori's made some stew, if you'd like some, Miss Thondi, and Mother and Thorin will be here soon," Fili offered and Thondi sat down and gave a small nice.
"That'd be lovely, thank you," she sounded distracted, as though she wasn't really listening to what they were saying, and she was shivering slightly. "It smells lovely, Ori," she added distantly and Kili draped a blanket over her shoulders. "Thank you."
"Anything we can do to help," Kili promised and Thondi nodded. "I'll go to the shops before they close and get a few things," he stated and Fili nodded his agreement. "Tell Ovila if she wakes up when I'm gone."
"Ovila's gone," Thondi muttered and her eyes filled with tears as her bottom lip trembled. "Her bed's empty."
"When? Where did she go? Calim said she was asleep!" Kili fired out rapidly, even as he ran down the hall to Ovila's room and threw open the door.
Sure enough, the bed was empty, still made, but Ovila's weapons were still hanging from the handles on the wardrobe and were littered over her trunk and her boots were still stood neatly at the end of her bed. The window was firmly shut and the wardrobe was closed. The only thing missing was Ovila and it was very strange.
"Ovila?" Kili called cautiously and silence met him. He frowned at the empty room and took a step inside.
Ovila hadn't gone past Kili or the others and Calim had been sure she was asleep, so she had to be in here and he just had to find her. He was sure she hadn't left her room and she couldn't close the window from the outside, which meant she had to be in there somewhere. He checked the wardrobe, the trunk, behind the curtains, and, finally, beneath the bed.
There, curled into an impossibly small ball, was Ovila and she was twining a lock of her hair around her fingers over and over again. Kili wriggled under the bed with her and laid on his back beside her small, curled up form. She didn't look right, much like her mother hadn't, and seemed unbelievably delicate. Her hazel eyes were red rimmed from tears, which had dried on her pale cheeks, and her gaze was stuck firmly on her hair.
"I used to hide under the bed when I was a kid," Kili said quietly and Ovila's fingers paused in their movements briefly. "Whenever I was in trouble, or was angry with Fili or my mother or Uncle Thorin, I'd hide under the bed, sometimes for hours," he continued and her eyes flickered up to him.
"I don't want to come out yet," her voice was hoarse and cracked and it shook slightly, but Kili just nodded and slid his folded hands beneath his head.
"Okay."
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