XVII. Show me sunset and I won't forget/That I am one of two planets dancing/I am part of two planets dancing/.../And life is so much dark and light/When day cannot exist without a night/And you are not separate from me/I am a heart that's full of life

On an ill feeling Azog urged them faster, grabbing the she-dwarf and racing the many leagues back to their camp; he did not let his warg rest, not during that day and not during the night. In the earliest hours of dawn he finally returned to camp, and even before he lept off his warg he heard Calla scream.

The dwarf woman, who had been weeping off and on since she'd been taken, was surprised at the scream for it was not the sound of an orc. She knew she had been taken to help someone give birth, only she had expected an orc – wondering if there were any female orcs, and if they'd be as hideous as their men – an orc was not the sight she was met with when the pale orc shoved her into the tent; instead she met with a very pretty young woman who was obviously in a great deal of pain.

Azog could smell the blood, smell Calla's blood, as she lay crying and he looked to the orc he left her with.

"She complained this morning of feeling strange, it wasn't until near supper we realized it was the pains. She's been screaming all night," the orc told Azog, not knowing what to do for her.

Azog knelt at her side and looked down at her, seeing the tears falling freely into her hair as she stared up at him relieved he had returned. He turned to Yazneg when she cried out again. "Tell the dwarf to do something," he ordered harshly, honestly hating the child for paining Calla so greatly, before turning back to her.

"Help her," Yazneg told the dwarf woman.

She looked at the orc incredulously before he grabbed his dagger and held it to her throat, and then she hastily moved between the young woman's legs. The problem was clear immediately, the walls of the her womanhood had stretched to push the baby out only the head was larger than a normal babe's and her walls could not stretch anymore without tearing. The poor thing, she thought looking up at the girl, seeing the pale orc with a large hand on her head as she looked up at him, what horrors have been dealt her and will continue to be given. "This will hurt you greatly," she warned her.

Calla looked up at the dwarf, her entirely body engulfed in the flames that came from her womb. She nodded before taking a breath and bracing herself, but she could never have prepared to feel as though she were literally torn apart. Azog was forced to listen to her screams, the smell of blood stronger in his nose, as the orc was born. Even after the dwarf had the orc in her arms Calla continued to cry, the pain lingering and throbbing in her very soul; and she wished for death in that moment, to come and bring her peace so as not to hurt like this any longer. Death did not come, nor did the blackness of unconsciousness – she lay unable to move as pain coursed through ever fiber of her being, feeling the blood leaking from her and praying her life would drain with it. And so she stayed, tears unceasing as wave after wave of agony drowned her; the only thing keeping her afloat on the sea of torment was a large pale hand stroking her hair.

"Please," she begged looking up at him, shocking the dwarf with her use of the orc's dark tongue.

Azog nodded understanding before ordering Yazneg, and moments later he returned with a cup filled with a dark liquid that Azog poured into her mouth; and in seconds she was finally given peace.

…

It was the ugliest thing she had ever seen; skin wrinkled from just being born, leathery skin a sickly pale color, eyes as pale and unnerving as its father's, its nose flattened like an animal, its mouth deformed as though it were a beast with a muzzle. She could not believe that this creature had been inside the pretty woman, it now being obvious its father was the pale orc but even he did not look so awful as this. The little orc could barely fit in her arms, looking more like a small toddler than a baby; she had literally had to get her hands inside her womanhood to pull the baby out, having to cut her to do it.

She nearly shrunk back when she looked at the pale orc to see him glaring at her dangerously.

"How badly did she hurt her?" Azog asked Yazneg, having been watching the dwarf as she looked at his son in horror and disgust.

Yazneg took his own dark eyes from the dwarf. "She took a knife to her," he answered, having wished to snap the dwarf's neck the moment she asked for his dagger.

With a growl Azog advanced on her, shoving her aside and sending her crashing into Yazneg, before he looked to see what she had done to Calla. He did not care that the dwarf had been holding his son, he did not care that this may have been the only way for his son to have been born without dying first – he did not care – all he cared about was Calla, her screams and her tears and her pleads caused by the orc. He got to his feet. "Do not let her die," he ordered, his hand wrapped tight around Yazneg's throat squeezing before he released him; the threat that if she was not still alive when he returned very clear. Yazneg wondered where Azog would stop if she did die, would killing him be enough, or would he tear them all apart – starting first with his son.

Azog ran to his warg and spurred him quickly away from the camp, heading toward where he first met her. It took him a day to reach her desolated village, having not stopped even a moment to rest. And he lept from the warg, who laid down heaving, and made for the trees; he searched for the leaves, not knowing where she had found them, and he stumbled upon only a small patch of them by sheer goodwill. In fear of Azog's mood the weary warg began the long run back to the tent, when they were a league away his heart gave out and he fell to the ground dead and unmoving. Azog roared in fury before getting to his feet and running toward the camp, being met by an orc who'd seen him, and he threw the orc to the ground and kicked the warg into motion.

…

Calla had woken to Azog being gone, her body aching in a dull coldness, and the babe screaming for food. She leaned against Daisy's back, who hadn't left her side since she first felt strange, and held the orc as the dwarf had told her and let it suckle her breasts. "What is your name?" Calla had asked her when he first fed.

"I am Nali," she answered, watching the longer the girl held the orc the more tired she became, until finally she herself had to hold the orc to her breast.

"What is your name?"

The young woman looked at her with weary blue eyes and a pale face, worrying Nali that she would not live many days longer. "Calla, my mother's favorite flower," she answered, and even exhausted her voice was still sweet and kind.

Nali looked up warily when the orc that spoke the common tongue returned to the tent, trying to get Calla to eat only for her to turn away.

"They will not hurt you," Calla told her.

She looked at the girl in disbelief. "They are orcs, you more than any should know how they will hurt me," she said taking the little orc and laying it down on Calla's lap.

Calla placed her small hand on his head, feeling his breaths warm against her skin as he fell asleep. "I bade them not even to touch you, no harm will come to you."

Nali looked at her, hearing the finality and certainty in her voice. "The pale orc," she said softly, "is he the leader."

Calla took a deep breath, finding that her eyes had fallen closed. "I supposed you could consider him their king," she answered.

It was then Nali understood, in that manner Calla was their queen therefore the orcs abided her word; at least, as much as she could understood for these were things she did not know about orcs – they did not seem so uncivilized, just cruel. "My brother is a king," she told Calla, who looked at her in surprise. "Well, my husband's brother is. He is the king of Durin's folk."

Calla smiled lazily. "Do you have children?"

"Oh yes, a son, Farin. He has children of his own, Fundin and Groin," Nali answered, taking a liking to the kind girl – thinking it horrid the sorrows that had befallen her and wishing there were something she could do help her. Calla was smiling no longer, instead she was looking down at the sleeping the little orc on her lap who Daisy sniffed curiously.

"Do you love your son?" she asked softly.

Nali looked at her. "Of course, Farin is my greatest joy as are his children."

Calla looked up at her, her eyes big and filling with tears. "Does it make me a bad person that I do not love mine?" she asked, her voice strained with her tears.

"Oh, no of course not," Nali soothed placing a hand on her shoulder gently. "Shh, it's okay, you'll hurt herself." She did not wish for Calla to bleed through the rags, for the bleeding had lessened until it had almost stopped. "You just need time, when you don't hurt so much."

Calla nodded as she sniffed, trying to stop crying for it hurt her. It was then, seeing the young woman crying over her monster of a baby, that Nali swore to herself she would save her; in some way, at some time, she would save her from this.

Two days Azog had been gone, and on the day he returned Calla lay so still they all feared she would die very soon; her skin pale, her breathing heavy. Nali did not know what to do with the leaves the pale orc handed her.

"You chew them," Yazneg translated, not even he knew what they were. "And then you put it on the wound."

Nali did as she was told, hearing Calla gasp and whimper when she placed the chewed leaves. It was three days, after Calla regained a little of her strength that new leaves were chewed and placed on her, and then a day after the wound was no more than a small scar just barely visible if looking directly at her womanhood. It was not until Calla sat up on her own, holding the orc in her arms as he fed – his appetite large and her milk plentiful – when she began eating, when she began to love her son, when she first stood on shaky legs, did Nali begin to grow worried. She was of no use any longer, for now Calla had to nurse her son and eat her own food and she would be well and good. And now Nali sat nervously waiting for the orc to come kill her, no longer believing in Calla's certainty they would not kill her simply because she said so.

"You should take her back," Calla said, holding her son in the crook of her arm as he suckled a nipple, and with her other hand she pet Daisy who was getting closer to her own birthing.

Azog gave a grumble before casting the dwarf a dark look, wishing to kill her and be done with it. He left Calla a moment later, pressing his mouth to her forehead before standing. Minutes later he had returned, and Calla looked up at surprise at seeing the orc Azog had brought; knowing he was the cruelest. And it was proven when he grabbed Nali by the hair and yanked her out of the tent making her cry out in pain and fear. Azog looked down at Calla waiting, wondering what she would do to ensure the dwarf would live.

She laid her son against Daisy before righting her dress and brushing past him as she left the tent. "Take her to the main road, near a village, and leave her. You will not harm her in away way, whether to kill or rape," Calla told him sternly, and he turned to her with daring eyes.

"But of course," he said mockingly giving a small bow.

Calla's eyes hardened and her mouth set in a firm line. "Lay a hand on her and die," she warned lowly, feeling the eyes of all the orcs on them but her will did not flee her; instead, it strengthened her, for she had come to like the dwarf who had helped and befriended her.

The orc sneered, tightening his fist in the dwarf's hair making her whimper as several strands tore loose. "Will you kill me?" he asked, though his smile wilted at the sight of Azog standing behind her. But in the end it was the sweet smile on Calla's own lips that made him falter.

"No," she said calmly, her voice still kind though her eyes were anything but. "I will have you bound, hands and feet, and whipped until you scream every day for years. You will be fed to ensure you live as long as I wish for you to, and I will refuse every orc in this pack from raping their women until their desires have grown so large they will take turns settling for fucking you. I will have you begging me to kill you, and only when my son is grown will I finally show you mercy. And he will tear your heart out so quickly you will see him holding it in his hand before you are dead." Not a single noise save the wind was heard throughout the camp, her voice had turned dark and risen until she was yelling powerfully; and she stood staring the orc down breathing deeply.

The dwarf had not known a single word Calla had said, but she knew the woman spoke to keep her from getting hurt; and seeing her face darkened with rage, hearing her once sweet voice low and dangerous, Nali could see why the orcs listened to her – she was their queen. And it was proven moments later when the first orc, who was Yazneg, got down on one knee and bowed his head, and then as all the other orcs followed suit even the one holding her hair. They were giving her, and Azog, the greatest act of respect saved for only the highest of kings of all of Middle Earth – an act that many no longer performed, and yet the orcs were bowing and it baffled her

Calla looked up at Azog questioningly though he did no more than smile. When they got their feet they were looking at her with different eyes, she was not just a sweet woman, she was their leader's mate and the mother of his sire; she had a power they hadn't realized, until that moment.

Nali looked back to Calla when the orc pulled her in front of him on his warg, seeing her standing small and proud beside her pale orc as she watched them disappear. The orc did not dare defy her, not any longer for her words had frightened him, and in two days he dropped the dwarf near a village before leaving her. She did not watch the orc go, she ran as quickly as her short legs could to the village, sucking in the air of freedom and life. Within days word was sent to her husband who she had been traveling with, who was in a nearby village searching for his wife, and they were reunited.

"How is this possible?" Borin said as he clung to her, thinking he would never again look upon her face.

Nali looked at him. "There was a woman with a pack of orcs, they took me to help her give birth."

"Orcs," he moaned. "How have they hurt you?" he asked, for orcs pillaged and raped and killed; it was a miracle his wife was alive, one he would always be grateful to.

"They did not," she told him, tears pouring out of her eyes. "The woman, Calla, oh she was barely even twenty. She forbade them from hurting me, she even stood down the orc who brought me back. We have to help her."

"And we will," he swore, for he was now indebted to the woman for keeping his wife safe. "We will return to our home and tell my brother, and gather an army to save her." And that was exactly what they did.

The lyrics are two parts of the song Two Planets by Bat For Lashes - and if you look closely, the way I used it is about her son and how he's half of her.

A little fun fact about who I made Nali: her husband is Borin, and his son Farin is the father of Fundin (father of Balin and Dwalin) and Groin (father of Oin and Gloin); and he is the brother of Nain II, who is the grandfather of Thror. However, where I'm placing the time of the story, it will be Nain's son Dain who goes after the orcs. Also, that will be a few years from now, so it won't be happening too soon. Just as a little factoid, if all that made any sense.