Shimrîn-kabil is a wonder, but it comes as no surprise to Fíli that the first thing Blackberry does upon waking the morning after their arrival is track down a broom and bucket. She spends several hours cleaning their new living quarters, occasionally directing an arched eyebrow at Fíli and Kíli who jump to follow her instructions without really thinking about it. Much to the amusement of Nori and Dwalin, who both snort and shake their heads as they dedicate their morning to assessing their supplies and checking on the nearby well. The only thing that Nori puts her foot down about, however, is Blackberry's desire to clean the windows of the building they have taken refuge in. Even her washing water is carefully poured into a washer's drain several doors down, the door to the building long broken down due to damp and age.
Fíli would resent the hard work, still exhausted after weeks of hard travel, but for the fact that it gives him something to focus on that is not wondering how they could possibly locate a single book in a place this large. Even the small amount that he had seen as they had searched for somewhere to sleep for the night had shown that Shimrîn-kabil has been constructed on a far larger and grander scale than the great citadel within Erebor. Their journey to Ered Mithrin had been made purely because, for all the wealth of gold and gems buried within Erebor, the Lonely Mountain would one day struggle to contain a population which, at that time, had been growing at an unprecedented rate. There has been too many costly battles since this place was started for such a growth to be a consideration for long, though Erebor was beginning to recover her numbers after the death of Thrôr.
Before Balin betrayed them anyway.
As the afternoon approaches, Fíli watches as Kíli approaches Blackberry with Thorin's journal and an ink block with a pen that he has managed to scrounge up from somewhere.
"I thought you might like this," his brother says to the hobbit, his face flushing. Much to Fíli's amusement. "I had to take the used pages out, incase we need to refer to them, but I know how much you like to take notes and I noticed you didn't have anything, so I thought…" he holds the book out awkwardly again.
Kíli is usually far more composed than this.
"Thank you," Blackberry beams, something in her countenance lightening. "I… I didn't think anyone had noticed."
They have all noticed, Fíli muses a little wryly. When Nori had commented that Blackberry reminds her of Ori she had not been the only one to notice the similarities between the pair. Ori had been thrilled with his assignment to Blackberry, Fíli knows, and he hopes that his friend has been able to find some place to hide as well as a way out of Erebor. This is not the first time that his thoughts have drifted to the people they have left behind, and not the first time that he has hoped that those not caught up in the initial attack have been able to find some way out of the mountain. Nor is he ignorant of the fact that it is unlikely any others made it out. It is a thought he has been careful not to put voice to, it is hard enough to have hope that they will complete the task given to them by Thorin. The sheer scale of this place makes even the first part feel impossible.
Instead he forces his mind away from the scale of their task, the impossible weight that is on Kíli's shoulders and the grief which hovers on the edges of his awareness, waiting to overwhelm him. He turns his eyes onto Kíli, who is blushing furiously as Blackberry wraps her arms around him to give her sincere thanks for the gift of the journal, obviously aware of the value of something that was once their uncle's. It makes something ugly flicker through him for a moment, this sign of closeness between his brother and their reluctant companion that he cannot share in. It seems ridiculous, to be experiencing jealousy over a moment between Blackberry and Kíli, but Fíli knows that is what it is because he has experienced it before. There have been moments in his life, more than he would like to admit, where he has been deeply envious of his brother. They are rare and it will often be years between such a moment, but they happen. How can they not given the differences between them? He adores his younger brother, but there are so many things that Kíli has which he does not and somehow Kíli finding this thing which might bring Blackberry some small measure of happiness chafes at him. Whether that is as something he should have thought of, or simply because he might have wished for something of his uncle's for himself Fíli does not know.
Nor does he really care. He pushes the momentary upset aside, there isn't any time for that given the task they have ahead of them, and instead watches as Blackberry seems to dance away from his brother, clutching her recently acquired book to her chest. Kíli is watching her too, with an all too familiar expression on his face and Fíli rolls his eyes, aware that this is not the time for his brother to form another of his infatuations. That said, it was almost inevitable that it happen, Blackberry is fascinating and he found her so before Erebor fell. Perhaps that is the source of his envy, but Fíli rarely has the patience to sit and soul search for long, and so he turns his attention back to his knife and lets his eyes fall on the other occupant of the room.
To one side, Nori is watching them all indulgently, while Dwalin is nowhere to be seen having slipped out not long after lunch to look through the fisheries and see if they are in any shape to provide a boost to their supplies. They will not get very far if they have to leave the settlement every few days to track down something to hunt. For all their love of the deep places under stone, Fíli's people have worked hard to make their homes as self sufficient as possible, they have known enough betrayal at the hands of the other races, and now apparently their own, to recognise that they cannot place themselves in a position where they are at the mercy of others when it comes to something as simple as grain for bread and ale.
There are fisheries built into the mountain, deep pools that have a fine metal mesh over the entrance and exits so that the fish will remain but fresh water can flow through, water which will have fed the irrigation systems belonging to the small farms growing hardy crops for the people within and caring for the goats and boars which prefer the tough mountain terrain in ways that cows and sheep do not. Those are often found in the grasslands around the mountains, and there had been ample evidence of such places on the way in, but never in the kind of numbers which would easily feed the population in the way that the goats and boars might. In some ways, it is that lack of external hustle and bustle of farm life which has been the most jarring instead of the deathly silence of the abandoned citadel. Fíli has spent enough time on patrols to be almost as familiar with the outer workings of Erebor as he is with the inner. To approach a dwarf settlement and see so much of that destroyed is unnerving, particularly with everything that has happened.
Dwalin's return startles them all, the large dwarf able to move with a surprising amount of silence, dropping a number of freshly caught and cleaned fish onto the table that Blackberry had dedicated a great deal of time that morning cleaning.
"We won't be hard up for fish," he tells them before Blackberry can scold him as her expression clearly states she wishes to. "The waters are clear and flowing well, good stock too. The mushroom caves are in good shape, and there's some green things growing on the outlets of the fish lakes that we might want to get our hobbit to look at later."
Blackberry nods, already reaching for the fish to begin preparing it for their evening meal even though it is still some hours away, her lips moving in the way that Fíli has come to associate with her going through her mental pantry. It is not an unusual sight after the weeks that they have been travelling, although Nori and Dwalin have taken stock of their non-perishable travel rations Blackberry is the one who knows and understands everything that she has been able to forage on the way here. All else considered, the northern plains are not as devoid of life as Fíli had been led to believe.
"How is the city looking?" Nori asks.
Dwalin shrugs.
"About the same as we saw last night," he replies, "lot of scaffolding up that shouldn't be after all this time, gets a lot more rough the further in we go. The basics were completed, but nothing on Erebor. It's still sprawling, and there are marks up from searchers in the past. Not sure what it was that Thorin wanted us to do, but if that book hasn't been found here in the last however many centuries I don't know that we're going to find it in a hurry."
"We'll find it," Nori assures him. "I'm good at finding things that don't want to be found," her eyes are distant, a slight haze to the amethyst that Fíli finds baffling.
"I know," Dwalin nods.
"Shouldn't we start looking now?" Kíli asks. "Surely it won't take Balin long to work out that we've come here?"
"My brother's always been too smart for his own good," Dwalin replies, although he stumbles a little in reference to his relationship with the one who has betrayed them, "but he's never been all that good at making leaps of logic. I'm sure he knows that we'll be looking for something we can use to drive him and his master out of Erebor, but I don't think that he would conclude that we would be off on the same quest that he'd been sent on. He'll assume we're looking for a weapon and allies, not children's stories."
"We've got time," Nori pulls a face, "but we've been out of Erebor for almost three weeks. Dáin will know what happened already, our raven will have reached him long before the army did. Bard of Dale will keep his head down, he's too canny to take a stand against whatever Balin's up to just yet, but he won't cover for us either. The rain will have washed out our scent, but we can't rely on Balin assuming we'll be looking for allies and weapons. The one he's working for will probably know why Thorin would send us looking for fairy stories. We'll be lucky to have a week to search before we have to move on."
"Then a week," Fíli says, "we spend a week looking and move on, there has to be a clue somewhere."
"Maybe the Arkenstone can show us?" Kíli hedges.
"You never made it work before, lad," Dwalin points out. "Not enough to recognise what it was telling you."
Kíli's face twists in an expression of hurt, tinged with anger and Fíli sets aside his knife to go to his brother, setting his hand on Kíli's shoulder and squeezing. Any envy is forgotten in this moment, no matter what else is happening in their lives Fíli would never envy Kíli this weight and this pain. Perhaps, had his brother spoken up this could all have been avoided. Given that message in Thorin's journal, however, Fíli almost feels like this was inevitable.
"Give it a couple of days," he advises, "and then we'll try."
Eyes watch as the white haired dwarf paces and rants, making demands of captive hobbits, captive dwarves, of their orc captors. Upon an anvil is a ring, melted, twisted, useless. Shards of black diamond glitter in the warped gold, not what the fallen servant of their maker had desired.
The eyes watch, the mouth curling in a silent smile.
A.N: Hi! Sorry this has taken so long. I've been in a combination of exam revision and taking hell (maths went fine but physics was a disaster), lack of inspiration due to said exam hell, and then the fact that someone I'm very close to is currently very unwell. There's nothing I can do on that end but wait, and I'm not good at waiting in the realms of things that I can't control. I am a perfectionist and a control freak and there will probably be many, many, MANY bobbles in this since I've basically glanced over it and then thrown it out into the universe for everyone in an attempt to get my head back into the writing place. Because this is how I relieve stress and I am STRESSED with nothing to relieve it. So this is me, shouting into the void and giving you things to try and help myself. Which... ramble. Have fun with that.