nadad = brother
nana = sister
nan'ith = little sister
+l+
Later that day, the town healer, Kram, comes to check on Emery. During the examination, she - along with her blanket - is on the table. Fili and Kili sit on the couch, impatient to hear how their new friend is doing. Dis sits in the armchair sewing repairs into old clothes, and Thorin is leaning against the wall behind her, smoking his pipe. Kram sits on a stool beside the table and gently prods her leg and moves it around, trying to gauge the progress of her injury's recovery by feel and response. Attempting to be helpful, she mostly stays quiet and whimpers when something hurts. Her checkup goes pretty quickly, and Kram declares that she is already getting better. Fili and Kili cheer and hop off the couch, though Fili seems less excited - probably because he remembers that the sooner she recovers, the sooner she has to leave. Kili, however, is unperturbed.
"You hear that, Lassie?" he says to her excitedly, leaning over the table to pet her. "You're getting better! You'll be running around in no time!" Fili says nothing, but joins his brother in petting her head. Emery licks his face in an effort to cheer him up. It works, and he giggles. Her foot jerks as his fingers scratch an itchy spot behind her right ear, and he and Kili both burst into a giggling fit.
Nora notices Kram talking to Thorin quietly in the corner, expressions of concern on both of their faces. She wonders briefly what they're discussing, but pushes those thoughts aside in favor of entertaining the boys and scarfing her food.
+l+
After dinner is consumed and the dwarflings are sent to bed, Emery is situated once more under the table. Thorin and Dis are sitting on the couch and armchair, respectively, talking quietly. She hears the tone of the conversation change, and her ears perk up.
"But what exactly did Kram say, Thorin?" He sighs.
"He said, 'She seems friendly enough, but it's not natural. No wolf, nor any living thing, should be able to heal so quickly.' I am inclined to agree, nana. Any other wolf would have taken at least a week to show the improvement that the pup showed in only a day. At this rate, she'll be completely fine within a fortnight."
"And what's so bad about that, Thorin?" Dis asks her brother. "So the pup heals quickly. She's also very large, and did that stop you from bringing her home?" Thorin is silent, and Dis continues. "Not to mention, she's obviously far more intelligent than any animal ever should be, and yet, there have been no spoken concerns about that." He stays quiet for a few minutes, then speaks slowly.
"I do not know if these characteristics are bad signs, and I never said that I thought they were. I merely agreed that it isn't natural." Emery rolls her eyes at Thorin's words. Of course it isn't natural! I'm not even from Middle Earth, for Pete's sake. "Kili is ill for a week. Then, all of a sudden, he feels much better and wants to take a walk in the forest. That very same walk, we find the pup. For all we know, she's a sign from Mahal, himself. I don't know." Kili was sick? Concern fills Emery before she remembers that Thorin said he felt better. Well, he got one thing right: she was sent by Mahal.
She listens for a little while longer, and comes to a conclusion: while neither of the adults think she's a threat, Dis thinks she's simply an irregular, unpredictable wolf, and Thorin suspects supernatural intervention.
+l+
In the middle of the night, long after Dis and Thorin finished talking and went to sleep, Emery jerks awake, not quite sure what disturbed her sleep. She looks around and peeks out from under the table. She sees nothing. She sniffs the air. Nothing. She listens as intently as she can. Noth-wait...what's that sound? It sounds like a wet sponge being slowly wiped across wood.
She slowly crawls out from under the table and looks around again. She sees nothing except Thorin sleeping on the couch. Confusion briefly crosses Emery's mind, doesn't he have a bed? But the thought disappears as the strange sound happens again.
Emery continues to listen. She hears the soft snores of the whole family, so everyone is asleep and obviously not cleaning. Hiss. She freezes. That can't be good. She limps over to Thorin and muzzles his hand. Nothing. She gently nips at his forearm. Nothing. She whines and licks his face. This works. He groans and turns his head away from her, obviously trying to go back to sleep. She whines louder and nudges his shoulder with her right front paw. He groans again and rolls over to face her, groggily propping himself up on his elbow. He glares down at her as fiercely as he can while half asleep - which isn't very fiercely.
"What do you want?" he says, though in his grogginess it sounds more like, "Wuddo yo wont?" She turns and limps away from him, listening carefully. Slide. Hiss. It's coming from upstairs. She growls softly and the hair on her back stands up. Thorin instantly becomes more alert. "What is it, lass?" he asks as he sits up, tosses the blanket aside, and stands. She limps towards the spiral staircase and contemplates for a second how she's going to get to the second floor. She eventually just decides to step-jump. She gets two steps up before Thorin scoops her up and swiftly but quietly walks up the stairs.
When he reaches the top, he gently sets her on the floor and waits for her to keep going. There's a short hallway with two doors, both on the left side, and a window on the right. She continues to listen. Hiss. She limps toward the second door, which has been left cracked (probably to comfort the boys), and gently nudges it wide open. Inside is a low bed, a little wider than a twin-sized mattress. On the bed is a softly snoring Fili and a loudly snoring Kili. Under the bed, however, is what has Emery's attention. Coiled up beneath the six-inch-high bed frame, about to slither up the wall toward the mattress, is a snake. It doesn't look like any kind she's ever seen before, but she's not ignorant. The diamond-shaped head makes it obvious that the snake is poisonous.
Her ears flatten against her head, her hair stands up, she bares her teeth, and she growls loudly. Kili hears her and wakes up first. After a few seconds, he stares wide-eyed at her, fearful, and shakes his brother awake. Fili's reaction is similar, but he pulls his little brother behind him. When they back up against the wall, Emery barks in fear, trying to get them away from that side of the bed...the side the snake was crawling up. The noise wakes Dis and she comes running into the room. She shrieks at the sight of the wolf growling at her frightened sons. She tries to run at her, but Thorin stops her. His eyes are cautious, but he seems to know something's wrong.
The snake twitches, recapturing Emery's undivided attention. It turns its head and focuses its eyes on her. She growls louder and barks again. The snake coils up and springs at her, jaws wide. Her animal form helping her anticipate the move, she side-steps and quickly lunges at its now vulnerable neck. Dis screams. The snake is still writhing and hissing, so Emery shakes her head back and forth violently. The snake still writhes. Eventually, she realizes that shaking it isn't going to work. She might have clamped her jaws into its neck so that it can't strike or bite, but it's still very much alive. Recalling a moment from the movie Crocodile Dundee, she captures the lower part of its body in her front paws, uses her body weight to hold it down, and yanks on its neck with all the strength she can muster. A snap is heard, and the writhing stops. She drops the now dead snake and turns to look at the dwarves.
At some point during Emery's scuffle with the snake, Dis had fallen to her knees, grabbed her sons, and pulled them as close to her as she could. She's now sitting and shaking, silent tears running down her cheeks as she whispers calming words to the crying dwarflings in her arms. Thorin is kneeling beside them, one hand on his sister's back and the other stroking Kili's hair. He turns to look at the wolf, his face muddled with shock, relief, and astonishment.
With the danger no longer present, Emery is reminded how tired she is, having been woken up very suddenly. Deciding not to try to climb down the stairs tonight, she curls up on the floor. She lets out a yawn, then lays her head down and returns to whatever dream she was having before.