Chapter 11
"The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies." - Holly Black
There are three dam visiting family in the district at the moment. One Firebeard, Dís gave him a distinct look this morning, and two dam from Thorin's Hall. They're young, one hundred and two and one hundred and ten. The Firebeard lass, again, the look she gave him, is closer in age, one hundred forty-five.
He wouldn't have known them when he ruled Thorin's Hall. They would have been too young when he sat regent for his father. Before Théli was killed.
Would you like a meeting with any of them?
He said yes. Of course he said yes. All of them. Even after Dís asked, the Firebeard lass too?
Aye, the Firebeard lass too.
His sister, nearly bouncing on her toes with anticipation, returned to her parlor to write the letters. She was happy for him. She had every right to be happy for him. None of them, himself included, thought his one would ever be. That he would be granted the dreams. Aulë's dreams.
Sacred dreams.
Would it be the Firebeard?
His one had red in her curling hair. He could see it spilling across the green pillow case as he rolled her under him. A braid with twin amethysts. Another with a nearly midnight blue azurite bead, spotted in bright green malachite. Three children in this dream.
She had a full lower lip, a small rectangle chip in front right tooth when she bit her lower lip. A small mole just above her breasts, one on the plush of her right hip and another on the inside of her left thigh. So many freckles everywhere, dots of nutmeg on darker skin, almost like-
Why wasn't there any music?
Thorin, so deep in thought, glanced upward, finding the corner empty. Was it Sunday?
No. Monday was the storm.
Yesterday was Tuesday and the argument, Mahal, she was a stubborn woman, about her coat.
Today is Wednesday.
(Thorin should have asked himself why he judged his days by time spent with Erdene.)
The ninth bell had rung already.
Was she late?
Tenth bell passed with no sign of her.
Eleventh.
(He should have been asking himself why he cared enough to count the hours.)
Noon.
He broke for a meal, his gaze strayed again, and again to the empty corner. The world bustled by. Thorin smoked his pipe as well, watching and waiting and yet, the wooden box at the corner across from the blacksmith's remained empty. He returned to working.
The first afternoon bell rang.
Her home was not too far away. Perhaps-
The second afternoon bell rang.
Then the third.
Fourth.
Mahal. Where is she?
The sun was setting now.
A dark thought crossed his mind. Had her landlord succeeded in his attempt to marry her off? His gut gnawed at itself with the idea. No. Erd- Mistress Thoroughfare was far too strong willed to allow that to happen.
Perhaps she had not allowed it? If the man would sell his child then-
Fifth bell.
The plaza was emptying slowly. The cold setting in sent everyone scurrying to their warm houses. By the sixth bell it would be empty. By seventh he would be walking home.
Alone.
It is strange how he had come to enjoy walking home with Erd- Mistress Thoroughfare. She was animated, speaking with her hands in addition to her voice. She smiled easily at him. Spoke to him as a friend. Her company was a pleasant end to the day.
Even if they did argue.
(He is still too stubborn to ask himself why.)
He half wanted to shake some sense into her last evening, at the same time put her over his knee (would she like that?) For her lack of common sense. Mahal. Such an obstinate, oblivious woman. Yet he couldn't fault her for her reasons. There are so few in this world who would sacrifice to keep others safe. And she meant well by it, even if her sense of self preservation (as she put it) failed her.
Moments before the sixth bell began to ring, Erdene walked into the plaza.
The gnawing pit in his stomach released the instant she walked through the archway closest to him. Whole, with a smile, and still wearing that damned thinner than paper cloak with one mahogany curl in her eyes.
A curl that picked up the red from the firelight at the forge. Brown eyes that were topaz in the same light. And freckles. Her smile, one chip in her front teeth as she said:
"Good evening Master Oakenshield."
Mahal. It cannot be.
"I apologize for my tardiness," she continued, pulling that awful cloak around herself, "but I was earning myself a coat." She drew her full lower lip between her teeth before giving way to a bashful grin.
He could not fathom words.
At his silence her head cocked to the side. "Thorin? I thought you'd at least give me some shit for taking all damn day. Sorry about that by the way."
Her voice is the same that called him in his dream. Thorin if you don't fuck me right now. He thought his one had an accent, but- In the dream her voice had been low, as if attempting to stay quiet in the early morning hours. He hadn't heard it quite completely. Yet, the way she called his name.
And then, as if the Valar were laughing at him, she drew back her right sleeve to her elbow. The same black strike marks on her inner wrist. "You're lookin' at me like you've seen a ghost. Are you okay?" She reached to touch his hand.
He drew back before she could.
No. She is a child of men. And he is not. Wits recovered, Thorin watched her frown at him. Mahal. Her brow furrowed, lips turned down, the green in her gaze.
Green.
If brown and topaz are happiness then what is green? Blue? Gray? Amber?
He has seen all of those colors in her eyes these last two weeks.
No. It is not for you to wonder about these things.
She may be his one. It is for him to wonder, isn't it?
Erdene Thoroughfare is a woman.
Who may be his one.
No. It is not for him to wonder. A daughter of men cannot rule beside him.
Erdene withdrew her hand. There was something off about the way he refused to look at her now. His features had gone almost opaque. Unyielding of his thoughts. "Sorry, I should have asked permission before trying to touch you. My mama used to check if I was okay like that so…"
He moved away, tending to his tools. "You should have."
And there was a cold snap to his words that reminded her of movie Thorin. The Thorin whose words could bite a jagged hole if he wanted them to. Her breath hitched. He'd never been cold to her before. Even last night when they argued. Last night he'd been argumentative but he'd sounded like he cared.
Standing there awkwardly, unsure of what had just happened, what she'd done, if he really was angry with her for trying to be nice, Erdene just looked at him. Watched his face for a sign of something. A sign of what happened between her walking through the archway and a minute after. Something happened.
Risking it, Erdene opened her mouth to ask if something was wrong. Her words died before they ever reached her lips.
Thorin, too, decided to speak. His words left his mouth a breath before hers could leave her. "If you wish to care for someone like a child then marry and have a child like others of your kind. You're well past the age." His words were even, with perfect enunciation. And devastatingly cruel. "Leave me be."
Her lips parted, eyes wide and as green as peridot. Green, it's the color of her sorrow. He thought, perhaps, to distance himself from her. His words were double edged enough to slice him as well, opening something in his chest that bled profusely.
He watched as she shrunk in on herself, the happy light in her gaze dying with the loss of topaz. Her shoulders hunched, head bowed, gaze averted. This was not the shame of last evening. Pain.
Her eyes were wet when her gaze met his again. Her words rasped out, "Forgive me Master Oakenshield," her voice broke on his name of honor, the edges of her pain stabbing into him, "for taking up so much of your time."
It tore at him. Mahal. What have I done?
Erdene straightened and with red rimmed eyes walked out of the blacksmith's shop.
Fuck him. No. Really. Fuck him. She had a great day. A really fucking amazing day. Erdene had helped Valis with her business, and Monica would be remembered by more than just her now. She earned herself a bunch of new clothes, which Valis promised would be done at the end of October.
She was just trying to be nice.
Like he'd been to her.
And then-
Whatever. Fuck him.
He pulled away from her like she was some kind of monster. Thorin stared at her like he'd never seen her before and-
Mercurial. Uptight. Asshole.
He just had to give her the same shit her family gave her. Coming from him, it was a thousand times worse. Coming from him, the unobtainable guy she kept dreaming about a future with…her eyes burned and her throat clenched and damn it - don't fucking cry.
Don't cry. Don't.
When her uncle, aunt, grandparents said it, that was the culture. Where she grew up, even if you were a prodigy and a baby genius, you were still a Deb (which she had been unwillingly) and you still got married and had a baby or two before you were thirty.
There were a whole variety of insults in the deep south entirely based on women who chose a career over a husband and kids.
But from Thorin.
She knew he could be mean. He'd nearly chased off Bilbo in every rendition of The Hobbit. She knew his words could cut. She hadn't expected to be the recipient of his temper for no good reason. Last night he had a good point even if he hadn't been very nice about it. Today, he snapped without provocation.
What the fuck was that about?
She ducked under the olive tree branch, Calm down or you're going to do or say something you'll regret.
Would Thorin regret his words?
Stop it. Stop. He's made it clear. You are no one to him. You're not even a friend.
Do. Not. Cry.
The house was blessedly quiet when she returned. Erdene mechanically went through the motions of locking up and putting out the candles. The house smelled like candle smoke as she went up the stairs to her room. The girls were sleeping thankfully. She didn't know if she was in the right mindset to deal with them asking her another mountain of questions.
Warren snored away loudly despite his closed door.
Erdene pushed open the door to her bedroom, walked through, and closed it behind her. She managed to sit down on the bed before the tears did come. A torrent of them, welling in her eyes only to overflow and flood down her cheeks.
When Thorin returned home that evening he did something incredibly stupid. He found Dís writing letters in her parlor. A small stack next to her on heavy stock paper with the Durin crest sealed in black wax.
"Tell them I will meet them all." His voice was far steadier than he felt. He felt as if he was bleeding into his stomach from his chest. A gnawing uncomfortable sensation that made him nauseous.
Dís, her face lit by candle light and the small hearth to her left, blinked surprised blue eyes at him. "I've written to the three-"
"All of them," he repeated with a tone that left no room for her to doubt.
And yet she did. "Are you certain? These are the same dam you've met. If there has never been a spark before, Mahal knows there may never be one."
There was a spark. With a barefaced young woman who spoke her mind, played a violin beautifully and smiled at him like he did not deserve. Whom he could not have. Because she was of men. And he was not.
"All of them Dís." He would not snap at his sister. She did not deserve what he could do with words. What he'd been taught to do with words.
What he had done to Erdene with words.
His sister's confusion was evident as she looked at him. "If you are certain?" He didn't blame her. He had not met with a single one of these dam in nearly fifty-five years.
"I am." Thorin replied evenly before turning around and leaving her to dispose of the letters she'd already written.
Fíli, who had been lounging talking to his mother as she worked, sat up as his uncle left. "Amad, what was that about?"
His mother blinked twice at the empty door frame, shaking her head. "I've no idea. He only gets like this when something's set him off." She took the stack of twenty out of thirty-two letters she had written and began breaking off the wax before tearing them in half and tossing the shreds into the fire.
The two servants they kept were trustworthy, but Dís was the sister of a king. She knew better than to leave correspondence where anyone could read it. Even if the correspondence was nothing of note. She'd already fed the gossip machine of the district this week with inquiries about visiting dam.
"Tomorrow," Dís addressed her son, "I will need your help in the morning. You and your brother. Thankfully he made this decision before it was too late to place orders. I will make you a list."
Fíli nodded, listening as his mother began noting all that needed to be done for the upcoming Durins Day. He'd go. He would divide the list with Kíli as they always had in the years when they were younger. And, once he was done, he would stop by the blacksmith shop where his uncle worked.
And, mayhap he would see if he could tell what happened.
She knew this room with its brownish-green walls and tacky motivational posters. Tightly knit beige carpet. Two orangy-yellow wooden desks each with two cubbies for studying and an open laptop set at one of them.
This is a dream. It's not borderline real like the last few. It makes her chest ache seeing her feet in Caleb's lap as they're both reading, though it's images of words and not the actual book in her hands. She's twenty-one, Caleb is twenty three. They're in the same masters program.
His hand is touching her left ankle, his thumb stroking just below the inside below her ankle bone. He turns a page and, because she's watching him, he looks up. He's so ridiculously cute it's adorable.
Shoulder length curling strawberry blonde, more blonde than red, and his blue-green eyes like the Santa Cruz pier water. "Doll?" He asks, and she knows where this is going.
The same way it went when it really happened.
"I thought about it." She closed her book. She didn't need to read it. She'd already read it. "I'm going to stay here in Las Vegas."
His hand on her ankle stopped. "Doll." He called her that as a tease when they first met. He said she reminded him of those American Girl Dolls. She found it insulting coming from her Organic Chem TA. That and his smarmy smirk incited a fire in her soul that made her want to break (or kiss) his stupid face. She was seventeen, and it was her spring semester in Las Vegas.
He was totally unprepared for the tongue lashing she gave him. He asked her out right after. They'd been a couple since.
Caleb swallowed, looking at her like she'd shattered his world. His book dropped onto the cushions between them. She extracted her legs.
"Say something," she said, her own voice cracking.
"My girlfriend is breaking up with me." He breathed the words like they cost him everything. "What do you want me to say?"
"I'm not. We can do the long distance thing." Even as she said that she knew it was a lie. They'd manage it what, a couple of months and then it would be over.
"For what, a few weeks? Six months at best? You fly in, I fly back, my job is across the country, how long do you think we're going to last after graduation?" Caleb shook his head, red-gold hair spilling around his face. He extended his left leg, and began digging in his pocket. "You know, I thought you'd give us a shot at the very least." He pulled out a small dark blue velvet bag with thin back string ties and tossed it to her.
She caught it between her open palms and felt…oh…oh…oh no. She tossed it back to him. "What the hell Caleb?"
He yanked it open himself in a fit of anger. A perfect little golden ring with a small oval shaped diamond sat pinched between his fingers. "What's wrong with asking the love of my life to marry me?"
Erdene woke with a start, hearing bells ringing distantly. It took her a moment, as she tried to orient herself. Before Arda, before Middle Earth she had trouble recognizing her room in her Sparks apartment. After a decade in a nice little place on the border of Paradise and Henderson, it was so odd waking to barren off white walls and Tracy's snoring.
One. Two. Two bells then a resounding silence in the dark. Two am.
She wiped one hand over her face and back through the loose curls that broke free of the low bun at the back of her neck in the night.
Don't check your phone. Don't check your phone. Don't check. No point. No signal.
And she still grabbed it to see if maybe something changed. Nope. Nothing. Two eleven am. The bells were eleven minutes off. Or was her phone the one that was off? A bitter, slightly hysterical laugh left her.
Caleb. God she hadn't thought about Caleb in forever.
She hadn't dreamed about Caleb in forever.
Her first real love. The man she thought, when they were first dating, she would end up marrying. Except she had been young. And she didn't realize then that she would be a different person at twenty-one going on twenty-two than she was at seventeen almost eighteen. Or that Caleb would be an entirely different person at twenty three than he was at nineteen when they first started dating.
He didn't tell her when he applied for the position at NASA. Instead he told her after he'd done the background checks and fingerprinting, and had a firm offer letter and a start date. One month after graduation.
Erdene was never quite sure if he had been under the assumption that, because she spent most of her time with him at his place, she would just move across the country with him. She'd made it abundantly clear she was still maintaining her side of the rent for the apartment she shared with Monica. Even if she only slept there twice a week.
She thought she made it clear that she didn't want to move back east. She liked living in the desert. She liked the proximity to Los Angeles. She loved living in Las Vegas.
And she did love Caleb. She did. He'd been her first lover. He put the time and effort into their relationship. He set the standard for all her relationships afterward. But, Erdene rolled herself over, sighing tiredly, closing her eyes once more, he hadn't been the right one.