Fic: An Inevitable Outcome
Dec. 30th, 2014 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityChapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
+++
Chapter 5
Fili does not like to be so long without her. This is not like his expeditions out of the Mountain for a hunt or on a trade mission to the Iron Hills. With those he has a purpose, and knows that she is safely home and waiting for his return. This is courting madness, this unawareness of what she is doing or how she is faring, and he feels like soon his frustrations will crack the very stone.
Of course, cracking stone is what has caused this problem in the first place. He came here with a group of workmen, not miners, but carvers and those dwarrows who could see the flaws in a rockface and how to fix them. It is a skill all dwarves possess, but some are gifted beyond others, and it is those that Thorin has put to work shoring up the Mountain’s bones. In the earlier years of Erebor’s resettlement, all efforts were focussed on the living quarters, forges, and most accessible mines. Now, at last the dwarves have begun to expand their rebuilding, though each step must be thoughtfully placed.
Nori, who is the best at sensing how to find and fix problems, is working with a large team close to the guild halls, while Bofur, who is only slightly less proficient, overseas the lower mines. Both areas are stable enough for daily use as they are, but Thorin wants to ensure that they are as safe as they were before the dragon came, because they see so much traffic. Fili, who is still too young for anyone to expect his stone sense to be flourishing yet, supervises more experienced dwarves as they inspect the ancient lower Gates, smashed by the dragon. They are not vital, but would make life more convenient, and they are as good a place as any for the Crown Prince to learn.
They are in much worse condition than anyone anticipated. Even Fili’s stone sense is enough to determine that the work is better left for a later day, but before the dwarrows could retreat to the safety of more stable rock, the chamber they were in had come down around their ears.
“My Prince,” whispers an engineer when the shaking and falling have finally ceased. “Are you wounded?”
“No,” Fili replies. “Everyone else?”
There is a slow murmur of voices as the others report. They are all whole and no one was caught by too large a rock, though there are some bruises and one lightly bashed skull.
“The cave?” Fili breathes, hoping the engineer will understand his meaning. It’s too dark to use iglishmêk until their eyes adjust, but speaking aloud might dislodge more stone.
“Safe for now,” the engineer says. His voice is low, careful, but not overly so. “It braces itself now, my prince. If you put your hand here, you will feel it.”
Fili had done so, and had known immediately that the engineer was correct. The stones had found a new rest, and had stayed solid for three days since the collapse. Every time Fili places his hand upon the wall, the stones are a steady thrum under his fingers: unmoving, but with the slightest sense of not-belonging where they are. He knows it will not stay stable forever.
And yet there is nothing he can do. There is air, but they have only the water they carried with them and no food at all. Three days without food is not much for a dwarf, but Fili misses his wife, and cannot find anything to distract him from thoughts of her. None of his companions speak very much - nor do they move - for fear of upsetting the Mountain’s balance, and there is nothing to pull Fili from his own mind. Sitting in the dark, with nothing to do but hope, is, he thinks, the longest wait of his entire life.
Fili is wrong about that.
+++
The raven brings news of the Elf Lord’s approach two days before his train can be seen from the Overlook. Oin does not say the words aloud, but he is relieved beyond measure. Sigrid is healthy still, and the babe hammers hard enough to make even Thorin smile, but Oin has felt the shape of the badger’s head, and knows in his bones that Sigrid’s original fears were correct. The child is so well-grown that now it is a worry, and in these last days, the old dwarf midwife will be glad of all the help he can get.
Lord Elrond arrives in the mountain with some small number of his kin, several curious bundles that are sent straight to the stillroom, and the Captain Tauriel as escort. Sigrid does not make the trek to the Front Gate to meet him, but Fili does, and once Kili and Tauriel have gone to supervise the unpacking, Fili guides the Elf Lord through the grand halls and smaller corridors to the rooms where Sigrid spends the bulk of her time.
The hound, which Fili still cannot name with a straight face, greets them at the door. The creature is exuberant to see Fili, as usual, but pauses with some dignity before Elrond.
“A noble beast,” Elrond says, when the hound at last consents to have its ears scratched. “How came you by it?”
“Beorn sent him with a gift,” Sigrid says from her chair by the hearth. She is struggling to rise when Elrond crosses to her side and lays a hand on her arm. “He has decided to stay with us.”
“He is a herd dog,” Elrond says. “Or at least, that is what they use his breed for in Gondor. If he has chosen you to guard, he will not stray again.”
“That is well,” Sigrid says, “for I have grown fond of his company.”
“How fare you, my lady?” Elrond asks her then, his hand still light upon her shoulder.
“I am well enough, I think,” she says to him. “My back aches and my feet are swollen, but I hardly consider that unusual. I merely feel restless and ungainly, so I try not to move.”
“Does it pain you overmuch to walk?” he asks.
“Not if I have someone to support me,” she says. “My sister is too small, and I don’t like to ask the guards if Fili is away.”
This is the first Fili has heard of this, and it is only a decade of political training that keeps him from taking her to task about it.
“I will aid your steps now that I am here,” Elrond says, perhaps sensing the tension. “It will allow me to monitor your state, and ensure that you are on your feet with some regularity.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Sigrid says, then pauses. “I must confess, Lord Elrond, you are not what I expected. Captain Tauriel tells me that she is a lowborn elf, but when she is here, her presence is undeniable. I had not anticipated you to be so…”
She trails off, at a loss for words, but Fili finds he understands her. His dealings with Legolas and Thranduil’s various ambassadors always put his teeth on edge. He has no idea how Kili manages to keep his head. Yet Elrond is straightforward and his company does not have the same sharpness to it that Fili has come to associate with elves.
“You forget, my lady, why my advice was called for,” Elrond says gently, lack of offense clear in his tone. “I may count the first born as my kin on one side of my heritage, but there is an aspect of my blood that I share with you.”
Sigrid’s hands go to her belly, and Fili follows the movement with his eyes. Elrond smiles at them both, and straightens his shoulders. His head is shorter than the ceiling, but only just, though it does not seem to bother him. The hound comes to sniff at his robes, and Fili recalls that, elf or no, the lord has just ridden halfway across Middle Earth to come to their aid. He ought to at least make the attempt to be the proper host.
“My lord Elrond,” he says. “If you will follow me, I will show you where you and your kin are to be quartered during your stay. There will be a selection of runners placed at your disposal while you are here so that you do not have to worry about navigating the Mountain on your own. Please let me or Lady Sigrid know if you require anything.”
“Thank you, Prince Fili,” Elrond says. “The road is long, even for an elf. My lady, I will call on you again after I have settled in, that we might discuss the finer points of the days to come.”
Sigrid nods, and Fili determinedly pushes all ill thoughts from his head. He kisses her brow, and leads the elf lord back out into the corridors of Erebor.
+++
When at last the stones are cleared away, and fresh air fills his lungs for the first time in days, Fili wants to go home more than he has ever wanted anything in his life. The medics insist that they examine him, and someone presses a full waterskin into his hands, holding it to his lips when he makes no move to drink on his own accord. Sigrid is not there.
At first he thinks that he only cannot see her. That she is behind a rock tending to some other dwarf and has not yet noticed that he has been pulled free, but soon enough he realizes that she is not in the tunnel at all. There is dust in the air. After so many days with nothing to do but sense the stone around him, Fili’s awareness of it is greater than it has ever been. The corridor is intact, but it is less stable than it was. They will have kept Sigrid away lest she come to harm in the same rockfall that held him captive.
He is both glad of that, and angered. They have no right to keep them from each other. No right at all. His mind is full of stone and anger and her, and it is not until Nori takes him by the shoulders and gives him a firm shake, amidst much protest from the medics, who remain concerned for his head, that his thoughts clear.
“Durin skulls,” Nori says, so quietly that only Fili hears him.
“You’ve got one too,” Fili points out, to let the other dwarf know that he understands and is grateful.
“Aye, but mine is carefully trained,” Nori says.
“So train me,” Fili says, and then holds up a hand. “Later. I want to go home.”
This is overheard by all present, and they smile. Rockfalls and danger taken care of, they are pleased to remember that their prince is still as besotted with his wife as ever, and when the medic clears him to leave, Fili is gone before the dwarf is fully standing upright from his bow.
Sigrid is waiting for him, flying across the room with a hand raised as though she intends to strike him, and he catches the blow before either of them can figure out what it was she really meant to do. He holds her more tightly than he means to, and she starts to scold him in the same breath as he kisses her. He knows she wants him safe with the same ferocity he craves her safety, but he also knows that he cannot promise her anything to that regard. He cannot lie to her, however much he wants to see her calmed and comforted, not even if it would calm himself.
Instead he pulls at her clothes, while she pulls at his. He does not tear at her laces because she stops him, but once he has her naked and in their bed, he does not hold anything back, and she does not dissuade him. He is not elegant or considerate, and he finishes long before he means to, but Sigrid does not complain. He doesn’t think about his ferocity until after, when he turns to see her and the lamplight shows the marks that are still reddening her skin.
He looks at each of them in turn, a quiet horror at what he has done boiling in his chest. Sigrid lets him carry her into the bathroom, into the hottest part of the tub, and does not protest when he pulls her into his arms again and sets to kissing each place his touch was too harsh against her skin. He feels three days’ worth of worry melt from her, as three days’ frustration went from him, but much less destructively. He is so tired, but he has done nothing but rest and wait since the cave in, and now his need to fix what has happened is overwhelming.
“There wasn’t much to do, except sit and wait,” he says eventually. “We couldn’t touch anything or fear of bringing more of it down. We just had to hope aid was coming.”
“They wouldn’t let me help,” she says, and he kisses her again, because she understands, at least in part, what it means to need to fix something and not be allowed to. “All I could do was sit and wait too.
“Sigrid,” he says, trying once more to apologize.
“It’s all right,” she tells him, even though he does not think he has done enough to be sure that it is. “It’s all right. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
She repeats it several more times, and then the tears come. It’s not a storm or a rage, like it was when he came home. It’s quiet, and he kisses the salt from her cheeks as she calms. He promises himself that he will never cause her harm again, and does not know that, despite of himself, he has made a promise he cannot keep.
+++
Elrond and Oin make an odd pair, but quickly determine the other’s strengths and determine the best way forward. Elrond, for all his long years as a healer, has overseen the birth of only one child: a boy of Ranger get whom he now fosters. Oin, on the other hand, has delivered nearly every badger born to his kin, both in Erebor and the Blue Mountains, since he completed his apprenticeship as a medic. His family may joke about an unfortunate incident involving his nephew, a too-small swaddling blanket, and a hard stone floor, but it is well known amongst the dwarves that he is the best.
“I think it is best, then,” Oin says, “if I see to the badger’s care while you give your attentions to the lady.”
“I agree,” Elrond says, his voice loud enough that Oin can hear him without the trumpet. They will both need full use of their hands, after all.
They resume their inventory of their equipment, pruning clutter where ever they can. Elrond has seen too much healing done by the Dunedain to be put off by the earthiness of Oin’s accoutrements. Elves tend to rely overmuch on herblore and spells, which do not always work fully on other races, and have not been tested at all on childbirth. It is entirely possible that he will be no help at all, until the moment of greatest need. It has occurred to him that he should ask Sigrid or Fili if they have discussed the possibility of hard choices, but he feels he would get two different answers if he did. Rather, he will make the decision himself, if it must be made, and deal with the fallout as it comes.
So he discusses blades with Oin, hoping they will never have to use them, and makes sure that the bottles and jars he carried from Imladris are labelled such that they can be identified by the young runners Thorin has assigned to aid them. Then it is a matter of restraining himself from checking and rechecking that everything is in place.
“This is the part I hate the most,” Balin says when the old dwarf joins them for luncheon on the fourth day after Elrond’s arrival to the Mountian. Theoretically, he is ensuring that the healers have everything they need, but Elrond suspects that Thorin’s temper is shortening as well, and does not begrudge Balin a short respite of it.
“Indeed,” Elrond says. “At least, were we waiting for a battle, there would eventually be something to fight.”
Balin sighs, and passes his tobacco pouch to Oin. Elrond doesn’t smoke, but has spent enough time with Gandalf that he understand the need to, and, somewhat oddly, he finds the scent comforting. It is undeniably the scent of peace and quiet. Oin packs his pipe and lights it, drawing for a good draft until he has it, and then, out of long habit, offers it to Elrond.
“No, thank you,” Elrond says, and turns to Balin to ask about the state of Gondorian trade. The affairs of Men have not bothered him overmuch for some years now, but he feels that the time has come for his renewed interest.
The pipes are still half-filled with the sweet-smelling pipeweed when Elrond’s elf-ears hear a sound that would cause his heart to race were he fully elven and in his own well guarded house. It is the hound, barking fit to raise an alarm in all corners of the Mountain, and shortly after Elrond hears it, the first of the young dwarf runners bursts into the room, short of breath and panting, to tell them that Sigrid’s time is come.
+++
Apparently there are going to be six chapters.
PLEASE LET THERE ONLY BE SIX CHAPTERS.
Chapter 6
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
+++
Chapter 5
Fili does not like to be so long without her. This is not like his expeditions out of the Mountain for a hunt or on a trade mission to the Iron Hills. With those he has a purpose, and knows that she is safely home and waiting for his return. This is courting madness, this unawareness of what she is doing or how she is faring, and he feels like soon his frustrations will crack the very stone.
Of course, cracking stone is what has caused this problem in the first place. He came here with a group of workmen, not miners, but carvers and those dwarrows who could see the flaws in a rockface and how to fix them. It is a skill all dwarves possess, but some are gifted beyond others, and it is those that Thorin has put to work shoring up the Mountain’s bones. In the earlier years of Erebor’s resettlement, all efforts were focussed on the living quarters, forges, and most accessible mines. Now, at last the dwarves have begun to expand their rebuilding, though each step must be thoughtfully placed.
Nori, who is the best at sensing how to find and fix problems, is working with a large team close to the guild halls, while Bofur, who is only slightly less proficient, overseas the lower mines. Both areas are stable enough for daily use as they are, but Thorin wants to ensure that they are as safe as they were before the dragon came, because they see so much traffic. Fili, who is still too young for anyone to expect his stone sense to be flourishing yet, supervises more experienced dwarves as they inspect the ancient lower Gates, smashed by the dragon. They are not vital, but would make life more convenient, and they are as good a place as any for the Crown Prince to learn.
They are in much worse condition than anyone anticipated. Even Fili’s stone sense is enough to determine that the work is better left for a later day, but before the dwarrows could retreat to the safety of more stable rock, the chamber they were in had come down around their ears.
“My Prince,” whispers an engineer when the shaking and falling have finally ceased. “Are you wounded?”
“No,” Fili replies. “Everyone else?”
There is a slow murmur of voices as the others report. They are all whole and no one was caught by too large a rock, though there are some bruises and one lightly bashed skull.
“The cave?” Fili breathes, hoping the engineer will understand his meaning. It’s too dark to use iglishmêk until their eyes adjust, but speaking aloud might dislodge more stone.
“Safe for now,” the engineer says. His voice is low, careful, but not overly so. “It braces itself now, my prince. If you put your hand here, you will feel it.”
Fili had done so, and had known immediately that the engineer was correct. The stones had found a new rest, and had stayed solid for three days since the collapse. Every time Fili places his hand upon the wall, the stones are a steady thrum under his fingers: unmoving, but with the slightest sense of not-belonging where they are. He knows it will not stay stable forever.
And yet there is nothing he can do. There is air, but they have only the water they carried with them and no food at all. Three days without food is not much for a dwarf, but Fili misses his wife, and cannot find anything to distract him from thoughts of her. None of his companions speak very much - nor do they move - for fear of upsetting the Mountain’s balance, and there is nothing to pull Fili from his own mind. Sitting in the dark, with nothing to do but hope, is, he thinks, the longest wait of his entire life.
Fili is wrong about that.
+++
The raven brings news of the Elf Lord’s approach two days before his train can be seen from the Overlook. Oin does not say the words aloud, but he is relieved beyond measure. Sigrid is healthy still, and the babe hammers hard enough to make even Thorin smile, but Oin has felt the shape of the badger’s head, and knows in his bones that Sigrid’s original fears were correct. The child is so well-grown that now it is a worry, and in these last days, the old dwarf midwife will be glad of all the help he can get.
Lord Elrond arrives in the mountain with some small number of his kin, several curious bundles that are sent straight to the stillroom, and the Captain Tauriel as escort. Sigrid does not make the trek to the Front Gate to meet him, but Fili does, and once Kili and Tauriel have gone to supervise the unpacking, Fili guides the Elf Lord through the grand halls and smaller corridors to the rooms where Sigrid spends the bulk of her time.
The hound, which Fili still cannot name with a straight face, greets them at the door. The creature is exuberant to see Fili, as usual, but pauses with some dignity before Elrond.
“A noble beast,” Elrond says, when the hound at last consents to have its ears scratched. “How came you by it?”
“Beorn sent him with a gift,” Sigrid says from her chair by the hearth. She is struggling to rise when Elrond crosses to her side and lays a hand on her arm. “He has decided to stay with us.”
“He is a herd dog,” Elrond says. “Or at least, that is what they use his breed for in Gondor. If he has chosen you to guard, he will not stray again.”
“That is well,” Sigrid says, “for I have grown fond of his company.”
“How fare you, my lady?” Elrond asks her then, his hand still light upon her shoulder.
“I am well enough, I think,” she says to him. “My back aches and my feet are swollen, but I hardly consider that unusual. I merely feel restless and ungainly, so I try not to move.”
“Does it pain you overmuch to walk?” he asks.
“Not if I have someone to support me,” she says. “My sister is too small, and I don’t like to ask the guards if Fili is away.”
This is the first Fili has heard of this, and it is only a decade of political training that keeps him from taking her to task about it.
“I will aid your steps now that I am here,” Elrond says, perhaps sensing the tension. “It will allow me to monitor your state, and ensure that you are on your feet with some regularity.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Sigrid says, then pauses. “I must confess, Lord Elrond, you are not what I expected. Captain Tauriel tells me that she is a lowborn elf, but when she is here, her presence is undeniable. I had not anticipated you to be so…”
She trails off, at a loss for words, but Fili finds he understands her. His dealings with Legolas and Thranduil’s various ambassadors always put his teeth on edge. He has no idea how Kili manages to keep his head. Yet Elrond is straightforward and his company does not have the same sharpness to it that Fili has come to associate with elves.
“You forget, my lady, why my advice was called for,” Elrond says gently, lack of offense clear in his tone. “I may count the first born as my kin on one side of my heritage, but there is an aspect of my blood that I share with you.”
Sigrid’s hands go to her belly, and Fili follows the movement with his eyes. Elrond smiles at them both, and straightens his shoulders. His head is shorter than the ceiling, but only just, though it does not seem to bother him. The hound comes to sniff at his robes, and Fili recalls that, elf or no, the lord has just ridden halfway across Middle Earth to come to their aid. He ought to at least make the attempt to be the proper host.
“My lord Elrond,” he says. “If you will follow me, I will show you where you and your kin are to be quartered during your stay. There will be a selection of runners placed at your disposal while you are here so that you do not have to worry about navigating the Mountain on your own. Please let me or Lady Sigrid know if you require anything.”
“Thank you, Prince Fili,” Elrond says. “The road is long, even for an elf. My lady, I will call on you again after I have settled in, that we might discuss the finer points of the days to come.”
Sigrid nods, and Fili determinedly pushes all ill thoughts from his head. He kisses her brow, and leads the elf lord back out into the corridors of Erebor.
+++
When at last the stones are cleared away, and fresh air fills his lungs for the first time in days, Fili wants to go home more than he has ever wanted anything in his life. The medics insist that they examine him, and someone presses a full waterskin into his hands, holding it to his lips when he makes no move to drink on his own accord. Sigrid is not there.
At first he thinks that he only cannot see her. That she is behind a rock tending to some other dwarf and has not yet noticed that he has been pulled free, but soon enough he realizes that she is not in the tunnel at all. There is dust in the air. After so many days with nothing to do but sense the stone around him, Fili’s awareness of it is greater than it has ever been. The corridor is intact, but it is less stable than it was. They will have kept Sigrid away lest she come to harm in the same rockfall that held him captive.
He is both glad of that, and angered. They have no right to keep them from each other. No right at all. His mind is full of stone and anger and her, and it is not until Nori takes him by the shoulders and gives him a firm shake, amidst much protest from the medics, who remain concerned for his head, that his thoughts clear.
“Durin skulls,” Nori says, so quietly that only Fili hears him.
“You’ve got one too,” Fili points out, to let the other dwarf know that he understands and is grateful.
“Aye, but mine is carefully trained,” Nori says.
“So train me,” Fili says, and then holds up a hand. “Later. I want to go home.”
This is overheard by all present, and they smile. Rockfalls and danger taken care of, they are pleased to remember that their prince is still as besotted with his wife as ever, and when the medic clears him to leave, Fili is gone before the dwarf is fully standing upright from his bow.
Sigrid is waiting for him, flying across the room with a hand raised as though she intends to strike him, and he catches the blow before either of them can figure out what it was she really meant to do. He holds her more tightly than he means to, and she starts to scold him in the same breath as he kisses her. He knows she wants him safe with the same ferocity he craves her safety, but he also knows that he cannot promise her anything to that regard. He cannot lie to her, however much he wants to see her calmed and comforted, not even if it would calm himself.
Instead he pulls at her clothes, while she pulls at his. He does not tear at her laces because she stops him, but once he has her naked and in their bed, he does not hold anything back, and she does not dissuade him. He is not elegant or considerate, and he finishes long before he means to, but Sigrid does not complain. He doesn’t think about his ferocity until after, when he turns to see her and the lamplight shows the marks that are still reddening her skin.
He looks at each of them in turn, a quiet horror at what he has done boiling in his chest. Sigrid lets him carry her into the bathroom, into the hottest part of the tub, and does not protest when he pulls her into his arms again and sets to kissing each place his touch was too harsh against her skin. He feels three days’ worth of worry melt from her, as three days’ frustration went from him, but much less destructively. He is so tired, but he has done nothing but rest and wait since the cave in, and now his need to fix what has happened is overwhelming.
“There wasn’t much to do, except sit and wait,” he says eventually. “We couldn’t touch anything or fear of bringing more of it down. We just had to hope aid was coming.”
“They wouldn’t let me help,” she says, and he kisses her again, because she understands, at least in part, what it means to need to fix something and not be allowed to. “All I could do was sit and wait too.
“Sigrid,” he says, trying once more to apologize.
“It’s all right,” she tells him, even though he does not think he has done enough to be sure that it is. “It’s all right. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
She repeats it several more times, and then the tears come. It’s not a storm or a rage, like it was when he came home. It’s quiet, and he kisses the salt from her cheeks as she calms. He promises himself that he will never cause her harm again, and does not know that, despite of himself, he has made a promise he cannot keep.
+++
Elrond and Oin make an odd pair, but quickly determine the other’s strengths and determine the best way forward. Elrond, for all his long years as a healer, has overseen the birth of only one child: a boy of Ranger get whom he now fosters. Oin, on the other hand, has delivered nearly every badger born to his kin, both in Erebor and the Blue Mountains, since he completed his apprenticeship as a medic. His family may joke about an unfortunate incident involving his nephew, a too-small swaddling blanket, and a hard stone floor, but it is well known amongst the dwarves that he is the best.
“I think it is best, then,” Oin says, “if I see to the badger’s care while you give your attentions to the lady.”
“I agree,” Elrond says, his voice loud enough that Oin can hear him without the trumpet. They will both need full use of their hands, after all.
They resume their inventory of their equipment, pruning clutter where ever they can. Elrond has seen too much healing done by the Dunedain to be put off by the earthiness of Oin’s accoutrements. Elves tend to rely overmuch on herblore and spells, which do not always work fully on other races, and have not been tested at all on childbirth. It is entirely possible that he will be no help at all, until the moment of greatest need. It has occurred to him that he should ask Sigrid or Fili if they have discussed the possibility of hard choices, but he feels he would get two different answers if he did. Rather, he will make the decision himself, if it must be made, and deal with the fallout as it comes.
So he discusses blades with Oin, hoping they will never have to use them, and makes sure that the bottles and jars he carried from Imladris are labelled such that they can be identified by the young runners Thorin has assigned to aid them. Then it is a matter of restraining himself from checking and rechecking that everything is in place.
“This is the part I hate the most,” Balin says when the old dwarf joins them for luncheon on the fourth day after Elrond’s arrival to the Mountian. Theoretically, he is ensuring that the healers have everything they need, but Elrond suspects that Thorin’s temper is shortening as well, and does not begrudge Balin a short respite of it.
“Indeed,” Elrond says. “At least, were we waiting for a battle, there would eventually be something to fight.”
Balin sighs, and passes his tobacco pouch to Oin. Elrond doesn’t smoke, but has spent enough time with Gandalf that he understand the need to, and, somewhat oddly, he finds the scent comforting. It is undeniably the scent of peace and quiet. Oin packs his pipe and lights it, drawing for a good draft until he has it, and then, out of long habit, offers it to Elrond.
“No, thank you,” Elrond says, and turns to Balin to ask about the state of Gondorian trade. The affairs of Men have not bothered him overmuch for some years now, but he feels that the time has come for his renewed interest.
The pipes are still half-filled with the sweet-smelling pipeweed when Elrond’s elf-ears hear a sound that would cause his heart to race were he fully elven and in his own well guarded house. It is the hound, barking fit to raise an alarm in all corners of the Mountain, and shortly after Elrond hears it, the first of the young dwarf runners bursts into the room, short of breath and panting, to tell them that Sigrid’s time is come.
+++
Apparently there are going to be six chapters.
PLEASE LET THERE ONLY BE SIX CHAPTERS.
Chapter 6
no subject
Date: 2014-12-31 02:07 am (UTC)What a marvelous detail. I'm as relieved as the rest that Elrond is there.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-31 02:28 am (UTC)