Chapter Text
There were a few moments in his life that Kili knew he would never forget, that they would be forever imprinted upon his brain for various reasons. Meeting and falling in love with his beloved, for example. That one time he was almost skewered by a crossbow bolt because his uncle is jumpy and trigger happy, as another example. And there would never be any level of being able to forget what happened on Raven Hill. So, memories. Both good and bad. Painful and sweet.
But there’s no pain like your 6-year-old cousin jumping on you (and your only warning is a sudden “Wake up, Kee!”) to wake you up and landing squarely on the old gems and drill.
“Eggs, that is not the way to wake a gent up of a morning,” Kili groans after depositing his cousin somewhere else on the bed that wasn’t his body.
“I knocked. Ask the guard, he opened the door for me,” Eglantine said.
“I’mma fire him,” Kili grunts as he rolls over and repositions his pillow and prepares to fall asleep anew.
“Kee, get up!” Eglantine cried, bouncing her little hands off his shoulder. “I’m h’ngry! So’s Thora!”
“Go get your mum to make breakfast,” was the muffled retort from under Kili’s blanket.
“Mummy’s still in bed, sleepin’!”
“What? Still?” This got Kili to poke his head out of the blanket cocoon. “This is the third day in a row that’s happened -- that’s not like your mum at all.”
“I knowwwwwww,” Eglantine groaned, dramatically flopping face-first into Kili’s blankets.
“Alright, alright, go to the kitchen and wait for me,” Kili sighed as he tossed back the blankets. “But don’t touch anything!” gets yelled after Eglantine’s back as she runs out of the room.
Rolling out of bed, Kili haphazardly pulls on a shirt and pads down the hallway, passing through doors and another hall until he reaches the door to Bella’s bedroom.
“Bella,” Kili calls through the door as he knocks, “you up?”
“...Getting there” is the sleepy, muffled reply that comes through the door.
“Okay, I’ll be in the kitchen with the girls -- don’t worry, I won’t try to cook them anything, promise,” Kili assured Bella.
That got a low chuckle from the other side of the door. “Thank Yavanna for that. I’ll be out shortly, Kili.”
“Alright, then,” Kili cheerfully said before moving away from the door and heading for the kitchen.
When Bella appears in the kitchen a few minutes later, Thora rapidly pats the seat next to her. “Sit down, mama.”
“Indeed, I urge you to listen to Thora -- you look dead on your feet,” Dis says from her position in front of the stove.
“Where’s -- I swear Kili was at my door a few minutes ago,” Bella says, looking around as if that will summon Kili as she takes a seat next to Thora, who promptly hugs her mother tightly around the middle. And also shows signs of turning into a limpet, too.
“Morning, mama,” Thora mumbles into Bella’s side as Eglantine comes around from the other side of her sister to hug her mother, too.
“Morning, my darlings,” Bella sleepily responds through a yawn.
“As to your query of where Kili has disappeared off to -- I was already in the kitchen making breakfast and sent him on an errand,” Dis says, finally having the room to respond to Bella’s question.
“Ah, thank you for making the girls breakfast, Dis. I don’t know what’s gotten into me as of late.”
“It’s no trouble. I like to cook and have had precious little time to do it of late. Not to mention, cooking for two creatures who actually eat their food as opposed to inhaling it so that they barely taste it? Priceless,” Dis insisted. She turned from the stove in the next moment, depositing a plate of eggs, crispy bacon, some pan-roasted tomatoes, and a nicely toasted crumpet in front of Bella.
“Eat,” Dis implored Bella. “Hopefully this will put some color back into those cheeks of yours.”
“Thank you, it looks delicious,” Bella responded, already feeling a bit heartened at the sight of the still steaming hot food in front of her.
“Here, momma, have some of this,” Eglantine urged her mother, pushing a plate brimming with fruit toward Bella. “Kee made lots cuz he wouldn’t turn on the stove.”
“Thank you for sharing your fruit with me, my darlings,” Bella said as she reached for a small cluster of grapes and created a mini avalanche of cut strawberries, as several came tumbling off the plate and onto the tabletop.
“Oops,” Thora giggled.
“Eh, more fruit for me,” Bella said, scooping the pieces up and depositing them on her plate.
Breakfast was an overall pleasant affair, truly. Both girls, without many dwarrow around to emulate their eating habits after, made very little mess and were happy enough to toddle off to play with some new carved toys that Bofur and Bifur had brought by the other day in front of the fireplace.
“So, now that we are effectively alone with our after breakfast tea, what was that look about?” Bella asked Dis in a low voice.
Dis, to her and Bella’s credit, did not dither or pretend that she had no idea what Bella had been speaking about. Instead, she got straight to the point. As she reached for the little stoneware jar that held some sugar, Dis started to speak.
“I was wondering if you could tell me something, first. And I hope that this does not bring up anything unduly unpleasant for you. After the birth of Thora and Eglantine, did you find yourself experiencing… how do I put this? Did you often feel what could perhaps be called disproportionately sad?”
“I was in a right state after the girls were born,” Bella answered, taking a sip of her tea to lubricate her suddenly dry throat. “I felt many, many things and nothing at all at the same time. I also felt so tired. So very tired. It went beyond being bone-deep tired and the only answer seemed to, at first, be to sleep all the time. Then there were days when I was able to get out of bed where I just felt sad. No explanation, I just woke up that way. It could last a few minutes or a few days, but it happened just out of the blue. Does that answer your question?”
“It rather does. I remember hearing other mothers, dwarrow and humans alike, back in the Blue Mountains referring to it as the ‘baby blues.’ Some were positive that it ran in families -- pure codswallop in my opinion. Most, the non-incredibly stupid, agreed that it struck at random and there was no way of telling if a new mother would have it after the birth of their babe. Though it was unsurprising, given the great trauma their bodies had just gone through bringing a baby into the world. I imagine the… events in your life leading up to the girls’ birth might have made for a particularly difficult time for you.”
“You are not wrong there,” Bella did not bother to deny. There was no point. She herself had long privately held the belief that the way things had gone down had made it worse in the long run.
There was a brief pause when Thora came over to ask Bella to remove a toy that Eglantine had accidentally gotten stuck in the former’s hair. Once that situation had been successfully resolved, the conversation was quietly resumed.
“It’s not just that, though. I also find myself very… nervous around some things. More so than a normal hobbit. No hobbit likes heights. We are a low to the ground people and our dwellings definitely reflect that. Not to say I was fond of heights before -- any of the company could tell you how not fond of the idea of riding a pony I was. But when I cross bridges in this mountain, I find myself getting very nervous. Almost light-headed, like when you hold your breath for too long. I also find myself thinking I’m going to fall even if I most certainly am not, or someone could come along and push me and there’s nothing there to even try and grab onto in the event of a slip or a fall or a push. The battlements, in particular, are a great source of distress.”
“Naturally,” Dis murmurs sympathetically.
“And I find myself unsure of how to precisely deal with or overcome these things. I mean, they are all around me now. But how do I get over that?”
“I don’t know if it’s getting over it so much as getting through it,” Dis mused. “But there are fixes for some of this. Like having guard rails added to the bridges and walkways that don’t have them. You know Thorin would gladly do anything that would make you happy and keep you and the girls safe.”
“I know, but I do not wish to seem like I’m complaining or… or nitpicking.”
Dis snorted, hard. “I promise you that he will definitely not see it that way. And, if you wish for it to not seem like it comes from you, perhaps drop it in conversation. For example, ‘Thorin, I was wondering when they were going to add some guard rails to the bridges? And would it not be safer for the girls to add them sooner than later?’ He would do anything under the sun and mountain to keep them safe.”
“That is definitely an idea worth considering,” Bella mused. “And perhaps… exposure over time, done carefully, could also help.”
“I absolutely agree that it might help and you, of course, will not be alone when this happens if you do not wish to be. I mean, I doubt you’ll be left alone to do something like this even if you wanted to. But they’ll at least attempt to be stealthy and not let you see them.”
This time it was Bella who snorted in amusement. “I think the only one who could be successful at that is Nori. The rest are utterly hopeless.”
“There’s a reason the dwarrow race has never really been into stealth warfare. We are not often a terribly subtle people.”
And as a terribly unsubtle underscore to Dis’ words, it was at that moment Oin came charging in, Kili at his heels.
“I rest my case,” Dis whispered in an undertone to Bella as both rose from the table. “It took you long enough, Kili. What was the hold-up?”
“It was a job to find Oin, that’s what happened. Turned out he’d been called to the mines and I had to go pretty damn far down to find him,” Kili sort of groused, dumping Oin’s large medical bag onto the breakfast table before quickly buggering off to play with Thora and Eglantine before he could be roped into anything else.
“What happened in the mines? Did anyone die?” Dis asked with some concern. Oin explained why he had been called down as he went and thoroughly washed his hands at the sink.
“No, no one died. Thank Mahal for small mercies. There was an old shaft twasn’t on the blueprints. Twas poorly covered up and two poor sods found that out the hard way. They’ll live, but both of them broke their legs and one cracked some ribs on t’other when he landed on top of him. It was a nasty business. Now,” Oin quickly dried off his hands. “I was told there was some concern about you, Bella. I don’t extend this privilege to just anyone but you know if there are any concerns you can come to me any time.”
“Ah,” Bella says, glancing at Kili, who had been peeping over a chair by the fire for a bit. With a yelp, he quickly dropped out of sight and the cries of laughter and play grew in volume a little after that.
“Be glad it was me that sent for Oin and not Thorin. He’d be a million times worse about this,” Dis boldly admitted. And Bella definitely had to concede that she was not wrong.
“Momma, you okay?” Thora asks, poking her head around the leg of a chair.
“I’m okay dears, just tired. Oin’s just here to make sure I don’t have a cold, that’s all. Now, have you shown Kili the new toys Bofur and Bifur brought you?”
That is sufficient to distract the girls long enough for Kili to engage them in play again and let Oin get to work.
“How long h’ve you been feeling tired?”
“For the last few days. I’ve not been sleeping terribly well if I sleep at all.”
“Tossin’ and turnin’? Or is it an inability to go t’sleep and stay asleep?”
“Both. It really depends on the sort of day I’ve had leading up to bedtime.”
“Appetite?” Oin distractedly asks as he takes up Bella’s wrist and watches a pocket watch he’d just removed from his coat pocket.
Bella at this point shows some reluctance in answering, trying to be evasive with “I eat.”
“And d’you eat those seven meals a day hobits are famous for eatin’?” Oin inquires, suspicious.
“Sometimes,” and before she could say anything else, Oin interrupted with --
“Ach, woman, you need to eat. It goes without saying, or at least I thought it did. But you need to eat. Hobbit physiology may be different from dwarrow physiology, but I’m also not entirely unaware of a hobbit’s dietary needs and that includes eating seven meals a day. To put it plainly, Bella, I’m prescribing some bed rest and a strict meal plan of seven meals a day.”
“But… But… Oin, I can’t do that.”
“Oh, yes, you can and you will. You’ve got more than enough people willing to help you out with looking after the girls and cooking meals. So, you just stay in bed, wear your housecoat in front of the fire or sit in the garden, I don’t care. You’re not to do anything remotely strenuous until I say so. And stop looking at me as if I’ve gone off my nut, while you’re at it.”
“Oin, this is mad --”
“No, what’s mad is when I’ve got a patient arguin’ with me. Don’t worry, I’ll stop by the kitchens on the way back and tell Bombur to send something up for luncheon.”
“I can be back in time to make dinner,” Dis offered up.
“Good. And you do not let Bella help with the cooking.”
“I can’t even peel or cut vegetables?” Bella exclaimed with annoyance.
“Bed rest is bed rest,” Is Oin’s final, firm word on the matter before he takes his leave.
“Oh, this is vexing,” Bella complains as she drops heavily onto the couch.
“Well, we wouldn’t want you to run yourself into the ground either, Bella,” Dis responded.
“Mummy, why do you look so grumpy?” Eglantine asked, crawling over to prop up her chin on Bella’s arm.
“Mum’s been put on bed rest, sweetie, just for a few days and she isn’t taking it very well at present,” Bella informed them both (since Thora was definitely also curious as to Oin’s early morning visit) with some resignation.
“You act like we’ll be leaving you all alone up here all day,” Kili pouted.
“You all have jobs that keep you busy, so it is reasonable to suppose that I and the girls will be alone at least some of the time for the next few days. And since Oin is very firmly not budging, I suppose I’ll just have to figure out how to make the most of it.”
“That’s the spirit, auntie!”
“Dis, Oin did say nothing strenuous, so please, throw a pillow at your son for me, would you?”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Seven days into bed rest and Bella was ready to mutiny on principle. Her daughter’s got out more than she did lately, for Yavanna’s sake. The only thing she was allowed to do was walk, and even that had started to look dicey when Thorin had been informed of Bella being put on bed rest. In the midst of Thorin trying to be Very Insistent that Oin clearly meant she shouldn’t walk on her own and Bella insisting she could indeed and would walk, Dis had handed Bella a heavy, thick old tome that Tolur had sent up from the library and told Bella that she would not tell Oin if the book mysteriously took flight in the next few seconds.
Thorin, clearly remembering the library in Bag End, had wisely backed up and backed off, also admitting that he could possibly be over-reacting a little bit.
When the Company had found out at dinner that Bella was on bed rest and restricted to the Royal Wing for a little while, they had promised not to let her be bored to death. And they had been as good as their word. Someone or several someones stopped by at various times of the day. There had been one very pleasant afternoon where Tonil and Tonilia had come for a visit and the girls had had enormous fun playing with Tonilia (or being pawed at by a curious Tonilia) on the rug in front of the fireplace while their mothers looked on and then got into a very spirited discussion about baking that somehow rolled into an equally spirited debate about knitting that only stopped when some obnoxious fake coughing caught their attention from the doorway.
“H-How long have you been standing there?” Tonilia asked the small tangle of dwarrow clumped up by the door. Said clump containing her brother-in-law, Balin, Ori, Kili, and Fili.
“Long enough to wonder how on Arda you went from baking to knitting the way you did. My mind couldn’t comprehend those mental gymnastics -- and I was here for it,” Fili responded as they moved into the room.
“And how the conversation got even more enthusiastic, don’t forget that, brother,” Kili chimed in as he hopped over the couch in a smooth motion.
“Did you know knitting needles double as implements of murder?” Ori chimed in. And when utter silence reigned in the moments after this proclamation, he looked up from the small stack of books he’d been fussing with to say “What?” with perfect innocence.
“Sometimes I think it’s not Nori or Dori we should keep an eye on,” Bofur slowly said, eyeing Ori with eyes of suspicion (that lasted for maybe five seconds before he cracked and smiled).
“Oh, pish,” Ori waved dismissively at his friend.
Bella was very grateful for her friends stopping by, she knew they were very busy with their jobs and duties in the mountain but still took time out to come and see her or take the girls out and show them the mountain. But she was still very quickly being bored out of her skull by being confined to the Royal Quarters.
And on morning ten of her confinement, an unlikely distraction appeared in the kitchen as Bella, Fili (a far more competent cook than his brother), and the girls were finishing up breakfast.
“Ah, Balin, what brings you here so early in the day?” Bella asked, rising from the table to greet the elder dwarf.
“Lessons,” Balin answered as he set a large box down on the table and started pulling smaller boxes and bags out of it.
“Oh, for learning Khuzdul?” Bella asked, her eyes lighting up with scholarly interest.
“Indeed. I thought we could test the waters today, see what works for you and the girls and what does not work. And after that is established, we could set up a timetable and schedule for lessons.”
“Lessons?” Eglantine asked, sharing a not very pleased glance with her sister.
“What for?” Thora asked.
“There’s more to Khuzdul than the curses, little one,” Balin informed her with a smile
“Sounds sensible. Girls, please go put your breakfast things in the sink and then come sit with me.”
Both girls, with a little bit of mutinous grumbling, acquiesce to their mother’s request. Bella has them sit on either side of her while Fili helps Balin set up some of the things he’s brought along with him.
“Now, it’s been a few decades since I’ve had to teach younglings the fundamentals of our language, so it took some time to gather up the necessary tools and supplies to help you learn. And I thought we might start off with something simple, to ease Thora and Eglantine into things,” Balin explains, adopting a posture and tone more akin to a lecturer than a statesman.
Balin picks up a simple wood box near his right hand and begins to remove some simply carved stones, placing them in a row on the table facing the girls and Bella.
“Now, could either of you two tell me what this color is in Common?” Balin asked, pointing to the first shape.
“Blue!” Thora jumped in before Eglantine could open her mouth.
“Correct,” Balin said with a small smile. “And in Khuzdul that word is ‘khagal’.” He spoke the word slowly, enunciated clearly and with a little of his natural accent as he could manage.
“Kha-gal,” Thora and Eglantine both repeat the word (at different times) slowly, as though feeling out the word with their tongues, getting used to it and all.
“Very good. That was not at all bad for a first try. Now, Eglantine, can you tell me what color this stone is?”
“It’s red,” Eglantine promptly answered.
“Correct. In khuzdul, the word I’m about to say translates more directly as ‘crimson’ but since that is but another name for red, it matters little. Repeat after me: damâmbaraz.”
Both girls look at Balin with an incredulous eyebrow raised. “Would you like a hanky to blow your nose?” Thora politely inquires. And that has all the adults present cracking up. Bella even thinks she can hear a guard or two snorting in amusement out in the corridor.
“No thank you, I am perfectly fine, young miss,” is Balin’s response to Thora’s inquiry. He’s trying to come off looking like a severe teacher not amused by his pupil’s sass, but Bella can see the way his eyes are crinkling at the corners that he found it just as amusing as the rest of them had. “Now, let us try this once more: damâmbaraz.”
It takes several tries before Thora and Eglantine both get a passable rendition of the Khuzdul word for ‘red’ out of their mouths, but they do try most admirably. It does help that the words for yellow, purple, green, and orange (tahaf, zabal, danakh, and khatad respectively) require less linguistic gymnastics to pronounce. Balin runs through all the colors again twice more before he moves onto the shapes carved into the surface of the stones.
“And these sticks, well, you can use them to help you while learning the names of various shapes in Khuzdul. Also, and I did not tell you this, girls, excellent for driving a caretaker mad by just grabbing handfuls and tossing them willy-nilly,” Balin added in a dreadful stage whisper that nevertheless had Thora and Eglantine laughing. He was a dab hand with teaching young ones, Bella reflected.
The portion of the lesson that concerned shapes Balin even turned into a game. He handed over several stone carved shapes, to let Thora and Eglantine play with them and familiarize themselves with the shapes. As the girls quite happily and readily did that, Balin set up an equal number of pieces of paper on the table. Each one had the name of the shape in both Common and Khuzdul wrote upon it. As Balin explained it, he would say part of the word and the girls had to put a shape, just the one, down on a piece of paper. Square was ibal, circle was imgam, diamond was idzab, rectangle was ibal abkhub, triangle was ifkham, and star was thatr. The girls listened well when Balin said the word parts and by the third run-through, they were matching stone piece to paper correctly every time.
And after running through shapes and colors, Balin gets out a slate and chalk and starts to draw out the Khuzdul alphabet so each girl (and Bella, honestly) can see what the letters look like, not just how they sound. The lesson goes on for a little while, wrapping up when Balin shows the girls a few games they can play to help them study between lessons (“And that way it won’t feel like such a struggle,” Fili added with a ‘sneaky’ wink behind Balin’s back).
“I think we’ll wrap it up there for today, you did very well Thora and Eglantine,” Balin says when the lesson concludes for the day.
“Thank you, Mister Balin,” the girls’ chorus in that way that will never not be slightly creepy to Fili (no matter how nicely and not creepily said the something happens to be).
“I must say that I am rather surprised by how well-behaved both Thora and Eglantine were during their lessons. Hardly a fidgeting muscle amongst them until near the end!” Balin exclaimed as he and Fili moved a small table out into the garden for elevenses.
“I take it your previous pupils were not so… studious?” Bella asked with the ghost of a mischievous smile playing around her mouth.
“Dwarrow children and, by extension, all dwarrow, are not exactly a ‘sit down and study’ kind of people. A lot of us prefer to just… do,” Fili says as he and Balin with the girls' aid set up the table and Bella sits on a bench and ‘supervises.’
“It can and does make them rather poor students at times,” Balin adds. “Biscuit, Bella? The guard tells me that these are a specialty of Bombur’s.”
“I would love to try one,” Bella said, reaching forward to claim a delicious, golden looking cookie from the plate proffered to her. “Mmm, there is some delicious and high quality butter in this cookie. And some cinnamon and,” Bella takes another bite and thoughtfully, slowly chews it, “And I do believe a dash of nutmeg as well.”
“It all tastes like dessert to me,” Thora says.
“Thora, you weren’t supposed to be eating sweets until after the meal,” Bella chides her eldest.
“I got one for Eggs!” Thora vehemently protests, gesturing to her sister, who does indeed have evidence all over her pinafore of just having consumed a cookie.
Bella rolls her eyes to the heavens as Fili out and out guffaws.
“That is not helping, Fili,” Bella says, trying to be reproachful. He, however, is utterly unrepentant.
“I know it’s not, but damn if that wasn’t hilarious!”
“Balin? If you wouldn’t mind?” Bella turns to the older dwarf and implores.
“Certainly,” Balin readily agrees, walking over to Fili and not-so-gently cuffing him upside the head.
“Ow!”
“That’ll teach you to behave with a bit more restraint, won’t it?” Balin says with a smile that is just so… so very much like Dwalin. “Now, come sit at the table like a proper dwarf and let us eat.”
Elevenses is a fairly quiet affair (with a dwarf like Fili and two young ones there was no way it was going to be an entirely quiet affair) and the talk is nice. Bella enjoys the company and the conversation. Fili is really a very much more astute and canny person than the usual persona he uses in public.
And when Balin prepares to take his leave after elevenses to attend to some duties that cannot be put off, he leaves with Bella a book that is about the size of a sheet of parchment paper but about the width of three of her fingers.
“Something a little bit more advanced for you, Bella, since you’ve already shown an aptitude for languages. Some of the pages at the beginning are like what I went over with the girls today, but this also quickly gets into sentence structure and punctuation and grammar. A bit dry, but whoever scribed this book did include some very fine pictures to liven up the dullness of the words within.”
Bella casually glanced over random pages of the book after Balin had left. The art, though the style was dwarven, was indeed very beautiful. And that the colors and lines still looked as crisp and bright as the day the book was completed spoke well of whoever had the guardianship of this text in the intervening years or decades. Becoming more proficient in Khuzdul was indeed something to look forward to, Bella thought.