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Tauriel picked another rosy apple and brought it to her nose. These apples in Rivendell's orchard were a different variety than the ones that grew in her Greenwood home; they had a sweeter, more floral aroma and flavor. After setting the apple in her now-full basket, she swung down from her perch in the tree.
Kíli made his way to her with a bushel basket. Being suited to climbing trees by neither frame nor inclination, he lent his help by loading bushels onto the cart that would take the apples back to the house.
Grinning, he held his basket out to receive her load. His cheeks were flushed from the nip of cold autumn air, but he didn't seem to notice the chill, warmed as he was by his work; his sleeves were pushed up past his elbows and his shirt collar was open.
"We should've hired elves to pick our apples in Ered Luin," he said. "We used to have to knock down the highest fruit, or just wait for it to fall." He scooped an apple from the basket and bit into it. "They're better if they're not bruised," he said around the mouthful. "Although Mum would put the squashed ones into spice cake." His look turned dreamy. "Do you think we could convince the cook to make me one?"
"I'm sure she could not refuse to bake for such an appreciative audience. As long as you don't eat all the apples before they get back to the kitchens," she teased. It seemed that half of the times she had spotted him today, he had been munching one.
Kíli smirked at her with his eyes as he took another bite. "But they'll never taste any better than they do now," he said, handing her a fresh apple from the bushel.
"That's true." Tauriel smiled to herself; anyone who thought dwarves less perceptive of nature's shades and changes had not truly known many dwarves. She brushed her lips over the velvet bloom on the apple's skin before biting. The crisp flesh flaked away easily, and tart-sweet juice filled her mouth.
"Mmm, nothing can match that first bite," she said.
"That's what I've always thought." Kíli's eyes sparkled with mirth. "When I was a lad—oh, maybe ten years old—I got in trouble for eating a bunch of apples from our cellar."
"Oh? How many did you eat?"
He smiled, obviously anticipating her reaction to his story. "Well, really it was Fíli who ate too many."
"I've never seen your brother eat an apple," Tauriel said. "While you, I have noticed, cannot get enough of them."
"Fíli hates apples," Kíli said cheerfully. "And it's my fault."
"I see." She nibbled another bite.
"In our cellar, we always kept a great bin of apples, enough for the whole dûm." He gestured expansively with his half-eaten apple core. "I always thought it looked like a treasure trove from Uncle's stories of Erebor. One day I climbed up the bin, settled myself atop a mountain of apples, and started eating them. It was jolly: I felt like old Smaug himself on his hoard—better, in fact, because even dragons can't eat gold the way dwarflings can eat apples. I was about a dozen apples along when Fíli found me."
"A dozen apples?" Tauriel raised her brows at him. "That's enough to make a grown dwarf sick."
"Yes, if I'd eaten the entire apple. But as you said, the first bite tastes the best. So I only took one bite from each." He nodded wisely at her and crunched the last bite of the apple now in his hand.
She laughed. "You were a dwarf of keen discernment even then."
"So I was. Now, Fíli came down to the cellar and found me tossing unfinished apples onto the floor—" He pitched his apple core across the orchard. "—and he tried to stop me. 'Mum will be mad,' he said.
"'No she won't,' I said. 'She said not to touch the butter or the beer and to eat as many apples as we wanted.'"
"Did she?" Tauriel asked.
"Of course she did!" Kíli tugged Tauriel's hair, so that she yelped and spun away from him. "I'm a rascal but not a liar."
"Yes, my love."
He wiped his sticky hand on his trousers. "'You're not eating apples; you're throwing them away," Fíli said to me. 'Am too eating them,' I said. 'I'm eating as much as I want.' And in my mind, it was true: I only wanted one bite of each.
"Well, when Fíli saw there was no stopping me, he knew there was only one thing left to do: if he finished all of my apples, Mum couldn't be angry with us for taking more apples than we could eat."
"How very valiant of him," Tauriel said.
Kíli dipped his head in agreement. "Especially considering I was up to about twenty by that point. I think he ate seven or eight before he had to admit defeat. He spent the rest of the evening with a miserable stomach ache, and he hasn't touched an apple since."
"Poor Fíli! And was your mother angry?"
"Oh, she scolded us both—me for not listening to my brother and him for not telling her before he'd made himself sick—but secretly I think she was amused. At any rate, I got to eat Fíli's share of the pie she made with the apples he wasn't able to finish, so I was very pleased with myself."
"Kíli!" Tauriel shoved his shoulder. "Weren't you at all sorry for your poor brother?"
"Well, it was hard to be sorry when things turned out so well for me." He flashed her one of his most winsome and roguish smiles.
"Mm-hm." Tauriel put an arm about him and tugged him close so that his shoulder bumped her side. "I think this story is a miniature portrait of your relationship to your brother."
"Is it?"
"Yes, my reckless young prince. You were having fun, and your brother was being responsible; despite his pains, Fíli is punished by being put off apples for life, while you are rewarded for your impulsiveness by no longer having to share your favorite treat."
"You know I didn't plan it that way."
"I know. And that is why we still love you." She caught his shirt collar and pulled him round for a kiss. "Even though you are a rascal."
Kíli licked his lips, a mischievous glint in his eye. "And you taste like apples."