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The first thing that Kíli learns about children is that they are curious. The second thing he learns about children is that they are fast. The third thing he learns is that if they are quiet, something is probably very, very wrong.
He knows these things, but he doesn’t really understand them until they all converge in a single moment, when he suddenly realizes that Orodir, who had been sitting at his feet while he shared an ale or three with Fíli, has abandoned his blocks and, essentially, disappeared. He blinks, and looks at his brother.
"Did... Tauriel come in for him?" he asks hopefully.
Fíli, who is on his fourth pint himself, thinks for a moment, then shakes his head. Kíli swears loudly.
"Shh!" Fíli gestures at the half-open door to his bedroom. "He probably just went to look for another toy, you keep leaving things in here. You don't want to be teaching him new words. At least, not that kind. Tauriel will kill you."
"I'll blame you if he repeats it," Kíli growls, getting to his feet and tapping on the open door. "Orodir?" he calls. "You in here, lad?"
No response. He pushes the bedroom door open and swears again.
"Not there?" A note of concern creeps into Fíli's voice as well. As one, they both turn toward the other door, the one that opens into the halls that lead, in one direction, to the rest of the royal suite, and in the other, to rooms that are still being cleaned out from before the Desolation. Normally Kíli doesn't worry about that door; it isn't quite the invisible-when-closed, ancient-magic, completely-sealed-once-shut type like the main gate or the hidden passage, but it is still Dwarf craftsmanship, metal handles and solid, heavy stone. Too heavy for his three-year-old child to move.
It is ajar.
Kíli rounds on his brother. "You left it open?!"
"You left it open!" Fíli points an accusing finger at Kíli's chest. "You followed me in!"
Having run out of appropriate Khuzdul phrases, Kíli calls his brother and himself a few choice words in Sindarin and drags a hand through his hair distractedly. Obviously (and, Kíli thinks, thankfully) not understanding his Elvish, Fíli puts a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"Come on, he was chattering up a storm not ten minutes ago," he says encouragingly. "He can't have gotten far. We'll find him before he gets himself into trouble."
At the word trouble, Kíli thinks about the month prior, when they had still been in Mirkwood, and Orodir had disappeared ten feet up into the branches of a large oak tree, only to eventually come down covered in sticky spider silk. He turns a shade paler. Fíli nudges him forward.
"Hey, he’s your son. Are you going to help, or what?"
Kíli shakes himself from his sense of impending panic and follows Fíli to the hall. They pull the door fully open and look down either side of the corridor. "Which way do you think he went?"
Fíli considers the choice for a moment. Then he sighs, grabs a torch from the wall, and starts down the lesser traveled end. "He's your son," he says again. "He will undoubtedly have gone where we don't want him to."
#
In Mirkwood, amad talked to him about listening to the sounds of the forest, the whispering melody of wind in the leaves, the quiet murmur of streams running to meet the river, the gentle beat of acorns falling to the moss-covered ground. She told him that one day he would learn to understand the songs of the trees, and to sing to them in reply. He didn't understand her then, doesn’t hear songs in the woods, but sometimes, when he puts his hands against the cool stone walls of Erebor, he thinks that he can hear a low thrum from deep inside the mountain, and maybe it is sort of the same thing.
“Kemthêl,” Orodir sing-songs tunelessly to himself as he walks. “Kamithî’aradî.”
It doesn’t occur to him at first that it’s grown dark; although he is used to the lantern and torch lit passages of Erebor’s inhabited halls, his eyes adjust well enough, and he keeps one hand on the stone as he walks, following it until he finds another empty fissure. He isn’t afraid as he turns into the new, darker room. It doesn’t matter that it’s cold, and still smells a bit stale from the thick layer of ancient dust, the stone under his hand and beneath his feet feels just like the rest of the fortress city. Erebor is safety, comfort, home. He isn’t afraid of anything inside the mountain.
The rooms are set up much like the others he is familiar with, and he can find his way from the empty outer to the cluttered and more interesting inner by feel if not by sight. The stone foundations of a bed sit in one corner, the wooden frame rotted and broken, and at the foot of the bed, a metal trunk etched and embossed with traditional Dwarven designs. It looks like his toy chest. He makes his way to the trunk and, with some protest from the rusting hinges, throws the top open.
He wipes his dust covered hands on his shirt to clean them and stands on his tip-toes to peer inside. The box is not full of toys but of blankets. He frowns and pushes them aside, digging to the bottom of the trunk, and his fingers brush against something encrusted with jewels.
“Orodir?” The voice drifts in from the hall outside and makes him smile. “Orodir, are you down here?”
He wraps stubby fingers around his prize and drags it and the long purple cloth it is attached to out of the trunk, examines it briefly, lets the trunk fall closed with a thump, and trundles back toward the hall. “Ada!”
His father meets him at the doorway and promptly scoops him up off the floor. Orodir grins. Too often lately his father has been telling him he’s too big to be carried.
“Ada, look!” he says proudly. “Gollo!”
But his father isn’t listening. “Oh, thank Mahal you’re safe,” he mutters, smoothing Orodir’s hair back from his forehead. “What’s all over your shirt?”
He shoves the jewel-studded clasp in his father’s face. “En!”
“What’s this?”
His uncle Fíli comes over with the torch and lifts the corner of the fabric for closer inspection. Orodir immediately snatches it back and balls the whole thing up to his chest. “Amin utue ta! I found it. Amin!”
“Yes, fine,” his father says distractedly, trying to push his hands away without dropping him, “but what is it?”
“Mine!”
Fíli snorts laughter, making Orodir muster up his best glare and his uncle laugh louder in turn. His father rolls his eyes and sighs. “All right. Come on,” he says, turning away from the abandoned room and starting back up the hall. “Let’s get you cleaned up before your mother sees you.”
“Up,” Orodir orders.
“You are up.”
“Up!”
His father sighs fondly again, and lifts Orodir so that he is sitting astride his shoulders. Orodir laughs happily at his compliance, and after a moment his father starts to laugh too— at least until they both catch sight of a tall, thin figure standing at the edge of the lantern light. Even from this distance, Orodir can tell his mother is unhappy. “Trouble?” he asks, leaning over his father’s head to try to look at him, but only succeeding in making him nearly loose his balance. Even Fíli looks somewhat nervous.
“Yes,” his father answers, straightening up slowly. “We are definitely in trouble.”
#
Orodir allows himself to be separated from the bundle he pulled from the old room just long enough for Kíli to inspect it. It is, in fact, a child’s coat, but for a child bigger than Orodir, so it fits him more like a cloak. Not that this bothers the toddler. He parades around their living quarters with it wrapped around his shoulders, and even insists on wearing it up to dinner (which is something of a relief, since it means that Tauriel can finally send his other favorite coat to be washed and rid of several stubborn grass stains). He is especially fond of the jeweled buttons and clasp at the neck, and soon has made a game out of reflecting light off them and onto the walls and floor. It proves to be a good distraction for him. When it looks like Orodir is approaching a tantrum, Kíli simply reminds him of the little gems at his wrist and throat, trying to make him laugh instead.
He’s getting close to one now, twisting away from Tauriel as she attempts to fill his plate with a steamed green vegetable that Kíli hasn’t even bothered to identify. He tries to catch her eye to see if she needs him to intervene, but she shakes her head. She has much more patience for their picky child than he does, and more patience than Orodir too, so she usually wins.
“They’re good for you,” she says encouragingly.
“No.” Orodir shoves the plate away. Kíli puts a few potatoes on it and slides it gently back.
“They’re very tasty,” she says, passing the bowl of greens to Kíli. “Look, your father’s going to eat some—”
“No I’m not—”
She turns a fierce glare on him before he can even finish the last word. Kíli dutifully puts a small helping of the greens (he sniffs and makes a face; probably cabbage) on his plate and silently contemplates ways to slip them into his napkin without Tauriel or Orodir noticing.
“Go on,” Tauriel says, looking at Orodir but clearly talking to both of them. “Just try them.”
“Emad!” Orodir shrieks, trying a distraction of his own. “Emad, come see!” He waves his wide sleeves to get Dís’ attention as she enters the dining hall, nearly dragging them through his dinner. Kíli waits for the inevitable scolding from his mother (“You found that where? And put it on your child without having it properly laundered?”) and furrows his brow when it never comes.
"Emad?" It's a question now, and spoken in the plaintive tone that Orodir usually gets when he thinks he's in trouble, right before he cries. Before Kíli or Tauriel can stop him, he wiggles out of his seat, slides under the table, and rushes to Dís, nearly tripping on the purple coat’s too-long hem. He grabs her leg and stares up at her, green eyes wide. "Emad sad?"
She doesn't answer him at first, just fingers the collar of the coat, looking like she's seen a ghost, and finally turns a sharp gaze on Kíli. "Where did you find this?"
"In a trunk in one of the old rooms," he answers. Then, as Orodir continues to tug on her skirts, probably wanting to ask much the same question: "What is it?"
Her fingers find the jeweled button holding the coat closed, and her lips turn upwards in the smallest of smiles. "This was my brother's."
Kíli looks between his mother and his son, and asks somewhat breathlessly, "This... was Thorin's?"
The Dwarrow in question enters the room just in time to hear Dís reply quietly, "No. Frerin’s. Thorin’s was blue.”
“Yours was red,” Thorin adds, his gaze falling to Orodir, who starts to squirm under so much attention, even if it is all family. Dís smiles fondly.
“I wore mine thin in the first years of exile. It wasn’t really made for that kind of wear.” She bends down and gathers Orodir into her arms to sooth him; he clings to her even when she straightens up, so she is forced to lift him, and promptly buries his face in her thick braids. “Not you though, little one. No dragons are going to steal your home from you.”
“Mahal, I hope not. I feel like we’ve only just settled in.” Fíli, having apparently only heard the last of the conversation, looks around at the others with confusion. “What’s happened, exactly?”
“Orodir has stumbled on something… sentimental,” Tauriel says carefully. She has kept her eyes averted, not wanting to intrude on Dís and Thorin’s memories, but she looks up when she feels Dís’ gaze on her.
“Aye, sentimental. And very special.” With some difficulty in disentangling his fingers from her hair and beard, she hands Orodir back to his mother, who settles him in her lap and starts to slide the coat from his shoulders until Thorin shakes his head emphatically.
“Our mother made those to be worn,” he says, “not lie forgotten in an old trunk.”
“Not forgotten,” Dís tells him solemnly. “But I did think it long since lost. Frankly I’m amazed it’s in such good condition still.”
“She was an excellent crafter. I am not so surprised.”
Orodir fidgets with the buttons, and a bit of torchlight catches on the ruby and sapphire chips, sending blue and red flares dancing over Dís’ nose. Tauriel puts her fingers over his to still them, and turns the button gently. “Your mother made these?” she prompts.
“The coats,” Thorin explains. “Our father made the buttons.”
Dís puts a hand on Thorin’s shoulder. He squeezes her fingers briefly, and then reaches across the table to ruffle Orodir’s hair affectionately before pulling out the bench next to Kíli and beginning to fill his plate, effectively bringing the moment of reflection to an end. Fíli pulls out the chair on his brother’s other side. Dís takes the seat next to Tauriel. Orodir gamely tries one of the round vegetables, makes a face, and spits it out again into his mother’s hand. Tauriel sighs, Kíli laughs, and any remaining tension around the table dissipates into the quiet comfort of being surrounded by close kin.
“Hey,” Fíli says after a bit, pointing his fork in his mother’s direction. “How come you never made coats for Kíli and me?”
“I might have done,” Dís replies off-handedly, “if you’d stayed still long enough to be fitted.”
#
The buttons move from coat to coat as Orodir grows. Kíli takes great care with them each time, removing the stitching holding them in place without damaging the fabric underneath, except for the first time, when he lets his mother do it.
Far away, a Hobbit is also salvaging buttons from a waistcoat long since worn too thin to be presentable. He won’t get rid of it, it’s far too precious. It will go in the trunk with all the other things from his adventure that he is slowly tucking out of sight.
The buttons though… the buttons are still in good condition, though having lost a few in Gollum’s cave, he doesn’t have a full set anymore. He drops most of them into a sewing basket— he’ll find a use for them one day. But he sets two aside to give as a gift. He has a young nephew on the Took side of the family now. It’s still far too soon to know what sort of Hobbit four-year-old Peregrin will turn out to be, of course, but the last Bilbo saw him he was dragging Frodo off by the arm to help him catch fireflies.
It isn’t exactly a journey over the Misty Mountains, but it’s a beginning.