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Dis did not hate the elves of Rivendell.
She didn’t like them, but she certainly didn’t hate them, not the way that some of the bullheaded and spiteful members of her family did, and so she had been the logical choice to send here. Sometimes she wished that her brother didn’t hate elves quite so vehemently, for that would have meant that she did not have to pick up the slack of diplomacy, but Thorin did despise elves and Thorin was inordinately vocal about it, and as long as that was true, it would fall to his sister to smooth elven brows and murmur, “Of course, my lord, he means no offense, my lord, he is merely passionate, my lord, my lord, my lord.” This was her work, and no one could do it but her, and the only reason this wasn’t the bane of her life was that Smaug had firmly claimed that title first.
But Dis did not hate the elves of Rivendell. No more, at least, than they hated her.
“My lord apologizes for his delay, my august lady.” Elrond’s perpetual follower looked apologetic as he said it. Or not apologetic, Dis decided. He looked sad, which was quite a different thing and made Dis snort as the elf bowed his ever-so elegant head. He’d been overly reverential towards her since she’d arrived three days ago and he had rested his hand on her shoulder to guide her to the atrium. Dis would have ripped off the elf’s fingers if Elrond had not stepped in on her side, and she was glad the elf remembered that.
“What is it now then?” she asked around her pipe. At least the balcony the elves had shooed her to had a nice view and a better bench, and the smell of pipeweed seemed to keep them far away. Their delicate lungs, perhaps. She often wondered how creatures so apparently timid of the filthier parts of the earth could survive so long. “Is he studying another thousand-year-old scroll that demands immediate attention?”
“I assure you, Lady—”
“Because I promise you, the hunger of my people is more urgent. The children that die this winter will, I hope, be more pressing a concern than the old academics of a different age.”
“Lady Dis, Lord Elrond would not delay unless he had the utmost need.” This sad little elf. Dis almost wished he would try to touch her again, where everyone could see. She’d be spared from his obsequious bowing, and as a bonus all of Rivendell could remember the price of laying a hand on a woman of Durin’s Kin.
It was possible, on reflection, that Dis did hate elves. Just a pinch.
“Enough.” Dis’s patience, never large, had dwindled to nothing. She was angry, cranky, and sore, halfway through pregnancy with the worst yet to come. Kili had grown big enough in her belly to start crushing her lungs when she lay down at night, but she couldn’t sleep unless she was on her back, so even with the finest elven beds she was still exhausted. She was five months out from home, in the middle of immortals with whom she desperately needed to barter and to whom she could offer nothing in return. She shouldn’t complain, of course. That was what her father had always said, before he disappeared on them as well. Fine then. She wasn’t complaining. If Thorin could be a smith, then Dis could be a diplomat. But she’d have rather the two of them go back to being royalty in the comfort of their own home.
Dis waved off the elf with her free hand, an imperious gesture she’d learned from her relatives. She may be princess of nothing now, but by Durin’s beard she could still play one. “Leave me be until your lord remembers that appointments still matter to us mortals. And while you’re at it, remind him that the dwarves of Erebor have far too much experience with the dismissal of elves.” There, she thought as the elf bowed again, a little less respectfully than the first time, and glided away. That might nettle Elrond into finally greeting Dis. As far as elven lords went, Elrond had at least the decency to say no to people’s faces.
“That wasn’t very polite,” said a very amused someone off to Dis’s left. Dis started and snapped her head to look at the interloper, who could not have been there a minute ago, leaning against the balcony railing. For a moment, Dis thought she was an elf child, for she was that small and she must have the elves’ stealth to sneak in so. But she didn’t carry herself like a child, nor did she have the face of one. There was womanhood in the look of her. Dis glanced down at the stranger’s feet to confirm her suspicions and smirked around her pipe.
“We can’t all be as pleasant as hobbits,” Dis said. The hobbit in question tossed her head back, black curls bouncing and glinting in the late afternoon light, and laughed.
“You’ve met few hobbits then,” she replied, still smiling. “I’ve often thought we’re the most contentious race in all the lands.”
“You’ve met few dwarves then." Dis was rewarded with more laughter, and then all of a sudden, the hobbit was plopping herself down on the bench beside Dis, fishing out her own pipe.
“True, true,” the hobbit said. “Counting you, I’ve met only three. I do believe you are the first woman I’ve met, though I could be mistaken. There was quite a lot of armor on the other two. They were smiths come to Bree to ply their trade. There’s good work waiting there for any lads with strong arms and a good eye, I’ve heard, though I suppose there’s work for lasses too. Are there many dwarf women? I asked the other dwarves, Gamli and Khim were their names, I think, and they just blushed and said something about how you never know. I think I embarrassed them, to be honest, but it seems like a right reasonable question. A Man once tried to tell me that dwarves grew out of rock, and I told him that if that was the case, the other races would like to know how the dwarves managed that one. Would save you quite a lot of pain in childbirth. He also told me hobbits were born from eggs. You have to wonder if it is a matter of Men being ignorant of other races or males being ignorant of the other sex. Or sexes, I suppose. It’s a big world after all, and I’ve looked up the skirt of very little of it. So to speak.”
And with that, the hobbit popped her pipe into her mouth and looked at Dis expectantly.
Dis didn’t quite know what to say to this. She was still processing how easily the hobbit had moved into her space, had nearly knocked their legs together with the hobbit’s feet a-swinging. But she was such a small creature, after all, and must be truly ignorant of the world to be so easily trusting of it. “Tell me,” Dis said after a moment, “do hobbits need to breathe as other races do?”
“Not at all,” the hobbit replied, a look of mock-seriousness playing over her rosy face. “We gossip instead, and that is how we fill our lungs.” Then she chuckled, a deep rich noise of joy that seemed to have no place in these halls of harps and tinkling bells. “My apologies, Mistress Dwarf. I’ve always been overeager. My tongue can outstrip the fastest runner.”
Dis blew out a smoke ring that would have even impressed Thorin. No, Dis was not affronted, she decided, though she reserved the right to become so in the future. “No apology needed, Mistress Hobbit. Quite a few of my problems would be solved if all in Rivendell were so talkative as you.” Not the big problems, of course. But it was hard to beg supplies from those who would not even hear you beg.
“I will apologize for that.” The hobbit nodded in the direction Elrond’s attendant had disappeared in. “For I fear I’m the partial cause of Lord Elrond’s distraction. Partial, mind you. I barely had anything to do with it. It’s all that wizard’s fault if we’re being honest.”
Dis raised an eyebrow. “Your guilt seems to grow smaller by the sentence,” she said, keeping her voice level. She’d gauge whether or not to be angry with the hobbit after the story was told. It was that level of patience that had appointed her the family diplomat, which said something about the low standards her kin were working with.
The hobbit gave her a cheeky grin. “Shouldn’t guilt be proportional to the guilty? Gandalf is very big, therefore his guilt is the largest portion. I am very small and so I must be innocent of all wrongdoings.” The hobbit shrugged and blew a smoke ring even larger than Dis’s.
Dis couldn’t help but smile, just a little bit, at the ridiculous creature. “I doubt that would hold up in court.”
“Not in a dwarf court, no, us being basically the same size.” She leaned in conspiratorially and tapped her nose. “Same level of culpability.”
Dis tapped her nose as well. “Come now, before I convict you, I must know the charges,” she said. “And perhaps the name of the accused.”
“Oh bless me, I forgot.” The hobbit hopped off the bench and curtsied, before she hopped back into her seat. “Belladonna Took.”
Belladonna. A big name for a small thing. Dis looked her up and down and decided that she liked the strange little creature. She spent most of her time in the company of dwarves who took things very seriously—herself included, for the very thought of Smaug still made her gnash her teeth on her pipe and brought up a heat in her chest that seemed she’d be able to breath fire herself. If her people weren’t so serious, they wouldn’t have survived. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a pleasant change to talk lightly with someone about nothing much at all. And the hobbit spoke with a lightness that said she didn’t even give her own words much weight beyond the pleasure of saying them.
Though Belladonna was unlikely to see it as the honor that it was, Dis bowed her head to the hobbit. “Dis, daughter of Thrain.”
“That’s a lovely name,” Belladonna said with a reflexivity that made Dis think that this was just what hobbits said. “And no last name, that’s simple, that. We couldn’t do without the family name in our parts, for how would we know how to judge each other without them? You’re not a hobbit, so I’ll tell you the meaning of me so that we may speak as equals. I’m a Took, so I’m wild, adventurous and horribly improper. One day I’ll marry, though, so some year hence I shall be stolid, dependable, and mild-tempered to a fault.”
“That must be a traumatic change.”
Belladonna held up her hands. “I intend to put him off as long as I can stand, but what can we poor women do? Our babes don’t come from stone, after all, and they certainly don’t come from outside wedlock. And alas, I do love him, my husband-to-be.” Belladonna cupped the end of her pipe thoughtfully.
“Love? Well, that is a shame,” Dis said and smiled in some slight amazement as Belladonna cackled around her pipe. What an easy woman to amuse, Dis thought.
“Indeed! To shackle your heart to another when you could toss it up to the sky! My life would have been far easier if I could have been like Gandalf and just wandered my way from village to village, kidnapping young lasses and lads for my schemes and telling them it’s for their own good.”
“Ah yes,” Dis said, “the mysterious quest that is the reason that your wizard is hogging my elf.”
“It’s a silly thing,” Belladonna said, smiling, sparkling. “Gandalf swooped me away from home a month ago promising me a picnic, and then next thing I know we’re finding an old book in the barrow mounds near Buckland. He insists that it’s something the elves must see, so then we’re fighting off brigands on the road, taking a long stroll through some dreadfully haunted ruins, then there was an incident with some schoolchildren that I won’t talk about as I don’t look very clever at all in that story, and finally we are here, and those two old men have been chatting about darkness and power and other such lofty words ever since.”
Dis frowned at that last bit. “Oh? Should I be concerned?”
“Oh sure.” Belladonna shrugged one shoulder, her fingers tapping on her pipe. “There’s always some danger in the world you’d be happier if you didn’t know about.”
“That is the truth,” Dis said, more quietly than she intended. Belladonna glanced her way, questioningly, and Dis turned her grimace into a thin, polite smile.
“But I’ve been rambling,” Belladonna said. “A fine lady such as yourself must have better things to do than to listen to a hobbit speak of nothing. We can do plenty of that, I promise you.”
“No, please, talk.” This exclamation surprised Dis for all it came out of her own mouth. She popped the pipe back in as if to stopper herself.
“My lady dwarf?” Belladonna asked. There was still laughter in her voice, even when it was tinged with confusion, and Dis struck by how pleasant easy laughter was, and how pleasanter still was easy conversation. She’d known decades of prying words from her kin like gems from stone, where the only tools were one’s tongue and tattered charm, in a life where she could measure a year’s smiles on one hand. But it was not fair, she knew that, to compare her kin to strangers soft with an easy life. If Belladonna knew tragedy, she hid it well in rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes and the soft curve of a happy mouth. Thorin wore his loss like a scar, and Frerin had died with the wounds of Erebor still bleeding, and Dis—Dis endured. As she would until she couldn’t anymore, and then it would at last be someone else’s problem.
“Don’t be silent on my account. It’s been too long since I’ve heard anyone speak of nothing, and I find I’ve missed it immensely. Truly.” Dis avoided Belladonna’s eyes. “Talk to me of nothing for a while. Of your husband-to-be who you tragically love, or a version of the story with the schoolchildren where you look very clever indeed. Tell me about the barrows or the brigands or how you felt when you first entered Rivendell. I felt small, myself. But I feel that too much these days, under the open sky. I was never supposed to be here, on hands and knees for scraps so far from home.”
Where the words came from, Dis did not know. She only knew that just as wounds bleed out, so must these words, and that there was something almost pleasant about the pain of them. It was, at least, a novel pain, this work of hacking up the tangled thread of miseries she had swallowed. Dis could have tugged on that string forever, pulling up fresh new pain with every inch. But she shut her mouth, with such force that her teeth clanked together. How was weak was she, to spill out pointless words because she’d met a sympathetic ear.
Then Belladonna’s hand was warm on Dis’s shoulder, almost as warm as the soft smile on Belladonna’s face. It was almost as warm to the touch as Dis was cold with horror. Dwarves rarely touched strangers; dwarf women never did. Dwarf women never touched anyone who wasn’t their blood or their partner, and those who touched them against their will faced the wrath of the dwarrowdam’s axe.
But there was no guile in Belladonna’s eyes though, nothing but a well of sympathy, open and honest. “It sounds like you’ve had a hard time of it. I’m sorry to hear that,” Belladonna said, and Dis could have forgiven her anything, even the hand slipping from Dis’s shoulder, for the frill-less simplicity of her concern.
“It is what it is,” Dis said and patted Belladonna’s bare hand before she could think about it.
It meant nothing to the hobbit, Dis realized when she drew her hand back hurriedly. Belladonna’s face had not twisted at the touch of a stranger’s skin on hers. The apology that had swelled up in Dis’s throat she swallowed down. Dwarf women did not touch those who were not their kin. But hobbit women, perhaps they may touch who they may.
She looked away and gripped her hand tightly with her traitorous hand, the one too clever to forget the feel of Belladonna’s skin. How long had it been since she’d touched someone? Five months she’d been away from home, five months where the only kin Dis had near her was the one she was growing in her own body. What incredible loneliness, she thought and regretted instantly the weakness of thinking it, because once named, it could not be unnamed, could not remain just a formless weight in her chest that she buried in the morning and nursed at night. The hand around her pipe tightened at the thought. The other hand rested in her lap, on the side where Belladonna sat, and Dis did not even realize what she had been hoping for until Belladonna, so quiet now, reached over and took it. The hobbit’s hand was small and hairless as a dwarf child’s, but there was nothing childlike about the strength of her grip. If either of them was a child, it would have to be Dis, whose eyes were beginning to water from the feel of Belladonna’s thumb rubbing a gentle circle over Dis’s knuckles.
“What’s wrong, Dis?” Belladonna asked softly, as if she knew Dis at all, as if they weren’t strangers breaking the oldest taboo. Dis shook her head. She had no words. None she wanted to say aloud.
When Erebor had burned, Dis had wept until her throat felt as rent as her clothing torn to rags by the mountain brambles. She had roared so loud her grief had sounded out over the crackling flames. When Frerin had grabbed her by the shoulders, his face white with terror, Dis had clung to him like a babe, racking his body with her sobs. Frerin’s arms had been like rock around her. If he held her tighter, closer, stronger, she thought she could inter herself in the tomb of his arms, and let others take up the heavy weight of grief.
If Dis thought she could bury herself alive, her father was the one who dug her out. He yanked her out of Frerin’s arms with a cruel strength that she didn’t know he had. When she turned crying to him, he slapped her. “Enough,” Thrain said, not a father to daughter but one noble to another. He looked at Frerin too, who was still shaking with a pain Dis saw too plainly was her own. “Enough,” Thrain told him as well. “You are a prince and princess of Erebor. You will act like it.”
When Thorin found them a few minutes later, scrambling through the woods in wild panic, half charred to death, Dis greeted him with a dry face and steady eyes. If he knew she was ecstatic with blinding relief to see him alive, Thorin didn’t learn it from her face.
Later that night in the wilderness, by the fire that Dis forced herself to trust, Thrain sat beside her at the edge of the orange glow where the shadows lapped at their backs. “I am sorry,” he said so softly no one but her could hear. “We do not have the luxury of pain. You especially.” Under the cover of the night, her father pressed his fingers against the inside of her left wrist, into the cradle of her pulse. “You will need to be strong for your brothers. They are wounded, Dis. They will look to you to guide them.”
“I am wounded too, Father,” Dis did not say. That was the first sentence in her life she knew she couldn’t utter.
How long Dis and Belladonna stayed like that, Dis did not know. Belladonna offered wordless comfort. Dis took it, as she could not have from anyone who knew her, anyone who loved her. Belladonna was a lake in a strange land into which Dis could throw her worries like coins and watch them disappear. But Dis could not speak them, not a one, and so she simply let Belladonna hold her hand, and that was better, in a way, than speaking ever could be.
Then Dis shifted, the wind blew, a songbird chirped as it swooped by, and Belladonna sighed into the broken mood. “My blessed pipe’s gone out.” She looked away dramatically into the west as Dis quickly wiped her eyes. “I know it can be a bleak old world out there, but I’d say that’s the real tragedy.”
Dis stared at the hobbit, her view still a little bleary. Then she snorted, the kind of laughter that had to punch its way out because the laugher wasn’t expecting it to come. “You’ll get none of my leaf, hobbit,” Dis said, her voice steady. “I’m further from my source than you are from yours.”
Belladonna’s hand fluttered to her chest as she gasped in mock-horror. “The greed of dwarves!” Then Belladonna laughed again, and threaded her fingers through Dis’s, and set her other hand to patting Dis’s wrist. Dis felt a little heady. Not even Vali touched her this casually, and they had touched quite a lot in the span of their marriage. Vali touched her reverently. Fili grasped at her for necessity. Thorin never touched her at all, not since they buried Frerin. The last time she embraced her brother was when she still had more than one.
“Lady Dis,” came a voice behind them, tinged with a cooler sort of amusement. Only entrenched decorum kept Dis from jumping. Elrond’s daughter stood in the doorway, the faintest hint of a serene smile on her lips. She looked quite smug, Dis thought, though of course she wouldn’t let that influence her opinion of the elf. Dis was, after all, the reasonable sibling. “My father apologizes for his delay.”
“Am I to take that to mean that the delay’s still going?” Dis asked. Belladonna still held her hand. In the heartbeat she had to decide between shame and pride, Dis tightened her grip. Let the elf say what she would say.
Arwen—yes, that was the elf’s name—inclined her head gently. “Not at all, my lady. He is almost done, and will be with you in a few moments.”
Belladonna squeezed Dis’s hand. “Perfect!” she said. “That means Gandalf is done as well.”
Arwen’s eyes crinkled at Belladonna, which did make her look a little less smug, Dis was willing to admit. “You have been very patient, Mistress Took.” Dis heard the mirth in the elf’s voice soft as the rustle of leaves.
“No more beautiful place in the world to be patient in. Though don’t tell Gandalf that, we’ll never leave.” Belladonna turned back to Dis and gave her a look that seemed to be the nonverbal equivalent of crossing your arms, sighing, and huffing something like wizards, honestly. “I think I’ll collect my wizard now, as I can’t head home without him. He is the one with the map.”
Dis glanced back over at Arwen, but the maiden was already gone, as silent as she had come. How strange it was to be surrounded by such silent people in their delicate whites and pastels. However Dis felt about the Last Homely House, however conflicted with love and resentment the contentment of these sacred halls made her feel, Dis could not abide the quiet. Give her the sound of forges and hammers in the deep. The snoring of her brother, when he slept. The cries of her child, when she wished he’d sleep. Dis gently freed her hand from the hobbit’s and curled it—still warm and a little sweaty from Belladonna’s touch—over the faint swell of her belly. And how lucky am I, to have still more noise on the way.
“And where is home for you?” Dis asked and watched Belladonna’s face light up.
“The Shire,” she said. “Hobbiton, where the hills will be mudslides after the spring rain and my gardens have turned into a tangle of weeds.” She spoke with such love that Dis had to turn away, and perhaps that is why Belladonna said, “You’re welcome anytime, should you find your way there. Mine is the third hole on Bagshot Row, the one with the blue door and yellow roses. Though not for much longer, if my Bungo’s lived up to his word. We build homes for each other, you know, when we marry. Some of us do, at least. We have money, the two of us, so that’s a boon there. I wouldn’t discuss finances of course, but you are an outsider and you won’t know that I have money just from my name, the way that hobbits would. You must tell outsiders all sorts of things that you wouldn’t tell anyone else.”
You must. Yes, one had to tell outsiders everything, had to voice the unacknowledged, the things everything knew but no one ever said. Dis reached out to Belladonna, pulled her hand back before she could touch. Belladonna looked at her with a question in her eyes, and Dis pulled together her dignity. “May I tell you something then?” she asked. “One outsider to another?”
Belladonna looked around for eavesdroppers then leaned in, her eyes intent on Dis. “My ears are yours.”
Dis herself looked for elves lurking in the shadows. She looked, but only to buy time to cast about for words to shape the pain in her gut, a chronic stabbing she had never articulated before. But there was nothing, no words there that she could find. What would she never want Thorin to hear, she thought instead, and then the words became to shape.
I want to go home, that was how her confession would start, but that is not an option for us. And yet I was so young when we lost our kingdom. I’ve lived longer in exile than I ever did at rest. When my first child was born, we promised him that Erebor was his inheritance. You would die, Thorin, to make that true. Frerin already tried that. Now my son’s sibling is on the way, and he will know neither his grandfather nor his uncle nor any other mad dwarf of ours with a dream and a sword to chase it with. When Kili is born, what will we promise him?
Thorin could never hear that. He’d shatter to hear that from her mouth. It was safer to never say it at all, not even to kind hobbits with warm eyes and warm hands, waiting patiently with quiet breaths. Belladonna would have to wait forever to hear everything, for Dis knew as soon as she thought the words that she would never let them pass her lips. Still, and here maybe Dis surprised Belladonna when she smiled a little, there was something nice about even thinking it.
“I wonder,” Dis said with a dry face and steady eyes, “would it be kinder to tell my oncoming child that that our home we lost was nothing but a bedtime story.”
Quiet settled between them. Dis could hear Belladonna’s breathing, the steady in-and-out that sounded like bellows stoking a low flame.
“I don’t know,” Belladonna said. “I’m sorry.” She looked at Dis with such compassion that tears threatened Dis again. How strange, how damn strange, to want to cry now after so many years of strength. She has been tearless longer than this hobbit has likely been alive. Belladonna smiled softly, like a mother comforting a child. Dis almost laughed. “I think all you can do for sure is to love him so much that wherever he lives becomes his home. Even if it cannot be yours.” Belladonna furrowed her brow. “Does that make sense? I am not yet a mother, so what do I know?”
With a great amount of strength indeed, Dis raised her hand to Belladonna’s face and ghosted her fingertips along Belladonna’s soft, pink cheek. “Do not think that motherhood bestows you with any special knowledge,” Dis said. She dropped her hand to her lap, her fingers tingling. “All I have learned in the process is how to successfully lie to my child.”
Belladonna laughed again, and Dis laughed with her, the sound echoing in the strange little cone of Elrond’s balcony.“But I have utter faith in you,” Belladonna said merrily, reaching up to touch Dis’s cheeks, right above her beard, as Dis had hoped she would. “Dwarves are the finest craftsmen, yes? Yes?”
“Yes,” Dis said, her cheeks a little flushed, “of course.”
Belladonna held out her hands. “Well, then how hard can it be to build a home?” She grinned. “If hobbits can manage it, anyone may do it.”
Dis looked at the hobbit for a long, long moment as the last of her Eren Luin leaf smoldered between them. She was almost overcome by the irrational urge to grab Belladonna, this stranger, this passing thought in the wide world, by the hands and say, come with me, and come home with me. Wherever home might be.“You are a most remarkable creature,” Dis said instead, and when Belladonna smiled as brightly as the noontime sun, Dis could not help but smile back.
Belladonna walked with her back into the main atrium, where Elrond stood talking with a shabby old man who must have been more impressive than he looked for Belladonna greeted him as her wizard. The old man looked down, chuckling at the little hobbit. “My dear lass, have you taken to bothering royalty as well as schoolchildren?”
Belladonna scowled good-naturedly. “I’ve been entertaining this poor dwarf who has been most inconvenienced by your adventure, Gandalf. I shudder to think the damage you’ll leave in your wake the day you can’t find a hobbit to clean up your messes.” Then Belladonna glanced at Dis. “Royalty?”
“Don’t worry,” Dis said, smiling. “None you’ve heard of.”
“I do apologize, Lady Dis,” Elrond said and seemed, more or less, to mean it. “Mithrandir has a way stirring ordered plans into chaos with his arrival.”
Dis looked the old man up and down, from weather-beaten hat to ragged hem. “Then let him part. I’ve enough of chaos in my life, Lord Elrond. I could use rather more order at the moment.”
“Yes, yes, I can imagine. The drought hit Eren Luin far harder than we expected.” Elrond stepped back and swept an arm towards the library. “Come with me, we will discuss what you came here for.”
At last. “One moment,” Dis said. “I’ll meet you inside. I have last words to exchange with my companion.”
Elrond gave her strange look—not an unkind one, no matter how she would have preferred to interpret it as such. But one she couldn’t read nonetheless and so opted to resent it. “Of course,” he said. “Mithrandir—”
“I will fetch our ponies and Belladonna will meet me by the fountain,” Gandalf said cheerfully. He nodded at Dis in such a congenial manner that Dis could not help nodding back. “My Lady. Tell your brother I said hello.”
Dis was very certain that Thorin knew no wizards, and she wasn’t sure she wanted him to, but there was no reason to say that now. With another goodbye, Gandalf was gone to the stables and Elrond to his library, and Dis stood alone with Belladonna in the muffled atrium as the silence ticked by. “Thank you for sitting with me,” Dis said. “Your company was much appreciated.”
Belladonna half-nodded, half-curtsied. “Thank you for letting me sit.” She gave Dis a cheeky grin. “Your majesty. Royalty. Honestly? You know, I told you about Tooks. You should have told me about Dises. I suppose that’s why you have no last name. Does royalty not need it? Are you just known? Or perhaps, would prefer to be unknown? I’ve never met royalty before, I don’t understand it in the slightest. You might have told, and then we could have talked about it, and I could have gone back to the Shire and told my sisters that I sat at Rivendell with a queen.”
Dis had laughed more with Belladonna than she had laughed in her entire five months away from Vali and Kili, and she added one more occasion of laughter right now. “My dear hobbit,” Dis said with a giddy fondness she could only barely explain, resting her hands on Belladonna’s shoulders. “Not everything must be said aloud.”
“Oh, I know.” Belladonna suddenly looked very serious, and just when Dis began to worry that she had done something wrong, Belladonna darted forward, up on tiptoes, and pressed a kiss to Dis’s chin, the highest part of her face that Belladonna could reach. Then Belladonna fell away, cackling. “The beard tickles! Oh, that’s quite strange,” she exclaimed as Dis raised a hand to her chin, to the space where Belladonna’s lips had been. “Be well then, my dear dwarf!” Belladonna said joyously. “Wherever you may hang your hat and heat your hearth.”
“I will try, and be well yourself,” Dis said. “Should you ever find yourself in the Blue Mountains one day, you will be most welcome for supper.”
Belladonna laughed once more, looking over her shoulder as she skipped down to her pony home, to her oncoming husband who would one day make her utterly respectable. “If Gandalf kidnaps me again,” she shouted back, “I will see you there and sup with queens!”
Dis grinned and raised her hand until the hobbit, waving back, turned the corner and was gone.
Then Dis lowered her hand, touched her chin again, and said, with a littler but no less heartfelt smile playing on her lips, “What an utterly bizarre afternoon.”
Her people were still at risk of starving this winter if they could not get elven crops. Thorin was still wandering from the forges of one disreputable Man to the next. Frerin was still dead. Thrain was still gone. So was home. But Vali would be back soon from trade, Fili along with him, and soon Dis would be back too, with the freshly minted Kili in tow, and if this was just one good hour, well, Dis’s face was still warm from one quick kiss. Maybe the good can linger as long as the bad, she thought, and she quite liked the sound of that. Maybe she’d tell it to her sons one day.
When she turned around, Elrond’s helper elf was there staring at Dis, a silver pitcher in his hands. Dis jabbed a finger at him as she walked towards the library. “Now you ever touch me, and I will kill you,” she reminded him. There still had to be some order around here. And with that, Dis passed, to Elrond, to her work, and hopefully, at last, to home.