How I Leave You

Grey Gold

Word about Balin shakes the mountain to its core.

Through every crack and crevice, every abandoned mine and forgotten hallway, the news of him stretches. The weeping almost reaches me before the actual sentence does.

Balin is dead.

It was peaceful and quick, we are told. From this world to the next, he was accompanied by those he loved and respected. Those who had helped him govern Moria, and who will now be there to do it without him.

"A tomb is to be erected in his honor," Thorin declares upon taking in the news. "It shall stand where the moonlight reaches, and be made of the finest stone."

Balin did not leave a legacy in children. Only in the hearts of those who knew him, and there he will live on, even after his bones have returned to this earth.

That night, Thorin cries both softly and fiercely, and we hold each other tight in the privacy of our bedchambers, where we see that we, too, have started to gray. The years have made silver out of his hair. When I met him, only streaks of it glowed like slivers of metal. Now, no more than a few strands are left of what used to be a black mane.

One day, my hair is going to turn white, too tired to keep holding onto the gold it has carried for centuries, and I am going to look at myself in the mirror and see my mother. Thorin will hold my hand, and find that its skin has turned fragile, so fragile a single paper might cut through it at will. Once, my skin was like that of my children: impenetrable. A coat of armor in itself. That was a long time ago now.

Now, our son has married his One, and our daughter is almost ready to be queen. It has been many years since they played their secret games in the halls and fought about food portions.

And yet I still feel youthful. Thorin holds me in the shy light of the night, and he looks at me just as he did the day he married me.

"Tell me your greatest wish," he whispers, running a gentle finger over the curve of my mouth to the bend of my brow, "and I shall grant it to you."

We are on our sides in the bed, turned towards each other. I think for a long time.

"What if I wished for the Moon on a string?" I finally ask, smiling melancholically. "What would you do then?"

He lets the silence envelop us for a bit before he answers.

"Then I would start weaving."

Yet, in spite of my age and the wisdom that comes with it, I do not predict the question Thrór asks me.

It has been a few weeks after Balin's wake, and I still cannot say the old dwarf's name without my throat closing in on me. For when I remember him, I remember his hands there, gently applying the salve to make my wound heal. How he used to look at my scar as though it was a work of art to be flaunted, and not something to be ashamed of.

"Ama," Thrór says, catching me as I walk out of my grotto. He must have been waiting for me by its entrance. "Do you have a moment?"

I narrow my eyes, the suspicion seeping out of me.

"Since when do you ask for permission to waste my time?" I say, still half smiling from my successful hunt.

When I make a move as though to keep walking down the hallway, Thrór grabs my arm, nodding towards the grotto instead.

"Since I no longer intend to waste it," he says, letting go of me. "Not with this."

There is no smile on his face, and I know it is serious then. I lower my voice.