How I Leave You

In the Darkness, Bind Them

Few things am I going to regret as vehemently as I will this.

I am going to wish myself back in time to this moment precisely, to deter myself from calling to this meeting. To stop myself from attending it, even if that means I would have to chain my feet to the ground.

Thorin greets me from his throne, and I take my seat next to it. One by one, the others start to fill up the meeting chamber, bowing to their king and queen as they do. Kili and Tauriel enter together, arm in arm in unison. I nod at my friends, who make seats of the chairs on either side of Thorin and I.

When no spots around the table are empty, the king bangs on the table for order. Dwarves are still a rowdy bunch, even if both elves and a naiad are among them.

I rise.

"I have called to this meeting today," I proclaim, harnessing the chamber's attention, "to discuss the future of Moria, and our kingdom with it." Approving mumbles and bangs spread throughout. "As you are all well aware by now, Moria stands without a leader, and is instead ruled by a council of noble dwarves." I gesture to the old lords sitting at our table, and they caress their beards, reveling in the commotion of the others. When the excitement has died down, I continue. "To ensure stability, my son, Prince Thrór, has honorably offered to take up Balin's position and the responsibilities that come with it. This will only be temporary, until the council presents a ruler for replacement."

Nods and noise almost drown out my last words, and a few dwarves even bang the table in support of my son's proposition.

After our conversation a few weeks ago, I thought it over, twisting and turning the possibilities in my mind. It would make him a better king, when that time comes. That much is true. And after talking it through with Thorin over the course of many nights, I see that my reservations are of selfish nature. There is no denying that. I am a naiad, I am a mother, and I am selfish.

So now I sit at a meeting whose outcome I already know the result of.

"He is young," a dwarven lord bellows out, twirling his long, braided beard. "Who is to say the lad is ready for such a role? The destiny of an entire people will rest upon his shoulders."

"Aye," Kili says, his voice almost as deep as his uncle's now, "but Thrór has the blood of Durin in his veins. The strength of his shoulders should be the least of your concerns."

At this, Dain grows the rowdiest out of those who approve, slamming the table with his fist and nodding profusely.

"He is not of Moria," Kol says, a dwarf I have come to dislike greatly over the course of the years.

"And you are not of Erebor," Thorin states calmly, for the dwarf was born in a small village in the epoch of Smaug's exile. "Yet you still sit at the table of our kingdom, and yet you still get a say in its matters."

But this does not deter Kol.

"Aye," he says, his armor heavy and grand, "but I am wholly dwarf. He is only a halfbreed."

If it wasn't for Thorin's hand upon my arm, I swear I would have bashed the lord's chest in. My nails would have clawed the armor off his chest, and my teeth would have made a meal of his throat.

"Are you questioning my children's claim to their thrones, Kol?"

Thorin raises his brows intimidatingly, asking the question in a voice so cold I feel a shudder go through me.

"All I am asking is: why him? Why not a dwarf of Moria's Mines? Someone who knows its tunnels inside and out, and whose people have always been dwarves of Moria?"