The Split Horizons: The Love Of Two Dwarves

2

Erebor

It had been nearly three years since the battle of the Five Armies when Thorin Oakenshield and company reclaimed the dwarf kingdom, but the emotional wounds the war had left still burned as if fresh and physical.

This pain was worsened when advisors told their king he needed to choose a bride if he wished to continue his line. Their words were salt in an open wound- his nephews... dead. Thorin was not sure if he wanted a wife, but there was only he and one other of the company that had not chosen a woman to court in the time since their return to the Lonely Mountain.

Dwalin too had not found love, but the loss of his brother haunted him still. He spent most of his days staring at a tankard, emptying it many times before Thorin or another company member found him and stopped his binge drinking.

None but Thorin could quite share in his pain, not only because of his losses, but because Thorin bore witness to Balin's death. The white-bearded dwarf had lost his life saving Thorin's. The elves tried to heal him but he had been too far gone.

Thorin and Dwalin supported each other on their hardest days and on the anniversary of the battle each year, so when Thorin decided he would depart from Erebor to find a bride, he insisted Dwalin join him. The other dwarf, too drunk for cognitive thought, violently protested the trip at first, but after sleeping off the alcohol, he saw the wisdom in it.

Two days later, once Thorin, as king, set his affairs straight, the two dwarves set out in search for wives. Two nights into their journey, the sat by the fire, Dwalin drinking once again.

"This ish hopelish Thorin," he slurred. "We ain't never gonna find women."

"Even so," Thorin replied smoothly. "It gets us away from the hounding of the others."

"Fair enough," Dwalin said before passing out in his drunken stupor. Moving quickly,  Thorin kept his friend from falling into the small campfire they had.

The next morning, the very thing that would happen was what neither believed could.