The Fifteenth Member (Thorin Oakenshield/OFC)

Chapter 52

Pictures are not mine
Wani shook me awake the next morning at the crack of dawn.

"Come on girl, get up! The wedding is in five hours!"

"All the more reason to let me sleep." I grumbled, the gray light of dawn had only just began to filter into the room.

"No, you need to get up and we need to get you ready!" Her voice was twenty decibels louder than I liked.

"But I'm tired!"

"Tough." She hauled me to my feet, causing a massive wave of nausea to wash over me, "Now let's go!" She began to pull me towards the door, making my stomach feel worse. I tore away from her and ran to the bathroom barely making it to the toilet before I was violently sick. Wani fled the room without me, she hated throwing up and she hated hearing or seeing someone else throw up even more. I heard the door open again and Dis came up behind me.

"Morning sickness or wedding jitters?"

"I don't know. I thought the morning sickness was gone but I shouldn't be having wedding jitters should I?"

"Well, it could be that you are just over-excited, when I say wedding jitters, I don't necessarily mean that you're scared."

"Probably wedding jitters then." I threw up again, "Or both." Dis stayed with me until the sickness went away and then she gave me a cup of water so I could wash my mouth out.

"You good?" She asked after a few minutes of me just sitting there.

"Yeah. Where are we going?"

"We are going to give you a bath."

"Why?"

"It's your wedding day and that makes it tradition."

"But my tail–"

"The smell will stay on you and Arwen gave us the details on how the magic works."

"Who is this 'we' and 'us' you keep mentioning?"

"Myself, Wani, Arwen, and Tauriel."

"Why?"

"Because it's tradition." She said that like it was the answer to everything.

I spent the next two hours in a closed off area of the hot springs being pampered with expensive, rose-scented oils. Arwen and Tauriel busied themselves with me hair while Wani allowed herself the luxury of cleaning my tail. She was overly curious about how my tail seemed to have no bones in it, allowing it to bend in, according to her, unnatural directions. Dis was the one giving me a rundown of what would happen. One thing that was different from human weddings was that Thorin and I would have to say our own vows. They were still the basic vows and Thorin would still be the first to say them but I was expected to have them memorized. Since I didn't, Dis began to drill them into my head. I had been looking forward to allowing the hot water to lull me to sleep but those hopes were dashed when Dis insisted that I learn the vows as fast as I can. At last, I got them down and I was able to recite them without prompts from Dis and she allowed me to snooze. Tauriel took her time combing my hair, making sure every little tangle was out and when she was done, Arwen took her place and began weaving my hair, which was still wet, into an elaborate style.

Wani took overly long cleaning my scales, examining how the bones in my tail worked.

"It's amazing! It's like a part of your spine!"

"Wani, that's the second time you've said that."

"Well it's true! And then it's like you have rib-like bones coming off it that and those give your tail it's size!"