The Wind Fell Silent

21. Smaug Awakens

Third Person

The company began to board small boats swayed, heavily laden with supplies and weapons. Around them, the clamor of the town issued, ready to send the dwarves off.

Kili who had woken that day feeling worse than he had before, made to follow his brother onto the small raft.

"Not you" Thorin said, blocking Kili, "we must travel at speed. You will slow us down."

Kili looked at his uncle with a grin, "What are you talking about? I'm coming with you." But his smile turned to disbelief when he realized that Thorin was in fact serious.

"No" Thorin said, helping to load a few spears on the raft. At this, Fili looked up from his place on the boat in confusion.

Kili, eyebrows furrowed in incredulity, spoke with words that he had been hearing his whole life. Words of his forefathers and the house of Durin and the right to Erebor. Everything he had been raised knowing, and working for was beginning to slip from his grasp. "I'm going to be there when that door is opened, when we first look upon the halls of our fathers..." his uncle's expression was unrelenting, and Kili's pained determination faded, "Thorin" Kili muttered unbelievingly.

Thorin looked almost tenderly upon his youngest nephew, and put his hand on his shoulder "Kili, stay here. Rest. Join us when you're healed."

"Uncle!" Fili called unbelievingly from the boat, "We grew up on tales of the mountain, tales you told us. You cannot take that away from him,"

"Fili" Kili tried calling his brother off.

"I will carry him if I must!" Fili continued, unhindered.

An image of two rambunctious dwarflings popped unwarranted into Thorin's head; large eyes turned up in wonder as he told them tales of a home they had never known. A pang shot through him that he quickly squashed by something unknown to even himself, something dark, something strong. He reminded himself that it was better for not only Kili, but the company if the young dwarf was left behind.

"One day you will be king, and you will understand. I cannot risk the fate of this quest for the sake of one dwarf, not even my own kin." Thorin reasoned. The pressure had always been on Fili, the eldest prince, heir to the throne. He had always been the one who had to grow up quickly.

Fili took one look at his little brother, hunched over on the dock, and moved towards him. Thorin put his arm out to stop the young dwarf.

"Fili, don't be a fool, you belong with the company."

Fili turned and looked at his uncle, a man he had always idolized, and for the first time his gaze was scathing.

"I belong with my brother."

Thorin made no more moves to stop him, and biting down his own urge to join the brothers, turned back to the boat.

This is for them. He reminded himself. This has always been for them.

But for the first time since the journey began, he didn't believe it.

Fili and Kili watched from the dock as the company floated down the river. Both feeling completely miserable, and both feeling glad for the other's presence.

"Fili," Kili began guiltily. This had been Fili's dream as well, more so even.

"It's fine Kili," he said with his comforting grin, but before he could finish, he saw his brother pale a bit and begin to sway.