soooo – Guilty Writer Problems Part the #768209th – when you say you will get a chapter finished by blah-blah date, and don’t. *cringe* I am so sorry. All I can say in my defense is: the Dwarfling is sick. She is so so gloopy and tired and miserable, and it’s like a hook in my heart. We’re off to the doctor again today. Plus, I have had a stream of family visitors over the last two weeks (my mum last week, MIL this week…) – PLUS new job. SIIIIGH. 

Anyway, I DID manage to complete and clean up one small scene last week, and so as an apology, here it is. It’s only 2K or so. BUT BARIS. Also THIRA. And… uh, badass angst? IDEK. 

Thank you for your patience and for putting up with my current flakiness. I hope you enjoy… whatever the heck this is! *hugs*

Sansûkh Sneak Peek (Draft) – Ch 39

It was very cold in the place of the tombs. Bombur looked
about, and shivered a little. His head was still spinning from the stars of
Gimlin-zaram.

“Why here?” he wondered aloud.

“Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea,” said Bifur
worriedly, and he patted at Bombur’s back absently as he spoke. “Perhaps it’s
too soon. We should…”

“I’m fine, barafun,” Bombur said in his soft voice, and he
squared his shoulders and lifted his round, pleasant face. “I’m all right.”

“He’d want his braid done proper – properly, I mean,” said
the Dwarrowdam before them stubbornly, catching her slip of the tongue and
correcting it almost absent-mindedly. “I can do it. Besides, it’s not like I
can do for my.” She stopped, and then looked down at her fingers.

“You needn’t explain it to me, child,” said the Queen – no,
the Queen Dowager – tiredly.

“She looks a century older,” Bifur whispered, but Bombur had
no eyes for anything but his eldest daughter.

“Our special little starling, our surprise baby she was,” he
said, staring fixedly at her. Her brown hair was caught in a plain
working-braid, her beard unadorned and her dress old and threadbare. Her
sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. The uniform of a nasty, mucky job.

The Dwarrowdam sighed and scrubbed at her eyes for a moment,
and then returned to the business of twisting thick, white hair into two long
braids. His arms ached with the need to hold his little girl again. She
sniffled, and rubbed at her nose. It was red.

Bombur gripped at Bifur’s arm, and his eyes stung and
prickled. “Ah, Barís. Don’t cry, poppet.”

Baris wiped her forearm across her eyes again, and then
broke off with a muttered curse to fumble for a handkerchief. The resulting blurt was embarrassingly loud in the
cold and silent crypt.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, and pocketed her handkerchief as her
cheeks flushed a dull pink.            

The Queen was seated beside her, her hand tightly clasping a
cold and lifeless one. Bombur glanced down at the bench before them once more –
and then hurriedly turned his eyes away from the wreck that was the remains of
the King. “No apology needed,” she said.

“I just.” Barís waved a hand at the corpse. Bifur’s warm arm
under his fingers was the only thing keeping Bombur from rushing over to try
and gather her up in a hug.

“No, no apology.” Thira repeated, and she finally looked up
at where Barís stood. “I did not lay out my parents. They were Burned Dwarves:
I never prepared them to return to the stone. I’ve never done this before
either.” She swallowed hard. “I did not expect to do so for him. Not him.”

Barís’ eyes dropped. “He always seemed so. Well.
Invincible.”

Thira smiled. There was no true warmth in it. “Aye, well. He
was good at seeming.”

“At least you can return him to the stone,” Barís said
eventually. “At least you have that.”

Thira laid a gentle hand on Barís’ forearm. “We will
retrieve them. Him. Barís, my son will see to it. I swear to you! You will have
your father’s body, to mourn and to bury.”

Barís’ lips tightened. “I wish–” she blurted, and checked
herself. Then she scrubbed at her face again. “What bloody use is wishing,
though? My Papa is dead, and wishing won’t bring him back.”

“Bombur, khulel: I’m here,” said Bifur,
low. “I’m here.”

Bombur nearly bit through the inside of his cheek.

“If wishes were pigs, we’d all be riding,” Thira said, and
laughed joylessly. “He used to say that.”

“He called me poppet,” Barís said. Her beautiful voice was
rough and wretched. “And I had that Mahal-cursed idea. And it killed him. My
papa.”

“Oh no, no you don’t get to do that, darling girl,” Bombur
said with sudden heat. “Not your fault. Not your fault it didn’t work, and not
your fault I chose to go out there with my bum leg an’ all!”

Thira’s glance was hard and sharp. “You tried to save us
all. No knife in your hands, Master-singer.”

Barís bent her head. “I wish,” she said again.

“My husband did the same as you: tried to save us all. So
did your father.” Thira shrugged one shoulder: a careless-looking movement,
though her expression was anything but. “So did many others, many who tried and
died. Will you claim their deaths as well?”

Barís’ mouth contorted as she struggled with her sobs. “My
uncle…”

“Aye.” Thira looked back down at the pallid, drained,
withered shape of her husband. Without the enormous force of his personality,
it was easy to see how old he was – how tired and shrivelled. “He chose too.
Chose to try to save the Bizarunh. Do not make his choice into your failing.
Will you strip them of their decisions in your haste to condemn yourself?”

Barís made a terrible broken sound, deep in her throat.

Thira kept gazing with endless longing at what had been Dáin
Ironfoot, King Under the Mountain. His white beard was clean and now braided
neatly, covering the terrible wounds upon his chest and arms. His skin was free
of blood and mud, pale and parchment-dry to look upon, the eyelids closed,
hollows beginning to sink upon his cheeks and either side of the sharp
Durinesque nose.

“Sometimes things don’t work,” she said slowly, in a
distant, almost dreamy voice. “Sometimes the best ideas, the best intentions,
go wrong. And that may not be the fault of anyone – or it could be the fault of
everyone. In another world, it might have worked. Who is to say? Without the
tunnel, would the Dalefolk ever have made it to the sanctuary of the Mountain?
Would Dale be a smoking graveyard now, if not for Bofur and Bombur and my silly
old boar? Would bright little Gimizh be dead, or perhaps the Crown Prince of
Dale dead, all those trapped underground slaughtered, if not for my Thorin and
your father? If not for the diversion of Dáin? If Brand had not decided to ride
out to meet him?

“And either way – what does that matter? Things are as they are. They are gone back to the stone,
and we are here. And life goes on. We remember. You sang that song, did you
not? You carry that with you always now. That moment… it’s a part of you. This
moment is a part of me.” She tipped back her head and her eyes fixed upon the
roof with its ornate and solemn carvings. “We’re all just moments and choices,
in the end.”

“And now I know why canny, shrewd old Dáin Ironfoot chose an
unknown and crowd-shy steelsmith to wed,” whispered Bombur. Bifur grunted in
agreement, his face serious and set.

Barís closed her eyes, and eventually she nodded. Her mouth
was still pressed in an ugly line, twitching every now and then as she barely
controlled her emotions. “I know, your Majesty,” she said in barely a murmur. “But I still
wish I’d never thought of it.”

“I can sympathise. I often wish – wished – that my idiot
husband didn’t have a thing about saving the day at the last minute,” Thira
said, and smiled a little. Unlike before, it was a true smile. “Come now, Barís.
We are to become family, you needn’t be so deferential. My son and your sister,
eh?”

“Little idiot,” Barís sniffled, and tied off a long white
braid, laying it respectfully down upon the King’s still and lifeless chest. “I
can’t believe her.”

“I think it’s wonderful.” Thira’s hand fumbled for the cold,
stiffened one again, and upon finding it she squeezed a little. “So wonderful.
He would have been thrilled.”

“Papa too.” Barís rubbed her eyes one last time, and then
sighed out, long and tired. “He spoiled all my nieces and nephews outrageously,
and they would climb all over his chair and pull at his nose and beard and ask
for sweets and stories.”

“She hasn’t called me Papa for thirty years,” Bombur said in
a faint little voice. “I was Dad or Adad, she called me… after the Quest, after
the money…”

“She didn’t need to, did she?” Bifur pointed out. “You’ve
always been Papa.”

“But it all changed, we all changed so much.” Bombur pulled
a little at his looped braid. “We… she got taught to speak more proper, and
stopped calling me Papa.”

“Looks like she never stopped where it counted.” Bifur
turned back to his cousin, and gently rubbed Bombur’s back. “There there, lad.
You get used to it.”

“The Council has been clamouring for a wedding,” Thira
snorted, and then shook her head and smiled down at Dáin’s still face. “How you
would have laughed at them, dear. Insisting on proper Ereborean protocol in the
middle of war.”

“Bomfrís is still panicking a little about that. Well, I say
‘a little’…” Barís laughed wetly, and then sighed again. Her shoulders relaxed
from their stiff, guarded posture. “What else can I help with? He’s clean, and
his hair is as it should be…”

Thira’s dark eyes glittered. “Always so helpful, hmm?”

Barís blinked.

“Don’t think I haven’t missed you hovering around my forge, Master-singer.
For all your grand performer’s tricks, you’re rather unobtrusive, aren’t you?
Always helpful, always willing.” Thira cocked her head. “Now, what is so
fascinating about my workrooms in particular, I wonder? Not a wiry old
steelsmith, Durin forbid.”

A flush rose on Barís’ sweet, round face, and she coughed
awkwardly. “I… want to be useful.”

“To one of my craftsmasters in particular, hmm.” Thira
huffed a little laugh. “I haven’t missed that either, young Alrísul. For a
trained artist, you aren’t the most subtle of actors.”

“Must we speak of it now? Here?” Barís said plaintively.
Then she scrubbed at her eyes again. “Oh, what use is anything anyway.”

“Now is the best
time to speak of it,” said Thira. “This is an ending. Go make a beginning,
child.”

“Easy for you to say.” Barís glowered down at Dáin’s
peaceful old face.

“No. No it isn’t easy for me to say.” Thira said, and her
voice was suddenly sharp and cold, like steel striking steel. “My love lies
here before us, without breath or life. It is not easy for me to say.”

“Forgive me,” Barís said quickly. “I mean, I just. I don’t
know where to begin. Sometimes I think Bani doesn’t even know my name…”

Thira’s eyes softened. Then her hand reached out once more,
and she squeezed Barís’ shoulder in reassurance. Her hard, thin fingers were wiry
and tough. “Remember, choices and moments, Barís,” she said kindly. “Bani is a
single-minded sort of lass, and gets lost in her work. She gets irritated
easily by any sort of interruption, and she often forgets to eat in her zeal.”

Baris digested that for a moment, and then she gave the
Queen Dowager a helpless sort of look. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

Thira squeezed Barís’ shoulder again. “It’ll come to you, child.
The moment will arrive, and with it, your choice.”

“Is that the one Barís has been sweet upon, then?” Bombur
wondered. “Alrís wouldn’t tell me.”

Bifur nodded. “Bani daughter of Bana, a woodsmith. Very
clever, very clumsy, very impatient. And very
unobservant,” he added sourly.

Barís’ face scrunched up with indecision. “But… what if it
all goes wrong again?” she mumbled.

“Then that is the way of things, isn’t it?” Thira smoothed
back Dáin’s shock of white hair, standing high over his forehead. Her rough
fingers lingered there. “But remember this, Crystaltongue. Sometimes, if you’re very brave, very honest, very lucky… sometimes, for a time, it goes right.”

Then the Queen Dowager looked up and smiled at the
master-singer. There was grief in that smile, naturally – but Bombur could see
the shade of a young smith with steady, fire-touched eyes and smooth skin in
it: the ghost of the Dwarrowdam that had captured the heart of Dáin Ironfoot.
“And if you’re very, very lucky?” she said softly, “it keeps on going right, and keeps on going right. And it’s just – just always there, always right, all your life long. Until one day, perhaps one hundred and thirty years later, your luck finally runs out. And it ends.”

…