So Comes Snow After Fire

3.i To Sit By the Fire

"Can you smell the earth warming?" Tauriel asked.

Kíli inhaled deeply. Yes, the air was definitely beginning to smell green. Winter was more of a blue smell.

He and Tauriel stood on one of the lower mountain ridges, looking out at the valley entrance to the mountain. A few last patches of white clung to the highest vales, but for the most part both valley and plain were dark from melted snow.

"Mum always told us Mahal was stoking his furnaces," he said, remembering late winter mornings when she had shooed him and his brother outdoors to blow the stink off, as she said.

As Tauriel smiled, he went on, "Mum will be joining us as soon as the weather holds for traveling."

"Then she knows you're all well."

Kíli nodded. "We sent word by raven. Our royal line still remember how to speak to the birds of the mountain."

"What is that one saying?" She pointed to a raven that had been watching them from atop a stone a short distance away. It croaked, as if in response to her request.

Kíli watched the bird thoughtfully for a moment, his head tipped slightly to one side.

"He says the world is likely ending, since an elf and a dwarf have become friends." He gave her a teasing look. "Sometimes they do just say nonsense."

Tauriel's eyes narrowed. "Kíli, did he really say that?"

He grinned. "No. I think it was something about a dead rabbit... Really, it is nonsense most of the time." He shrugged. "Raven has about twelve different words for 'carrion,' and I've never bothered to learn them all."

She laughed.

"What?" Kíli asked.

"You dwarves are quite surprising," Tauriel explained. "I never expected you to speak to birds."

"Do you mean we're not as strange as you thought?" He liked being able to surprise her. There must be so much she had already discovered in the world, but he could give her something she had not yet found.

She flushed. "I confess, I do still find you strange. But not in a bad way. You have your own beauty."

He looked up at her happily. Not long ago, he had wondered if she, this lovely creature from a world so far from his own, could see anything to admire in him, in mind or body. Now, he even dared believe she felt drawn to him as much as he was to her.

Tauriel reached out and caught his hand, her expression both eager and shy at once. Kíli thought she often seemed overwhelmed even by that simple touch, though he wasn't sure if it was because of who he was, or because what she felt for him was new to her. Surely, with as long as she had lived, she had been in love before? He had not, not truly. Oh, he had chased a few girls back in Ered Luin, lasses who'd been perfectly willing to kiss him because he was persuasive (and a prince), but luckily they had never taken him any more seriously than he had wished. Yet Tauriel— Well, he now understood why so many dwarves never moved past a first love, even if they had been refused. It was in his people's nature to love unwaveringly, when they did spare their attention from the forge long enough to care for something other than their own work.

The two of them continued to walk along the ridge. Some brown, scrubby grass was all that showed of last year's vegetation. Kíli hoped that soon he would see the mountain slopes as his mother and uncle had always described them, covered in pines that roared in the wind. That new growth might begin soon indeed, with the dragon's influence gone. The earth felt softer under his boots than it had all winter. Yes, spring had nearly come.

And that meant she would leave.

Kíli had been reminding himself of that fact for the last week. He understood that she could not stay. As much as he hoped she might one day belong wherever he did, he knew he could not yet convince his uncle, much less Daín's folk from the Iron Hills, to accept her. And he suspected Tauriel still felt displaced after losing her own home. He would wait, if he had to, till they both found where they fit into their new lives.

"Where will you go, after this?" he asked.

"Dale, and thence perhaps to Esgaroth," Tauriel told him. "The elves will be driving the evil things from the forest, and the creatures may flee here. The lakemen will need to protect themselves, and I can help with that. If they'll have me."

"I don't know if it will help, but you can tell them the Prince of Erebor vouches for you."

She laughed. "Let us hope they believe you unbiased."

"Why didn't you go to Dale before?" Kíli asked presently. He had often wondered over that question this winter. Surely Bard's people would not have refused her, after the aid her king had given them.

Tauriel shook her head, as if she did not quite know how to explain herself. "Penance? Or perhaps stubbornness. I brought this exile upon myself, and I needed to understand what I had done."

"Then why did you come with me?" He believed he knew the answer, but he needed to hear it from her.

"Because..." Tauriel drew him to a stop and looked down at him, her lips parted to speak, though she found no words for several long moments. "You asked me once to follow you, but I could not. This time, I had no duty to oppose my desire."

Kíli remembered the way she had looked at him on the lake shore: her eyes had been troubled, as if opposing emotions struggled within her. Then, he hadn't been sure if she had wanted to give him a different answer, or if she had merely been sorry to disappoint him.

There was no reluctance in her answer today. Her eyes met his, steady and warm and free.

"Kíli, I intend to go after a day or two more. I will not overstay my welcome. But I promise I do not leave you."

"I know," Kíli told her, and they began the walk back to the mountain halls.