As the time went on, Briella's stomach continued to swell and grow with the new life that was developing inside her and, whenever possible, she and Thorin would sit quietly in their private chambers on the bed, his hand on her stomach with hers on top of his, smiling as they both felt the baby moving within her, kicking and squirming at its father's touch, though mostly it seemed to recognise his deep, timbre voice and that truly delighted Briella, knowing that their child was responding to anything Thorin said or to the way he laughed, it already knew its father.
It was a widely known fact that the dresses worn by the ladies in the palace were troublesome at the best of times, but nobody could have foreseen the accident that would befall the Queen as she approached a staircase in the east side of the palace. Miscalculating her footsteps, she felt her foot hit the edge of the top step and she tumbled, landing on her back and quite fortunately managing to avoid hitting her stomach in any way on the way down, Kili rushing to her aide as he was the one to see it, ordering Thorin be summoned.
"Shh relax darling everything is alright; the physicians say that the baby survived the impact and the accident itself" Thorin said in a calming voice when she finally woke in a state of panic over the health of the baby, finding his large hand on the side of her face before he leaned in and gently kissed her forehead, which was something he knew from the past times would help to get her to relax somewhat as being overly stressed was not going to be doing the baby or her all that much good and that was not what he wanted.
"Kili; he was there after I fell" she whispered quietly and Thorin nodded, saying that Kili was the one who found her and had finally used his authority with the guards to bring it to his attention as fast as they could while Kili carried her back to their room as gently as he was able, not wanting to do any further harm to her or to the unborn baby, whose existence for now at least depended completely upon Briella and the expertise of the large team of palace physicians, who spent most of their downtime preparing for the royal arrival.
"I don't think I have ever seen Uncle Thorin as rattled as he was during that time when he did not know if he and Briella's unborn child would survive" Fili commented to one of his oldest friends as they sat in a palace hallway waiting to see the King, "Aye, there was a real look of fear in his eyes; that if he lost one or both of them there would be no way he could go forward in his life even though that was what Briella would want in the worst case scene to see him gradually moving on".
Fili and Dwalin were both right, Thorin did not know what his life would be worth if Briella or their unborn baby were not a part of it, in fact it was quite possible, Thorin thought, that he would literally fall on his own sword if it meant being with her again were she taken from him as she very nearly was with the wine incident that had been traced back to Mirkwood and Thorin's most trusted advisors were dealing with Thranduil who had confessed to asking for it to be done but making no apology at all for his actions.
"Why in all the realms of Middle Earth would King Thranduil want Queen Briella to lose this baby" Balin commented to Thorin one day but all the King of Erebor could do was sigh and shake his head, "I do not know my old friend" he replied, "But what I do know is that he is to be excluded from any event directly involving Briella and our child; certainly Legolas is invited if he chooses to attend but not Thranduil; it was his guards who scared Briella half to death with their 'fun', causing her to flee in fear to Rivendell".
Balin sat and listened as Thorin recounted the story that Briella had once told him, word for word, unablie himself to believe that Thranduil would have allowed such a thing to happen to one of his own people, but remembered with equal clarity being thrown into a Mirkwood prison with no foreseeable escape were it not for Bilbo Baggins, made invisible by the Ring of Power, which he had solicited quite sneakily from Gollum, who spent his life from that day on trying to reclaim it but was not successful as Bilbo's nephew Frodo threw the ring back into Mount Doom.
If it was able to be avoided, Thorin spent as much time as he could with Briella regardless of where she happened to be as it meant double the number of guards watching over her at all times and it was while they were wandering the palace gardens that Briella first brought up the issue of naming their unborn child. Not wishing to discuss it so publicly, Thorin led her back to their private chambers where the discussion continued privately, with Briella not suggesting even once that the baby should be named after ancestors; it was their firstborn and their decision.
That was one of the many things that Thorin had grown to love about his Queen, that while she respected tradition and custom of Erebor at appropriate times, when it came to subjects such as this, the name of their child, she wanted to do it their way, nobody else's and even now it seemed that no-one in/around Erebor who valued their lives would even consider challenging either of them as the price for defeat was either imprisonment or exile, never to return to the place they once called home, having to leave the ones they valued most of all behind.
