the depths of moria || hobbit

chapter one - the death of kings

The king's body had been laid out in state for all to see.

In death, the great man appeared so much smaller. One by one, the mourners filed past his bier, pausing only to look down upon the face, to lay flowers by his side, or to stop and speak to the family that stood, almost like an honour guard, around the body.

Bard, former bargeman, slayer of Smaug, and king of Dale, looked almost peaceful. He had lived a long life for a man, re-building and ruling the city for nearly fifty years. His children had grown, married, and had children themselves; several generations stood watch over their sire, a sight that proved a fitting testament to the late king.

The man had apparently ordered himself to be buried in the old clothes he had worn in his years on the lake, clutching the bow he had used. Within his worn lambskin coat, the king only looked shrunken, a pale spectre of the man we had known. The man, who nearly fifty-odd years before, had saved us from the wroth of a dragon.

I wondered if Fili was thinking just that as he looked upon the man's lifeless face. He was ahead of me in the queue of mourners, dressed in the traditional mourning robes of the Durin family, a fitting costume in his role as Erebor's ambassador. I was not close enough to ask him, but I could tell from the stiff set to his neck, the uncomfortably formal way he held himself, that the robes and the regalia bothered him. They would undoubtedly be dumped on our bedchamber floor the moment we returned.

It had not only been the bargeman and his children who had changed in the fifty years since Smaug and the Battle. Fili was 130 now, growing only more handsome in his prime. He was not much taller now than when I had first met him, but he was wider, stronger. His hair was longer, reaching the middle of his back, a thick mass of dark gold, and his beard now brushed past the base of his neck. He still wore his moustache braided, it growing longer and heavier and needing larger beads to hold it together.

I had probably changed a bit too. Fili was not the only one to get wider. My hair remained the pale blonde it had always been, but my beard had darkened and grown, although nowhere near long enough to rival my husband's. It was good that my hair was so pale, I half-expected it to go grey any day soon.

The three reasons for my future grey hairs stood either by my side or by their father's. Thrain, our eldest, stood solemnly beside his father, barely a head shorter than Fili, doing his best to make a good impression of the other dignitaries. At nearly thirty, he was still only a child by our people's standards, and moments like this, where he had to step up to the role of prince, were thankfully rare. He was at that awkward stage in a young dwarfling's life when he was shooting up and his beard was coming through, although too silvery to look like much against his skin. He had inherited my fairness in contrast to his father's golden hair and he looked then paler still, weighed down by his own thick set of robes.

His brother, our second son, Vili, was not so keen about behaving himself. At fifteen, he was annoyed that he had been relegated to standing between his mother and grandmother, while his brother got to stand up front. Vili was as gold as his brother was silver, his round face surrounded by vivid curls, and where his brother was quiet, Vili was always so very loud. At that moment he was rocking on his heels, loudly badgering his grandmother with questions. Fili must have heard him from where he stood, because he turned back to look at us, smiling when he caught my eye. Vili brought his father more joy than he did trouble and he was young and cute enough still to get away with messing about.

Our youngest, Nyr, was no less curious than her brother, jumping in at every one of Vili's rare moments of silence with a question of her own. At ten, she had only just left infancy and this was her first visit to the world outside of Erebor. She was all round-eyed and amazed, wanting to stop and look at everything we passed, holding up the queue behind us. She had her father's colouring, but my temper, and she was proving to be quite the force of nature in the nursery.