Dis was only a girl when her brother jerked her into his arms and ran with her from their family home.
She didn’t understand everything – nine years old and clinging to Thorin in fear – but her people were screaming and her grandfather was missing and Thorin shoved her in Frerin’s arms and yelled, “Get her to the mountain!”
Frerin wasn’t big enough to carry her, and she cried and reached for Thorin and cried for her mama, but her biggest brother wouldn’t take her.
“Where are you going?” Frerin demanded, his voice cracking, and usually that made Dis laugh but now it made her scared.
Frerin was afraid.
He was never afraid.
“I have to find Grandfather,” Thorin told them, and he was young too, barely a hint of a beard and his hair a tangle, but he seemed so much older. “Go to the Mountain and stay there. Don’t leave for any reason. And don’t let go of Dis.” He grabbed their brother’s shoulders, looking Frerin straight in the eye. “Promise me, Frerin.”
Frerin’s chin shook, but he met Thorin’s gaze and swallowed and said, “I promise.”
He kept his promise. He pulled her to the port, and onto a transport, surrounded by people as more screamed to get in, and held her in his lap as they broke free of Erebor’s atmosphere and connected with the Lonely Mountain in orbit.
She’d been on the Mountain before, of course. It was shiny and new and exciting, a ship as big as the main Iron Mountain, designed for asteroid mining or long travel or helping their fellow dwarves, whatever it was needed for. She’d learned about it from her tutor and stood on the Bridge and looked down at Erebor and seen how beautiful her planet was. She’d seen the twin moons of Dale, covered in bright lights.
She’d decided then and there that she was going to work on a ship one day. She might as well, since she could never be king. She was fourth in line, and four was a lot.
It wasn’t fun this time.
And all she wanted to do was go home.
There were hundreds aboard the ship, a thousand, more, until Dis couldn’t count anymore and Fundin found them and whisked them away to where his two sons and other noble children were tucked in and office. “Stay here,” he said, and left Balin, who was even older than Thorin, in charge.
That was all she knew for a long time.
She never saw the great red ship in orbit between the Dales, didn’t know that the panic of her people came from the knowledge that it was a ship of the Smaug.
She didn’t know the Smaug conquered planets, wiped them clean of life, and mined them until it was only a shell floating in space.
She knew only that she was afraid, and something was wrong.
And that she never saw her father again.
---
Soup was procured for Thorin when he returned with the Hobbit, and introductions were made, and Thorin would have talked without giving Mr. Baggins a seat at his own table if Dis hadn’t been there to set him straight.
Dis sometimes tried to imagine Thorin’s life without a sister to keep an eye on him, but it was too terrible a thought to contemplate. As much as she hated being away from her husband, there was no doubt that this hobbit would have been well within his rights to kick them out in the cold, and Thorin wouldn’t have been able to come up with enough charm to stop him.
“Please, Mr. Baggins, do sit down,” she said, and Mr. Baggins eyed her with an odd mixture or weariness and approval as he did so.
“We came here expecting you to be fully apprised of our situation,” she said, a bit loudly as she was pointedly speaking over her brother. “Out intermediary said that you’d already agreed to work with us.”
“Intermediary?” Baggins looked around the table. “Do you mean Gandalf?”
“Yes indeed.” Dis patted Thorin’s hand. There was murder in his eyes, so it was probably a good thing Gandalf hadn’t shown his pointy nose here. “We asked him to contract a specialist in shields and programming to assist us in retaking our home world from the Smaug.”
Baggins’ jaw dropped.
“The Smaug,” he squeaked.
“Aye,” Bofur offered from down the table, and Dis loved him to bits but if he teased the hobbit she would- “The chiefest and greatest calamity of our age, hovering above Erebor, royally pissed off because they can’t get down to the surface. And we’d like you to go and have a crack at ‘em.”
Dis leaned across the table and tried to whap him a good one, but she couldn’t reach.
So Nori did it for her, definitely employing the appropriate amount of violence.
“Not helping,” she hissed, as Bofur turned his best puppy dog eyes on them both. It didn’t work. The three of them had known each other too long.
----
Normally, they would never have met.
On Erebor, royal children were kept well separate from commoners, but Dis, Nori, and Bofur didn’t grow up on Erebor.
They grew up on the Ered Luin.
Separating children by class wasn’t so important when they were scrambling to learn to live as their fellow dwarves had for generations. Instead, it was more about keeping the children corralled and busy. Bored dwarflings were no good for anyone, especially anyone living inside a breakable ship.
So as the adults in her life dealt with treaties and meetings and long conferences with the kings and lords of other mountains, little Dis was placed, along with all the other surviving small children, under the watchful eye of teachers and older children. Thorin was considered old enough to attend meetings, but Frerin was among the “older children” category. For the first few weeks, her brother wouldn’t let Dis out of his sight, but eventually familiarity creeped in, and he started to leave her be.
Thank goodness.
A girl couldn’t make friends with her princely brother running interference and glowering at everyone.
And Frerin was the nice one. Thank goodness Thorin was old enough to stay busy.
Even without a princeling looking over her shoulder, fitting in with other children was no easy task. Each child had been told who Dis was, and that they had to be respectful. Among dwarflings who had already been through so much, “respectful” quickly morphed into something like fear. No child wanted to get into trouble with all the adults in their lives so nervous and tense.
So Dis found herself quite alone.
At least until the day a boy near her age, dressed in sturdy brown leather and wool, tossed his braids over his shoulders and marched over to her during the dwarflings’ lunch hour. There was a gasp of surprise from his fellows – all the children of miners, once the most common of dwarves and now rare.
Most of the miners had been too deep to get out in time.
The boy’s hair was messier than Dis’s family would ever allow, and his boots were so scuffed they must have belonged to plenty of cousins before him, but he looked her straight in the eye and said:
“Is that a cheese sandwich?”
Dis looked up at him, and then down at the sandwich Thorin had made for her that morning. There wasn’t very much fresh food left aboard, and the cheese was a treat. She hoped she wasn’t going to have to fight for it.
But if she did, she was gonna go for the eyeballs.
“Yes.”
The boy shifted from foot to foot before he offered, “I have our last jam sandwich. Do you wanna trade halves?”
Dis stared at him.
“You don’t have to,” the boy said, rubbing a ragged wrist on his nose. “I’m just offerin’.”
The princess looked between the boy’s face and his sandwich. Her heart was beating fast – someone her own age, what was she supposed to do? She’d always been the baby around older siblings and cousins-
“Okay,” she said, trying to sound confident, and the boy grinned, big and gap-toothed for the moment, before he plopped cheerfully down beside her.
“Bofur,” he said, tearing his sandwich carefully in half, “son of Kefur.”
“Dis,” she answered, picking up her neatly sliced sandwich and handing him his share, “daughter of Freya.”
Bofur grinned again. “Dis is kind of a funny name.”
Dis stuck her tongue out.
Bofur grinned.
And a gloriously unconventional and generally inappropriate friendship was born.
~~~~~~
Convincing a peaceful Hobbit that he should leave his planet – something no Hobbit had ever done – and face the most feared race in the galaxy was no small feat. Dis left Thorin to it, trusting Bofur and Balin to act as buffers if her brother became too abrasive. He was actually trying, in his way, to be friendly, she just wasn’t sure a Hobbit would read it as such.
The rest of the Khazad scattered, so as to be less overwhelming (twelve aliens in your dining room was rather a lot, and poor Mr. Baggins had been horrified when Fíli had to walk down his table to hand out drinks and reach his seat). Her boys she found sitting on top of the home’s gentle swell, cheerfully drinking Mr. Baggins’ ale and leaning comfortably against each other. Kíli laughed, a little too loud as always, and Fíli looked quietly amused, crinkles at the edges of his eyes.
Her heart warmed.
The thought of her boys, home, with stone under their feet and soaring over their heads, made everything worth it.
“You’ll want to talk to them before clothes come off and the Hobbits get an eyeful.”
The voice seemed to come from nowhere, but Dis knew the owner too well. A quick glance revealed a flash of brown and blue in one of the tall trees that lined the main road. “There you are,” she said, turning and tilting her head back. “I wanted to thank you for bopping Bofur for me in there.”
Nori rolled his eyes. “He was being a brat and he knew it. He deserved more than he got, and so do you for using the phrase ‘bopping Bofur.’” He looked down at her with his crooked little smile. Nori was well up in the tree – always a climber, not proper Khazad behavior at all – managing to lean against the trunk as if he had materialized there instead of climbing. He nodded to the little hill of the Hobbit’s home. “Ori was with them for a while, but he knows them too well to stay around when they’re getting in their cups and what flimsy excuses for inhibitions they have start to fade away.”
Dis laughed. Her boys were actually quite well behaved most of the time, fully aware that the others didn’t have the loves of their lives aboard the Retribution. But they did enter a highly cuddly mode when ale was involved, and it had gotten out of hand, ah. Once or twice.
“I’ll talk to them.”
“Oh, let them have their fun. There’s five bedrooms I that smial and they should have one of them. Just make sure it’s in a bedroom and not on the roof.” His face turned serious and still, as it did. “The months ahead aren’t going to be easy for any of us.”
“But the reward-”
“Might be worth it,” he interrupted, “if we all survive to see it.”
Not a natural optimist, Nori. But she couldn’t blame him.
Their mission was impossible, and they had already been away so long.
“We will,” she answered with the determination of the powerful. After all, why else was she here, away from her people and the warmth of her husband so long, if not to see that this company was alive and well at the end of their journey.
Nori snorted. “If willpower could defeat the Smaug, we could send you in alone.” She grinned up at him, and he shook his head. “Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
“Of course.” She waved a hand. She knew why he was out here, even if he’d never confess to it. He was more like Dori than he would ever admit, worrying and fussing over his Ori and her boys. He could go exploring now that she was here to take over.
“Exploring” often being synonymous with “snooping,” which was how he knew just how many bedrooms their Mr. Baggins had.
Nori nodded, and there was a flash of his vulpine smile as he blended into the dark.
He was so quick, and so silent, and so different, and so much a part of how Dis survived from day to day. They’d been inseparable so long, the three of them: the princess, the miner, and the thief.
~~~~~~~~~
Orphans were a natural result of the attack on Erebor.
No child would tease another about lost parents, not when they’d lost so many themselves. But children will always find reasons to be cruel, and targets to attack, if they’re not taught better. And the Khazad, who valued directness over subterfuge, sometimes erred on the side of a blunt cruelty.
The adults were so busy surviving that the children weren’t always taught the line between honesty and meanness.
And so it was Nori, whose mother lived, who came under attack from his fellows.
“My dad said your mama’s a whore.”
“My aunt said there were lots of good people who died, so why should your family live?”
“My dad said-”
Nori curled up against them then, not the sarcastic, sharp-tongued, deadly Khazad he would be in later years. He was only a boy, several years younger than Dis and Bofur, and he was tired and scared and overwhelmed, and his big brother was gone for the day, which is why they could get away with this.
No one mentioned their mother’s profession in Dori’s hearing. He’d broken several noses already.
It was Bofur who stood first, his friendly face screwed up in a scowl. Dis grabbed for him, tugged at his arm.
“They’re being mean,” he said, pulling.
“Then they’ll be mean to us!”
Bofur looked down at her, and there was disappointment in his face. “That doesn’t matter,” he said, and Dis blinked up at him.
She’d always been taught that having the people like you made you a stronger leader.
“Mama’s with the guild,” Nori piped up behind his arms, because that’s what Dori always said. Dis didn’t really understand what that meant, and when she asked Thorin he’d looked offended and told her she wasn’t old enough to know yet.
…Then he’d muttered she might never be old enough to know.
She hated it when he said that!
“I’m going to help him,” Bofur announced.
Dis hesitated only a second before bouncing to her feet, determination in her eyes.
She wasn’t going to be king, anyway. Thorin was.
When they spoke, it was with one voice:
“Leave him alone!”
“Don’t you tell us what to do!” one of the bullies hissed, but another grabbed her arm and whispered, “It’s the princess!”
As the bullies grumbled and complained and finally walked away, Dis realized for the first time in her life that being princess…might not be so bad.
Maybe she couldn’t be friends with everyone, and maybe they were kind of scared of her, but she had Thorin and Frerin and Bofur-
And, she learned very quickly, a fast-fingered, sharp-eyed little Nori as well.
For the fic meme my beloved time travelling wee Kili, #7, 1, 2!
1
1.What inspired you to write the fic this way?
Original inspiration was the novel Portrait of Jennie, which I highly recommend if you can find a copy of it (didn’t like the film version that much). I took some major liberties with a lot of things,one of them being the nature of this mysterious being, and I really didn’t like how the novella ended. It became a challenge to figure out how I was going to pull it off, and it took a while to fit all the pieces together. And coming up with enough historical context without going overboard was also a challenge. I’m a history buff, and nothing annoys me as much as ‘historical’ fiction that could with very little trouble be transplanted to a different time period.
2. What scene did you first put down?
Boring as hell, but … the very first one, with the very first line that popped into my head: The calendar said it was spring, but as far as Fili could tell Mother Nature hadn’t gotten the memo. I tend to write in linear order, writing ideas and bits off to the side to flesh out and plug in later.
7 Where did the title come from?
The beautiful poem When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats, which reads in part: But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and all the sorrows of your changing face. Fili is watching Kili grow up before his eyes, and watching him go through a number of life events in a short amount of time, the joys and sorrows both.
I thought I’d try and cheer you up with a tiny bit of Boffins, my dear. I just hope you like it!
Bilbo had been to the market when the delivery had arrived – Bilbo Baggins, Bag End, via speeded courier from Rivendell, of all places – and now Bofur was left with a small sack of what felt and sounded like beans and bursting with curiosity.
He wasn’t sure if he would survive the next hour or so until Bilbo would come home. He was prowling around the sack that sat on the dining table like a cat.
And then, finally, finally, the door opened.
“I’m back!
“Thank goodness! I thought I couldn’t hold it any longer!”
Bilbo stuck his head around the corner and mustered his dwarf who was looking at him with a grin that was a tad bit too bright to be natural.
“You got a delivery,” Bofur said.
“A delivery?” Bilbo sorted out his coat and put it on a hanger.
“From Rivendell.”
“Ah!” That got Bilbo moving, and he hurried into the kitchen. “Is it that?” He asked as he pointed at the sack.
“Aye, it is.”
“Oh. All right, then.”
Bilbo left again and headed for his bedroom. Bofur was sure he did it on purpose, just to let him stew in his own juices a bit. He knew perfectly well what he was doing to his dwarf.
“So...” Bilbo rubbed his hands when he came back, dressed down into comfortable trousers and shirts. “Let’s see.”
Bofur was long past pretending he wasn’t dying of curiosity and craned his neck when Bilbo opened the little sack.
“Oh, it really is beans!”
“Yes but they’re...”
“I love beans!”
“But...”
“Beans are a very healthy food, but as a Hobbit you’d know that, aye?”
“But these are...”
“Can we make a stew? With chopped beef and onions?”
“Bofur...”
Bofur poked Bilbo in the belly, eliciting a dignified little squeak.
“Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart,” he started chanting with a grin.
“Bofur...”
“The more you eat the more you...”
“Bofur!”
“The more you...”
“BOFUR!”
“...the better you feel, so let’s have beans for every meal!”
Bofur grinned broadly and attempted another attempt at belly-poking. Bilbo, arms akimbo, stared back.
“These beans are not for cooking!”
“They’re not?” Then Bofur’s face lit up. “Oh! Seed, now I get it!”
“No, they’re not for sowing, either. These beans don’t grow in the Shire, they come from farther south where it’s much, much warmer.”
Bofur crossed his arms and stared at the sack.
“Now...” Bilbo dropped his hands, curled and uncurled his fingers and proceeded to open the sack. He showed Bofur some of the small, black beans.
Bofur leaned forward. “They smell atrocious.”
“I told you that you’re not supposed to eat them.”
“Then what by Mahal’s sacred beard is it you do with them?”
This time, it was Bilbo who grinned.
“You, my dear dwarf, are in for a really big surprise.”
Bilbo rolled up his sleeves and got to work. Bofur sat back in a chair and enjoyed a pipe as much as he enjoyed watching his Hobbit in his element.
There was roasting and grinding and blending with sugar and warming and stirring and then there was cream and more sugar and after three more pipes, and dinner, Bofur had to go to bed, still being none the wiser.
Bilbo spent the next day in the kitchen, too. Bofur, by now rather miffed about Bilbo’s refusal to speak about or explain what he was doing, busied himself with repairing the bench next to the front door and doing a bit of weeding. Something he didn’t usually do despite Bilbo having taught him to. Which showed how desperately he needed something to do to keep himself occupied. Bloody Hobbit. Bloody Hobbit secrets.
Bofur sighed. He wasn’t going to kid anyone trying to pretend he was angry at Bilbo.
When he came back inside somewhat later, the smell that greeted him was heavenly. And after hanging his hat at the coat rack and getting rid of his soiled boots and socks –a long a time living with a hobbit would leave marks, after all – he entered the kitchen and found Bilbo arranging small, brown squares on a platter.
Bilbo smiled warmly and affectionately at his dwarf and held the platter out to him.
“I can only hope it’s as good as what I tried in Rivendell. I had a lengthy conversation with the master of Elrond’s kitchen and he was so kind as to supply me with recipes and the produce to make it happen.”
He offered Bofur the platter again.
“Go on,” Bilbo said. “I’m not going to poison you.”
Bofur reached out and took one of the small brown squares. It immediately left a brown smudge on his fingers.
“I’m afraid it hasn’t quite cooled off sufficiently,” Bilbo said somewhat apologetically. “But it will not impair the taste in the slightest, I assure you.”
Bofur had no clue how something that smelled as atrocious as those beans could be turned into something that smelled this delightful.
And if he had believed the smell was delightful, the taste was divine. He was sure that the sound he emitted would not have been suitable if children had been around.
“These are amazing...”
Bilbo looked terribly pleased with himself.
“Can I have another one?” Bofur did his best puppy eyes.
“I made these for you, you... dwarf.”
With an affectionate smile, Bilbo held out one of the squares and Bofur let him pop it into his mouth.
Bilbo’s smile softened considerably. “Bless your Craft Day, Bofur.”
Bofur’s heart melted. “You remembered?”
“How could I forget?” Bilbo put the plate down. “You told me how important the anniversary of the discovery of one’s craft is, my dwarf.”
After a deep, heavy sigh, Bofur pulled Bilbo into an embrace and nuzzled his curls.
