A Tale of Time

Chapter 13: Flying Potato

Chapter 13: Flying Potato

"Oi! Watch it pointy ears!"

"Are you warning me or him?" Gailien exclaims, letting her new long sword drop slightly. Kili rolls his eyes, crossing his arms and leans against his pack. Gailien laughs, holding her sword higher to meet Elladan's. The feeling of a sword in her hands is anything but unnatural, but not being able to see beyond a certain point to her right, is.

Though she is going to be escorted, they both figured that I would do no harm to practice a little training before they hit the more dangerous road. To make up for it, her head is turned more towards the right, putting her enemy back into the centre of her sight. Meeting, blocking and avoiding strikes is almost guesswork, trying to estimate the spatial distance. But for the most part, her muscles do the work.

"Alright, I call for a rest," she sighs. Elladan agrees nonchalantly, sheathing his weapon. Fili has been put on lunch duty and Gailien can't help but wonder how decent his meals are. They didn't nearly choke on her meals, so they can't have been starving.

She plops down next to Kili, resting against her own pack. The bead that the brothers made for her sits neatly in her hair. The section under Thorin's bead is now braided, tied off with theirs.

"You're going to make your cheek bleed," he chides, breaking her from thought. Gailien sends him a half-glare, dropping her cheek from her teeth.

"I wasn't biting that hard."

"No, but you start to bite harder the more you get lost in your thoughts," he counters with a small smirk.

"You get this dazed look in your eyes when you're lost in thought," she notes in the same tone. "And you squint."

"You dig your nails into your palms."

"You snore when you dream."

"You choke on your spit when you sleep."

Gailien's mouth opens, a laugh instead of retort coming out. "Do I really?" Kili nods, smiling at his boots. "That's hideous." She glances over, trying to find something else to take her thoughts. "Your arrows," she realises. "I thought Erebor used red arrows." As she had noticed before, his feathers are now black, sitting neatly in his quiver.

Kili shifts, pulling his knee between his fingers. He glances to the side, and Gailien notes his nervous shifting. "Uh, yeah," he answers quietly. "Fee found it hard to be near them when they were red. Feels guilty still, you know. I think Thorin felt the same after Fee mentioned it. Next day, they were ordered to dye them all black instead."

Gailien stares at the arrows, the image of the red feather sticking from her chest a vivid memory. "I never blamed him, but, I'm glad, to be honest. How is Erebor?"

"Amazing," he sighs. "Thorin's well respected, Fili's going well. Almost all of the rubble has been cleared away and all the mines and stuff are going again. Just mostly restoration work now."

"So I missed all the heavy work?"

Kili snorts, nodding his head. "That you did. Like Thorin would even allow you to anyway. You'd be treated as the Queen." Gailien's brows twitch, her mood dimming again. "Tough subject?" Kili assumes. She nods, sucking her lips. "If it helps, you wouldn't have to do anything beyond that what you want. The King is the foremost ruler."

"It's not that. I don't exactly look like I should be married to a king, do I?"

"I won't lie," he declares, giving a nervous laugh. "You have a unique appearance. But why should it matter? Your appearance doesn't dictate who you are as a person."