Sansûkh (Bagginshield & Gigolas)

Chapter Five

"Dwarves of Erebor!"

Dís stood at the gates of Ered Luin, her eyes flashing and her hair streaming behind her in the cool spring breezes. The last caravan to Erebor watched her attentively, their faces bright and eager.

"We are going home!" she cried in her ringing voice of diamond and mithril, and a mighty cheer rose up from every throat. Turning, Dís began to walk away from the worked-out mines and the crumbling halls of Belegost that had sheltered them in their poverty, and raised her face to the East. She did not look back. Wagons rumbled along in her wake as she began to march.

"Now there's a proper Dwarrowdam," breathed Frís. "Oh, my brave daughter." Thráin took her hand, and with wet eyes together they watched their last surviving child lead their people away from their reduced and pitiful lives towards the rising sun, and Erebor.

Thorin looked back over the great train of Dwarves, carts, ponies, goats and even a flock of sheep that stretched out behind his sister. Old Dwarves walked doggedly beside wagons that were pulled by oxen and draft-ponies, their gnarled old hands wrapped around axes that had not seen use in decades. Families crowded in amongst their furniture on top of the wagon beds, and the older children eyed the guards and warriors that flanked the caravan with inquisitive and awed expressions.

"Keep up, keep up!" Glóin bellowed to a heavy cart that was dawdling. The foothills of the Blue Mountains slowly slipped behind them, and before them rose the little rolling hills of Emyn Uial and beyond that lay the great sheltered valley of the Shire. "Got a long way to go as yet, my lads!"

The Dwarves began to sing as they marched, and soon Thorin was humming along:

And her beard was as soft as the downy wing
Of the birds that fly home at the call of spring,
O! Why did I leave her, why did I roam?
For now and forever I'll be marching home!

"I've not heard that one before," Gimli remarked, trudging alongside his father.

"T'is an old traveller's song, son," Glóin said, and as he had every time since returning to his family, his face creased with bemused pride.

His reunion with Mizim, Gimrís and Gimli upon his arrival at Ered Luin had been nothing short of spectacular. Glóin had wrapped himself around his wife and held onto her tightly, burying his face in her pale hair. She put her hands either side of his head and drew it back, tracing the old scar over his brow with her thumb before kissing him deeply and gently. "Hello, you old bear," she said softly, her hands slipping into his mane of wild red hair. "You're late."

"Jewel," he said, and his eyes misted over. "More lovely than ever you are, Mizim, crown of my life, light of my heart."

"Don't think you can sweet-talk me into forgiving you, now," she scolded him, before kissing him again. His hard, craggy face softened as she rested her head against his chest for a moment. He took her hands and kissed them one after the other before turning to his children – and his mouth slowly formed the shape of an 'O'.

Thorin privately thought his expression was hilarious. Frerin, of course, didn't keep such things private. His brother keeled over backwards, laughing his head off.

Glóin's amazement was justified. Nearly three years wrought quite a change in a growing Dwarf, after all. Gimrís now appeared more queenly than ever, all gold and topaz, the fiery sun to her mother's pale moon. And Gimli was no longer a lad. He was a strong and sturdy young khudz, his arms thick with muscle and his beard lengthening rapidly. Glóin had gawked for a moment longer before Gimrís was hurling herself at her 'adad and Gimli was doing likewise, and Glóin was buried beneath the bodies of two mostly-grown Dwarves and groaning.