Everlong

40

Thorin looked sympathetic, "That doesn't sound like an easy burden to bear."

"No," she smiled honestly and pushed away from her leaning position. Honestly, as much as she loved seeing Dale, her heart clenched at the Dale before her and the one she had seen burning. The kites flying wouldn't last long, and the happy faces of children would be no more, and it made her feel sick. She had always dreamt of coming here, and now she had she didn't want to be anymore because all she was seeing and feeling was death and this unspeakable heaviness. "But I make do, I survive because I have to. It doesn't make it easy, but I am not one for being kept down." Liruliniel said while Thorin seemed to understand her words because he nodded along. Tilting her head and smiling down at him, she waved a hand his way. "I have told you so much about myself, yet I know next to nothing about you. Who are you?" Liruliniel watched as he shifted a little uncomfortably yet ran a hand through his long wavy black hair and gestured back inside.

She followed Thorin as he walked through the spacious corridor which had some dwarven guards sitting in, or changing shifts over to go out and stand outside. "I'm really not all that interesting, in comparison to you." Thorin said offhandedly while awkwardly smiling and walking down the stairs which they had originally came up.

Liruliniel hummed, she narrowed her eyes in thought and clicked her tongue. "Either you are very modest, shy, or believe that to be true. Either of which, it seems like I have a mystery to solve." She said with a growing smile, Thorin looked at her curiously, he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow when she laughed softly. "Don't look like that! Isn't it part of being friends to figure each other out?"

"You want to be my friend?" Thorin's eyes near on grew to the size of dinner plates, he didn't think he had ever heard something so...he would say ridiculous, but by the look on Liruliniel's face he knew she was being serious.

Liruliniel placed a hand to his shoulder, "You are not the first dwarf that I have befriended. I grew up around some, you know?"

"Really?" Thorin looked even more dumbfounded then. Was it just him, or was she full of surprises? He cursed himself for judging all by how and who they are, but she truly was breaking the mould here of what he thought elves would be like. Did he think others were like her? Evidently not.

"Now that is an interesting story!" Liruliniel beamed as they continued on their walk. Thorin listened and laughed over her tale, she didn't hold back on details, telling him how the dwarven smith had been extremely grumpy when he noticed a small elven girl sneaking about his workshop. Liruliniel had remembered it being incredibly smokey, yet spacious enough for him to do his work; there were many swords hanging, treated and ready to be properly sharpened and cleaned for use. But also it was evidently where he slept too, because of the small bunk in the room. She couldn't understand how someone could work or sleep in such heat, but this Bodur apparently did.

Thorin listened to how she explained she was bored, they'd just come to the Blue Mountains and though mortals lived there too, it was the dwarves that really caught her interest. Thorin felt a bit sorry for her when she admitted mortal children didn't wish to play with her, and she was the youngest in the elven group for quite some time; so she set her eyes to the dwarves. She had spoken fondly about how she had watched the closeness they showed for their kin, and she couldn't get why no one wished to be like that with her.

"My father was in the company of King Oropher at the time so he couldn't parent me and my brother." She had commented, trying to explain for her father's absence. "But then Thalion was too young to try and keep me in check either. So it's no wonder I managed to run off and find Bodur," she said, looking rather proud at her sneaking and running about. "He hadn't been happy mind. He had chased me out the workshop shouting: 'Get out you little impish pest!' Which...I thought was funny, and it still is really. But time after time I kept coming back, gradually though. I'd peer around the door, or I'd sit on a stool near the exit so I could run if he got angry again. But it showed that after time he realised that I didn't really have anyone else to be around. So I was surprised one day when he came walking over to where I sat, he picked me up under the arms and set me on his workbench. There he had gone on to explain about what he was forging, how it was done, the sketched plans and the metal he'd use to do it. I think he thought I'd grow bored...but I didn't, he gave me a wooden sword as a present once, I still have it. But he also allowed me to train with weapons he made, though he had joked about them being too heavy for my weak limbs. Weak?! I scoffed at him for that...though in truth when I first went to try and lift a sword, I failed which set him off laughing."