A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Three - Feasting

Dain nodded. “Fair enough. Who then would you choose?”

I’d been thinking about this the moment he’d said I couldn’t live alone. “Bofur. If he would agree to it, since I think I know him best.”

Dain glanced across at Bofur, and tentatively I looked up too. Though startled, Bofur was grinning at me. I began smiling too.

Dain looked back at me. “Bofur has never raised anyone,” he reminded me, “nor would you have a mother.”

My reply was steady. “I never did. I would like to live with him, all the same.”

“With Gloin you could have the benefit of a full family.” He belched into his mug and sighed with gratification. Apparently the mead was good.

I turned a gaze that had gone chilly on our new king. “My family is comprised of the people who love me, not the people who happen to live with me.”

The chill of my glare did not seem to touch the king, which was probably for the best, since the last thing I wanted to do now was instigate ill will with the ruler of my new home. “I will consider it,” he said amiably, “as other families have come forth and offered to take you. I’ll of course make my final decision based on what I think is best.”

“Why are you the authority on what is best for me when you don’t even know me?” I was treading uncertain ground and I knew it, but the backbone I’d been growing was determined to show its strength, and I wasn’t accustomed to resisting my own self-confidence. “With all due respect I have traveled over a thousand leagues to come here and I have died once already. I left my house and my ill-suited father on my own and unaided, and I was a year younger then. While your own morals may not permit you to permit me to live autonomously have I not at least earned the right to make decisions in my own life? Decisions which I am more suited to making than a stranger? I understand that you must look after the welfare of all your people, regardless of where they were born and how strange they might be, but I am not your average child and I have not had the upbringing of your average child. I am a child by age only; mentally I am equal to an adult when I’m of a mind to be. I understand that it pushes your beliefs to do so but please try to allow me my independence. I have fought too hard for it not to stomp on the toes of others to keep it, and I am afraid I do not yet have the tact to not include yours in my stomping ground.”

The others were staring at me, their expressions ranging from Ori’s anxious horror to Dwalin’s calm and close observation, to Balin’s hope for a good outcome and Bofur’s startlement. I knew it was brash, and a poor decision to beard a king, particularly one I didn’t know well enough to toe the boundaries of, but there was a quivering ball of fear in my gut and the only thing that kept it from flinging all to pieces was my level voice and cool explanations. I could not accept my own cowardice any more. It would kill me.

The face of the king in question was pleasantly taken aback as well by my words, and my tone, and my resistance. Perhaps he had expected me to be more childlike. Perhaps he had expected me to be less forceful. I couldn’t know what he had expected. But he no longer knew what to expect from me, and that could be a good thing, but it could also be very dangerous. At last he shook his head, chuckling once. “Lass, I was right in assuming you would shock us. I’ll do my very best not to give you reason to stomp on me, I promise, despite the strangeness of the situation. You are also welcome to argue my decision if you feel the need, though I honestly doubt that would change much once I’ve made up my mind.” His plate finished, the king stood, shook hands with an astonished Bofur, and dipped his head to the rest of us. Then he took his leave.

My back and shoulders wilted in and I dropped my head heavily onto my arms, my own plate pushed aside. Oin rubbed his hand across my back to comfort me, and Bofur stood to stretch across the table and touch my hair, trying to get me to lift my head. At last I did, and he held out his arms. I rose so I could embrace him across the table, relieved to have someone as straightforward and jovial as such a close friend, and then, to the dwarves’ dismay, excused myself.