{Dedicated to Light____ because they are the one who, through comments on the previous chapter, gave me the idea of Essiny to start with. I love it! And I hope I did your brainfruit justice.}
I was just as happy the next time I told everyone the good news, but I was more scared too. So was Gimli. Freda and Fraeg both found excuses to visit more often.
We kept a better eye on things this time. And there were more people getting involved, much to my surprise, and exasperation.
I stood in Dale with my fists on one hip, a half-full basket of summer greens on the other, one eyebrow raised, Sirai at my side. "You have got to be kidding me. You I can understand, but she belongs in Mirkwood. She's not capable of leaving. Her heart gives out. I've heard this from a very reliable source."
Tauriel laughed and Oloran translated for Nesetha, who stood beside them. Nesetha then rolled her eyes. "Orders are orders," said Tauriel.
My eyes widened in astonishment and I transferred my basket to Sirai so I could put my fists on both hips, doing it properly. "I beg your pardon? Whose orders?"
"Thranduil's, of course."
I threw my head back and groaned, and Sirai laughed outright. "Can you believe this?" I demanded of my human friend, extending a hand toward my apparently personal healer for the following sixish months. "This is what madness looks like, my peaceful friend." I turned back to my three elves, wearing my best stern expression. "Nesetha is one of the best healers in Mirkwood. Mirkwood is where she belongs. What if there's another attack? What if there's a natural disaster like a tornado? What if one of the people in Mirkwood has more pressing health concerns than I do? Might I remind you that I do not actually have health concerns. My trouble before was not caused by genetics."
They awaited my tirade with serene smiles that told me already I was not about to win this argument. Tauriel grinned, drat her, while Oloran translated again. Then Nesetha grinned. Well, drat her too. "You told Nesetha once that you tend to bleed too much. This we have confirmed with Tavard. Thranduil thought it best, and Nesetha agreed."
"No, you mean she didn't disagree. You know Nesetha's too nice to fight with anyone." Well, mostly.
Tauriel sighed. "Mabyn. Remember your ring? If nothing else will convince you, consider other reasons why Thranduil may choose to send his favorite healer to look after you."
Well, that made more sense to me. And the bat was out of the box both in Erebor and Dale, so there was no point being too worried about who overheard our discussing it now. "All right. Fine. You're staying too, right?"
At this Oloran shook his head. "I am afraid Mirkwood needs its Captain of the Guard. Even I am fairly important, so we will be going home tomorrow."
This time my eyes widened because I was aghast. "But that's not fair! Nesetha doesn't speak the language! How can you expect to leave her here for six months without speaking to anybody?"
"I'm sure we will be able to figure something out," Sirai said, offering her hand to Tauriel first, reaching right over me. "I'm Sirai, and Mabyn is impolite. Hello."
Tauriel gladly shook her hand. "I apologize for not introducing ourselves earlier. My name is Tauriel, and this is Nesetha and Oloran." Once the hand-shaking was done she returned her holy attention to me. "Nesetha was well aware of that when she agreed to come—and she did agree, Mabyn—and believe it or not, she knows how to write letters. There are a few here who speak our language. Nesetha can make merry with the historians. I am sure they will have a lot to discuss."
I heaved a groan. "This is overkill. I recognize the purpose of it, but it is overkill and you will not convince me otherwise. Have I ever showed you around Dale? Come on, Sirai knows all the best spots."
Oloran laughed. "That would be lovely, Mabyn, thank you for allowing us to intrude on Mistress Sirai's competency."
I rolled my eyes and took my basket back from Sirai; she had her own basket to manage. "Come on. I'm not even showing yet."
"I'll have you know I have not finished my shopping," Sirai reminded me as we started back off down the row.
"Well they can come shopping with us, it won't kill them. Oh have you tried this tea? It's better when it's picked before it blooms. If you buy it and don't like it I'll buy it from you."
Sirai shook her head at me and stuck a hand in her belt purse. "You're a menace, you are. What does our Mabyn get up to when she's off buggering you?" she asked of our trailing trio of elven guards and healer.
"The most delightful and undignified things," Oloran assured, musing. "She got stuck in a tree once."
"I never." I stuck my nose in the air. "That has never happened to me."
"I don't mean you couldn't normally climb down," he assured me, strolling along while deeply inhaling the sweet summer breeze. "I mean with the baby opossum in your other hand you did not trust yourself to do so without squishing it."
"You were nearby—you were able to take the opossum for me and I made it down all by myself, thank you."
"How long did you sit in the tree waiting for someone to come by?"
"The opossum was scared. I was comforting it." I paid for a bundle of green threshes to throw in the bottom of the linen closet to keep the sheets fresh.
Oloran said to Sirai, conspiratorial, "She never did admit for how long she had been waiting."
"Why am I unsurprised?"
"Because this is Mabyn," he said with eyes alight. "One learns to be accustomed to the odd and unusual in her proximity."
"Hush you," I said firmly to all of them, standing on a stool at yet another booth. All the sellers kept stools on one or both sides of their booths, so we dwarves could still see what all the fuss was about. I usually shopped in Erebor, but I did like to socialize on occasion, and shopping was the way to do it without wasting time. "I am making a very difficult deliberation."
"What is it you are so heavily pondering?" Tauriel wanted to know, coming to stand at my side. She tapped her fingertip against one of the many jars of beet juice being sold in concentrated form as dyes. "This one is pretty."
"I'm trying to remember which one I use to dye the meat stew with."
Sirai made a face at me. "You dye your stew? Fooling with Gimli again?"
"No 'with', just fooling. This particular stew always turns out a funny, milky, light brown color and I hate it, so I use beet juice to darken it up. Adds quite a nice flavor too actually. But if it's suddenly a different color than it was before he'll know something's up."
"He'll notice?"
"Aye, he's funny that way. I'll take this one, thank you." I toasted the seller with the jar once she'd wrapped it protectively in paper. "Cheers."
I asked Thorin about it, and he directed me to the rooms for non-dwarven visitors, so at least Nesetha wouldn't have to curl up on a dwarf-sized bed for the next six months. The doorways were even of appropriate heights for tall people. Because dwarves aren't short; everyone else is just lanky.
Gimli tugged the end of my finger when I swept past him one afternoon after chatting with Nesetha again. She had picked up—or had always known and hadn't used—a few words we could use to communicate about my situation. "Don't disparage us too much, feistytongs," he said, settled before the empty hearth with a small ax he was honing and polishing. "We're just trying to take care of you."
"I take care of me," I grumbled, tying my apron over my swelling stomach. Then I huffed, heels of my hands braced against the counter. "I don't like feeling babied. I feel like I can't take care of myself when others do it for me, or try to. I don't know how to explain it." I tapped my nails a few times. "It's like if Tavard were about to get you drunk so he could do some scary procedure to you, wouldn't it scare you if he said to tell me goodbye? Even if he tells you you're going to be all right, it's very unlikely that you won't wake up. He tells you to say goodbye so I won't regret never having said it, but in doing that he makes you think I'm going to end up in that situation."
Gimli groaned to his feet. He put his arm around my waist and tipped his beardy cheek against the top of my head. "We should get you another plant."
I had seven already.
Soon I had seventeen.
But I'd happily have gone back to the seven.
Because my friends sent those plants when I caught a fever and lost my grip on something far more precious than my own health. I was so hurt, so broken-feeling when I finally rose out of my haze, I didn't even know how to register my feelings as sentient emotions. I was shaking, vomiting even though the fever had already passed. I'd gone into labor and given birth to my dead child only days before. Tiny enough to fit into Tuva's palm. A boy this time.
I could remember Nesetha arriving at a run, but not when in my fever she'd done so.
I could remember her shouting to someone, in broken Westeron, that Gimli had every right to be with me for the birth of our dead baby. I could remember Freda lying in our bed with me, holding me against her chest as I trembled, unable to make a sound.
After I resurfaced, I didn't think I'd ever have a strong enough anything in me ever again to be able to raise my voice above a murmur.
My heart was an empty, ravaged town covered in snow. Several people stroked the sturdy gates and murmured for me to let them in. Some cried.
But I had locked myself in the dungeons and didn't want to come out.
Fraeg, Tilda, and Thorin frequently sent their children to Gimli and I for babysitting. I expected an uncle and aunt to be among one's top picks for sitters, but Tilda had to come all the way up from Dale, and despite my friendship with Thorin, we didn't do anything together outside of work. I suppose I didn't expect it.
Thorin's wife, a dwarf from the far north of here, I hadn't spoken much to until recently. Her name was Miskiminalatalia. Thorin told me her people believed in long names, especially for the nobility, because one had to take the time to show their respect in saying the entire thing. Before marrying Thorin, strangers had called her Lady Miskiminalatallia. Associates called her Lady Miskimina. Friends called her Miskimina or Miskim. Close friends and family called her Mina.
I started by calling her by her full title, as regardless of my own position (which I for the most part ignored) she was still my queen, but she'd waved a hand and told me to start with Lady Miskimina.
Then one day she came in with her child—born only a month after mine should have been—I could only imagine how watching me lose two pregnancies had made Thorin feel when his own wife finally carried a child—bouncing in her arms and trotted breathlessly up to Thorin's desk, with a brisk smile and hello to me as she passed. I flickered a smile back and continued smoothly underlining Thorin's correspondences for him, sitting quiet and straight.
Gimli and I had gone to Mirkwood for a while, to get away from the sympathies of our family and friends here. The elves hid theirs better. And Gimli hadn't seen Legolas in a while. And I just needed to get away for a while. We'd only just gotten back. I'd had several long, lonely soaks in the hot springs Thranduil had once told me about.
I ricocheted back and forth between wanting to leave Gimli so he could marry someone who could give him everything he wanted, and hating myself for even scooting to the far side of the bed and denying him the comfort he was owed too.
I just felt I didn't deserve it.
Maybe if I'd left my father earlier I wouldn't have poisoned so bad. But really, it didn't seem to be the poison's fault. One to poor judgment and misfortune on my part; one to an unpreventable complication; one to illness.
"Mabyn?"
I had a hard time keeping my thoughts in their smoothly ordered lines. Was getting better though. Always did. I looked up. "Yes?"
Lady Miskimina smiled hopefully. "We've both got meetings tonight and I promised Yissa's maid weeks ago that she could have these few days off. Could you watch Yissa for me tonight? Just for a couple hours?"
That was how I came to sit for Princess Yissa. We princesses have to look out for each other.
I thumped along with Eydis in the spring, picking violets. My basket was fuller than hers. I wasn't getting distracted by trying to sort out which bird had done the singing, noticing an odd yellow violet and letting it live because I wanted to see more of them next year, or pausing to unravel the breeze.
"It isn't your fault, Mabyn," Eydis said, plucking.
"I know."
"You're hurting yourself, you know, thinking less of yourself because of a state of your luck."
I shook my head. "It's less that they're gone, now, and more that I haven't been able to make Gimli happy. With children, at least."
"You know that's—"
"Oh I know." How illogical it is. Benzene poisoning was known to cause infertility, but I'd shown no signs of carrying that symptom. Based upon experience, I should be able to carry a healthy child to term. There should be nothing stopping me. "But when the same outcome happens too much I start to not want to risk it happening again."
"Two bad times seems a little early to make such final judgments."
I opened my mouth and closed it, shredding a violet's petals between my fingers now, the bruised lavender fragments fluttering down into my yellow apron. "I—" My voice cracked, breaking. Just like the rest of me. "Eydis I—I lost one before, and I never told anyone here. I was in an accident, and I lost one."
Her hands stilled in the quilted grass. "When you came back with the broken leg?"
I nodded, scrubbing the heels of my hands up my eyes, scraping the tears away, leaving purple smudges on my cheeks.
"Oh, honey," Eydis breathed, and set her basket aside to sit beside me on the steep hill, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. She laid her cheek on top of my head and I clung to her waist. "Makes it seems like the gods are compensating for something, doesn't it. The girl who meant to die but kept on living, and the children who meant to live but things kept happening." She firmly kissed my hair. "Maybe I'll give you one of my nephews. Gods know I have enough of them."
I chuckled through the tears, and squeezed her harder. "You cursed dwarves, being so close-knit, any parentless child is immediately taken up by other family. Even in Dale and Mirkwood there are parentless children."
"Love, those poor children would look like cuckoos if you raised a human or elven child. They'd push you right out of your nest and not even mean it."
I only shook my head, forcing myself to smile.
Everything gets better with time. Sometimes the bad things are dead flowers that just lose so much color they no longer count as flowers, and just turn to dust someday. Sometimes the bad things have worms all through them for ages and ages, and then slowly dissolve with the rain and sink back into the soil. You always look at that spot and remember, but the stink no longer follows you home.
Being me still wasn't me yet, but I no longer felt insufficient as I sat at dinner with Gimli anymore.
It was early summer, nearly a year after Nesetha came to stay in Erebor, and seven months after she left, and I sat at the edge of the forest behind Erebor, my chin on my knees. I wasn't avoiding anyone, wasn't avoiding anything. Just letting the breeze tug at loose strands of my hair and reminding myself how good the dirt and trees smelled.
One of Gimli's friends waved at me from down the hill, where he and his dogs were guiding his sheep herd back toward the barns for the night. It was an hour from dusk still, but I knew from talking to him that he liked to have his flock heading in early in case of mishaps. His dogs had gotten distracted by a wounded stag once, and the sheep had scattered when the dogs ran after their chosen quarry. I raised a hand and waved back.
A commotion stirred distantly from behind me and I craned to look over my shoulder, hand flattened against the damp grass. The breeze made the blades flicker, tickling against my forearm.
I couldn't distinguish the exact nature of the sound next time I heard it, it was still too far away, but it was definitely closer this time, and I eased to my feet.
"What's got you, Mabyn?" Delnar called, whistling to his hounds.
My brow furrowed. "I don't know."
Delnar changed his whistle, and one of the older dogs separated, the others stopping their forward funneling of the sheep to circle them, keeping them in place. The older dog bounded up the hill to me, pausing for a pat on the head, before trotting into the forest. He stayed close, stepping back and forth to catch different shafts of air. He ambled out to the east, remarked upon nothing. Ambled toward the west, started to whine.
"Mabyn, come away!" Delnar whistled to his dog, and I hastily backed down the hill toward him. Delnar could hear the commotion now too. His dogs started pressing the herd straight toward Erebor, snapping at their tails as they hadn't before.
Then I saw the outline of a woman sprinting toward me, ragged around the edges, and a larger shape bounding after her, a weapon raised. She darted; the weapon pounded into the mulch beside her.
I screamed and bolted into the forest.
Delnar shouted, and his cheery dogs transformed from herders into a snarling mass, racing up the hill toward me, with me, and past me. I plunged into the forest just behind them, Delnar coming behind me with a roar.
"Here!" I shouted to the woman, a dwarf, as she dodged the orc's clawed weapon again. Or maybe I shouted at the orc, distracting it.
The dogs parted around the gasping woman and swarmed around the orc, leaping to snap at its legs and limbs. It seethed something at them and kicked. One of the dogs yipped but none fell, or ran. The orc dislodged, the woman plunged toward me and I caught her by one arm, dragging her toward the fading light outside the trees, outside the darkness within.
The orc was spinning, snarling at the dogs who snarled harder. It was skinny—a scavenger? Deserter? It twisted to run back the way they had come.
The woman stumbled and I lodged an arm around her back, supporting her as we at last stumbled out of the trees. As soon as we were out from under the majority of the boughs the woman collapsed to her knees. I skidded forward a few more steps to the crest of the hill, cupped my hands to my mouth, and stood on my toes to shriek back down to Erebor, praying someone would hear.
I spotted movement. A handful of people hastened out from under the mountain's long shadow. I flung my arm in a wave, bidding them to hurry.
I then spun and dropped to the woman's side. "What's wrong, how can I help? Can you walk? We'll get you to safety, I promise."
The woman hunched forward with a choked breath, and I nearly shed my skin in shock when I saw the blood streaking her back.
The orc had gotten her after all.
The woman straightened, sagged, straightened and sagged. Tears coursed down her cheeks. She clutched something tightly to her chest as she sobbed, and through her disconsolate noise I began to hear a thinner cry from within her arms.
The woman's chest heaved as she struggled to breathe enough to make up for the blood she'd lost. Her arms began to loosen.
"No no!" I begged, gripping her shoulders. "Stay conscious! Focus! You're safe now, you can do it!"
She was shaking her head, head hanging as though her neck were only a string, the rest of her body made of stone. The backs of her arms sank to lay against her thighs and I scooped her crying bundle into my own arm, not wanting it to fall.
Her breath began to slow.
I shook her cheek. "No please! Stay conscious, you can do it, you can!"
Delnar came thudding back, dogs surrounding him. He sent the dogs back to the sheep, his crossbow loaded in one hand. One look at the deteriorating woman and he thrust the crossbow at me; I gripped it tightly and he swept her into his arms.
Then down and down the hill we went. I clutched the bundle to my chest as tightly as I safely could so it wouldn't jostle wrong, the crossbow always pointed to the flowing, shadowy ground below us.
The sheep scattered as we hurtled through them at the base of the hill. I didn't recognize any of the men or women rushing toward us from the barns and stables. But I recognized the look of the bag at one of the dwarves' sides. Delnar recognized it too, and hastily laid the woman out on her back before her as the healer tumbled to her knees. The healer immediately hovered a hand over the woman's mouth and pressed her fingers into the side of her neck.
Even before she spoke we knew. The insides of Delnar's arms were spattered with the blood that had already begun to dry on the woman's back.
"No," I whispered, gripping the woman's wrist and shaking her. "Please come back. Please come back."
Delnar rested a heavy hand on my shoulder.
Tears began to drip down my cheeks and I pressed my hand over my eyes, shuddering. The bundle in my arm whimpered, having stopped crying, and I uncovered the face of a child not even six months old. I sucked in a tattered breath, the infant's blanket falling half-unraveled from my arm. The pale child freed a hand and pawed at my chest. One finger caught in the hem of my bodice and pressed, tugged. It turned its face into the giving skin there, gumming at it.
"I'm so sorry, love," I gasped. "I've got nothing for you." Then I started to sob too, taking up where the nameless child's nameless mother had left off.
"Mabyn!" Distantly I heard his commotion too.
"She's all right, Gimli!" He must have come out looking for me. Even Gimli wasn't quick enough to have heard the screaming from inside.
Gimli stumbled into Delnar's side he stopped so quickly, and Delnar steadied him. Gimli dropped beside me, breathing heavily as he stared, stunned, at the dead woman before us. Her eyes had drifted open a crack now. Her child moaned in my arms.
We named her Essiny. I had expected people to comment more on her hands—her fingers were fused into pairs on both sides—but when I remarked on their lack of remarks to Gimli, he only shrugged. "It's not like she can't grip things," he pointed out.
I adored dwarvish practicality. My child was not disabled, she was not a thing to be pitied because of her difference. Her hands would inconvenience her less than her half-deaf adoptive mother was inconvenienced by her own 'disability'. Admittedly, I also worried people wouldn't think she was as pretty.
Again, Gimli pointed out that I had scars splitting my right cheek and pieces of my right ear missing, and a number of other scars besides. Plus I was foreign and despite having filled out, still in no way adhering to the dwarven ideals of classical beauty.
Within his blunt reassurances, some of my tremors calmed.
When Essiny was nearly one I became pregnant again, for the third time as far as most anyone knew.
Afraid of losing it after allowing myself to fantasize about its future, I wanted to purposefully let it go. But Gimli convinced me to have some faith and try again.
One day Nesetha came for a visit and, smilingly, never left.
Other elves periodically came and went as well, visiting for different perspectives on my progressing condition than Nesetha and I offered him.
This is absurd, I wrote to him once. They've started drafting their letters to you even while sitting with me. They read some parts aloud just to vex me. It's bordering on obscene, actually, is what it is.
He wrote back, in his pristine, sharp calligraphy, Nesetha is an optimist and you omit facts and details you either dislike or disregard, not foreseeing the importance of them. The more perspectives from which I can perceive a situation, the better understanding I have of it.
With that letter he sent a basket of fruit that even I wouldn't normally buy, it being about as expensive as half a horse to get it here before it rotted. Nesetha rolled back in her chair laughing when the messenger thunked it down on my desk in the middle of my work (she was taking no chances, and accompanied me nearly everywhere). At first I thought it was because of the face I made. Later I found out, after she wiped tears from her eyes, that every single fruit in that basket had a documented or proclaimed benefit to those who were with child.
He claimed to have thought the fruits looked interesting. That mother hen; he had no one fooled.
I was starting to think he liked me more than just the engravings on the ring he'd given me.
In my seventh month, the furthest I'd ever gotten, Thorin put me on part-time work and enlisted Nesetha's and Gimli's help in ensuring that I took no more than a minuscule amount of work home with me. At the eight-month mark he gave me vacation 'indefinitely.'
In my spare time, I repotted several of my plants (I now had twenty-three); crocheted a pale green rug for the living room; repainted the wood in the shutters to a color Gimli couldn't decide was red or a heady pink; made eighteen jars of soaps and scrubs, including sugar scrubs for the skin; and made Gimli's life hell by deciding I wanted three lamps hung from our vaulted living room ceiling instead of just sitting on tables, and had him have fellows come in to bolt and hang them. The hell wasn't having them installed; I made him spend three hours in Erebor and two in Dale looking at lampshades and chimneys of various shapes, colors and sizes until we settled on three we liked which Gimli said matched. People still teased me about sometimes questionably matching my clothes.
And that was all by the eight months and one week mark. At eight months, one week and one and a half days, I went into labor, and everybody panicked. I panicked, too.
Nesetha hurried to the door and shouted down the corridor. A random passerby bolted over, though because it was my house or because it was an elf yelling at her, I didn't know.
"Suryi," I groaned, recognizing the girl when she came sliding onto the threshold. "Find Tuva, Tavard and Gimli for me please. Nesetha says I'm going into labor."
"You want your ma and sister too, Lady Mabyn?" she breathlessly asked, already bouncing on the rounds of her feet.
"Bofur?" Nesetha added, getting the sway of Suryi's question.
I stared back and forth between them both. This was only the first contraction, and Freda had prepped me on what to expect, but I still hovered there on the edge of my armchair, uncertain. "Are they all supposed to come? I don't know," I fretted. But I'd sat vigil at Fraeg's son's birth, hadn't I? Only Friedmar, Freda and Tuva had been in the room with Fraeg when she'd given birth, three years ago. Fraeg had invited me, but I'd been too intimidated, and said I didn't want to crowd the room.
"Yes," I said at last, shaking my head with closed eyes. "Anyone else you think ought to be here or would want to know. Thank you, Suryi. Thank you."
Soon our house was feeling like a teeming fishbowl. Freda made it first, and immediately put two pots on the fire to boil for tea. One tea was for me, to calm and ease pain. The other was to keep everyone else satisfied. I saw her put something in it from a flask in her apron and my eyes popped.
"Freda!"
She gave me a sideways grin. "Lass, we all could do with some loosening up. No one'll tip their beards in the froth, I promise."
At first I insisted on staying where I sat in the living room, enjoying all the company, the bustle, reveling in the rotation of so many distracting, lovely people as they swirled around me. Essiny bounced on what remained of my lap, delighted by all the extra attention she was getting. Fraeg snuck up on her and whisked her off my knee to twirl her through the air, and Essiny shrieked with laughter. Gimli sat on the arm of my armchair, his arm draped over my shoulders, frequently leaning down to kiss my hair or hold my hand.
After a couple hours the cramps got worse, and at Dila's suggestion I slid to the floor, leaning back against Gimli, who leaned against the armchair's feet, so I could stretch my legs out and air my lungs, carefully breathing deeply.
Some of the contractions brought tears to my eyes, and I laughed through them as best I could as Gimli rubbed my back and shoulders and Runi and Eydis each rubbed one of my calves. I think they just needed something to comfort. Nesetha had made me put a cloth in my panties to catch any bleeding that occurred. I'd been frightened by that at first, but Tuva assured me that at this stage bleeding was normal. She helped me into our bathroom to check and change the cloth frequently though, since Tavard reminded her I tended to bleed more than was necessary.
Tavard and Tuva, friends for decades, were there for more than just Gimli and I. While Nesetha mostly spent my labor looking after me because she knew me best and hardly spoke a common language, Tavard and Tuva, between gossiping over their tea in a corner like absolute fiends, traveled through our crowd reassuring and taking part in discussions, ensuring no one's stress dug too deep, and that no more stress than was necessary was permitted to touch me. While an amiable authority in his own right, I noticed that Tavard always deferred to Tuva in the situations when I'd seen the two of them together in a pregnancy-related event or matter.
When my contractions were fewer than five minutes apart—Bofur and Gimli were making bets to see who could stage a toast at exactly the time I began to moan again—Nesetha and Tuva got me up and guided me toward our bedroom, which they'd already discussed and prepared. Tavard smiled encouragingly at me as I passed, remaining propped against the hearth.
Bofur shouted a toast to frolicking goats—this was not the strangest thing someone had given thanks to over the course of the last several hours—and Gimli put his tea down to staunchly follow me.
Tuva heard him coming and opened her mouth.
"He comes," said Nesetha, voice as unwavering as a hundred-year-old tree, and just as placid.
"Yes," I agreed, wincing because the cramp was still carrying on.
Tuva rolled her eyes, but apparently felt no need to be shouted at again, and tipped her head to give her blessing as he shut the door behind us.
On a strictly physical scale, giving birth to a child nearly its appropriate age was far more painful than the last birth I'd given.
This child was small too, and Gimli and I stared down at him in dismay, but Tuva and Nesetha grinned. Tuva held him with his head angled down until he'd coughed up all the fluid in his mouth and nose, and Nesetha drew our attention to the resolute clench of his tiny, almond-sized fists. Gods, he was so small.
Gimli's arms tightened around me, and he pressed his forehead against my shoulder, sniffing. My chest heaved loosely up and down still from where I lay propped limply against our pillows, astonished, stunned. I couldn't believe what we'd done. I couldn't believe what we'd finally accomplished.
After some cluttered discussion between Tuva and Nesetha, Tuva patted him dry while Nesetha trimmed his umbilical cord and cleaned me up some, refreshing the towels underneath me, since technically I wasn't done yet. I felt like the lower half of my body had been ripped out. I wouldn't have been surprised to see some of it splattered on the wall behind Tuva, really, I felt I'd pushed so hard.
Tuva freed a hand and patted Nesetha's wrist, grinning. She chipped her head toward our bedroom door. "Want to tell them?"
Nesetha beamed. I knew how hard she'd worked to not step on anyone's toes while here, but how closely she wished to be involved. She squeezed Tuva's shoulder in gratitude and went to our door, cracking it open. It had gone silent out there in the living room, like they'd known our time had come.
The moment she opened the door she jumped, surprised, and I saw her look almost straight down, into someone's sheepish yet unrepentant and expectant gaze. "A boy!" she announced.
Then the cheering began. Gimli chuckled into his beard.
Tuva came around to my side of the bed. "You got any strength left in your arms, Mabyn?" she asked before extending our child toward us. Now that he was born, her first priority was him. Rightly so.
I sucked in another breath, tears still wavering in the corners of my eyes. I was dehydrated from all the tearing up I'd been doing all day. It had taken nearly a full day to make it this far, to come all this way at last. I nodded, and held out my trembling arms. "I've got him."
Still smiling like the summer sun, Tuva laid him into the cup of my arms, and I brought him around so Gimli could see his face. He'd hardly said a word since closing the bedroom door however long ago. He sniffed again when looking down into the squished, purple-looking face of our son. He considered.
"Poor bastard got his looks from me," he said at last, and Tuva and I burst out laughing. Nesetha could only smile for our mirth, words of vanity not being in her specified vocabulary.
"They cuten up," Tuva assured us. "You want us to bring Essiny in, or rest a bit?"
Gimli left the decision up to me.
"Oh, bring her in," I said. "Just for a while though. I think a boulder landed on my bellybutton."
Gimli kissed my cheek.
Nesetha, of whom Essiny was a huge fan, fetched our daughter for us, to introduce her to our son. She helped Essiny climb up on Gimli's side so she wouldn't jump, and so Gimli could hold her in case she got too excited.
Essiny, with Gimli's help, peeled down a little of her brother's blanket the better to see his squashed face, then grimaced, but it was clear she was trying to smile, knowing that was expected of her.
Gimli richly laughed again. "He'll look better in a few days, Essy," he promised. "Your ma will too." He kissed my hair again.
Later, when the three of us were alone, Gimli helped me adjust so I lay curled against him, not having to trust the support of my pounding back to the wilting of pillows or the stiffness of a mattress. I held the boy we'd named Gidron so so carefully in my arms while he alternately slept and fussed, and Gimli kept one hand gently on top of his head, as though he would vanish if he took his hand away. But he'd given up being able to see his son so I could rest comfortably, so I understood.
Tears dripped down my nose again, and this time I sniffed.
"All right?" he wearily asked, nearly as wrung as I was, I imagined. People can underestimate the power of pain when the one you love is the one feeling it.
I took in a shaky breath, determined to stop shaking soon, so very tired of being afraid. "This was the one adventure I would always have said was impossible."
And I refused to think too long about that, knowing what deep thoughts in certain directions could do to me. My state of mind was fragile when it was at its worst, unstable, just as Thranduil had rightly called me all those decades ago. I was doing a better job, these days, of avoiding the things that hurt me.
I developed a fever by the end of that night, and Nesetha hovered for several days afterward and a full day after that to ensure I would recover well and that our new child wouldn't sicken. He didn't. He was as strong as his father already.
Thranduil and Legolas had arrived by the time the fever broke. Essiny tried to put one of Thranduil's rings in her mouth, with his finger still attached. Gimli, unapologetic, said she took after her grandmother in her pursuit of shiny things. Thranduil rolled his eyes and shook toddler spit off his hand.
(pg755)
Author's Note: I SINCERELY apologize for the wait, my dedicated and delightful and ever-patient people! I genuinely love you guys, seriously. I can't believe it took me so long to get this written. But here it is, another course, and the meal is not finished yet. Nearing its end, but not quite yet. Stay awesome!