Clarity of Vision, Chapter 10
Jul. 16th, 2013 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mithenTitle: Clarity of Vision, Chapter 10
Relationship: Thorin/Bilbo
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Fíli, Kíli, Thorin, Dwalin, Balin
Fandom: Hobbit
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 1900
Story Summary: In a Middle-Earth where Erebor never fell, a shadow remains in the heart of the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo Baggins finds himself drawn reluctantly into a quest that will lead him across the continent--from Bree to Lake Evendim to the icy North and beyond--with a party of five dwarves searching for an artifact that will cure the ailing King Thrór.
Chapter Summary: Thorin's party rents a boat, and five dwarves and a hobbit set out to sea in search of a fabled elvish fortress.
"You wish to borrow my boat?" The man sitting outside the hut, mending his nets, seemed bewildered by the demand. "Dwarves and--whatever he is--in a boat?"
Thorin drew himself up to his full height and continued on: "We would leave you our mounts as a surety against the loss of your boat if we do not return. And..." He drew a gem from his pouch and put it in the man's hand.
The man's eyes widened as he looked at an opal the size of a cherry. "I can keep this if you don't return?"
"The ponies you can keep if we do not return," Thorin said carelessly. "The opal is yours in any case."
The man let out a low whistle. "I can buy myself three new boats with this," he said. He raised his eyebrows at them. "The boat is yours--but I have to tell you, there's no way to get onto that island. It's all sheer cliff face. Many have tried and failed."
"They were not us," Thorin announced. Bilbo shot him a glance: talking to strangers had re-summoned Thorin's old familiar arrogance. But he held his tongue as he patted Daffodil on the nose and gave her a wild carrot he'd been saving for a treat.
"I'm sure we'll be back soon, Daff," he whispered.
She nickered and put her nose into his chest, shoving him playfully.
"Oh," said Thorin, turning back to the man, "We also have need of clothing that will fit the hobbit. Warm clothing."
"A hobbit? Is that what he is?" The man peered curiously at Bilbo. "I believe my boy has some jumpers he's outgrown, I'll throw them in as well."
The child's jumper was thick beige wool with a cabled pattern knitted into it. Bilbo suspected he looked ridiculous in it, but Fíli and Kíli assured him that he was "quite adorable," which didn't help much. He tried to look bold instead of adorable as he stood on the pier with his arms crossed, eyeing the little sailboat with a trepidation he attempted to hide.
"Hobbits and boats don't usually mix well," he said, looking at the rigging. "Do you know how to sail one of these?"
Balin, Dwalin, and Thorin exchanged glances. "We have some experience," said Thorin.
"But Dwalin made us promise never to speak of it again," said Balin.
Dwalin was looking distinctly green. "Perhaps I'll just stay here and guard the horses."
"We have no idea how long we'll be," Thorin said. "I need you at my side."
Dwalin swallowed hard. "Very well, Thorin," he muttered.
The reason for his worry became clear shortly after they cast off. Avoiding the side of the boat where Dwalin was groaning and retching, Bilbo made his way to where Thorin was standing in the bow.
The wind was blowing Thorin's hair back in a long dark stream as he gazed west, and Bilbo thought that if Thorin had been even the tiniest bit self-conscious, he would have looked ridiculous: an overwrought painting of some brooding romantic hero. As it was, he seemed entirely unaware of his appearance, and the effect was--well. Perhaps striking was the right word, Bilbo decided.
Thorin turned to look at him and smiled, pushing wind-tangled locks back from his face. "Your short hair has a distinct advantage here," he noted.
"You seem rather comfortable on a boat," Bilbo said. Even Fíli and Kíli were more subdued, following Balin's orders to the letter and refraining from horseplay as the boat skimmed over the waves.
Thorin shrugged. "I cannot afford to be squeamish about non-dwarvish things," he said. He lifted an eyebrow. "How are you doing?"
"It's...not bad," Bilbo said cautiously. He was reluctant to admit it even to himself--he was no Bucklander, after all!--but it was actually rather pleasant, with the sound of the waves and the wind snapping in the sails, the sharp keen scent of the sea and the endless westward blue. A seabird sailed by the boat, nearly touching the waves, and Bilbo followed its white wings with his gaze. "It's kind of pretty."
Then he blinked as he spotted a shape on the horizon. "Is that the island?" he asked, pointing.
Thorin squinted into the west, where the haze of distance was starting to solidify into a craggy form. "Himring," he breathed. "Last remnant of the First Age." Whirling, he started calling out to Balin and his nephews, barking orders, his body tense with energy and purpose.
Soon enough the sheer cliffs of the island loomed before them. At the top, Bilbo could see the traces of great stone walls, overgrown with scarlet ivy. "How are we supposed to get up there?" he murmured. "If no one else has done it in thousands of years..."
"...Ah," said Thorin, "But we have a map." Grabbing a scroll from his pack, he unrolled it across a box to reveal the margins of an island in a penciled sea. "It's in Khuzdul," he said, indicating the spiky runes written in the margins, "Which is probably why it went unnoticed by elves or men." He pointed to a small mark on the western side. "There is a hidden entrance here in the cliffs, behind a waterfall." He raised his voice. "Be strong, Dwalin. We shall have you on solid land again soon."
Dwalin groaned and muttered something in Khuzdul that Bilbo decided not to remember for later.
There was a deep lagoon hidden within a cleft in the cliffs, with a high waterfall endlessly unfurling its silver into the water below. With the dwarves heaving at the oars, the boat slowly maneuvered behind the waterfall.
In the water-rippling darkness, grey stone stairs gleamed, climbing upward.
: : :
"Thorin!" Bilbo's voice behind him was breathless and annoyed. "Could you perhaps slow up a bit?"
Thorin looked upward, where sunlight was glimmering at the top of the stairs. "But we're nearly there," he called back.
"We're about halfway there," said Bilbo. "And some of us aren't so keen on stairs."
Thorin turned to snap something at the hobbit--and stopped when he realized that Bilbo was practically supporting a still-woozy Dwalin. When Dwalin saw him looking back he shook off Bilbo's arm, and the hobbit shot Thorin a speaking glance. "I'm exhausted," Bilbo griped. "We don't have stairways like this in the Shire."
Thorin sat down on the stairs. "Very well," he said. "It would be too much work to carry the hobbit all the way up, so we shall rest a moment."
Bilbo plunked down next to him. "It's not my fault that dwarves are better with stairs than hobbits," he said, loudly enough that the echoes covered up Dwalin's heavy breathing as everyone sat down in turn. "Who in the world would even need to climb so many stairs, it's ridiculous."
They kept bickering for a good half hour, ranging over a wide variety of topics, until everyone seemed rested. "Are you willing to put forward some effort once more, Bilbo?" Thorin asked.
"Drags me halfway across the world, then makes me climb an infinite number of steps--Thorin, your leadership skills are truly unparalleled," said Bilbo as everyone gathered their gear once more.
"One needs followers to lead, not pampered hobbits." As Thorin walked past Bilbo, he clapped a hand to his shoulder and squeezed briefly. He wasn't sure the hobbit would interpret the gesture rightly, but Bilbo looked back at him and winked before starting up the winding stairs again.
: : :
They emerged blinking into the sunlight at the top of the stairs. "More ruins, how wonderful," said Kíli.
"I've had enough ruins to last a lifetime already," agreed Fíli.
"These are different," said Bilbo.
He was right. The ruins of Himring were all of golden marble, veined with glimmering mica that caught the light and refracted it. Even broken and worn by time, the very lines of the ruins were different from either Fornost or Annúminas, with a strange grace that haunted the eye. These walls witnessed great deeds, and beings beyond our ken, Thorin thought, and a shiver ran down his back. He shook it off impatiently.
"We shall find a place to set up camp," he said. "There must be a spring, the source of the waterfall. Let us locate it and make our base of operations there."
The island was nearly circular, what used to be the flat top of a great mountain fortress. The sound of the sea whispered all around them, an endless murmur, and the wind moved in the ivy. They found the spring, bubbling a stream of cold, clear water from a cleft in the rock, in the ruins of a tiled square. Thorin put his pack down on the broken mosaic on the ground, bright tiles fragmented into meaninglessness. "Here," he said.
They started a small fire and set up camp. "Tomorrow we shall start to search the island." Thorin sketched out a circle in the dust with Deathless's scabbard, divided it into six sections. "A different section each day."
"But...what are we looking for?" asked Fíli.
Thorin tapped the tiles with his scabbard. "An artifact of power."
"That's great," said Kíli. "That narrows it down a lot."
Thorin closed his eyes for a moment. "Here's what we have so far," he said, and recited carefully:
"When golden thoughts to gentle darkness turn
And shadows form within the gilded heart
Then shall the fevered mind no longer burn
And Durin's Scourge shall finally depart.
To save the soul from dragon's dreadful bane
Requires idle love in sweet repose;
A heart that's eased from anguish and from pain
Is like a blossom that unblighted grows."
He broke off. "Those seem to be the first two verses of this section of the poem. Then the text is corrupted for an unknown number of verses, but we have a phrase: 'In lands beyond the reach of vengeful waves,' and two words: 'emerald' and 'alabaster.' So that's basically what we have to go on."
"What about that last verse?" asked Bilbo. "Wasn't there another?"
"Oh, yes," said Thorin, "The summary." He took a breath and rattled off quickly:
"And when at last you see your treasure true,
If sacrifice and love can fill your soul,
The dragon's curse shall lose its hold on you
And clarity of vision make you whole."
"That isn't much to go on," Kíli said dubiously.
"It's all we have," said Thorin. "We shall search until our rations run low. If we can't find anything by then, we will admit defeat and move on." To Mahal knows where, he did not add out loud. His mad father was ruling Erebor and time was running out. It had to be here.
Their camp that night was subdued, with no singing or joking. Starlight mingled with firelight to cast strange shadows around the ruins, and Thorin was oppressively aware of the millennia that hung over the island.
{"Teach more Khuzdul?"} Bilbo said in that tongue, and Thorin realized that he'd been staring in silence at the shattered mosaic below them. {"Learn more is good."}
Thorin couldn't help but smile at Bilbo's earnest but flawed grammar. "Very well," he said.
So they spent the evening going through the names for the colors, each gem-like hue a talisman against the dark. The crisp syllables of Khuzdul echoed strangely off the fluting ruins, and the stars looked down incuriously upon the dwarf and hobbit talking amongst the crumbling elvish glory.
Relationship: Thorin/Bilbo
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Fíli, Kíli, Thorin, Dwalin, Balin
Fandom: Hobbit
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 1900
Story Summary: In a Middle-Earth where Erebor never fell, a shadow remains in the heart of the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo Baggins finds himself drawn reluctantly into a quest that will lead him across the continent--from Bree to Lake Evendim to the icy North and beyond--with a party of five dwarves searching for an artifact that will cure the ailing King Thrór.
Chapter Summary: Thorin's party rents a boat, and five dwarves and a hobbit set out to sea in search of a fabled elvish fortress.
"You wish to borrow my boat?" The man sitting outside the hut, mending his nets, seemed bewildered by the demand. "Dwarves and--whatever he is--in a boat?"
Thorin drew himself up to his full height and continued on: "We would leave you our mounts as a surety against the loss of your boat if we do not return. And..." He drew a gem from his pouch and put it in the man's hand.
The man's eyes widened as he looked at an opal the size of a cherry. "I can keep this if you don't return?"
"The ponies you can keep if we do not return," Thorin said carelessly. "The opal is yours in any case."
The man let out a low whistle. "I can buy myself three new boats with this," he said. He raised his eyebrows at them. "The boat is yours--but I have to tell you, there's no way to get onto that island. It's all sheer cliff face. Many have tried and failed."
"They were not us," Thorin announced. Bilbo shot him a glance: talking to strangers had re-summoned Thorin's old familiar arrogance. But he held his tongue as he patted Daffodil on the nose and gave her a wild carrot he'd been saving for a treat.
"I'm sure we'll be back soon, Daff," he whispered.
She nickered and put her nose into his chest, shoving him playfully.
"Oh," said Thorin, turning back to the man, "We also have need of clothing that will fit the hobbit. Warm clothing."
"A hobbit? Is that what he is?" The man peered curiously at Bilbo. "I believe my boy has some jumpers he's outgrown, I'll throw them in as well."
The child's jumper was thick beige wool with a cabled pattern knitted into it. Bilbo suspected he looked ridiculous in it, but Fíli and Kíli assured him that he was "quite adorable," which didn't help much. He tried to look bold instead of adorable as he stood on the pier with his arms crossed, eyeing the little sailboat with a trepidation he attempted to hide.
"Hobbits and boats don't usually mix well," he said, looking at the rigging. "Do you know how to sail one of these?"
Balin, Dwalin, and Thorin exchanged glances. "We have some experience," said Thorin.
"But Dwalin made us promise never to speak of it again," said Balin.
Dwalin was looking distinctly green. "Perhaps I'll just stay here and guard the horses."
"We have no idea how long we'll be," Thorin said. "I need you at my side."
Dwalin swallowed hard. "Very well, Thorin," he muttered.
The reason for his worry became clear shortly after they cast off. Avoiding the side of the boat where Dwalin was groaning and retching, Bilbo made his way to where Thorin was standing in the bow.
The wind was blowing Thorin's hair back in a long dark stream as he gazed west, and Bilbo thought that if Thorin had been even the tiniest bit self-conscious, he would have looked ridiculous: an overwrought painting of some brooding romantic hero. As it was, he seemed entirely unaware of his appearance, and the effect was--well. Perhaps striking was the right word, Bilbo decided.
Thorin turned to look at him and smiled, pushing wind-tangled locks back from his face. "Your short hair has a distinct advantage here," he noted.
"You seem rather comfortable on a boat," Bilbo said. Even Fíli and Kíli were more subdued, following Balin's orders to the letter and refraining from horseplay as the boat skimmed over the waves.
Thorin shrugged. "I cannot afford to be squeamish about non-dwarvish things," he said. He lifted an eyebrow. "How are you doing?"
"It's...not bad," Bilbo said cautiously. He was reluctant to admit it even to himself--he was no Bucklander, after all!--but it was actually rather pleasant, with the sound of the waves and the wind snapping in the sails, the sharp keen scent of the sea and the endless westward blue. A seabird sailed by the boat, nearly touching the waves, and Bilbo followed its white wings with his gaze. "It's kind of pretty."
Then he blinked as he spotted a shape on the horizon. "Is that the island?" he asked, pointing.
Thorin squinted into the west, where the haze of distance was starting to solidify into a craggy form. "Himring," he breathed. "Last remnant of the First Age." Whirling, he started calling out to Balin and his nephews, barking orders, his body tense with energy and purpose.
Soon enough the sheer cliffs of the island loomed before them. At the top, Bilbo could see the traces of great stone walls, overgrown with scarlet ivy. "How are we supposed to get up there?" he murmured. "If no one else has done it in thousands of years..."
"...Ah," said Thorin, "But we have a map." Grabbing a scroll from his pack, he unrolled it across a box to reveal the margins of an island in a penciled sea. "It's in Khuzdul," he said, indicating the spiky runes written in the margins, "Which is probably why it went unnoticed by elves or men." He pointed to a small mark on the western side. "There is a hidden entrance here in the cliffs, behind a waterfall." He raised his voice. "Be strong, Dwalin. We shall have you on solid land again soon."
Dwalin groaned and muttered something in Khuzdul that Bilbo decided not to remember for later.
There was a deep lagoon hidden within a cleft in the cliffs, with a high waterfall endlessly unfurling its silver into the water below. With the dwarves heaving at the oars, the boat slowly maneuvered behind the waterfall.
In the water-rippling darkness, grey stone stairs gleamed, climbing upward.
: : :
"Thorin!" Bilbo's voice behind him was breathless and annoyed. "Could you perhaps slow up a bit?"
Thorin looked upward, where sunlight was glimmering at the top of the stairs. "But we're nearly there," he called back.
"We're about halfway there," said Bilbo. "And some of us aren't so keen on stairs."
Thorin turned to snap something at the hobbit--and stopped when he realized that Bilbo was practically supporting a still-woozy Dwalin. When Dwalin saw him looking back he shook off Bilbo's arm, and the hobbit shot Thorin a speaking glance. "I'm exhausted," Bilbo griped. "We don't have stairways like this in the Shire."
Thorin sat down on the stairs. "Very well," he said. "It would be too much work to carry the hobbit all the way up, so we shall rest a moment."
Bilbo plunked down next to him. "It's not my fault that dwarves are better with stairs than hobbits," he said, loudly enough that the echoes covered up Dwalin's heavy breathing as everyone sat down in turn. "Who in the world would even need to climb so many stairs, it's ridiculous."
They kept bickering for a good half hour, ranging over a wide variety of topics, until everyone seemed rested. "Are you willing to put forward some effort once more, Bilbo?" Thorin asked.
"Drags me halfway across the world, then makes me climb an infinite number of steps--Thorin, your leadership skills are truly unparalleled," said Bilbo as everyone gathered their gear once more.
"One needs followers to lead, not pampered hobbits." As Thorin walked past Bilbo, he clapped a hand to his shoulder and squeezed briefly. He wasn't sure the hobbit would interpret the gesture rightly, but Bilbo looked back at him and winked before starting up the winding stairs again.
: : :
They emerged blinking into the sunlight at the top of the stairs. "More ruins, how wonderful," said Kíli.
"I've had enough ruins to last a lifetime already," agreed Fíli.
"These are different," said Bilbo.
He was right. The ruins of Himring were all of golden marble, veined with glimmering mica that caught the light and refracted it. Even broken and worn by time, the very lines of the ruins were different from either Fornost or Annúminas, with a strange grace that haunted the eye. These walls witnessed great deeds, and beings beyond our ken, Thorin thought, and a shiver ran down his back. He shook it off impatiently.
"We shall find a place to set up camp," he said. "There must be a spring, the source of the waterfall. Let us locate it and make our base of operations there."
The island was nearly circular, what used to be the flat top of a great mountain fortress. The sound of the sea whispered all around them, an endless murmur, and the wind moved in the ivy. They found the spring, bubbling a stream of cold, clear water from a cleft in the rock, in the ruins of a tiled square. Thorin put his pack down on the broken mosaic on the ground, bright tiles fragmented into meaninglessness. "Here," he said.
They started a small fire and set up camp. "Tomorrow we shall start to search the island." Thorin sketched out a circle in the dust with Deathless's scabbard, divided it into six sections. "A different section each day."
"But...what are we looking for?" asked Fíli.
Thorin tapped the tiles with his scabbard. "An artifact of power."
"That's great," said Kíli. "That narrows it down a lot."
Thorin closed his eyes for a moment. "Here's what we have so far," he said, and recited carefully:
"When golden thoughts to gentle darkness turn
And shadows form within the gilded heart
Then shall the fevered mind no longer burn
And Durin's Scourge shall finally depart.
To save the soul from dragon's dreadful bane
Requires idle love in sweet repose;
A heart that's eased from anguish and from pain
Is like a blossom that unblighted grows."
He broke off. "Those seem to be the first two verses of this section of the poem. Then the text is corrupted for an unknown number of verses, but we have a phrase: 'In lands beyond the reach of vengeful waves,' and two words: 'emerald' and 'alabaster.' So that's basically what we have to go on."
"What about that last verse?" asked Bilbo. "Wasn't there another?"
"Oh, yes," said Thorin, "The summary." He took a breath and rattled off quickly:
"And when at last you see your treasure true,
If sacrifice and love can fill your soul,
The dragon's curse shall lose its hold on you
And clarity of vision make you whole."
"That isn't much to go on," Kíli said dubiously.
"It's all we have," said Thorin. "We shall search until our rations run low. If we can't find anything by then, we will admit defeat and move on." To Mahal knows where, he did not add out loud. His mad father was ruling Erebor and time was running out. It had to be here.
Their camp that night was subdued, with no singing or joking. Starlight mingled with firelight to cast strange shadows around the ruins, and Thorin was oppressively aware of the millennia that hung over the island.
{"Teach more Khuzdul?"} Bilbo said in that tongue, and Thorin realized that he'd been staring in silence at the shattered mosaic below them. {"Learn more is good."}
Thorin couldn't help but smile at Bilbo's earnest but flawed grammar. "Very well," he said.
So they spent the evening going through the names for the colors, each gem-like hue a talisman against the dark. The crisp syllables of Khuzdul echoed strangely off the fluting ruins, and the stars looked down incuriously upon the dwarf and hobbit talking amongst the crumbling elvish glory.
Yippie! New chapter!
Date: 2013-07-16 08:40 pm (UTC)Oh Thorin, you overconfident royal...dwarf.
was thick beige wool with a cabled pattern knitted into it.
OMG! It's a John!jumper! *flails*
eyeing the little sailboat with a trepidation he attempted to hide.
Ah. I remember hobbits and boats do not go well together...
"But Dwalin made us promise never to speak of it again," said Balin.
LOL!
The wind was blowing Thorin's hair back in a long dark stream as he gazed west,
Ah!
"I'm exhausted," Bilbo griped. "We don't have stairways like this in the Shire."
LOL! and bless him for his circumspect manipulation.
They kept bickering for a good half hour, ranging over a wide variety of topics, until everyone seemed rested.
Wonderful how they work together. I wonder if they are fooling anyone though.
These walls witnessed great deeds, and beings beyond our ken, Thorin thought, and a shiver ran down his back.
Yes. This is the Thorin who can appreciate the sea and be moved by it. :-)
So they spent the evening going through the names for the colors, each gem-like hue a talisman against the dark. The crisp syllables of Khuzdul echoed strangely off the fluting ruins, and the stars looked down incuriously upon the dwarf and hobbit talking amongst the crumbling elvish glory.
Oooh, such a lovely last paragraph!
Re: Yippie! New chapter!
Date: 2013-07-19 11:51 pm (UTC)*falls over giggling* I wasn't positive anyone would recognize it, but a few people did! :D The image of Bilbo in John's clothing just made me flail like mad...
Ah. I remember hobbits and boats do not go well together...
They really don't! But Bilbo has just enough of a touch of madness that sailing is okay with him (although he doesn't like to admit it...)
I'm so glad you liked that last paragraph! I could see it in my head so clearly...