Clarity of Vision, Chapter 19
Title: Clarity of Vision, Chapter 19
Relationship: Thorin/Bilbo
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin, Gandalf, Galadriel, Celeborn, Arwen
Fandom: Hobbit
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 3900
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 and Bilbo spend the night in Lothlórien and are given a rare gift by its Lady.
Thorin felt as if the platform beneath him had tilted sideways at Galadriel's words; he staggered and felt a small hand at his elbow, steadying him. "Not magical?" he rasped. "How can this be?"
Galadriel shook her head. "The poem was written and engraved by my cousin Maedhros as a gift to his companion Fingon, in honor of their great friendship. It was Fingon who made the glass to go with it, saying that Maedhros had always magnified the words of his heart. Together they are a tribute to friendship--" She closed the notebook and handed it back to Thorin, "--but beyond that they have no special power."
"But the poem," said Thorin, finding the page in the notebook with the Sindarin and his translations, "It spoke of this glass."
Galadriel looked at the poem, frowning slightly. "I recognize this name," she said. "Elloth of Eregion. She was a great friend to the dwarves of Khazad-dûm and a skillful healer." A corner of her mouth twitched. "A better healer than a poet, it seems."
"Elloth," said Celeborn, "Was she not the second child of Thurinan and Arhal?"
"No, dear," said Galadriel absently, still looking at the notebook. "That was Melloth. Similar names, but born two hundred years later."
"That's right," said Celeborn, and Thorin could feel Bilbo at his side stifling laughter at the sight of these two ancient beings sounding like any other long-paired couple.
Galadriel looked up from the notebook again. "I fear that you have drawn some incorrect conclusions, Prince Thorin," she said. "Some of the phrases could be taken as referring to the glass, and I understand that in your great need you interpreted it so, but there were no enchantments on it of any sort."
Thorin looked down at the silvery wooden floor, a tumult of emotions churning inside him. There was a stab of baffled fury--I carried some elf's friendship-token halfway across Middle Earth for nothing?--but then slowly a different feeling emerged, one he had not felt for far too long.
If the glass had not been the artifact he sought, then...
"The true cure is still out there somewhere," he heard Bilbo breathe beside him.
"It is possible," said Galadriel.
"Do you have any further information about it?" Thorin tried to keep the hope from his voice, but he could hear it there like sunlight.
"I know nothing of such a cure," Galadriel said. "I am truly sorry."
"You said Elloth dwelt in Eregion," said Thorin. "And was friends with the dwarves of Khazad-dûm."
"It was a happier time," said Galadriel, "She spent much time in their halls, exchanging lore with their healers."
Thorin felt his jaw set. "Then it is to Khazad-dûm that we must travel next," he said. "To find the last remnants of the poem."
"Isn't that the place Stefa said was...well, overrun with orcs?" Bilbo said timidly.
"I braved Gundabad itself. The halls of Khazad-dûm are known to us; we can find the Chamber of Mazarbul, where the records would be." Lost in thought, poring over the memory of maps in his mind, Thorin slowly became aware that Galadriel's eyes were on him. "Would you advise me against this path, Lady?"
Galadriel shook her head slowly. "It is not my place to advise you, Prince Thorin. You will do what you feel is right. But I sense..." She paused, then continued, "...I sense a shadow upon you, a darkness that has touched your soul somehow." She closed her eyes for a moment; when she opened them again she looked weary. "I am weakened from the battle and I cannot see clearly," she murmured, "But know this, Thorin of Erebor: I sense potential for great deeds in you, but you will have to give up much and suffer much if you are ever to achieve it."
"I will give up anything, suffer anything to save Erebor from the dragon's bane," said Thorin. "The only darkness upon me is the despair of failure, and that I shall banish with action." Indeed, he felt fresh resolve kindling in him, a new determination. "We shall leave for Khazad-dûm immediately."
"Darkness will fall soon," Gandalf said. "Stay here and rest for one night." His keen eyes glinted at Thorin, and Thorin nodded, somewhat reluctantly.
"Only if we can sleep on the ground," Bilbo said with emphasis, and Galadriel laughed.
"We shall prepare a small pavilion for you--on solid ground," she said.
"I believe your translation is inaccurate in the second stanza, Prince Thorin," Celeborn said abruptly, looking at the notebook over his lady's shoulder. "You say the heart that's eased from anguish and from pain is like a blossom that unblighted grows, but 'heart' is actually modifying 'ease.' It's the ease of the heart that resembles a blossom." He took the notebook from Galadriel's hands. "A natural mistake, considering--"
"--yes, thank you," Thorin said, stepping forward to pluck the notebook from his grasp. Celeborn's expression made clear that Thorin was not exactly erasing millennia of ill will between their peoples, but Thorin put his notes--his notes--back in his pack without apology. Then he cleared his throat and managed, "Thank you for your hospitality and your information, Lord and Lady of the Wood."
They bowed to him and he bowed back, clumsily, grinding his teeth a bit at their effortless grace.
"Come this way," said Arwen, "Your pavilion is being readied."
Their descent from the trees was harder than the ascent; Bilbo turned pale when he looked down, gulped several times, and had to be given a drink from a small vial of something Arwen called miruvor before he could attempt it at all. But his spirits picked up against when his curly-haired feet were on solid ground once more, and he gazed around as they walked, lost in wonder. When he saw the pavilion laid out for them--a tent of pale green silk that rippled like water, heaped with velvet cushions and filled with food and drink--he gave a squeak of rapture that made Arwen laugh with delight.
"This is lovely," Bilbo breathed, bouncing happily on a large brocaded cushion, and Thorin had to agree that there was a peacefulness to the scene that was oddly soothing.
He didn't have to agree out loud, though, so he crossed his arms and nodded brusquely. "It is acceptable."
Bilbo shot him an exasperated look, then tossed him an apple. "This place is a wonder. Fresh apples in late November--is it still November?"
Arwen looked up from where she was placing a flagon on a low table. "Tomorrow is the first day of December, Mr. Baggins."
"December! My goodness." Bilbo took a bite of apple, and his face turned wistful. "Back home they'll be preparing for Yule Week and the Star Festival, seeking out the best logs for the fire and preparing all the candles." He sighed a little and looked around the pavilion. "On the other hand, they're not sitting on a brocaded cushion in an elvish pavilion." He shot a glance at Thorin, who was taking his own seat gingerly on an alarmingly plush pillow. "Or traveling around with a majestic dwarven prince on a quest." Another bite of apple. "So I think overall, I might have the better deal of it."
"I must take my leave of you now," Arwen said, and Bilbo jumped to his feet to follow her to the door of the tent. "Thank you for all of your kindness, my Lady," he said.
"Rest and be refreshed," she said with a smile. "No harm can come to you in this place."
"It feels true, you know." Bilbo stepped out of the tent to gaze up into the towering golden trees, touched with late-afternoon sun, and Thorin followed him. "Don't you just...know that no evil can touch this place?"
Thorin made an ambivalent sound in his throat: he had known places of great beauty where evil had still managed to find a foothold. But he was forced to admit, looking around at the ancient wood, that there was a...stillness to Lothlórien, a pristine and untouched air. Ever since arriving his mind had felt clearer, his thoughts more certain.
"Oh," said Bilbo, his voice blank with wonder. "Oh, Thorin, look!"
A swarm of gigantic insects swooped down, buzzing--no, Thorin realized abruptly, not large insects but tiny birds, their wings a blur of emerald-bright motion. They stopped in front of Bilbo, staring at him with black-bead eyes, each with a patch of sparkling ruby at their throats.
"Hummingbirds!" Bilbo breathed. "Oh, aren't they beautiful."
The hummingbirds shimmered this way and that in the air like little gemmed clockwork machines, their wings making a tiny shiver of sound. Bilbo laughed in delight, reaching out in a vain instinct to touch their shining wings, and they whirred this way and that to avoid his touch, unafraid.
Thorin watched Bilbo's laughing face surrounded by living jewels and felt something turn over in his chest.
As if by a secret signal, the hummingbirds all rose together away from the hobbit, vanishing into the tree canopy once more, and Bilbo sighed and looked at Thorin with his eyes shining. "Thank you," Bilbo said.
"Why in Durin's name are you thanking me?" Thorin growled, turning to go back into their tent. He heard once more a small voice in the dark, a tiny pinprick of light in the consuming despair. If anyone is due thanks, it is-- "You have no need to be grateful to me."
"But all the things I've seen," Bilbo said, turning down his bedroll. "Ancient cities and elvish ruins and this living wood--because of you, my world is so much larger, and I..." He looked thoughtful for a moment, "I think maybe I don't mind being a tiny part of such an amazing world."
"You are not a tiny part of this world," Thorin said. "You are a large part of--well, of our world. Of my people, Balin and Dwalin and Fíli and Kíli. And myself, of course," he added in something of a rush. "What I mean is, the size of a person is no reflection of their importance in the world. As far as I am concerned, you are an important person, Bilbo Baggins."
There was no response from the hobbit; Thorin finally glanced over to see him sitting on the bedroll, looking at him. Thorin looked away again and cleared his throat. "Get some rest," he said. "We rejoin our companions tomorrow, and the road to Khazad-dûm is not an easy one."
He closed his eyes, sure that sleep would not come easily to him this night, deep in elvish territory. He started to soothe his thoughts with dreams of dwarvish glory, images of himself on the throne of Erebor, leading his people to greatness and wealth, the kind of dreams that had come to console him since the loss of the glass.
Yet somehow, the wind sighing in the branches overhead made him think instead of life on the road: Fíli and Kíli playing the fiddle and Dwalin roaring with laughter, the sound of a brook nearby and Bilbo humming quietly under his breath at his side.
In the depths of Lothlórien, Thorin slept, and his dreams were for the first time in many nights not of gold.
: : :
Bilbo came awake with a start, looking over to see Thorin sitting up in bed as well, Deathless unsheathed in his hand. At the door of the tent stood a tall figure, all in silver cloth: the Lady Galadriel, holding a light in her hand that turned her face to alabaster and her hair to moonlight.
She beckoned to them both, and turned to walk away.
Bilbo glanced over at Thorin, expecting a protest or a refusal. But Thorin was sheathing his sword and following the Lady of Lórien into the night.
Bilbo hurried to keep up.
Galadriel walked soundlessly through the wood, her silver train brushing across golden flowers, until she led them to a small, enclosed garden. The crescent moon shone above, but the garden seemed full of light, and in that brilliance Bilbo saw a silver basin and a silver ewer beside it.
Wordlessly, Galadriel took the ewer and poured a stream of pure, clear water into the basin; it fell with a sound like crystal chimes. She bowed and breathed across the water, then said, "Behold the Mirror of Galadriel. Within its depths one may see many things: the past or the future, the threads of one's life. Mithrandir told me that I should aid you in your quest, and once I saw you I knew why he spoke so. There is a powerful destiny hanging over you, for good or for ill. And so I have brought you here, to give you--if you will--a glimpse of that destiny.
"Bilbo Baggins," she said, "Will you gaze in my Mirror?"
"Me?" Bilbo pointed at himself as if there might be some other "Bilbo Baggins" around and looked wildly at Thorin. "No, I'm just--I'm just here because he's here. I just banged into him on the road, it was an accident, I'm not part of any destiny."
Galadriel's mouth curved in a smile that was remote and yet compassionate. "There are those who say there are no accidents, Bilbo Baggins. You may believe as you will, but I would give you as well as Thorin a chance to gaze into my Mirror."
Bilbo felt his hands shaking; this was all too strange, and suddenly he wanted very much to be in the Shire once more. But he squared his shoulders and stepped forward. "Well, I suppose I can't pass up the chance to get more information," he said, hoping his voice sounded resolute.
Galadriel touched him lightly on the shoulder as he moved to stand in front of the silver basin, and at the touch he felt--not braver, but more himself again. "Look into the water," Galadriel said. "Let your mind wander and images will come to you--perhaps of the past, or the present, or of things yet to be. But do not touch the water," she added, and stepped away from him, leaving him alone at the Mirror of Galadriel.
He looked into the water, but saw nothing but the outline of reflected branches with the stars glimmering between them. Let your mind wander, he heard Galadriel's voice again, and he tried, but it was a bit difficult to let your mind wander when you were so far from home and unsure of yourself and--he had to admit it--worried about Thorin, who had been so very distant and remote lately. Within the basin, the stars glinted in the blackness of the reflected night sky like diamonds on velvet, shifting and wavering, and he felt loneliness brush him like a chill breeze. What had happened to the sardonic Thorin he had known, whose solemnity had been a veil for a glimmering sense of humor and a kindness that shone through no matter how hard he had tried to hide it?
Have I lost him forever? Bilbo thought. My Thorin, where are you?
The tiny sparkles in the basin glinted, and Bilbo realized suddenly that they were diamonds on black velvet, forming a design: a stylized raven. His eyes widened as the vision sharpened and focused and he found himself looking at a boy wearing a black doublet.
No, not a boy, but a dwarf barely out of childhood: too young for a beard beyond a slight patch at the chin. With a shock of almost-painful recognition, Bilbo realized that the blue-green eyes were Thorin's.
They were full of tears.
As Bilbo's heart lurched, the vision swung and resettled, and Bilbo could see a body lying on a bier: a dwarf-woman clad in silver silk and brocade, with two sparkling diamonds resting on her closed eyelids. Thorin stood next to it, at the side of a younger boy with pale hair. At his feet sat a baby too young to walk, her thumb in her mouth and her eyes wide as she gazed up at Thorin.
Bilbo saw Thorin's lower lip tremble as he gazed at the woman on the bier. Then his eyes went to the two figures at its head. The two older dwarves were clad in formal finery, with crowns on their heads, and they gazed outward across the body, looking at neither it nor the grieving children at its side, seeming to see nothing but the throngs of people Bilbo could dimly sense crowding into the hall.
The vision's focus returned to Thorin just as the first tears spilled over onto his cheeks, streaking downward. For a moment grief shattered his young face and his shoulders shook.
Then Bilbo saw him square his shoulders and scrub a velvet sleeve across his face in a quick, furious motion. He bent to scoop his baby sister up into his arms and hold her, then rested his hand on the shoulder of his little brother, pulling him closer. Frerin and Dis gazed up at him adoringly, but Thorin's face was no longer the face of a grieving child.
It was the face of a prince.
The vision shifted and blurred and Thorin's dry and regal eyes faded away, to be replaced by a shifting set of images, none of them staying longer than an instant: a room filled with flames; a line of white birds crossing a pale sky; a single bright star shining from atop a tall fir tree; a narrow passage through rock. Then those faded as well and for a long moment the glass showed only mist, calm and peaceful. Bilbo was about to step away when suddenly the water sprang into life once more.
This time the images flickered so quickly that he couldn't catch them all, but he thought he saw a vast flat lake like a mirror under a cloudless sky; a walled city with curving tiled roofs of shimmering azure; a great gray animal with tusks like swords; and finally a glimpse of something that seemed to be a lake of nothing but fire, glowing balefully.
The image went black abruptly, as if a curtain had dropped, then shifted and rippled, and Bilbo was looking into Thorin's face once more. Thorin's face--
Bilbo bit back a cry at the sight of Thorin's face, black with bruises and soot, streaked with dried blood from his nose and mouth. There were bars behind him, rusted iron bars, and his eyes were closed. He lay on the floor of a cage, broken and beaten, and his eyes were closed, and Bilbo couldn't tell if he was breathing.
His lips were curved in a smile, and his face seemed at rest, at peace.
Bilbo couldn't tell if he was breathing.
His beautiful hair was matted with blood, and his brave strong mouth was bruised and smiling; his face was utterly still and Bilbo couldn't tell if he was--
Ripples bloomed across the surface of the vision like a scattering of rain, and Thorin's face wavered and vanished. The water showed only the blank meaningless sky and stars once more.
Bilbo turned his face away from Thorin and Galadriel for a moment.
"I don't know what it means," he said after a time, and heard his own voice hoarse in his ears as if it belonged to a stranger. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes and could not look at Thorin.
"The vision is yours," said Galadriel. "Reflect on it and the meaning will come to you in time. Will you take your turn, Thorin of Erebor?"
As Bilbo turned at last, he saw Thorin's gaze jump hastily from him to Galadriel, as if he hadn't wanted Bilbo to see him staring. "My turn," Thorin echoed. "You would let a dwarf use your elvish enchantments?"
"Yours is a heavy destiny, Prince Thorin," said Galadriel. "You will have need of hope or of warning, and I do not refuse my council to any who can aid the cause of the light in Middle Earth."
Thorin's eyes flicked nervously from Galadriel's face to the basin. "Are you all right?" he said to Bilbo without looking at him. "I saw nothing but the moon reflected in the water, but you--"
"I'm all right," said Bilbo. "It's not...it doesn't hurt. Not that way," he added under his breath, too low for Thorin to hear.
Thorin took a swift breath and nodded, then stepped up to the basin and looked within.
After only a moment, he tilted his head as if puzzled and moved back, frowning. "Is that all?" he said.
"The Mirror shows what the gazer needs to see," said Galadriel. "Not always what they want to see."
"Very well," murmured Thorin. "I...thank you, my Lady." His expression was baffled, but neither angry or sorrowful.
"Consider it well," said Galadriel. "For the Mirror shows nothing without purpose."
Back in their pavilion, the Lady gone once more into the night, Thorin stared down at his silken bed. "I don't understand," he said. "May I ask what you saw?"
"I...just images," said Bilbo. "Too many to remember, flickering by. A room in flames, a star, a city on a plain. A lake of fire. I think--an olifaunt?" Somehow he could not bring himself to describe the first and last images; his heart felt bruised and sore, battered with a new knowledge that threatened to shatter him into weeping once more.
"I saw just one image," said Thorin. "Just one thing." He tilted his head to the side, remembering. "A hill covered with flowers: white and purple, with yellow hearts, nodding in the breeze. The hill had a little round door in it, a green door. That was all. Flowers in the wind and a green door in a hill."
Bilbo dropped the pillow he was fluffing. "What? But--but that's my home! My hobbit-hole! In the spring, when the violas bloom. Why--why did you see my home?"
Thorin's brow furrowed and he looked at Bilbo; after a moment, Bilbo looked away. "I do not know," said Thorin. "The Lady said it showed nothing without purpose. Perhaps I needed to be reminded that peace and beauty still exist in the world. That there is still a home for some of us."
Bilbo cleared his throat. "You are always welcome in my home," he said.
Thorin nodded and turned down his bed without another word, but as Bilbo closed his eyes he heard Thorin say softly, "I would like to see it one day."
Bilbo lay in the darkness and tried to think of something other than Thorin's still face in the vision, peaceful and smiling beneath the blood and dirt. Tried to hold his heart together through the night, to hide the cracks within it from even himself.
As the morning sunlight turned the gossamer walls of the pavilion into a blaze of glory, he turned over his silken pillow, smoothing the fresh and pristine, unmarked surface with his hand. Hiding away the other side. He took a deep breath.
"I'm ready to go on now," he said to Thorin and to himself.
Relationship: Thorin/Bilbo
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin, Gandalf, Galadriel, Celeborn, Arwen
Fandom: Hobbit
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Word Count: 3900
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 and Bilbo spend the night in Lothlórien and are given a rare gift by its Lady.
Thorin felt as if the platform beneath him had tilted sideways at Galadriel's words; he staggered and felt a small hand at his elbow, steadying him. "Not magical?" he rasped. "How can this be?"
Galadriel shook her head. "The poem was written and engraved by my cousin Maedhros as a gift to his companion Fingon, in honor of their great friendship. It was Fingon who made the glass to go with it, saying that Maedhros had always magnified the words of his heart. Together they are a tribute to friendship--" She closed the notebook and handed it back to Thorin, "--but beyond that they have no special power."
"But the poem," said Thorin, finding the page in the notebook with the Sindarin and his translations, "It spoke of this glass."
Galadriel looked at the poem, frowning slightly. "I recognize this name," she said. "Elloth of Eregion. She was a great friend to the dwarves of Khazad-dûm and a skillful healer." A corner of her mouth twitched. "A better healer than a poet, it seems."
"Elloth," said Celeborn, "Was she not the second child of Thurinan and Arhal?"
"No, dear," said Galadriel absently, still looking at the notebook. "That was Melloth. Similar names, but born two hundred years later."
"That's right," said Celeborn, and Thorin could feel Bilbo at his side stifling laughter at the sight of these two ancient beings sounding like any other long-paired couple.
Galadriel looked up from the notebook again. "I fear that you have drawn some incorrect conclusions, Prince Thorin," she said. "Some of the phrases could be taken as referring to the glass, and I understand that in your great need you interpreted it so, but there were no enchantments on it of any sort."
Thorin looked down at the silvery wooden floor, a tumult of emotions churning inside him. There was a stab of baffled fury--I carried some elf's friendship-token halfway across Middle Earth for nothing?--but then slowly a different feeling emerged, one he had not felt for far too long.
If the glass had not been the artifact he sought, then...
"The true cure is still out there somewhere," he heard Bilbo breathe beside him.
"It is possible," said Galadriel.
"Do you have any further information about it?" Thorin tried to keep the hope from his voice, but he could hear it there like sunlight.
"I know nothing of such a cure," Galadriel said. "I am truly sorry."
"You said Elloth dwelt in Eregion," said Thorin. "And was friends with the dwarves of Khazad-dûm."
"It was a happier time," said Galadriel, "She spent much time in their halls, exchanging lore with their healers."
Thorin felt his jaw set. "Then it is to Khazad-dûm that we must travel next," he said. "To find the last remnants of the poem."
"Isn't that the place Stefa said was...well, overrun with orcs?" Bilbo said timidly.
"I braved Gundabad itself. The halls of Khazad-dûm are known to us; we can find the Chamber of Mazarbul, where the records would be." Lost in thought, poring over the memory of maps in his mind, Thorin slowly became aware that Galadriel's eyes were on him. "Would you advise me against this path, Lady?"
Galadriel shook her head slowly. "It is not my place to advise you, Prince Thorin. You will do what you feel is right. But I sense..." She paused, then continued, "...I sense a shadow upon you, a darkness that has touched your soul somehow." She closed her eyes for a moment; when she opened them again she looked weary. "I am weakened from the battle and I cannot see clearly," she murmured, "But know this, Thorin of Erebor: I sense potential for great deeds in you, but you will have to give up much and suffer much if you are ever to achieve it."
"I will give up anything, suffer anything to save Erebor from the dragon's bane," said Thorin. "The only darkness upon me is the despair of failure, and that I shall banish with action." Indeed, he felt fresh resolve kindling in him, a new determination. "We shall leave for Khazad-dûm immediately."
"Darkness will fall soon," Gandalf said. "Stay here and rest for one night." His keen eyes glinted at Thorin, and Thorin nodded, somewhat reluctantly.
"Only if we can sleep on the ground," Bilbo said with emphasis, and Galadriel laughed.
"We shall prepare a small pavilion for you--on solid ground," she said.
"I believe your translation is inaccurate in the second stanza, Prince Thorin," Celeborn said abruptly, looking at the notebook over his lady's shoulder. "You say the heart that's eased from anguish and from pain is like a blossom that unblighted grows, but 'heart' is actually modifying 'ease.' It's the ease of the heart that resembles a blossom." He took the notebook from Galadriel's hands. "A natural mistake, considering--"
"--yes, thank you," Thorin said, stepping forward to pluck the notebook from his grasp. Celeborn's expression made clear that Thorin was not exactly erasing millennia of ill will between their peoples, but Thorin put his notes--his notes--back in his pack without apology. Then he cleared his throat and managed, "Thank you for your hospitality and your information, Lord and Lady of the Wood."
They bowed to him and he bowed back, clumsily, grinding his teeth a bit at their effortless grace.
"Come this way," said Arwen, "Your pavilion is being readied."
Their descent from the trees was harder than the ascent; Bilbo turned pale when he looked down, gulped several times, and had to be given a drink from a small vial of something Arwen called miruvor before he could attempt it at all. But his spirits picked up against when his curly-haired feet were on solid ground once more, and he gazed around as they walked, lost in wonder. When he saw the pavilion laid out for them--a tent of pale green silk that rippled like water, heaped with velvet cushions and filled with food and drink--he gave a squeak of rapture that made Arwen laugh with delight.
"This is lovely," Bilbo breathed, bouncing happily on a large brocaded cushion, and Thorin had to agree that there was a peacefulness to the scene that was oddly soothing.
He didn't have to agree out loud, though, so he crossed his arms and nodded brusquely. "It is acceptable."
Bilbo shot him an exasperated look, then tossed him an apple. "This place is a wonder. Fresh apples in late November--is it still November?"
Arwen looked up from where she was placing a flagon on a low table. "Tomorrow is the first day of December, Mr. Baggins."
"December! My goodness." Bilbo took a bite of apple, and his face turned wistful. "Back home they'll be preparing for Yule Week and the Star Festival, seeking out the best logs for the fire and preparing all the candles." He sighed a little and looked around the pavilion. "On the other hand, they're not sitting on a brocaded cushion in an elvish pavilion." He shot a glance at Thorin, who was taking his own seat gingerly on an alarmingly plush pillow. "Or traveling around with a majestic dwarven prince on a quest." Another bite of apple. "So I think overall, I might have the better deal of it."
"I must take my leave of you now," Arwen said, and Bilbo jumped to his feet to follow her to the door of the tent. "Thank you for all of your kindness, my Lady," he said.
"Rest and be refreshed," she said with a smile. "No harm can come to you in this place."
"It feels true, you know." Bilbo stepped out of the tent to gaze up into the towering golden trees, touched with late-afternoon sun, and Thorin followed him. "Don't you just...know that no evil can touch this place?"
Thorin made an ambivalent sound in his throat: he had known places of great beauty where evil had still managed to find a foothold. But he was forced to admit, looking around at the ancient wood, that there was a...stillness to Lothlórien, a pristine and untouched air. Ever since arriving his mind had felt clearer, his thoughts more certain.
"Oh," said Bilbo, his voice blank with wonder. "Oh, Thorin, look!"
A swarm of gigantic insects swooped down, buzzing--no, Thorin realized abruptly, not large insects but tiny birds, their wings a blur of emerald-bright motion. They stopped in front of Bilbo, staring at him with black-bead eyes, each with a patch of sparkling ruby at their throats.
"Hummingbirds!" Bilbo breathed. "Oh, aren't they beautiful."
The hummingbirds shimmered this way and that in the air like little gemmed clockwork machines, their wings making a tiny shiver of sound. Bilbo laughed in delight, reaching out in a vain instinct to touch their shining wings, and they whirred this way and that to avoid his touch, unafraid.
Thorin watched Bilbo's laughing face surrounded by living jewels and felt something turn over in his chest.
As if by a secret signal, the hummingbirds all rose together away from the hobbit, vanishing into the tree canopy once more, and Bilbo sighed and looked at Thorin with his eyes shining. "Thank you," Bilbo said.
"Why in Durin's name are you thanking me?" Thorin growled, turning to go back into their tent. He heard once more a small voice in the dark, a tiny pinprick of light in the consuming despair. If anyone is due thanks, it is-- "You have no need to be grateful to me."
"But all the things I've seen," Bilbo said, turning down his bedroll. "Ancient cities and elvish ruins and this living wood--because of you, my world is so much larger, and I..." He looked thoughtful for a moment, "I think maybe I don't mind being a tiny part of such an amazing world."
"You are not a tiny part of this world," Thorin said. "You are a large part of--well, of our world. Of my people, Balin and Dwalin and Fíli and Kíli. And myself, of course," he added in something of a rush. "What I mean is, the size of a person is no reflection of their importance in the world. As far as I am concerned, you are an important person, Bilbo Baggins."
There was no response from the hobbit; Thorin finally glanced over to see him sitting on the bedroll, looking at him. Thorin looked away again and cleared his throat. "Get some rest," he said. "We rejoin our companions tomorrow, and the road to Khazad-dûm is not an easy one."
He closed his eyes, sure that sleep would not come easily to him this night, deep in elvish territory. He started to soothe his thoughts with dreams of dwarvish glory, images of himself on the throne of Erebor, leading his people to greatness and wealth, the kind of dreams that had come to console him since the loss of the glass.
Yet somehow, the wind sighing in the branches overhead made him think instead of life on the road: Fíli and Kíli playing the fiddle and Dwalin roaring with laughter, the sound of a brook nearby and Bilbo humming quietly under his breath at his side.
In the depths of Lothlórien, Thorin slept, and his dreams were for the first time in many nights not of gold.
: : :
Bilbo came awake with a start, looking over to see Thorin sitting up in bed as well, Deathless unsheathed in his hand. At the door of the tent stood a tall figure, all in silver cloth: the Lady Galadriel, holding a light in her hand that turned her face to alabaster and her hair to moonlight.
She beckoned to them both, and turned to walk away.
Bilbo glanced over at Thorin, expecting a protest or a refusal. But Thorin was sheathing his sword and following the Lady of Lórien into the night.
Bilbo hurried to keep up.
Galadriel walked soundlessly through the wood, her silver train brushing across golden flowers, until she led them to a small, enclosed garden. The crescent moon shone above, but the garden seemed full of light, and in that brilliance Bilbo saw a silver basin and a silver ewer beside it.
Wordlessly, Galadriel took the ewer and poured a stream of pure, clear water into the basin; it fell with a sound like crystal chimes. She bowed and breathed across the water, then said, "Behold the Mirror of Galadriel. Within its depths one may see many things: the past or the future, the threads of one's life. Mithrandir told me that I should aid you in your quest, and once I saw you I knew why he spoke so. There is a powerful destiny hanging over you, for good or for ill. And so I have brought you here, to give you--if you will--a glimpse of that destiny.
"Bilbo Baggins," she said, "Will you gaze in my Mirror?"
"Me?" Bilbo pointed at himself as if there might be some other "Bilbo Baggins" around and looked wildly at Thorin. "No, I'm just--I'm just here because he's here. I just banged into him on the road, it was an accident, I'm not part of any destiny."
Galadriel's mouth curved in a smile that was remote and yet compassionate. "There are those who say there are no accidents, Bilbo Baggins. You may believe as you will, but I would give you as well as Thorin a chance to gaze into my Mirror."
Bilbo felt his hands shaking; this was all too strange, and suddenly he wanted very much to be in the Shire once more. But he squared his shoulders and stepped forward. "Well, I suppose I can't pass up the chance to get more information," he said, hoping his voice sounded resolute.
Galadriel touched him lightly on the shoulder as he moved to stand in front of the silver basin, and at the touch he felt--not braver, but more himself again. "Look into the water," Galadriel said. "Let your mind wander and images will come to you--perhaps of the past, or the present, or of things yet to be. But do not touch the water," she added, and stepped away from him, leaving him alone at the Mirror of Galadriel.
He looked into the water, but saw nothing but the outline of reflected branches with the stars glimmering between them. Let your mind wander, he heard Galadriel's voice again, and he tried, but it was a bit difficult to let your mind wander when you were so far from home and unsure of yourself and--he had to admit it--worried about Thorin, who had been so very distant and remote lately. Within the basin, the stars glinted in the blackness of the reflected night sky like diamonds on velvet, shifting and wavering, and he felt loneliness brush him like a chill breeze. What had happened to the sardonic Thorin he had known, whose solemnity had been a veil for a glimmering sense of humor and a kindness that shone through no matter how hard he had tried to hide it?
Have I lost him forever? Bilbo thought. My Thorin, where are you?
The tiny sparkles in the basin glinted, and Bilbo realized suddenly that they were diamonds on black velvet, forming a design: a stylized raven. His eyes widened as the vision sharpened and focused and he found himself looking at a boy wearing a black doublet.
No, not a boy, but a dwarf barely out of childhood: too young for a beard beyond a slight patch at the chin. With a shock of almost-painful recognition, Bilbo realized that the blue-green eyes were Thorin's.
They were full of tears.
As Bilbo's heart lurched, the vision swung and resettled, and Bilbo could see a body lying on a bier: a dwarf-woman clad in silver silk and brocade, with two sparkling diamonds resting on her closed eyelids. Thorin stood next to it, at the side of a younger boy with pale hair. At his feet sat a baby too young to walk, her thumb in her mouth and her eyes wide as she gazed up at Thorin.
Bilbo saw Thorin's lower lip tremble as he gazed at the woman on the bier. Then his eyes went to the two figures at its head. The two older dwarves were clad in formal finery, with crowns on their heads, and they gazed outward across the body, looking at neither it nor the grieving children at its side, seeming to see nothing but the throngs of people Bilbo could dimly sense crowding into the hall.
The vision's focus returned to Thorin just as the first tears spilled over onto his cheeks, streaking downward. For a moment grief shattered his young face and his shoulders shook.
Then Bilbo saw him square his shoulders and scrub a velvet sleeve across his face in a quick, furious motion. He bent to scoop his baby sister up into his arms and hold her, then rested his hand on the shoulder of his little brother, pulling him closer. Frerin and Dis gazed up at him adoringly, but Thorin's face was no longer the face of a grieving child.
It was the face of a prince.
The vision shifted and blurred and Thorin's dry and regal eyes faded away, to be replaced by a shifting set of images, none of them staying longer than an instant: a room filled with flames; a line of white birds crossing a pale sky; a single bright star shining from atop a tall fir tree; a narrow passage through rock. Then those faded as well and for a long moment the glass showed only mist, calm and peaceful. Bilbo was about to step away when suddenly the water sprang into life once more.
This time the images flickered so quickly that he couldn't catch them all, but he thought he saw a vast flat lake like a mirror under a cloudless sky; a walled city with curving tiled roofs of shimmering azure; a great gray animal with tusks like swords; and finally a glimpse of something that seemed to be a lake of nothing but fire, glowing balefully.
The image went black abruptly, as if a curtain had dropped, then shifted and rippled, and Bilbo was looking into Thorin's face once more. Thorin's face--
Bilbo bit back a cry at the sight of Thorin's face, black with bruises and soot, streaked with dried blood from his nose and mouth. There were bars behind him, rusted iron bars, and his eyes were closed. He lay on the floor of a cage, broken and beaten, and his eyes were closed, and Bilbo couldn't tell if he was breathing.
His lips were curved in a smile, and his face seemed at rest, at peace.
Bilbo couldn't tell if he was breathing.
His beautiful hair was matted with blood, and his brave strong mouth was bruised and smiling; his face was utterly still and Bilbo couldn't tell if he was--
Ripples bloomed across the surface of the vision like a scattering of rain, and Thorin's face wavered and vanished. The water showed only the blank meaningless sky and stars once more.
Bilbo turned his face away from Thorin and Galadriel for a moment.
"I don't know what it means," he said after a time, and heard his own voice hoarse in his ears as if it belonged to a stranger. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes and could not look at Thorin.
"The vision is yours," said Galadriel. "Reflect on it and the meaning will come to you in time. Will you take your turn, Thorin of Erebor?"
As Bilbo turned at last, he saw Thorin's gaze jump hastily from him to Galadriel, as if he hadn't wanted Bilbo to see him staring. "My turn," Thorin echoed. "You would let a dwarf use your elvish enchantments?"
"Yours is a heavy destiny, Prince Thorin," said Galadriel. "You will have need of hope or of warning, and I do not refuse my council to any who can aid the cause of the light in Middle Earth."
Thorin's eyes flicked nervously from Galadriel's face to the basin. "Are you all right?" he said to Bilbo without looking at him. "I saw nothing but the moon reflected in the water, but you--"
"I'm all right," said Bilbo. "It's not...it doesn't hurt. Not that way," he added under his breath, too low for Thorin to hear.
Thorin took a swift breath and nodded, then stepped up to the basin and looked within.
After only a moment, he tilted his head as if puzzled and moved back, frowning. "Is that all?" he said.
"The Mirror shows what the gazer needs to see," said Galadriel. "Not always what they want to see."
"Very well," murmured Thorin. "I...thank you, my Lady." His expression was baffled, but neither angry or sorrowful.
"Consider it well," said Galadriel. "For the Mirror shows nothing without purpose."
Back in their pavilion, the Lady gone once more into the night, Thorin stared down at his silken bed. "I don't understand," he said. "May I ask what you saw?"
"I...just images," said Bilbo. "Too many to remember, flickering by. A room in flames, a star, a city on a plain. A lake of fire. I think--an olifaunt?" Somehow he could not bring himself to describe the first and last images; his heart felt bruised and sore, battered with a new knowledge that threatened to shatter him into weeping once more.
"I saw just one image," said Thorin. "Just one thing." He tilted his head to the side, remembering. "A hill covered with flowers: white and purple, with yellow hearts, nodding in the breeze. The hill had a little round door in it, a green door. That was all. Flowers in the wind and a green door in a hill."
Bilbo dropped the pillow he was fluffing. "What? But--but that's my home! My hobbit-hole! In the spring, when the violas bloom. Why--why did you see my home?"
Thorin's brow furrowed and he looked at Bilbo; after a moment, Bilbo looked away. "I do not know," said Thorin. "The Lady said it showed nothing without purpose. Perhaps I needed to be reminded that peace and beauty still exist in the world. That there is still a home for some of us."
Bilbo cleared his throat. "You are always welcome in my home," he said.
Thorin nodded and turned down his bed without another word, but as Bilbo closed his eyes he heard Thorin say softly, "I would like to see it one day."
Bilbo lay in the darkness and tried to think of something other than Thorin's still face in the vision, peaceful and smiling beneath the blood and dirt. Tried to hold his heart together through the night, to hide the cracks within it from even himself.
As the morning sunlight turned the gossamer walls of the pavilion into a blaze of glory, he turned over his silken pillow, smoothing the fresh and pristine, unmarked surface with his hand. Hiding away the other side. He took a deep breath.
"I'm ready to go on now," he said to Thorin and to himself.