Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“A typical mastery begins with a master, and an appret-Aprenl-apprentice, and a contract. In a narrow field with few masters however, one must forge their own way. The mastery I seek has few masters, and fewer to walk the path. Luckily, Spoons walks beside me, and while he seeks a different mastery to mine, our paths are mirrored to each other. I find myself enk-encere-encouraged therefore that I am able to take a record for any who walk this path in the coming days.”

—Excerpt from “The Thief's Key”, Volume One, as scribed for the recipience of Inkheart, with all notations and supplementary materials preserved. 

The Shire had always been an odd place to Nori. He avoided it when he could, skirting its edges, or only going so far in as Bree. This was his fourth time passing the odd place and he could already tell that he’d wandered too far in. It felt so much bigger than its small notation on maps, placed there as if an afterthought. “This is a peaceful place, but boring, small, trading is minimal, and insular peoples abound,” is what the maps all seemed to say. 

Nori called hogshit. He’d been wavering through this Mahal cursed valley for long enough that his side was bleeding. Again. He was out of bandages, he’d lost one of his boots to a rabbit hole and abandoned the other after, and he still could barely see through the snow flurries drifting in the air. 

This was not a small valley, and it was cursed. He knew it, felt it in his bones. He was losing his sanity to the rhythmic song pounding up through his feet and trembling out of his fingertips as he clutched his infected stab wound. 

Nori’s stone sense had always been good. Strong, detailed and precise, he’d worked for years to develop it that way to reach deep and far, and exact enough to feel locks and hidden things. He’d put a lot of time into building his stone sense to work off of the quiet tap of his fingers, as was ideal for a thief. 

He had never once been able to use his stone sense through his feet like a proper dwarf would, gaining awareness through footsteps and stomps. 

Cursed place. 

A door, circular and green, rose in his peripheral set into a hill, green and lush. Nori turned and staggered towards it through the biting wind and ever increasing snow. The gate he pushed through squealed on its hinges, shaking in the storm’s grasp. 

It clicked behind him, and the only reason Nori didn’t panic at the sound was because the height of it was beyond easy to jump. At least it would be when his feet were no longer frozen. 

When he figured out where he had lost his boots too, and gotten them back, as well, Nori thought dimly, and he stared in bewilderment at his rag clad feet. The twists and turns of the place left him doubtful that he’d retrace his steps at all. He… truly didn't know when those had left his feet, now, even if he remembered how. 

The song echoing through every step was louder along the garden past the gate and Nori felt a flash of pity for his neighbors in Ered Luin. Bombur’s stone sense may not have been the strongest, but Bofur and Bifur both had enough to make a priest of Mahal jealous. 

Most dwarrow listened with their feet, with kicks and stamps, the dwarrow with high levels of innate skill were able to sense details with a fist thump, as Bofur and Bifur could. Nori could not do either, with his feet or his fists, relying entirely on palm taps and his fingers. 

Bifur had taught him how to do so, gentle little finger taps to hear the details of the stone in the times between his headaches. Even injured in his head from the Great Battle, Bifur was clever and insightful. His inability to talk with his twisting tongue and tangled languages hadn’t lessened that, only meant that Nori learned his signs as well. 

Nori had liked Bifur as a pebble.

If theirs were anywhere near as overwhelmingly loud as this then Nori could spare every last bit of pity he could spare from past the melody drowning out his scattered thoughts. 

The Shire had always been an odd place, filled with odd people, and it had always called to Nori. Never this loudly though, and he rather regretted the shortcut through Bree. 

That round door loomed before him, easily clicking open at the moment he drew near, and there wasn’t a single creak of cold-shrunken wood, or frost dried hinges as he slipped through. The door, painted a soft blue on the other side of its verdant green, snicked shut again behind him. 

Nori leaned on the frame and breathed deeply. His side ached enough that he felt the pain of it thrumming behind his eyes, and still the song rattled up his toes and rang louder than the heartbeat in his ears, beckoning him further still. He stumbled down the hall, twisting down corridors at the melody’s behest even as he leaned on the wall for increasing support. 

The song calmed as he ducked into a room set beyond an alcove. There was no door, only a curtain across either end of the inset, but there was a dresser and a bed, and there were no windows. Nori tumbled onto the bed and slept. Hobbits were odd, but he could not imagine them a threat. 

Besides, he was tired and the song had quieted as lifted his feet from the floor. 

He slept deeply for a time before he woke, half aware in the way he would on the road when disturbed. He stiffened, just slightly, a tensing of his muscles to move if there was truly a threat. He’d woken for a thrush that was too close before, after all. 

He turned to find a hobbit staring at him from mere inches away. 

Nori jerked back, startled. The hobbit was strange, most were, but this one seemed almost like a far eastern Rhún dwarrow. Nori had only seen them once, from a distance, and the deep brown of its skin was deeper than even the darker of the menkind that Nori had met, his chestnut skin was topped by a wild crown of a deeper brackish brown, one that lightened to a rich gold where it curled around his ears. 

To contrast the hobbit’s darker countenance though, its blue eyes were piercingly bright. They were a mixture of the blue of the turquoise beads Nori had pinched from a Southern Harad trader once, and the deep azure of the coveted Erebor jewelry secreted away in their flight. 

He was pretty, in a way that Nori could not help but stare at as his breath caught. The hobbit smiled at him, a slow thing with too many sharp teeth and Nori’s frank admiration gave way to true alarm. 

One of the hobbit’s ears twitched downwards and it lunged forward with a motion too fast for Nori’s addled mind. A cloth wet with something that smelled sharp and stung his nose was pressed to his face. 

Nori’s last thought as he fell to sleep’s grasp once more was the thought that the predator’s teeth suited the hobbit well, surprisingly so for a supposedly peaceful, insular folk. 

Nori woke up with a start. His mind was clearer of the pain that had been so present before, but a muzzy feeling remained, a telltale of a drugged slumber. He was alone though, so he took a moment to assess. He wasn’t in his leathers anymore, nor did his side ache so badly of infection. 

Nori jerked himself up and tugged and pulled at the long cotton shift he was wearing until it was bunched under his arms. There were indeed fresh bandages wrapped around his wound, with the distinctive lumping of poulticed packing underneath them. The blade that had caused the injury had been rusted, and without supplies as he had been, infection had fast set in. 

He’d resigned himself to dying where his brothers would never have known, without honors or a prayer to bear him to Mahal. 

Now though, the red was gone, and the inflamed heat was much lessened. If Nori pressed he could feel the faint tug of fresh, neat stitchwork. The pain was there, but dull in the face of the chill of the poultice. 

Nori dropped his shirt hem and shuffled until it covered the short cotton leggings that he did not recall in the least. Someone had not only removed his leathers to dress his wound, but sponge bathed him too while he slept. It was disquieting. Still Nori swung his feet to the floor and repressed a shudder at the smug tones of a song he could only barely hear as it pressed like a cat up through his toes once more. 

“The Shire likes you,” came from the doorway in a soft, cultured voice, and Nori looked up sharply, his loose hair swinging. The pretty hobbit from earlier stood there, hip propped on the edge of the alcove into the room, half hid by a curtain. 

Nori strained and could still not hear his breath. He wondered idly if the hobbit were a lad, or a lass. The shorn hair tickling the bottoms of his ears followed no convention Nori knew of, but he’d never walked amongst the Shriefolk as he had other races. 

“I don’t know what that means,” Nori rasped back, honestly. His throat was raw and dry, and the hobbit made an amused sound at him, akin to a purr. 

“There’s a pitcher of water and a cup on the table for you. It has yard lettuce in it, and will aid your pain,” they said, and Nori reached cautiously for the wood pitcher indicated, “I’m Bilbo, of the Baggins Clan, head once I reach majority.” 

That in fact clarified nearly none of the questions Nori had, save that of name. He doubted that Hobbits counted Clans in the same way as dwarrow, as a mark of common kin, by choice more than blood.

Still, Nori offered as close as a smile as he could back, “Well met. I am Nori, son of Vori.” 

Bilbo hummed and ducked past the curtain to walk towards Nori. He walks oddly, a sort of dance step, and as Nori presses his toes to the floor he realizes that the hobbit is matching his steps to the rhythm of the song in the ground. Bilbo stops with a bare handspan between them, with his nose an inch from Nori’s. 

“Would you like to know?” He asks, and there’s an undertone to the question that makes something deep in Nori shake with something just to the left of fear. Even so, the song still pressing through the gentle pressure of his toes on the floor is smug and wild and encouraging. 

It’s intoxicating. 

Nori doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to, but he nods anyway, his brown eyes holding the hobbit’s strangely feylike blue stare. 

Bilbo grins again, wide and exactly as full of teeth as the last time, but edged at the corners with shy nervousness. Then he twists to wander back through the curtain in the same dancing gait. Nori scrambled to follow him, stepping gingerly around the sour notes and the hums of the Song. 

They took a twisting path, and Nori compared the length of the hall with his dim, pain edged, memory of a hill set door. They weren’t moving up or down, and yet they had quite a distance indeed. Still, they passed a great many rooms, all set into alcoves that seemed grown out of the walls themselves with ornately painted and carved wooden frames. Some had curtains, many were simply alcoves that he could peer into the room beyond easily, and three were fitted with locks. 

They were big brass things, those locks, and his first glance told him they’d be easy to pick. His second glance had him hesitant, as the song moaned warningly up to his knees. Even if he could, he thought this might not be a place to consider all the same. 

Bilbo slowed when they had reached what was unmistakably a kitchen, even as alien to the stone constructions of utilitarian use of the dwarrow. Nori liked it better, it was homey. Small shafts of light filtered in through twisting glass constructions set in the walls and the ceiling, sending sunbeams to twist through the myriads of hanging plants. 

The warm browns of the wooden furniture were fitting to the soft greens of the cushions set about on chairs and benches, and one stray tasseled thing on the counter beside a book. 

It was that bedraggled cushion that Bilbo hopped up to perch on, a faded green thing, the pattern lost to the wear of steady use and the tassels tangled and ragged. Bilbo simply hummed slightly and ran his fingers through the hanging plants, baskets of growing things and dried sprigs alike. 

To a teapot on his lap he’d add a leaf of this, a flower plucked from that, and a few dried berries from another thing entirely. Then he hopped back down again to hang it by the fire to steep. It was a casual thing, but done with such skill and knowledge that Nori longed to bring Dori here to watch for himself.

His fussy older brother loved showmanship of skill dearly, but had little flair of his own, slipping into quiet proofs, complicated braids and support, for himself. This was something his brother could learn that would be ever so interesting to him, but he knew both that Dori would never leave Ered Luin, not without Ori nor without an assurance of his beloved tea shop’s care. 

He would also not leave his pride. Dori might deign to learn from a halfling, but only if the halfling went to him. 

“The Shire is aware, as all of Arda is, but it is more awake than most places,” Bilbo said as he peered at the tea, “Hobbits help to keep the Song, but that means we listen to it as well. All of it. The Shire led you here, and It hasn’t stopped cooing since. It likes you.” 

Nori wasn’t sure how to react to that. The statement didn’t seem wrong, necessarily, the Great Song of Arda was a well known myth, and Dwarrow still revered Mahal’s place in it. And the hum beneath his bare toes was still smug, like a cat that had dragged home a kill. 

He accepted a cup of tea, steaming from a crude clay mug delicately painted in whorls of vines, as he mulled it over. It was magnificent tea. He still missed Dori’s tea though, the hearty stuff sometimes thickened with goat’s butter. 

“Right,” he said as he set the empty cup down gently, “Right. I’m not sure that actually makes sense, but I suppose it has little bearing. Thank you for bandaging my wound, I think I should head home now.”

“No, you shouldn’t. Nor will you.” The hobbit answered with a flash of teeth as he bit into a cookie from a jar on the counter. It was a wooden monstrosity shaped like some mashed semblance of either a bullfrog or a troll. Nori glared at the jar instead of the pretty hobbit. 

Then he turned on his heel and strode for the door, following the sour notes of displeasure now, as he found his way to the blue painted wooden circle. Even now the song was urging him back, whining like a petulant child through the sound of faint, out of tune, trumpets. 

Nori wrenched the door open and immediately slammed it shut again.

He stared at the slush melting on his feet and shivered hard. He couldn’t see past the blank white of the storm, but the biting wind and ice crystals that had cut at his cheeks for even that moment told plenty. He was trapped. 

Nori stepped back out of the melting snow and shuddered. 

“I told you. The Shire has been singing about winter storms for weeks. It had been so guilty when we missed her warnings about the Fell Winter that It’s been deafening this year. We’ll be snowed in for weeks, and it’ll still be months until the big roads are thawed.” 

Nori turned to look at the hobbit who had trailed after him clutching a lopsided mug of tea, and resplendent in a patchwork housecoat that looked as if it had been pieced together from three others before it. 

He remembered that winter, the Fell one. It had been Nori’s first trip southward and he’d missed most of the effects as a result. He’d come back on roads that had lost ground to snowmelt, past trees bent under the weight of ice, long since gone, and through villages filled with hollow faces and hungry eyes. 

Ered Luin had been little better, and he’d been greeted by Dori, who had been so terrified that Nori had starved or frozen to death that he’d started sobbing the moment Nori had let himself in the window. Dori had clutched Nori tight, crushed against his chest like a pebble, in an embrace he’d not had since his Amad were still alive. 

Ori had been scared as well, thin and gaunt in a way that Dori and Nori had always taken great care to prevent before, in the way that Dori and Nori had grown up being. Dori more so for being the oldest and distributing the food, but Nori had always made a habit of sneaking food onto his brother’s plates, and had been in and out of holding cells besides. 

Ori’s first question on his return that spring had been to ask after whether Nori was alright, rather than asking after what Nori had brought him, as had been his  habit prior. His voice had rasped so badly through a lingering cold cough that Nori hadn’t been able to answer through his outright fear over missing the fact that he could have lost his brothers to something he cold never have defended them from. 

He would never have known either, not as far away as he’d been. He’d have come back to a pair of pauper’s graves. 

Nori never wanted to leave them to worry like that, and had tried to make it back for winters since. He could not make it through for this one. He knew that very well, and he stared hard at the hobbit in mute, terrified, frustration, even as he bit his tongue to hold back frustrated tears. 

“I’m Winter court,” Bilbo said, and Nori wondered if he was supposed to know what that meant, “I read the signs before the Spring court and Summer court, I and my kin. All the Smials and families stocked more than a surplus. We have enough to last comfortably into the growing season. Travel is limited, is all. There’s food aplenty. What we didn’t need we sent out. The Men heeded the signs, stocked up. Most of the extra food went to the mountains.” 

Nori released a trembling breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. There was still a good chance that the nobs would hoard the food, but without a true scarcity then there would be more available. Nori could only feel relieved that his brothers would eat, even if it were scraps from the nobles’ pickings. 

Nori nodded. The hobbit wandered back down the corridor and Nori followed him without a second thought. All the way back to the kitchen to fix a plate of food, cheeses and fruits, dried and fresh alike, a treat that Nori had never been able to afford and only occasionally stolen. 

Then the hobbit had taken up a loaf of bread and savagely torn off two hunks, instead of cutting it. Nori’s eyes wandered to the knife block where the hobbit had pulled from to cut the fruit. The rivets on the bread knife’s handle were dull, but unmistakable. The hobbit tore another hunk off and began buttering them. 

“There’s a bread knife?” He asked with as much hesitation as he’d ever had. Surely there was a reason that Bilbo wasn’t using it, but Nori was a thief not a smith, he wouldn’t know by the handle. 

“It’s dull.” The hobbit breathed out, a sad, lonesome sound, though Nori couldn’t understand why, “My parents would have taught me the trick to sharpening the ridges when I came of age, but they died in the Fell winter. I never learned, and now it’s dull.” 

“I could teach you?” Nori offered, “Any dwarrow can sharpen a knife, e’en one with serration. Doesn’t take a smith, that.” 

Bilbo appraised him, and nodded, pulling the knife from its block to toss him, handle first. It was sheathed in a thin leather wrap and Nori unwrapped it to reveal a bread knife that was not only dull but chipped and slightly twisted. 

“Ah,” Nori muttered, “Or perhaps it does.” 

“I threw it. It got stuck in a wall beam and I didn’t have the strength to pull it out for another two winters.” Bilbo hunched his shoulders inward, “I was mad. I got it out last spring when I wasn’t mad at Mam and Da for dying anymore.” 

Nori hummed and set down the knife gently on the counter to offer the common dwarrow condolences, “I grieve with you. May Mahal’s stones weep for your loss, and your foundation hold steady all the same.” 

Bilbo looked at him, those gem blue eyes only barely holding back tears, “Thank you. I- thank you. My relatives have barely offered that much, and never so pretty.” 

Nori idly wondered just how old Bilbo was. Still he nibbled on a buttered hunk of bread, ate cheese better than he’d ever tasted, and savored the cut peach and handful of berries interspersed with dried grapes. 

Then the hobbit wandered off again and Nori followed for a lack of anything else to do. They went down another twisting hall through a door at the back of the room, and came to a parlor, or perhaps more appropriately a den. It was cozy, overlarge for two people, but so stuffed full with armchairs, blankets, cushions, and bookshelves overflowing with both books and trinkets that it was homey regardless of the size. 

A fireplace crackled merrily, big with wood stacked by it, and warming the whole of the room easily. Ceramic tubes lifted from the top of the fireplace and led off in every direction along the ceiling and through the tops of the archways that dotted the edges of the room. Bilbo beelined for a nest of cushions and blankets by the fire and wriggled his way in before he picked up a book. 

He was in the perfect spot for one of those odd glass filled tunnels to beam a thin winter sunlight where he sat. Nori shifted on his feet in the doorway and the little hobbit looked up, “Make yourself at home, it’ll be a long winter.” 

“Do you even know what you offer your home to?” Nori asked with an air of desperation. 

Bilbo looked up and appraised him, “Dwarrow. Thief, if the tools in your leathers are any indication. Why?” 

Nori made a strangled sound of assent, ”How would you know thieve’s tools?” 

“They look like my mother’s,” Bilbo said, “Though I only ever learned to pick locks from her.” 

Nori wasn’t sure how to process the fact that this odd, well to do, obviously wealthy, hobbit’s mother had apparently been a thief. He wasn’t sure how to process anything at the moment. He picked a chair near the fire and curled up. 

It was comfortable enough, and he watched the hobbit read for a while, before he was fidgeting slightly, and cold besides. His leathers and furs were much warmer than the cotton shifts he wore now, and he wasn’t sure where the hobbit had put his clothes, even if it was now obvious that they had been dug through. 

“You can read, you know. And use the blankets. I don’t think you’d mistreat the books, and the blankets are plentiful and warm.” 

Nori shrunk in on himself and grabbed a blanket from the basket beside the chair to tuck around himself. He refused to look at the hobbit. 

Nori had been born shortly before Erebor fell, a babe while they fled, his Amad cradling him close as she’d pulled Dori along as a pebble.   He’d grown up in the refugee caravans, playing rough with other pebbles, no toys or food to be found. When he’d been of an age to learn to read, Amad had been selling her nights to feed them, she’d had no coin for books, and less time. 

Then Amad had been carrying Ori and had no time for anything at all, and Dori had begun selling whatever he could make, fix, or take to get by, and none of them had any time at all. A sickness swept the camp, and Amad died, Dori had needed to cut Ori out of her, too small, and too quiet a cry. 

Nori had learned to steal properly then, not the subtle nicking and snitching that he’d learned from his desperate older brother, but properly planned out thefts. They’d needed a goat, feed for the goat, and coin for so much more. By the time that Dori was teaching an eager little Ori his letters, Nori had quite forgotten the few cirth runes he’d learned so long ago. 

Nori had to come to the realization that his brother and his Amad had forgotten to teach him, forgotten that he still couldn’t read. Ori loved it so much, and would bring his primers to show Nori, and Nori would steal him more words, and never could he read a one, only recognize the patterns if they were common. 

The street sign where Dori had eked out a tea shop they could live above in Ered Luin, the mannish runes for the Blue Mountains, merely to point it out on a map, and his brothers’ names. He couldn’t so much as recognize his own, but he knew Dori’s and Ori’s by heart. 

By the time he was an adult, a thief by trade and craft, he was the only dwarrow his age that couldn’t. Even kinless orphans were taught to read by friends or neighbors long before they were ever on their own. 

Bilbo watched him for a long moment, then sighed deeply and wiggled his way out of his blanket pile to leave the room. Nori felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes and he buried his face in the blanket to hide them. He breathed as deeply as he could, ignoring the traitorous hitching of his breaths. This had happened before, far too many a time. 

Someone, either by figuring it out, or by Nori’s own admittance, would find out. They’d call him a simpleton, a burden, stupid, useless. They’d assume he wouldn’t read because he was broken, never because of something so simple as never being taught. They’d leave. 

There would be a new slew of rumors in the Blue Mountains, about a lulkhâ kakhifi, an idiot, and Nori would make another throwaway name. No one abided a useless thief, they barely stood the ones that could read the values they were after. 

Bilbo came back eventually. He carried a basket of things, a slate board of all things was on top, and Nori couldn’t imagine why. It was too thin, too polished to be used for crafting, and leather wrapped at the edges besides. Then the hobbit was a whirlwind around the room as he dragged cushions and blankets, rearranging his nest to his liking, before he nestled back in with a soft, fussy sort of sigh. 

It was reminiscent of Dori, if Dori had ever been able to afford this sort of luxury as blankets even so soft as these. Bilbo looked up then and raised an eyebrow at Nori. 

“Well? Are you coming? I’ve taught a fair few of my cousins to read, and you do seem quite a bit cleverer than they,” Nori gaped at the smug hobbit, and buried his face in the blanket for a moment before he began to scramble up. The hobbit waved a hand dismissively behind Nori, “Do grab those stand lanterns, shall you? You won’t learn in a day, and the light will be ever so helpful.” 

Nori grabbed all three lamps, and arranged them behind the little nest before he sat at the edge of the cushions, despite the fact that he didn't know how to light them. Bilbo looked at him blank faced for a long moment before he reached out and tugged Nori closer gently. 

“We’ll start with the letters. They are different scripts for different languages, but Westron is common and plentiful so we shall start with that. I have a paltry three primers on dwarvish, so we can get through letters and nought else on that,” Bilbo handed the slate board to Nori along with an odd wooden tube with chalk affixed to its end, “So I think that I shall teach you Westron first, then either an elvish tongue or mine own. Thataway you are well able to teach yourself the particulars of your own tongue.” 

Nori blinked down at the chalk pen and slate. Bilbo pulled a matching one from his box followed by several small, well worn, hardbound books. Bilbo flipped the first one open to show Nori the inked and embossed tracings of a mannish alphabet. 

He set Nori to copying the letters on his slate, saying them as he went, erasing and doing it over again. All through the hobbit lectured softly, and quietly, on how the letters worked together. He used metaphor, example, stories, even rudimentary comparisons both to gardening, smithing, and thievery to describe the interactions between letters. 

Nori would have to remember Bilbo’s description of the “th” sound or the “sh” sound being alloys seeing as they made new sounds altogether, or his description of the silent letters having had their sounds pickpocketed by the letters previous such as in the word “climb.” Ori would appreciate the examples. 

For hours Nori sat curled by Bilbo, clothed in borrowed cotton shifts, as he scratched out letters, then simple words to practice how those letters meshed. The light waned and Bilbo rose to light the odd lamps, and slipped out in the process. Nori kept focusing on his letters. He was lulkhâ kakhifi, he had to absorb as much as he could before Bilbo gave up on him. 

The hobbit tapped on his shoulder eventually, peering at the shaky words chalked on Nori’s slate. Nori froze, his hand clutching the chalk shaking slightly as Bilbo hummed, “Huh. You learn fast. That’s really impressive, especially since I accidentally left the primer out of your reach. Put it down though, dinner.” 

Nori gently set the slate down and twisted to look the pretty hobbit in the face. His expression was honest, purely impressed and open. Nori followed the hobbit back to the cozy kitchen, and ate a very nice meal of fish stew with a sort of flatbread for dipping with him. 

Bilbo wasn’t very conversational. If it was about learning he would talk, or if Nori asked him a question, but the hobbit still seemed continually startled by the concept of friendly talk. For the next several days it continued as such, with three larger meals enforced by the hobbit, several smaller ones offered, companionable silence, and the knowledge and skill that had been denied Nori for so long given without hesitation. 

It was splendid, and by the time that Nori had been approved to begin reading the books that were simply everywhere in the smial, which is what hobbits apparently called their burrows, Nori had felt the most accomplished he ever had in his life. Even if he was still reading out loud, haltingly with many mistakes. He’d improve, he had all winter to practice. 

It was surprisingly nice to curl next to the hobbit. Nori told himself it was for warmth, and he knew he was lying to himself. He was as starved for friendly touch as the hobbit was. Dori hadn’t been anything other than outwardly disapproving for years upon years, Ori was the only person Nori got to hug, got any affection from. 

He knew Dori loved him, that was never a question, but he didn’t feel the need to comfort Nori as if they were still but pebbles, and hadn’t since long before they were settled enough for Dori to disapprove of his Craft. 

Bilbo though, Bilbo he suspected was merely lonely, and had been for far too long. Nori had rung a confession out of him with the return of his washed leathers, alongside a nice cotton and wool wardrobe, that the borrowed clothes were from Bilbo’s deceased father. His mother was seemingly not in the picture either, and the hobbit was far too small and quiet for the sheer size of his burrow. 

Nori hadn’t questioned further after getting lost in exploration one late morning and slipping past a curtain to what was clearly an abandoned children’s room. A nursery or a playroom, he wasn’t sure, but the signs of it being only halfway packed away again, and the sections of neatly folded children's clothes bore a tale too painful for as of yet. 

Still. Whenever Nori leaned on the hobbit, or pressed up against him to read, or even threw a blanket over their legs to share, he would stiffen straight up the spine, nervous and trembling. Then Bilbo would gasp out a soft shuddering sigh and melt into Nori. 

It was heartbreaking, just how lonely and touch starved the hobbit was, especially considering the previously mentioned relatives in abundance, who seemed to leave the hobbit alone to wither from neglect. 

The hobbit’s relatives loved him, Nori had no doubts about that, several of them visiting between snows to take tea with Bilbo and press chattering conversation at Nori in the lulls when Bilbo’s tongue stilled and he spoke up so Bilbo didn’t have too. 

Nori had always done that for Dori and Ori anyhow, offering a child’s chatter up to distract Dori’s customers into paying without haggling too far down as a pebble, and using a facade of aggression to protect Ori from his own social anxieties when he was grown. 

It was beyond easy, even instinctual to do so for the fussy, quiet, sweet hobbit that his friend retreated behind the facade of when company arrived. Bilbo had lowered his mannerly mask not two weeks into the visit, and while he still had days where he didn’t talk, days where Nori painstakingly taught him the Iglishmék he used to communicate with Bifur, he had still wormed his way into Nori’s nearly nonexistent circle of trusted people. 

When Bilbo had felt comfortable enough to begin teaching Nori another language, practicing the principles to reapply them so he might yet learn Khuzdul, his mask had fully come down. They began exchanging skills and words alike as easy as breathing, a dance of knowledge-gifts that was as equal as it was dizzying, Nori hadn’t been so at ease for as long as he could remember. 

Even as a pebble he had been guarded, cautious e’en around his brothers. Now with this snarky, little, fey creature he found that he had no use for the boundaries of propriety, dwarfism society, nor his own innate paranoia. 

Bilbo, barely of age for his own people, trapped in a society where folk died peacefully so close to always that no one knew how to grieve, or support, when his family hadn’t. Bilbo, who was so loved that he was drowning, was so misunderstood and starved for support that he withdrew simply because no one knew how to help. Bilbo, who had taken him in without protest and provided more care and understanding than Nori had received from his own kin from his childhood, without any expectation of return.

Bilbo, who he was swiftly growing to love. Nori had no idea how to court a hobbit, much less did Bilbo know how dwarrow courted. Still, Nori refused to lose his friend, the first person he had ever trusted deeply enough to call such even to himself, to a misunderstanding. So, the dance of gifts cycled and cycled. 

He taught Bilbo to pick locks, Bilbo taught him to brew poisons and medicines alike. Bilbo taught him to read, Nori taught him Iglishmék. Bilbo taught him the Hobbitish language, Æthel, Nori ignored every tradition, and taught Bilbo, far more of a natural linguist than Nori, Khuzdul. 

They practiced pickpocketing together, sewing more pockets onto clothes to play with, poorly at first, then practiced enough to hide the pockets. On colder days, when the lamps burned low they embroidered on anything they could, practicing Bilbo’s da’s old hobby, and the skill that Dori had picked up on the road from Erebor. 

They spoke of traditions, and stories, and superstitions, and old significance, and different cultures, freely and without reserve. Nori adored this fey creature, with the too bright blue eyes, who danced as he walked, and carried every word as if its importance would weigh his tongue down, who trusted him with the secrets that hobbits held more dear than their own existence, who guarded Nori’s own with an easy grace, locking them behind his sharp teeth and his fierce hunger for new curiosities unshared by his kinsfolk. 

Three months passed and the snows melted, gradually, then all at once through the Shire, though the Big Roads remained impassable and the howls passed the Old Forest and deep snows kept the hobbits corralled within the bounds of the Shire with the Song’s steady thrum as reassurance. 

Nori wore his leather jerkin over brightly dyed hobbit wools, embroidered with Bilbo’s flowers woven through the geometric and patterns of the Dwarrow. He had long since adjusted his braids, Hobbits didn't braid typically, but the high peaks that Nori had long worn had never been a practical sort for everyday wear, intended to carry that distinctive difference between Nori of the house of Ri, and Nori the thief. 

Bilbo had listened carefully to the significance of his braids, the characterization inherent in them to identify a Dwarrow, to others and by their deeds and their kin-line. Then he’d pulled his neighbor over, a Daisy Gamgee ne-Bell, who had been his mother’s friend once, and more importantly had three daughters and therefore could braid. 

They had taken three days, sketching, and braiding, and rebraiding, before they had settled on a practical style that held easily, and still read the same as before. Whilst the braids could be read, they were distinctly non-dwarrow, hobbitish in their length and practicality, and Nori adored them. He could wear his Peaks with his brothers, but for the remainder of that winter he wore Bilbo’s braids. 

Nori discovered as spring approached that he had long since lost his boots, and the search for them had amused Bilbo so much that the Song echoed mirth up through his toes. Nori discovered that he did not truly wish to leave, he was happy, despite missing his brothers dearly. 

Still the roads thawed slowly, but surely, and Nori found himself packing slowly to return to Ered Luin. Bilbo watched him, a soft smile at the edge of his quiet sorrow, and Nori determined that he’d come back, at least to visit. 

Nori had things to do before he left. He had developed a great love of reading, and an equally great stack of books to pare down before he left, to reserve or to borrow. Bilbo had been horribly transparent as he offered for Nori to borrow some of his tomes if he promised to bring them back. 

He also stole over to Bilbo’s cousin’s house, and eased through a window for the spoons taken after the death of his friend’s family. Inheritance, phah, Bilbo still mourned the spoons given as a courting gift to his father and the cousins had no right to hold them back simply for circumvention of a will. 

If a few spoons were missing from the set, well, Bilbo was surprisingly bad at numbers and Nori truly did wish to make a dwarfish courting gift for him, even if he never worked up the courage to give it to him. 

Then, Nori left, walking away from the shire, his booted feet leaving the wheedling tones of the Song, of which he still had little explanation for, as he returned to his brothers. The three and a half months had changed him far more than he had ever expected. 

He had a blank journal though, hand bound by Bilbo with handsome green leather, and the ability to fill it, to record his wandering, and his thoughts. He had books carried for himself, rather than Ori, teas for Dori as well as for his own use. He had the memory of happiness deeper than he’d known that he could carry, and as he joined a caravan he pulled one of his tomes out. 

This wasn’t one of the storybooks, the histories written as an epic tale that hobbits used to keep records, the ones he enjoyed best and had brought. Nori turned the book over curiously. It was missing the leafing at the spine that hobbits did for identification, a method vastly different then the scroll crests for Dwarrow collections. 

The leather of the tome was old, flaking at the corners and worn in the way that meant it would soon need to be rebound, and the layers of book cloth holding the pages together to the spine spoke to its age, and its previous rebinding. 

Nori opened it to find a note, Daisy Gamgee’s cramped script scrawling across the crumbly, petal pressed paper that hobbits made and used for notes meant not to last. It read:

Nori, I know you are not of the Æthel, not truly, but I should be the first to inform you of the fact that it matters little after a point. The Song, that first great melody, chose you, first for itself, then for Bilbo, whose lonesome has grown greater by the season, though none of us had known how to assist. I then chose you as well, for the Song lose you, as does Bilbo, and my Heart-Sister’s son may not have wished for a maternal figure after the loss of his first, but he remains family all the same. My Heart-Sister asked me to watch after he child, and I have, and I will, and so I watch after mine as well. You are good for Bilbo, and I wish to keep you, to do good for Bilbo, and to do good for yourself also. 

So I find I must inform you that Hobbits, as a rule, are but an aspect of the Æthel, of the Voidfolk from beyond the second singing, and that Æthel runs strong in Bilbo, in many of us, but Bella was fey and her son far moreso. Æthel are hobbits, and hobbits are Æthel, but others can be Æthel, should they so choose. You chose, perhaps not on purpose, and I chose for you with full intention. I am not sorry, Sunůz, you are mine now, though I shan’t replace you with a shambling changing to keep you at home as may have been done in ages past, I will demand you visit home with some frequency. 

To that end, because you and Bilbo talked of much I am certain, I am also certain that it would not have occurred to Bilbo to explain the whys of our culture and ourselves, and of what we are. His parents and younger sisters died, and he retreated into the Song nearly entirely in his grief. It likely did not so much as occur to him that there may be differences between you beyond how you may have grown. I will then inform you that the state of being Æthel can be contagious, after a fashion, in certain circumstances. Marriage is one of these, and new-blood lines may be less valued with no new Great Wandering in sight, but they are remembered, and respected still. 

The Took New-Blood line came from a maiar taken to wed, who lived and died as one of use, and the Bell line from an elf of long ages yore. Gamgee’s came from elves as well, though from what I understand a different kind of them from Bell. The Baggins come from elves and men both, I had a great-grandfather that was a captured orc turned to the Song, we have many goblin lines, skin hanger lines, and dwarrow ones, though the blood of the last few wear thin indeed. I tell you this so you might consider what is contained in this book with the grave intention I know you capable of, as well as the intentionality learned from speaking of your brothers. 

Each line carries a book such as this. It is a history, a guide, an advisor, and above all, very much valued, secret information. You are claimed as my surůz, and so I gift you the Gamgee Grimoire until such a time as you do not need it. Learn of the Song now, of the Vala in their earliest days, of the Void, the Æthel, of courting and families and how possessive of love may be. Learn of yourself as you are as Stonekin, and how you relate to us Arda-bound Voidkin. Learn, surůz, and then return when you have decided upon what you have earned, for there is far more than is contained in these pages.

Daisy, Mōþōr

Nori hummed and folded the note carefully into his pocket. He had time before the caravan arrived even near to Ered Luin. He turned the page to begin reading. He had much to learn, and there had been a lot that Daisy had mentioned that referenced something unknown, or outright did not seem possible. For one, he had not known orcs to be capable of breeding, much less marriage. 

Besides which, Æthel was a language, he’d thought. Perhaps he could make it one visit without disappointing Dori with new rumors of a familiar thief. This might just be distracting enough to keep him busy enough to avoid his Craft. Between puzzling this tome out through the Old Æthel runes instead of the Tengwar of Westron, an alphabet he was only partially fluent in, and with learning the Khuzdul runes to match what he could speak and stealing Ori’s old primers to do so, he had plenty to occupy the time he usually got restless in. 

For now though, he settled back and began to slowly read the first pages of the Gamgee grimoire swaying with the movement of the cart. 

Bofur thought he was going half mad. Somehow he was the only one. Bombur looked at him as he were seeing things, and Bifur simply did not care. Dori and Ori were as same as they ever were, too glad of having their brother back and behaving to notice what Bofur had. 

Nori was different though, he was. Bofur saw it, he did, but somehow he was the only one who saw it, or cared. He knew Nori, he did. He’d grown up with him, sort of, they’d been neighbors since the Erebor refugees had come to Ered Luin and taken over, turning it from a slowly dying miner’s colony to settlement, if equally poor off in a different manner entirely. 

He and Nori had been the same age, not pebbles anymore, but certainly not adults either, and while they certainly didn’t do everything together, they had done enough. Bofur had gone honest as an adult though, and Nori hadn’t, not that it had affected their friendship in the least, it just meant that there was a line in Nori’s trust that grew thicker as time marched on. 

He knew Nori. Nori was different, and he was the only one that saw it but he couldn’t be the only one that knew Nori. Nori had changed, in the manner of old mountain tales passed down through the generations of Broadbeams that had long resided in the Blue Mountains, passed from the time of the first fathers, and nearly forgotten. 

He had changed in the manner of those who had been taken by the Fae. Other clans scoffed at the tale, saying that the fae were elves, and dismissing it entirely. The Broadbeams had held the tale anyways, watching for the signs of changing pebbles, for those taken by the first teachers, for those whose stone sense was too strong, but weren’t called to Mahal. They watched for those who wandered too far, dancing out into the bad rock, and sometimes returning and sometimes not. 

It hadn’t happened for generations. Babes had always had iron over doors and tangled into child’s braids, and the mountain watched. Nori wasn’t a Broadbeam though, his kin were from Erebor, Longbeards and Firebeards, and Durinfolk all. 

Nori was still Nori, but he was odd, different, and Bofur wished he were more articulate, more educated to be able to put it into better words than old superstitions. The only words Bofur had was to say that Nori was fey, odd, and to say once that he thought that Nori had been taken off over winter. 

Bifur had hummed at that, but Bombur, wonderful, sweet Bombur, had glared at him fiercer than Bofur had ever seen from his little brother. Bombur’s wife, who was cradling their first child close, closer now, had drawn herself up beside Bombur. 

Kisto, great friends with Dori, and technically employed by him besides, had reamed him out for twenty minutes. She knew the old tales, a Broadbeam through and through, but she knew Dori more. She still had pinched coppers until she had bought an extra iron link chain for little Kistur though, and had used it to hold his teething ring whenever she held him in his sling on her shifts. 

Nori was different though, and Bofur saw it. His gait had always been quiet, careful, subtle in a way that no Dwarrow naturally was, but the rhythm to it was new, often matching the rare melody from the groaning of the dying Mountains they mined. His eyes, always sharp, seeing everything as if the world could be categorized and drunk in by Nori’s gaze entirely, had gained a new edge, of something new and undetermined. 

He lingered now, on signs that had always been there, a strange delight in his eyes, ordering new things when they went drinking instead of only getting what Bofur had, and sometimes Bofur would catch him tracing letters with his fingers as if he were relearning how to be a functional dwarrow. He did trace over iron, with only slight hesitation, more contemplative than pained. 

His always dancing fingers, tap-tap-tapping since he’d learned to stone-sense like a jeweler from Bifur, now tapped in odd patterns, sometimes still, and turned into the pitter-pat like rain, less purpose and paranoia in Nori’s fingers without each tap to provide layouts of the space he occupied. 

It was still Nori, still sharp-eyed, observant, ever-watchful Nori, who was never up to good for long, but something was off. Besides, the fae never took adults, for all that Nori counted being only a decade into true adulthood, only babes. Every Broadbeam knew that your babe was safe once they could speak. 

Still, Nori was his friend, fey or not. Nori had never cared if he were too loud, or too crude, or if he sometimes struggled with his words or favored the Iglishmék of his beloved uncle for its simplicity. So, when Nori followed him to the workshop in the center of the complex, the hidden one in the house set aside for Bombur and his family that he didn’t use, he quietly took down the iron shaving bundles from the venting sills, and tucked them away with his iron tools. 

He could use his lead ones this time for his whittling, not like it mattered, he was making children’s toys to sell at the night market where the Guild’s couldn’t tax him. Nori knew, and Bifur grunted from his own corner, where he was very carefully smelting tin for little metal joints for the toys. 

Nori perched on the edge of the table, watching him whittle, a common enough occurrence, though usually after one of his friend’s yelling fights with his brother. Dori got weepy after those, and Nori usually hid. Bofur had worked very hard to provide this as a safe space for Nori after those fights once, if the shavings had to stay down to maintain that then they would. 

There hadn’t been a fight though, not since last visit. Bofur wasn’t sure if it was because Dori and Ori were extra clingy after another hard winter where Nori had been absent, and thus unwilling to fight, or if Nori were trying not to push this time, but either way Bofur wasn’t surprised by Nori’s need to hide. Dori had been radiating tension and stress for a week now. 

Eventually Nori rocked forwards onto the balls of his feet. Typically this is where his fidgeting got the better of him, and he’d carve with Bofur or play with the wood shavings. 

Instead Bofur blinked at the small pile and delicate, finely wrought, silver spoons. The stylized symbol on the handle resembled a Westron B, but the Tengwar wasn’t quite right. A house symbol perhaps, but not one that Bofur knew. 

He glanced from the spoons to Nori. His friend grinned from beneath his distinctive peaks. It was a vaguely sheepish grin, and Bofur poked a spoon. The pile tinked merrily, and Bifur looked up. 

“Why.” 

“Why what?” Nori answered, false innocence in his tone, and mischief dancing in his finger-taps. 

Bofur sighed, deep enough for Bifur to heave himself from their oven-turned-illegal-forge and wander over, “Why have you brought me spoons? Where did you even get those?” 

“They’re mine,” Bifur poked at the spoons, faint alarm growing on his face as Nori tugged a paper from his vest, “I wondered if you could show me the basics of how to turn them into something else.” 

Bifur grumbled softly, and signed rapidly to no one in particular. Apparently the spoons were a mithril and silver alloy, a mix that weakened the mithril; that alloy had once been used by the elves for jewelry. Bofur eyed the spoons with new interest. These could feed them for months, the whole complex, Ur’s and Ri’s alike. 

“Huh. Ingots, I’m guessing? To fence?” Bifur chuckled faintly behind him and threw a hunk of beeswax at Nori. They kept it to make molds for their hardware, but the beeswax went slowly for the amount they’d bought, and Nori stared at it in confusion. Then he glared slightly at Bofur, and Bofur wondered what he’d done. 

Bifur clicked his fingers, and Nori signed rapidly at him over Bofur’s head, leaning on his heels to see. Bofur stared at the spoons in bewilderment. Even if he weren’t making ingots to sell, Nori wasn’t exactly good at making things that were pretty. Functional yes, but not pretty, certainly not jewelry. 

Bofur gave up, Nori would share if he wanted to, “Right, well, Bifur’ll have to show you that. I can mine, and carve, but that’s it really. Bifur knows more about metallurgy.” 

Nori nodded and took himself, the beeswax, and the spoons over by Bifur. One of Bofur’s knives was missing. He glanced back to see Nori using it the carve the shape he wanted from the wax with Bifur’s help. Nori had also, possibly, gotten far better at pickpocketing over the winter. 

By the time Bombur came to tell them that the shop was closing, and there was leftover stew and tea for dinner, Bofur was no closer to figuring out what Nori was doing with an incomplete set of marvelously expensive spoons if he wasn’t selling them. 

A few weeks later Nori was triumphant in showing Bofur his spoils, perched once more on the table in the workshop. Bofur stared down at the results. They were functional, vaguely pretty, but in a crude way, less like they'd been forged or cast and more as if the metal had somehow grown and twisted into odd patterns. 

In the center was an odd box, latticed and the top opened like a tiny cork, as if anything could be contained in a box the size of a walnut shell riddled with holes. It was shaped like a pinecone, with rather more expertise than Bofur had expected, but perhaps that explained the pile of wooden pinecones of various sizes in the wood scrap pile. 

It had the odd vine like warping along its cast metal, but it was smooth. Surrounding it were seven braid clasps of different sizes and shapes, with two mirroring each other. The two smallest, the mirrored ones, had an etching that was unfamiliar. They were plain but for the significance of the metal itself, almost unremarkable without the gems and etchings and patterns a proper jewel smith would give them. 

Still they were pretty, and they looked solid enough indeed. The walnut sized pinecone box still perplexed him from its place of honor though and Bofur just hummed in what hopefully sounded like the encouragement he intended it too. 

Nori was definitely not a jeweler. Nor was he a smith, even if the skill was properly learned. Dori had floated the idea that Nori was trying to pick a new craft, a respectable one. If this was the case, then he might choose another. 

Nori reached down and separated the three larger clasps away into a separate pile from the matching set and the box. He pointed at the three clasps, “These are for Dori. He’s started to get his first silver hairs, and he’s miserable about it. Terribly vain, too. Said the only other affordable option is wood, that would match his beard whether it's auburn, silver or both, since his copper ones apparently won’t.” 

Bofur had known that actually. Dori had a whole streak of silvered hairs, just enough to look vaguely like a skunk, instead of the dignified scattering of silver like Bifur’s great badger’s mane. He’d apparently not quite noticed yet until a customer had noticed and he'd cried in the shop kitchen, miserable and overstressed and vain. 

Bombur had been supportive, the lovable lump. Kisto had called him a wimp, and then laughed until she’d cried, both then and later. 

Nori was perhaps a very good brother despite Dori’s overbearing nature. 

Bofur nodded, then he took a second look at the other pile. Matching beads, and a box made by hand. 

Then Bofur whipped his head up to stare Nori down, “Do your brothers know you’re courting someone?” 

Nori wavered in his perch and sat down hard, legs crossed as he deflated. He picked up the clasps and the box, almost reverently, “No. They won’t either. Dori said he doesn’t want to know anything about the stupid things I do away from Ered Luin, or about who I do them with. And I-“ 

Nori swallowed hard, tucking his chin into his chest. Bofur gently patted his knee, sacrificing one of the precious bits of wrap paper and drawstring bags to wrap the clasps for Dori, “You don’t want your One, or your husband to get rejected by your brothers, especially if Dori won’t approve of them already.” 

“Mm. Dori hates a lot of things. About me. And. About what I do. He loves me, and Ori, but he hates my Craft, and my need to wander, and I love him, I do, but I’m- I’m not the pebble he raised anymore, and I think sometimes he still looks at me and sees the pebble he wishes I had been, not even the one I was, or who I am now.” 

Bofur lets out a gusty breath. Oof. That wasn’t inaccurate, actually. He thinks for a moment on that before he responds, “Alright. If Dori doesn’t want to know then he doesn't have too. Are they here in Ered Luin? May I meet them?” 

Nori flashes the ghost of a smirk at him, “No, they aren’t. And you’re not invited to the wedding either.” 

Bofur feigns deepest offence, pulling a giggle from Nori as they gently shove at each other. He hadn’t expected that if they weren’t here actually, he’d rather suspected that Nori will elope, to avoid Dori’s wrath even if they were. Bofur sobers then, resting his head on the table by Nori’s knees. 

“Fine then, I would like to meet them eventually though, maybe when Kistur is older, or letters maybe. Promise me you’ll tell Dori eventually though?” 

Nori hums, and pats at Bofur’s hat, “Promise. The second he notices the marriage braid and clasp, and asks about it I’ll tell him. I’m curious how long though. Want to take bets?” 

Bofur laughs at that, and declares it a good night for drinks. A celebration he says, and has to drag a drunk Nori home. His fey friend has even more of a dance step when he’s drunk, and he twists this way and that as Bofur guides him, barefooted for some reason with his boots slung over his arm, laces tied together. 

He tucks Nori in, something he’s done before, and that Nori’s done for him, to the accompaniment of Ori’s quiet giggles from across the room. Nori looks at him, with those sharp, sharp eyes, that new edge might be love, Bofur thinks giddily, and Nori pulls him down briefly with a strength usually gone with someone this drunk. 

Nori, curls his lips into a grin by Bofur’s ear, and whispers barely louder than a breath, “Promise me, promise that if you meet him, or I bring him here, that you’ll leave the iron behind. Sometimes it stings a bit, and it’ll hurt him more than it does me.” 

Bofur pulls back sharply and regards Nori and his sharp eyes. The edge might be love, he is no longer giddy about it. Nori giggles wickedly, with just enough mischief that he could feasibly play it off as teasing about the Broadbeam superstitions if Bofur is really bothered. 

Bofur chews his lip for a long moment, his eyes holding the gaze of Nori’s sharp, sharp stare. He nods slowly, “I promise,” he whispers, and a slow, satisfied, trusting smile spreads across Nori’s face. His teeth are sharp too, just a little too much so. Bofur blinks and his teeth are normal, Nori’s eyes sleepy, and heavy rather than sharp, and his smile equally so. 

His fingers are still. 

“I promise,” Bofur whispers again, and then he leaves to go to sleep. He’s going to have a headache as well come morn. He quietly replaces the iron in the sachets with sawdust and burnt tin scrapings. He does it to the tea shop door sachets too, and carefully drips a putty of wood dust and wax over the heads of the iron nail heads in the furniture. 

It takes weeks. He still can’t do anything about Kistur’s iron chains, and he leaves the ones around the nursery alone anyways, just in case. No one notices but him, Bifur, and Nori. Nori watches him sometimes, quiet and sharp. 

After those times Nori brings him stories, anecdotes with no names or places, about his One. Bofur starts calling him Spoons, and Nori never drops the name. Bofur watches the Ri family settle into an uneasy peace, with Nori’s ultimatum not to so much as mention what he does for his Craft, or outside Ered Luin at all, and with Nori’s willingness to comply, purely in deference to winning his bet. 

Nori is different now, more fey. He’s still Nori though, and when he leaves as the leaves start to turn, he tells Bofur that he will be gone for longer than Dori wants, and Bofur nods solemnly. The nearest Dwarrow settlements are weeks to months off anyways, and he has a courtship to finish. 

Nori leaves, with a small package kept close, and a dance in his step that Bofur still can’t find a rhythm too. Nori is different, and Nori leaves, but he’ll always come back. He’s one the feytook that wanders into the bad rock is all. Bofur will watch for him when he’s home, and trust that he’ll come scampering back from the shale and the crumbling ledges. 

A year passed, and Bofur did not worry, and so, neither did anyone bit Dori. Feytook spread amongst the Broadbeams of Ered Luin, and Bofur just hummed. Dori raged against the title, but he never took the plain mithril alloy braid clasps out, not once. 

Nori eventually came back, and he had gifts. All was well. His teeth sharper, his peaks fuller, and a new braid with a silver clasp crowned the center peak. No one noticed, not once. Nori grinned at him, all mischief and sharpness, and Bofur thought he was going half mad. 

But still, Nori was home, and when Nori began to grow restless, too sharp and jittery at the new babe’s iron, then Bofur watched him leave, scampering back into the bad rock, the world beyond, anywhere and everywhere. He’d be back, the feytook came in kinds. 

Nori wasn’t the kind that longed and longed until it consumed him and he never returned, nor was Dori knowledgeable enough to bind him with salts and promises to keep him there. 

Which meant that Nori was the kind of feytook that left and returned as he pleased. He wouldn’t come back one day, but Bofur would watch for him. The old legends told the signs, and how to stave them off. When Nori was home Bofur watched, and Nori always returned. 

Nori was his friend, his almost brother, his kin cousin. Bofur could watch, it was no hardship to drag his friend off to go drinking when his edges were sharp, to rebind him to society with food and companionship, nor to encourage his Craft when Dori wasn’t listening to anchor him to Mahal. It certainly wasn’t hard to defend Nori when Dori smothered him and Ori. 

Now he knew that the fey could take those grown, if they wished to go. They’d taken Nori already, but Bofur made sure they couldn’t keep him. It was enough.