Title: Shâlakbashd Beseka (Wave Washed)
Fandom: The Hobbit
Rating: G
Length: 2700
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: Thanks go to Zana, Morgynleri & Icka for encouragement & sanity-checking. This is part of my Iron and Light series, which is an AU of Zana's Lay of Dwalin the Dwarf, but should be able to stand on its own.
Summary: Bifur and Thorin have a conversation


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Wave sculpture by Terry Smollo

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Shâlakbashd Beseka (Wave Washed)

Thorin's chamber was empty when Bifur arrived to take up his self-appointed watch over his King. A bed had replaced plinth and bier, but furs and coverlet were rumpled back, pillows disarrayed. Awake now, against expectation if not hope, wounds of body healed, Lord Elrond deemed (and Bifur agreed) that Thorin was yet not ready or strong enough to remove from the quiet of the Deep Stone, but neither should Thorin stay abed. Nor would he, even though it was barely three days since opening his eyes. The Elf encouraged him to sit, stand, walk as he could — challenged him, rather, but that was far better encouragement than gentleness or concern would be. Bifur hoped Thorin would not push himself to injury, but he knew well enough that recovery had setbacks as well as advances. Knowing did not make it easier to watch his King stumble and fall on smooth ground, re-learning the use of his legs.

It was not quite with alarm that Bifur noted the bench unoccupied as well as bed. Lord Elrond he knew was with Balin and Dain, the rest of the Company about their various tasks and duties. (He wished more of them would decide how they felt about Thorin being returned to them, that more than Balin and Ori would come down and see him. Oin was in attendance once or twice a day, but Bifur could not tell if it was solely as healer, or also as friend. Bombur had sent food, lovingly prepared, but not yet come himself. Nori might have visited, but if he had spoken with Thorin, neither had said. Most of all, Bifur wished Bofur and Dwalin would return. And Bilbo too, though that was unlikely. The Company should be together. Bifur's eye fell on the little carved figures lined up on the narrow ledge of the band of cirth, stiff and still in the mingled light of glow-stone lamp and the Arkenstone. It was people, his family, that Thorin needed now, not just the idea of them.)

Bifur looked around the room again. Orcrist was unmoved from its niche near the head of the bed, as were the boots and formal clothes very like those Thorin had been laid to Sleep in, that Dain had insisted be brought down immediately he knew of Thorin's waking. Bifur thought they were overdone. Apparently Thorin agreed. The heavy-soled slipper-boots and old, fur-lined over-robe that Balin had conjured were the only garb not visible. Thorin would not have gone far in bed-shirt and robe.

Not in Fíli and Kíli's tomb, though the lamp there was again lit. Bifur turned the other way down the hallway, where a glimmer of light shone from a doorway long dark. The chambers further along were those of dwarves from the first founding of Erebor, long passed into legend. Bifur approached with his own lantern turned low, walking neither loudly nor softly, not wanting to startle Thorin. A fragment of verse met his ear.

"There beryl, pearl and opal pale,
and metal wrought like fishes mail…

Thorin's voice was still rough, thin from long disuse, but no longer the unrecognizable harsh rasp it had been upon waking. For a moment, Bifur wondered if it was possible to have some of Beorn's honey brought to the Mountain, or if Bombur might have some. Though even ordinary honey would be a help, soothing for a dry, stiff throat. It was not amber or honey that met Bifur's eyes when he stepped into the doorway, despite the warm light of his and Thorin's lanterns.

Bifur had no idea whose bones rested in the monument carved like a wave, dark blue-green marble streaked with lines like foam, set with gems every color of the sea. Water was not a usual theme of Dwarves, not like this, but angle and weight, line and setting proclaimed it Khazad indeed, even beyond the bands of cirth. Ered Luin was not far from the Western Ocean, and some of the stonework in the Grey Havens was Dwarf-wrought, but this was as if Mahal had carved for Ulmo the heart of a wave, and set it in the depths of Erebor. It was strange and startlingly beautiful. Around and beneath the wave was a plinth draped in mail like water, rings blued and burnished, washed in silver. The lines from the Song of Durin might have been speaking of this very work, for all it was in Erebor, not Khazad-Dum.

Thorin was sitting on the step at the base of the plinth, the silver in his hair echoing the silver and white in the stone. In his hands was a rope of pearls and carved shapes in a rainbow of colors — purple and blue and pink, green and black and gold. It appeared to have fallen from among the other things on the plinth at the base of the wave, shells and stones and glinting things. It looked rather like Thorin had fallen to land among them, though if he had, he had picked himself up again, enough to be sitting rather than sprawled. (Bifur remembered that unbalanced sense, knees that would not hold, finding the ground rushing up. Thorin would no more want such a thing mentioned or fussed over than he had.)

/Did you know this was here?/ Bifur asked in Iglishmek, indicating wave and walls. Even the memorial lamp was made in the seeming of silver coral and sea-foam.

/No,/ Thorin signed back, looking up and around with the beam of Bifur's lantern. /Not here on purpose./ There was a wry expression on his face and the ghost of a smile in his eyes. Bifur wondered if Thorin meant the chamber or the floor. The signs he had used were ambiguous. That Thorin even might be able to find humor in his situation lightened Bifur's heart in a way he had not thought possible. The tilt of Thorin's hand said /Join me?/ The only place he could mean was the step he was sitting on. Bifur had not imagined that gleam of self-awareness, and another strand of tight-coiled wire eased in his chest.

Bifur knew his own smile to be more of a grimace, but he gave it to Thorin freely. /But of course/ he said, adding the flourishes of honor and respect to the sign that meant 'Thorin' in genuine feeling. He hung the lantern on the bracket by the entry, and came to sit on the broad step. Close enough to catch Thorin should he come over faint, though that was a thing less and less likely, between his King and any danger that might come through the door, but not blocking the light.

For a moment they sat, unspeaking, watching the flicker of light move over the rich colors and textures of the stones spilling in Thorin's lap. Appreciating both the craft and the beauty of the piece together. Bifur recognized pearl and crystal, the iridescence of nacre and the sheen of silver, even the branching stone twigs, but not the richly and variously colored carved pieces. He reached out to touch one, a vivid, deep blue sphere incised with curves that echoed the darker spots within the stone. It did not feel like stone, cold and hard, but warmer, lighter. Bifur's surprise must have shown on his face, because the corners of Thorin's eyes crinkled in a smile.

Thorin touched the green spiral-cut shape next to Bifur's blue sphere. "Farakh'aban. Coral. Ulmo's gift. Coral from every corner of the sea. They grow under water, living rock, building edifices on the bones of leviathans, making homes for the little creatures of the deep. Nearly everything in this necklace was alive, once. Ikyêl ebnel âzah" Thorin's voice was low, less rough than before. There was a measure of both wonder and peace in it. "They have slept under these stones for a thousand years, undimmed."

"They are beautiful" Bifur said, the formal, ancient words of the tongue Mahal had given them fitting in this place. Now that he knew they had once been alive, he could almost see it, hear it, taste it, a sense he had not words for in any language; as he had perceived that Thorin was not gone, not dead, his spirit still tethered to his broken body. That thread had wavered over the long wait, though it had flickered and frayed the most at the beginning and the very end of the Sleep. After the battle, Bifur had hardly known what he was seeing, desperate chance a better choice than immediate and certain grief. Three days ago, Lord Elrond had assured him that what he was seeing was a true thing, and tasked him with careful watch. Not that Bifur needed leave to stand watch for Thorin, but it was good to know he was not alone in his perceptions, and that he could be of direct and immediate help. Even now he sat a little straighter for it, felt that as much as the orc-axe had taken from him, something of use and value had grown of it. Like the corals.

Another small silence fell. Bifur watched the lantern light pick flashes of color from the walls, the gems, the mesh of the mail, the veins of metal in the marble, the silver in Thorin's hair. When Thorin spoke again, it was almost as if the stone was speaking. "Thank you, Bifur. For your friendship. For your steadfastness. For your kindness." There was a vulnerability to his expression that Bifur had not seen before, quite different from the indignity of a body that resisted one's will, the nakedness of pain, and Bifur understood this was not his King speaking, but Thorin in his own person, one Dwarf to another. "There is no undoing what has been done, only going forward. If I have wronged you, if there is aught amiss between us, I would make it right."

Out of what depth had that come, that Thorin apologize to him? To Bilbo, perhaps, not to him. Bifur's fingers started to shape Melhekh, Uzbad, king, lord, but he stopped them. Thorin was not looking at Bifur's hands, but at his face, brows drawn and lips pressed tight as if bracing for a blow. The silence between them lengthened. What had Thorin been thinking on, before Bifur found him here? What had he to apologize for? Falling to the lure of the gold? They all had, a little. And Thorin had brought himself out of it, come forth from the depths [of ruin] to ask (not demand, not assume or take for granted) would they follow him to battle. And follow him they had. How could they not?

Thorin was looking at the blue stone set close to the green, a look of profound sorrow carving deeper the lines on his face. "It was ill-done of me to refuse your suit so harshly. I was wrong in what I said."

Ah, Kíli and the fandûna, Tauriel. A swift, doomed love, that Bifur would have been happy to have seen prosper; though not, now, at the abnegation of his own self, feeling himself too damaged to be marriage-worthy, except as a sacrifice to another’s happiness or need. That bitter, dark place was no longer where Bifur found himself. The Quest and the battle and the last three years had wrought healing in himself he had not noticed until now. At the time, Bifur had taken Thorin’s rejection of his offer as of the same strata as his own assessment of himself; he had expected no different, had offered for Kíli’s sake (and, in a sense, for Thorin’s, so tangled up over the whole thing) and had not been surprised or particularly hurt at being refused. The angry, prickly cloud that snarled around Thorin to Bifur’s odd perceptions had smoothed and lightened, and no more was said on the subject.

But Thorin was still speaking, or perhaps speaking again after a silence in which Bifur had been thinking, the words slow, effortful, but not hesitant.

“Any Dwarf would be fortunate to have your love, whatever their rank or lineage. You offered honor for honor, and I did not, could not, see that. I was ashamed, of myself more than anything. Honor is never lost by love, nor by compassion. You reminded me of that, and I should have thanked you. I thank you now, for that, and all else.”

Not unlike the sensation of a wave tumbling over him, taking his breath and leaving him blinking dazzled eyes, Bifur realized that Thorin had not then, and certainly did not now, see Bifur as less because of the axe, did not see him as less at all. It was his own self that Thorin doubted, his own worth as a Dwarf, a person, an uncle, a friend, apart from the armor and weight that was uzbad, melhekh. It wasn't just Thorin’s frame and flesh that was vulnerable, fragile in recovery, his spirit and heart were as well.

As had not his own been likewise? But Bifur was not Balur, to hammer at precarious foundation stones. No, he would see such stones set sure and true and sturdy again for Thorin, not cracked. /”I hear you and accept your apology. I will not say none was needed, for you needed to say it, I think, and thus good to hear. I am honored in your trust in me./

The harsh lines in Thorin’s face eased at Bifur’s words, sincerely spoken and emphatically signed. The formality of Khuzdul was a comfort to both of them, giving a little distance from the immediacy of feeling, but also allowing an ease and intimacy of shared language, wholly theirs. "Thank you, " Thorin said after a moment, "for your care and faith in me."

To that, Bifur had no reply but a smile and a light touch to Thorin's hand where the coral chain still lay. Thanks were not needed, but always nice to hear. They sat for a time in the glimmering light, surrounded by stone and Made things, present with each other in a way neither previous or present life had much allowed.

At length Bifur remembered that the day was advancing, and small as Thorin's circle of friends might seem, the people in it were sincere in their care. He caught Thorin's attention with a gesture. /Balin and Elrond will be done soon./ They will worry if you are not there when they return, Bifur did not say. Thorin knew it well enough. Bifur very sincerely hoped that Dain would not be with them this time. That was a rockfall waiting to happen that none of them needed, Thorin least of all.

Thorin's breath was not quite a sigh. "Yes, and we will both be looked for, I do not doubt." He began to gather himself for the effort of standing.

Bifur stood. When he held out his hand, Thorin took it, levering himself to his feet with a small sound of effort that he did not suppress and Bifur did not remark. Reverently, Thorin laid the necklace back among the loose gems and shells scattered on the mail drape, one loop caught up on the carved foam froth of the wave. It was right that it stay where ancient hands had placed it. When Bifur reached for his lantern, Thorin handed him the one he had been carrying. "Leave it. There should be light here again."

Nor did Bifur remark on Thorin's choosing to rest a hand on Bifur's shoulder for balance, rather than depending on the wall as they made their way back to the warmth and light of Thorin's chamber, but the weight of that trust loosened the last band of worry around Bifur's heart.

A long road yet to go, yes, but Thorin, his friend, his King, leader of the Company, and one of his family, was once again awake, healing and himself.

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Notes:
1. The Song of Durin - found in the chapter 'A Journey in the Dark' in The Fellowship of the Ring

2. Coral really does come in all colors of the rainbow.

3. Thorin is primarily apologizing for events in this chapter from Zana's original story: Spare Parts, Bifur and Kili, and her commentary on that chapter: here.

Khuzdul (from the Dwarrow Scholar's excellent dictionary, though I started this before the major revision, and have not gone back to see if any of what I used has changed.)

Ikyêl ebnel âzah — Living Stones from the Sea
Farak'abban — Corals)
Ikh-khajam Usahu — Gift [of] Ulmo
Fandûna — Elf-lady

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