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( open rp post. )
leave me a prompt or ask for one! open to pictures, text, whatever.
nsfw is cool, just link all images that might fall under that category and designate what they are in the subject line.
leave me a prompt or ask for one! open to pictures, text, whatever.
nsfw is cool, just link all images that might fall under that category and designate what they are in the subject line.
for Thorin
What began to raise the company into a twitter were the few that followed, messily but intricate facsimiles of styles worn by other dwarves in the party. Most of her attempts were cribbed from braids that meant nothing in particular aside from the wearers' personal preferences. One or two, however, spoke of achievement or skill worn as badges of honor.
A very particular plait, which she'd taken to wearing along the crown of her head, screamed in its unspoken language of love, dedication, and a bond with a helpmate forged by no mere mortal hand. Were the dwarves possessing of a poetry they'd let outside eyes see, that braid would be it. Additionally, it was implicitly masculine, a message from husband to wife.
Belle wears it tonight as she presses a stub of graphite between her fingers against her journal's page.
"I thought you said you wouldn't be visiting tonight," she said, her attention clearly caught up in what she's sketching. Still, there's a little smile at her lips.
They've been seeing so much of each other recently.
(She should mind it. She doesn't.)
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And the braids, loping along her head in an unabashed welter, no less a convoluted mess for all their woven softness. Oh, the braids.
Thorin moves to her washbasin, his expression lowered before she can look up and catch it. He helps himself to the clear water, not with contemptuous assertion or cold avoidance, but knowing he is welcome, and at ease in that knowledge. An unimaginable state, not so very long ago, but then so much about his human wife has already eclipsed the limits of imagination. The bulk of his own hair is tied, bound back from the heat of the forge, and this keeps it from soaking while he rinses the worst of the ash and soot.
“The rest of my work can wait,” he says between splashes. There is warmth in his voice, a quality which does not diminish its deepness but makes it more malleable, somehow, capable of greater expression even when confined to brief syllables. And what it conveys now is his pleasure in the visit, in no way negated by his next words’ altered tone.
“There is something we must discuss.”
i'm so sorry i had to tweak that last line or i'd never get over it
Only among the lowest peasantry of her kin would her appearance be deemed acceptable upon a wife greeting her husband: a work dress caked in the soot that cannot be escaped anywhere in the encampment, billowing from the smithy in clouds, an apron just as filthy and inexcusably wrinkled, and boots. Soft leather, good for traveling, but boots, covered in mud to the toes. She never deigns to hide them, instead letting her feet dangle from wherever she sits. Tonight, her legs are folded under her, propping her curled body upwards as she scrawls so intently.
Her appearance, however, has never seemed to bother him, lest he's never spoken of it - and he would, she believes, speak if he were displeased. On her part, his presence in rolled-up shirt sleeves, his usually (and unfairly) regal mane tied up and out of his way, has hardly even registered.
However, if pressed, she may say she feels more comfortable around him this way, prefers him this way.
"There remain parts to be designed, and the details are not quite here yet, but..." Already, she's nearly beaming at the scheme she cultivates, a sparkle twirling in her features as she faces him fully.
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Only when she turns does he toss aside the towel, and reciprocate her full regard. There is nothing false or forced in his expectant air, one brow arched a little above the other, his gaze open and interested though his mouth remains more settled. But in truth he has the expression well-in-hand; one would have to know him through long years indeed to guess how nearly, and how helplessly, he’d broken into a smile. And no subtle thing, but a parting of lips to draw up even the overshadowing beard, that fleeting flash of teeth which some might call a grin.
This rarest event has not been checked due to lack of comfort with the witness, but because Thorin doesn’t wish her to misconstrue his amusement, especially in view of what first prompted it. And if Belle’s enthusiasm grants him something of a reprieve, he’ll take it gladly, with neither pride nor patronizing to his portion.
“Show me what you will, then.” He steps closer to her side, but stops well short of leaning in, the arched brow heightening a fraction as his voice turns gently goading – no real spike in it, of course, save for perhaps himself at the end.
“Unless you had rather be subjected to my guesses.”
ty tolkien for making Men a race so i can make terrible wordplay with man vs. Man
A fox in repose is a well-thought comparison, for Belle upon one of her tears is a force of nature itself. Her mind is a curious contraption, the thoughts falling from it as water through a sieve with almost no action on her part; the ideas have her rather than the reverse. With him close by, she has nothing to constrain those ideas, either, and she lifts her work to his eye level. Her thumb keeps the journal open as she explains, with a widening grin of her own design and a comfort all rolling shoulders and a head tilted his way, the plans she has for a new tool perfect for detailing small craft pieces previously thought too impossible for even the steadiest, most skilled of hands. Of course, she reasons, her index finger drumming against her chin as she thinks aloud more to herself than him, the development remains entirely theoretically, and there are more than a few tests she must run first -
Her fingers, always at large when she muses along her deepest of topics, move from her face to curl at the braids in her hair. Ah, that is far from specific enough: she fiddles, momentarily, with the infernal braid, laced with as much meaning as hair.
"What do you think?" Her question is in many ways an afterthought, however sincere she is about wanting to know his opinion. Though their minds move in different strides, she finds his input beneficial - perhaps it is those differences that do enrich her so. What had started out as verbal spats pushing closer and closer to a declared war has now morphed into something...something...
She adjusts the braid again, her whole body shifting forward as her posture slumps again to mirror an old miser's over his ledgers. The old ladies back in the village would have scolded her fiercely for the negligence; she'd develop a hunched back and, beyond that, it makes her look so knotted and gnarled. What man would find that appealing?
As if Belle would care overmuch for the opinions of men. As if catching a man's heart could be anything more than an abstract for her. Men, men, men, she has no time for and less interest in Men.
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This study does not typically distract him, though he could no longer call himself, if turning inward that same scrutinizing lens, indifferent to it. Yet in the moment her tugging of the braid captures his attention, as perhaps it must, given that one plait’s power to incite such a fuss.
Thorin isn’t bothered by the potential for jests. None of his kinsmen have commented on the matter with malice – degrees of disbelief, awkwardness and mirth, yes, but not malice – and if the dwarf exists who would do so, they dare not tread within easy leagues of here. It’s not even that he takes umbrage at the flouting of their customs. Though certainly at one time he would have (and undoubtedly to grand effect), when still perceiving the braid-wearer to be a presumptuous outsider, incapable of genuine respect for, let alone solidarity with, dwarvenkind.
Knowing all that Belle is capable of, now, his chief reaction is not one of embarrassment or indignation, however much he realizes that the wayward braiding ought be stopped … or at least better informed. What he feels is closer to wonder, and something soft-edged and dangerous as hope; for though it may not follow the prescribed language, the message in his eyes is anything but meaningless. She chose to braid her hair, to bind it not from duty, but from gladness. And with that choice is presented a singular possibility, as unexpectedly tantalizing as it is altogether unforeseen: that she willingly claims the tether not only to his people, but to him.
His gaze has been fixed on her, needless to say, but it drops to the journal soon enough. His mind is too admiring of her plans to long ignore them, and too analytical to forgo a thorough assessment.
“It would be costly to make one for every rune-worker,” he says slowly, adding together the list of possible materials jotted under her schematics. “But worth it for what we’d recoup in production time alone.” Her project doesn’t conform to the old ways, but in their wanderings Durin’s folk can ill afford to reject new methods out-of-hand; crafting on the Road cannot always be done as it was under the Mountain.
“This is well done.” Thorin almost has to duck his head to catch her glance, so centered is Belle on the pages she holds. But there’s no condescension in his praise, succinct yet most sincerely offered.
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No one had taught her anything about dwarves or business, but she'd learned all the same. This self-guided tutelage had unexpected outcomes, as well: a few of the more genial dwarves, or ones who were more observant and at least fair-tempered, were somewhat endeared by - if nothing else - her determination to unearth any knowledge she could.
"Then I must make the prototype as soon as I can," she says, her excitement bubbling over at the prospect of a new task at hand. Why, she is so thrilled with the prospect that her cheeks have begun to flush, a trait she knows the dwarves find either amusing or distasteful, with little in between.
The praise he offers may hold its own contribution to her blush, unlikely as that really seems. The less thought put into that notion, the better.
Her gaze turns downward for a moment, whether she is collecting herself or (more likely) mentally listing what she will need to construct her device. Her index finger traces circles into the air, one, two-
And then-!
"Oh," she interjects, looking up at him once more, a touch sheepish this time. "You had wanted to speak with me about something, as well. What was it?"
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Through all her time abroad Belle has fought for every scrap of learning, and her husband has watched her at the fray, long before he had any desire to witness (much less wager her a worthy victor). But the greatest contest was between them both, a pitched and protracted battle whose unlikeliest outcome seemed a semblance of basic understanding. That they managed to push past the truce into joint incursions, a shared venture through the territory of loyalties tested and confirmed, is nothing short of astounding; and he credits Belle where credit is due, for Mahal knows he did not make it easy for her.
If she wished in the aftermath to employ ingenuity for her own purposes alone, he would not gainsay her. But she stands here generating plans that would benefit them all, and for that there is no blush or braid that could render her lesser in his view.
Small wonder, then, that he’s somewhat reluctant to broach the subject come to hand. It is important to him that she not mistake his intentions, and though Thorin in his day has unflinchingly advanced much thornier topics – commanded recalcitrant dwarf-lords, counseled heedless nephews – he is not entirely certain of how best to proceed.
“Yes,” he replies firmly, followed by a lengthy pause, while he straightens and draws an inward breath, barely perceptible.
“It’s about your hair.”
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It must be forgiven that Belle, in her most exposed and tenderest of moods, shows no sign of hiding her confusion. Her hair? To her recollection, no part of her appearance has ever been an object of discussion with her husband nor his closest associates. At first, there had been a few japes about her not having a beard - which she is quite glad of, as she is certain it wouldn't quite fit her face as well as it might a female dwarf - and how strangely she dresses in shifts more scrap than new, but nothing more.
Her hair. Is it filthy? Well, that is to be expected, she should probably wash it - ah, and there had been the incident last week.
"I may have singed it a little," she confesses, reaching up to touch an offending strand. There is always a sign from above that an idea is not a good one, she supposes. That experiment could still be saved, she believes, and the crispier bits of her hair will grow out.
(She thinks.)
She wrinkles her nose, not in feeling transgressed, but in pure bewilderment at this sudden broach of the topic.
"But I must admit, I am not sure what you mean."
The braids have been such a constant companion to her that they do not present themselves as culprits here.
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“I mean your braids,” he gets out at last, more forcefully perhaps than is appropriate (and even a slight increase in force from his voice is like a bellows blast). “You are not making them properly.”
In the wake of those words Thorin grits his teeth, but it’s a fleeting indulgence of frustration. He refocuses on Belle’s face, and his stance eases, his brows unfurrowing over the steady gaze he gives her.
“You’ve begun to wear braids, fashioned after those we wear. I’ve seen it, and so has the rest of the camp.” There is no need for a significant pause, when he knows she is by now well-accustomed to the vigilance of dwarves.
“You don’t realize that these braids have specific meanings, in accordance with our own customs and designs, things an outsider could never know. We do not just weave our hair at whim. To do so invites misunderstandings which are considered … unseemly.”
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Still, she can't stop how her shoulders stiffen at the sudden rumble in his response to her.
...ah.
If the expressions flickering across her face when he'd befuddled her had been light reflecting off a running stream, they are now the riptide, all pressed lips and furrowed brows as she takes in what he's said. Perhaps there is even a flash of embarrassment nestled in her features, and were she of a weaker constitution, that is where her expression would rest.
"It started out as a way to keep my hair out of the way during the journey," she begins, returning her attention to him as her her hands fall to her lap. "Though I did think the braids were beautiful and wanted to try my hand at them. I could hardly believe how difficult it was."
Anyone else would be embarrassed at such a misstep; Belle, instead, is clearly interested in something more. Something deeper.
"Then, it's a form of communication?" Another language she'd have to decode, then.
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“There is some practicality to it,” he muses, not for an instant missing the changes in her expression. “Our hair grows thick, and all unbound would be a nuisance, whatever our occupation.”
Thorin turns away from her, long enough to look for the barrel of drinking water she keeps by her makeshift desk. He takes a battered cup and fills it, offering her the draught. If it’s presumption to guess that Belle has not recently quenched her thirst, unwilling to break from her sketching even for a short reach, he has little concern for the offense.
“But it is also a communication, yes. There are braids that signify everything from a warrior’s ranking in slain foes to a toymaker’s preference for certain tools. So too we wear them as messages exchanged, between colleagues, kin and comrades. A liege chooses one braid for his lord, an apprentice one for her mistress. A mother for a son, a mine captain for a crewman.”
Unbidden, his eyes once more follow the length of Belle’s plaits, starting with a smaller fishtail whose style it seems was inadvertently based on that of the heartiest imbiber in camp. “A drinker for his mead-mate,” he adds slowly, jaw tightening this time not on teeth but returning humor. Thorin’s lips don’t so much as twitch, but it’s a close thing.
Then his glance moves over the main affair, her crowning braid in all its confused glory; and though the lightness around his mouth remains, his voice takes on a lower timbre.
“A husband for a wife.”
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Aside from the disregard her poor father had for his own good health - an inheritance from father to daughter, on occasion - these are good memories, and she wears a wistful smile as she takes the tin cup from Thorin.
"Incredible," she breathed before taking a sip, the tepid water an unwitting balm to her throat. "There is nothing like that where I am from, nor do I suppose it is common among any Men." So, she has been wearing all sorts of "mixed messages," as they say, none of which apply to her. All right, she must admit, she might laugh at herself behind her hand were she someone else, too.
Yet the discovery is worth the small price of embarrassment, she reasons, as she continues to adjust her understanding of dwarf culture and thinks aloud as she traces the lip of the cup with her thumbnail.
"We wear jewelry, but that's not quite the same. Hunters," or at least one hunter, whose memory is not nearly as fond as her others, this evident in the way she gesticulates, "would often haul the heads of their kills around, to show off their skill with a bow. That is far less tasteful."
(Or, at least, a certain individual who did it frequently was unpalatable.)
After a cursory read of his expression, she sets the cup down on the desk near her repaired music box and reaches to pull down one of the braids. It is one that proudly announces its wearer as a master at throwing knives. The marriage braid, for the moment, stays.
"While no one would mistake me for a drunken husband, I think, it isn't proper for me to wear something I haven't earned." One elbow rests on her desk as she tilts her head. "If there is another way to wear them, more suitable to me, then I must learn how to do so."
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These are the words in Thorin’s mind as he watches Belle’s pondering. He and her voracious curiosity have oft been at odds, yet he admires how consistently she chooses it over petty reaction. Furthermore it’s evident that she will not jump to conclusions, either from overeagerness for the foreign or from disdain for the familiar. When she determines her next step, there is no cloud of chagrin or resentment about her limpid gaze; and as much as the determination itself, that fills him with pride. It is a quieter sort of pride than he is accustomed, but welcome nonetheless.
“It was a fine first attempt, by the standards of your own people.” This not at all the cold compliment it could be, coming from him, but an honest assessment of her ability. He is of course aware that dwarves are not the only race to style hair, and he has seen braids amongst many human settlements. Though for some inconceivable (but doubtlessly inane) reason they seem to prefer it as the province of their women.
“But the skill with which we make our braids cannot be learned in an evening. The arrangement and number of the strands, their exact placement and measure – the slightest variation can mean the difference between a line of verse intoned or shrieked.”
Thorin walks a few paces around her desk, running one hand along the edge in thought. “It takes us years to master, and much guidance from our kin. Still, I will try to explain some part of this, if you wish.”
His eyes have been on the braid unraveling, but now they come back to Belle’s face. He stops, and without more thinking of any sort, turns his calloused palm up and open on the desk between them.
“Or I could show you, myself.”
...these babies, they are so freaking precious i'mma die
Yet there is kindness, too, in slivers that crack through at the most unexpected of times, as gems are wont to appear in the crags of ancient earth with a little coaxing. Except gems are, for all their beauty, always chilled to the touch. While pretty, Belle finds little purpose in anything meant only for show. To be beautiful there must be a higher use, a sense of contentment.
A warm feeling.
Thorin can be warm. The occurrence is rare, however (at least in the past, as it hasn't escaped her peripheral notice that during moments like this, when they are alone together, she can see...something that wasn't there before), yet it's that very fact that earns a slow, loping grin from her once she makes (quick, careful, secretly fluttering and buried deep) notice of his hand.
The hand which, on no related note, hers brushes against as she pulls herself to one side of her low, wooden bench to make space for him.
"I do try to be a quick study, but it's easier when you have an example." Already eager eyes take inventory as she once more focuses her gaze on him. "You have the time?"
...she asks, already having invited herself to impose, expecting him to sit down. Still, he would not have offered if he did not intend to follow through. This is another trait in him Belle admires, though it had taken a grand display in personal forging to get to the core of the matter: he does not indulge in pleasantries for pure pleasantries' sake, not in the way even she had been taught to do to survive the politics of the village. When her husband shows care, he means it.
And showing her how to do it on himself, which she fully expects, is a thoughtful act indeed.
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By the time he comes back round the desk, Thorin’s expression is not half so convincingly impassive. He is willing to give it freer rein, since she’s had opportunity to judge for herself the business that brought him hence, and her smile gets something in reply. At each corner his mouth crooks irresistibly upwards, too far for the dark of his beard to hide. And if he fights a grin’s fullness, now, it’s only because he would savor the need.
He’s still standing as he realizes, both from her words and the direction of her assessing glance, what Belle expects her example to be. Perhaps he had not so fully considered the matter himself, but in the moment it’s clear to Thorin that only one course seems fitting.
“Time for your hair, not mine,” he answers, the pitch of his voice softening what might come out blunt and wry. “FĂli and KĂli once practiced on it arduously enough for me to know it a challenge, even for dwarven hands. And in any case, your braids will shape their meaning differently than ours. I cannot show you how best to form the translation, if I have never touched your hair.”
He takes a seat on the bench beside her, leaving a comfortable space between them. Though close enough he can see the individual strands stirred by the shifting air, lifted free of her loosened knife-thrower’s plait, crimped and textured like amber in the lantern light.
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"All right," she says, idly brushing her fingers of her left hand through her hair, the glint of the wedding ring buried in dark locks for a moment. "No one besides myself has ever touched my hair, I must admit."
Still, her desire to absorb from this new pool of knowledge outweighs any misgivings she might have or silly, bubbling feelings of foolishness that effervesce in her throat.
(And, even disregarding that determination she possesses in spades, she will be in the hands of Thorin. That should, in the most cold, detached of theories, make no difference, nor should his being her husband, in her comfort or discomfort. Increasingly, however, she's begun to see that it makes all the difference.)
An expression that could almost be considered as a touch mischevious blossoms across her face.
"My father tried, when I was quite young, but he did not know how. I must confess, I bit him several times." The recollection cascades from her unprompted, a habit she's only recently nurtured. Before, she never would have told him anything of the sort, out of both assuming he didn't care and her jealous fashion in guarding her softer emotions in his presence.
"He'd pull so close to the roots that it'd smart awfully."
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His thoughts on these matters carry no little sobering weight. Even so, at her confession the breath escapes him before he can check it, expelled in the muted but distinct beginning of a laugh. The sudden image of her past self gnashing teeth, combined with the present gleam in her eye, proves too much to resist. He’s turned his body slightly to face her, so the hitch of his chest is plain; and with the black fall of his hair subdued, there is nothing to overcast his look, all quirking brow and bemused cheek.
“I will need to take particular care, then.” Thorin leans back, the bench creaking under his weight, and rests spark-scorched and roughened forearms on his knees, though he keeps his head angled in towards her.
“Tell me what you wish the braids to convey. What accomplishments, what merits.” His own mind supplies some suggestions, and though none can be wholly dwarvish, he does not despair of possibilities. But in this he has no desire to lead her. The decision is rightly hers, and his role that of the translator teaching expression for an idea already well-formed.
Of course, a dwarf-wife would willingly wear braids of her husband’s own making, and he hers: the prerogative of their bond, confidence in each other’s assessments proudly displayed. Nor would the accounting between them run cold. There are plaits woven only by lovers, pledge and testament to that fiercest passion which is said to burn beyond craft-love, and in marriage overtake even the most pragmatic of dwarves.
But of those braids Thorin studiously thinks not, whatever else Belle’s errant one has made him consider.
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Naturally, that would be the first thing she asks as she catches her breath, her high, easy laughter causing a lilt in her shoulders - said laughter due more to the rumbling in his chest and the upward tug of his lips than her own childhood jest. No one, even a dwarf less trusted and valuable to him, would peg Thorin as having a scrap of humor, but here he is, pouring over lighter days with her and wearing (could she possibly call it a grin, or does that go too far?) a fine smile if she's ever seen one.
But, of course, the books. Above all of her prowess, any inventor's eye she may have or brain bred for genesis, there's the root of her passion. Despite her host husband's earliest decree that she travel lightly, she had not thrown her songs and stories to the wayside and she'd been all the wiser for her stubbornness. Many a night, when she'd been left cold and sick for a home that was less than a pinprick of light in the distance, the words had been her only companions. Again. Again. She'd read the same tales she'd always devoured most lovingly, imprinting the cadence of each sentence on her very heart.
Most of the company did not understand her affections back then. Many do not now, though they look on her with a gentler, fonder spirit than they once did.
Thorin is, perhaps, one of the few who does grasp why she curls up so close to the pages, reading for hours if she's allowed, however much of a shock his understanding did stir in her. At least, on evenings when dusk falls quicker than it should and he comes to her tent with time to spare, he does not protest when she keeps to her books and the two sit in affable silence. More recently, he has not objected to her reading aloud the ballads of great deeds and heroes of the past.
She finds she likes those nights most of all.
As she turns to let him begin his work, she keeps an appraising, inquiring gaze upon him from her peripheral.
a little bird sent me over here
...a little bird, hmm? tempted to make a varys joke.
Her fingers cradle the spine as if what she's holding is bound in the most precious, pure gold. The pages have only been open long enough to see the light for the first time (the coat of dust that still lingers on the leather jacket of the book attests to this), but she's already devoured the introduction as he stands in front of her. ]
Jon. [ She near breathes rather than properly speaks. ] Are you certain you want to give this to me?
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He's a king, now, but of a poor country under the strain of winter, and he has less to give than most would assume... no jewels, gowns only as pretty as they are warm, and so on. He doesn't think she'd like a knife or a sword as much as he thought she'd like this book.
And the sweet young girl who the book had once belonged to... well, he's a man who has seen much, given his youth, but the thought of the Princess Shireen always chills and sobers him. If he'd had any say at all, if he'd known, the child would be alive now. She would have loved Belle like a sister. It's obvious who her newest book about the Dance of the Dragons belongs with, if it cannot be with her, if it's fallen into his hands through a series of disasters. It doesn't seem like she'd ever even had a chance to read it.]
I'm certain. I remember the stories, as Maester Luwin taught them. It was a terrible war; it put an end on the dragons. But there was a fierce princess in it, and when it was over, the world went on.
[She seems quite pleased, but he adds, a little rueful,]
I'm sorry I don't have a happier story to give you.