Well, I'm back.

What do you know, I seem to be overwhelmed with sorrow over Dis again. I see this as a companion piece to my other short stories - Entwined, and The Education of Princes, though none of them are compulsory reading for this one, of course!

Hoping all of you are well, and offering sincere apologies for an extended absence, as well as assurance of renewed output on my part, I remain your humble servant ~ Kivrin.

There are moments in every mother's life when she realises her hopes are to be dashed. Her children will not become what she had hoped and dreamed for them. They may not become anything. She either rejects that truth, holding to a useless dream, or she learns to change her hopes, to fit them to reality.

Dis loses her world when she is too small to know what it means. She builds a new one with her hands, reclaiming life and light and joy in a dark place, and she holds onto the scraps of hope that come her way with all the might of Durin's line.

She knows it will never be enough.

When her first child is born, she rejoices to see the strength of him. He cries like a healthy babe, and his eyes are bright and alert when they first meet hers.

"A fine heir!" Thorin says when he meets Fili, holding him awkwardly. Dis stifles an inappropriate smile at the sight of him, her warrior brother, looking as if he would rather face a dragon than rock a baby. "He will make a great king one day, sister."

Dis snatches Fili back, and Thorin smiles gratefully at her, and her heart goes a little colder.

When she knows that life is quickening within her again, Dis works a prayer into the handle of the knife she is making. LIFE, she carves, and STRENGTH, and GRACE. Prayers for a daughter, cast in whispered undertones that will not be seen by others. She will not pray for prowess in arms, or bravery in battle. Mahal has never promised them all they ask, and she will not insult him by asking that he form the life inside her in a particular fashion. But Dis looks for the signs and omens at every turn, hoping every shadow of a daughter will come to pass.

Her husband is there for the birth, and they pass the babe to him first. He sits so carefully by her side, cradling the tiny, silent bundle, and offers her a weary smile.

"He will be well enough," Hali whispers, leaning in to press a kiss to her temple and to lay the baby in her arms. "Small, yes, but there is strength to be found in these hands."

Dis looks at her son – son, son, son, her heart pounds - and he is as perfect as his brother before him. She weeps silently, and Hali sings to them – strong and deep, songs of war and death. She mourns.

While Hali lives, Fili and Kili are his sons. He is a miner. His hands are strong and sure, his back and shoulders broad enough for two lads, and Dis rejoices at the light in their eyes when they look on their father. Fili tries to lift his father's pick from the time he can toddle, and begs for the songs of the mines.

"Sing, papa!" Tiny, chubby hands bat at Hali's weary arms as he props himself up at their wooden table after a long shift. "Kili would hear the mine songs!"

"Ah, would he?" Hali stays still for a moment, then launches himself at the tiny boy, sweeping him high off the ground and throwing him up, carefully judging the distance so that Fili's head just barely missed the stone above their heads. "And here I thought your brother was sleeping!"

"Papa!" Fili's protest turns into a giggle as Hali swings him low, burying his beard against the little one's exposed neck. "Sing with me, then!"

The songs of the mines are nothing like the epics Dis had learned by heart in Erebor, nor like the plaintive songs of exile her people had written since Smaug came. They move with a deliberate step, keeping the miners moving together, and as Fili's high, clear voice joins his father's deeper tones, Dis smiles. She rocks in time with the beat, letting even sleeping Kili take part in the song.

Hali could bring them up as good miners, she thinks happily. They would be strong and steadfast, bringing out from the ground the things their people would need to survive and grow prosperous again. There was no shame in the work of the mines.

Hali dies in a mining accident. It is a tragedy, a shock to their tight-knit community. Dis cannot weep.

Thorin comes to her after he is laid in the stone, after they have asked everything they dare of the Maker. Dis sits sightlessly by their bed, where her sons have curled together in the exhaustion of grief, and Thorin's hand on her shoulder is tentative.

"I cannot replace him," he says heavily, and lets out a long breath. "But I will see that your sons do not grow up without a father's care. I will teach them what I can, and see that they are ready when the time comes."

She sleeps in the chair beside the bed that night, and wakes to see her tiny ones gone. Her heart stops, and then starts again at a frantic pace until she hears them through the open door. Dis stands on unsteady feet and makes her way to the door, leaning against the rough-hewn stone as she listens.

Thorin is singing to her sons. He sings of dragonfire and loss, of gold and vengeance and the end of their world. The rhythm is that of war, and she can feel it sinking into their hearts and pulling them into the same beat. They will not be miners, now, if indeed they ever could have been.

Hali's pick still rests by the door. Fili and Kili will never touch it again.

Her brother takes them away from the time they can reasonably defend themselves. All of the logic is sound, of course. They must know how to treat with Men and with Dwarves from other clans, and how to move in the open. As Thorin is prone to reminding them at every turn, Fili will be King after him, and must be prepared.

They are gone for days at a time, and then weeks. They come back stronger and bolder each time, with tales of wild adventure and near encounters with danger (though Thorin shakes his head behind their backs and assures her there were no such dangers. Her sons have many admirable qualities, but they are prone to exaggeration.)

In the year that sudden crop failures leave all of the Dwarves tightening their belts against hunger, her children have grown tall and wild. They are browner than they ever would have been in the safety of Erebor's halls. They have grown up breathing free air and standing in the sun, and sometimes, a bitter part of Dis' heart wonders whether her parents would have despised them. They have had a happier life than they might have known in the confines of the golden halls – but it is a hard life, and they are older than they ought to be with the weight of it.

Thorin does not ask her whether they can accompany him on a long journey. There would be no point to it. They are Dis' sons, but it is Thorin they look to with admiration verging on worship, and she would not be able to stop them if she tried. He is intent on making contact with a group of their distant kin who have wandered far away, and Dis knows her brother has nothing but Erebor in his thoughts.

"It will be good for them," Thorin assures her. There is no doubt in his voice. "They will finally see real hardship, real danger. I will see they have opportunities to fight."

"Will you?" Her voice is dry as dragon's desolation. "And when they come home, will I know my sons?"

He places heavy hands on her shoulders, eyes glimmering one of his rare smiles. "I will protect them from as much as I may. They will be changed, sister. They will be ready for the quest."

Dwarven women do not wave at the windows and pine for their beloved ones. Dis does not watch their backs grow smaller in the distance, nor the sunlight gleaming on black and golden hair. She works in the forge, carving prayers into the items she has been commissioned to make: LIFE, and STRENGTH, and GOOD FORTUNE. Keep watch, oh great maker.

They are gone nearly a year, and her hands grow more weary, and her back more stooped. She wonders if she will still know them and love them when they return. Some of the warriors come home changed, she knows – hard hearts, cold eyes, hollowed souls. It would almost be easier if they did. If Thorin brings home monsters in the shapes of her sons, will it be any easier to let them go? If they are cold and hard as stone, will they stand a chance against the fire of the dragon?

Fili surprises her on the day of his return, sweeping her into his arms – so strong now, so broad, like his father before him – and laughing at her startled cry. He is the same golden boy he has ever been, and his eyes are still as kind as they ever were.

Kili limps in behind his brother, slightly shame-faced to be returning with little more than a scratch to show for all his feats of recklessness on the journey. He is overflowing with energy, life sparkling in his laughter, and Dis has to sit down and compose herself again. They are no longer children. They are good dwarves, strong and true, and her last hope that she would be able to let them go crumbles away in the fresh breeze they bring in with them.

Dis has given up all her finest dreams for her children – all the ones that would keep them safe or offer them a fighting chance. Her fingers clutch the rune-stone she has carved, every prayer she knows worked into such a small space. It is all she has left to give.

She works the prayers into every item she carves when Thorin takes them away again, far over the Misty Mountains. RETURN TO ME, she prays. The stone she made, she gave only to Kili, to remind him of his promise. He is reckless and wild, led by his heart, and she needs him to think. She has no stone for Fili, because if Kiki does not return to her, neither will his brother. They will both come back, or neither of them will.

And on the day the ravens arrive, carrying news from Erebor, her heart does not leap with hope. Dis, daughter of a ruined kingdom, has known far too long what dragonfire means. She does not come away from the forges with the others to hear the news, because she already knows what the ravens carry. She carves one last prayer, the last hope of her heart, and sets down her tools. She looks to the sinking sun, blood-red on the horizon, and sees in it the forges of the Maker.

"Wait," she whispers. It is the only prayer she has left for her brother, for her children. "Please wait."

The sun sets, and the bells begin, once again, to toll mourning for her family. Memory, and sorrow, and stone graves under a mountain that is nothing to her now but a funeral pyre. This is what has become of her children.