Afterward, Sigrid finished her sewing as Fili sat behind her and rebraided her hair.

In the immediate afterglow, as Sigrid curled up on the blanket, Fili had torn a few strips off of his ruined breeches and soaked them in the lake. "See, you ladies are a lot less messy than we are when it comes to sex," he'd told her as he cleaned his sticky white cum from her belly and breasts.

"It doesn't feel less messy," she mused, giggling as he spread her legs and stroked another damp cloth over her inner thighs. Her bloomers were folded on top of her shoes now; it seemed silly to keep them on considering what they'd just done together. She knew she should feel more self-conscious but she felt too warm and tingly to care. Fili certainly didn't seem to mind her nakedness, taking every opportunity to sneak a kiss to some normally obscured part of her body: behind her knee; her shoulder blade; the dip between her belly and her sex. It made her toes curl with pleasure.

Now they were sitting comfortably on the blanket, Sigrid cross-legged between Fili's legs as he plaited her hair in an intricate dwarf braid. "Braids can be a whole language of their own," he explained. "If I had the proper beads and ribbons I could make your hair tell a story."

"Oh?" She smiled as she bit through her thread and examined her handiwork. It was clearly a nightshirt that had been turned into a pair of makeshift short pants, but they'd do well enough to guard Fili's modesty until he could get back to Erebor and change into some proper clothes. "What kind of story would you have it tell?"

"Hmm... Something simple, I think. I'll leave the sagas to Kili. He could braid enough drama into Tauriel's hair to last a lifetime."

Sigrid laughed and looked over her shoulder at him. "I prefer simple," she agreed, admiring his handsome face and kind blue eyes. "Life is too complicated as it is."

She reached back to rest her palm on his cheek, her smile softening as he leaned into the touch. "What would your simple story be?" she murmured, stroking her thumb across his cheekbone.

His hands fell from her hair as he wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her back to rest against his chest. "Just a word," he murmured, his lips drifting from her ear and down her neck to her shoulder.

"One word? Such delicate braidwork for one word?" Sigrid closed her eyes, dreamily reaching her hand further back to play with Fili's own braids.

"Mm-hmm."

"And that would be?"

"'Mine.'"

She laughed. "My dear Prince Fili, I am the Lady of Dale! And you say I'm yours? You're being a bit presumptuous, don't you think?"

"No." He grinned at her, full of mischief. "You're Sigrid, remember? Not the Lady of Dale. Not to me."

"Mmm... I remember." She turned in his arms and cuddled against his chest. "And you're Fili. Remember?" Her fingers toyed with his hair, idly curling it around her fingers. "My Fili."

+%+%+%+%+%+%+

And Fili kissed her and said, "Yes."

THE END