Author's note:

This story is the sequel to So Comes Snow After Fire, but it can also be read alone.

In order to be sure I comply with the guidelines regarding sexual content, I will post a slightly edited version of the story here on FanFiction dot Net. The complete version of this chapter is published on ArchiveofOurOwn .org. I publish there under the same username, Moonraykir.

Special thanks go to That Elf Girl, who not only has beta-read this, but has offered invaluable advice and suggestions as I've worked out the plot. Go check out her wonderful Kiliel drama, A Promise Kept, if you haven't already!

You can see the full version of the cover art for this story in the first chapter on Archive of Our Own.

Updates monthly.

Spring After Winter and Sun on the Leaves

Chapter 1: New Journeys and Hopes

"So tell me, what is your favorite of all that you have seen since you came here to Imladris?" Legolas set down his slender crystal glass and fixed his eyes on the elegant redhead, once the captain of his father's guard, seated across the table from him.

Tauriel's eyes brightened with eagerness; clearly this question was an easy one for her. "The sunrise, on that first morning," she said, smiling at the memory. "I'm sure I shall never see anything like it."

"It is a wondrous sight," the Sindarin prince agreed. And one that might have brought her sadness mixed with the joy, had she not been permitted to share it with the one now sitting close at her elbow. "And you?" He nodded to the dark-haired dwarf, who watched Tauriel with an expression of soft adoration.

"I'm afraid I've had eyes for one fair sight alone since I left home," Kíli admitted and then glanced down momentarily, apparently aware that it might seem he boasted in his victory over a former rival. Meeting Legolas's look again, he went on, "But I have very much enjoyed this chance to live among elves for a season. I should like to again, some time, especially when—" He colored for certain then and said no more. Yet Legolas guessed: surely Tauriel would want her children to know both halves of their heritage.

He took another taste of the clear, herbal liquor in his glass, set it down again.

"I am sure Imladris would welcome you both back," Legolas said. "You've become quite renowned in these six months. Even the Dùnedain talk of the dwarf who shoots like an elf and of his flame-haired bride from the wilds." He laughed, still amused by how his ranger comrades had spoken of Rhovanion, that unknown realm on the far side of the mountains, as if it were a far more dangerous place than the unsettled wastes they patrolled here in Eriador. "The two of you are much more famous than a mere Sindarin prince could hope to be."

Now it was Tauriel's turn to laugh. "There is quite enough legendary blood under this one roof to quite humble a Silvan elf." She gestured upwards with her glass, clearly intending Legolas's private chambers to stand in for the greater house of which they were one small part. "Lord Elrond is the scion of the royal houses of both Doriath and Gondolin, and his sons are of Queen Galadriel's line. Kíli is Durin's heir, and you a Sindarin prince. I even heard it said that the young boy, Elrond's ward, is distantly connected to an ancient line of kings. I am quite outranked," she said playfully, flashing a laughing look over the rim of the crystal before drinking off the last of her liquor.

"Are you not a princess, too?" Legolas asked, grinning, as he refilled her drink from the glittering decanter.

"Yes, I do often remind her of that," Kíli added, apparently grateful for the reinforcement on this point.

Tauriel's flush spread over her delicate nose and high cheeks, quite to her hairline.

Kíli said, matter-of-fact, "When we return home, I shall make you a crown to wear, and then it will be impossible for you to forget."

"Oh heavens, Kíli!" she gasped, though Legolas felt sure she was not displeased.

"I should like to see that, Tauriel," her own former prince jested. "I would return to Rhovanion specially to congratulate you."

Her cheeks still burning, Tauriel seemed unable to speak as she twirled her glass awkwardly on the tabletop.

To spare his wife, Kíli put in then, "I wasn't sure of this, at first." He lifted his glass to peer at the bright liquid inside. "It's rather like drinking a bouquet of flowers chased down with a pine tree, but, you know, actually good." He took a meditative sip.

Legolas laughed. "You taste the juniper. There are over a hundred herbs in this, hand-blended by Lord Elrond himself, I'm told."

More or less recovered now, Tauriel put in, "Your father has imported it once or twice. The benefit," she added for Kíli, "of knowing a prince and a king's steward is that one does get exposed to the cream of the cellars."

"And here I thought your friendship with me was of purer motives," Legolas teased. "An affinity for a kindred soul."

Tauriel laughed. "I don't see how this discovery should diminish your sense of my true affection. You can't imagine that even a few casks of the finest spirit could have warmed me to you, had you been humorless and condescending."

This remark earned a wide-eyed glance from Kíli, who seemed to infer accurately that Tauriel alluded to Thranduil's own haughty manner.

Legolas gave a soft, silent laugh. "Thank you, meldis." He offered her the smile that had always been rather intimate passing between a prince and his captain. It was true that he had once hoped Tauriel's loyalty and regard might one day grow to a warmer emotion. Yet tonight, his look simply told her how grateful he still was for the friendship she had always truly and freely given.

After a moment, he said, "I hear your friend Mr. Baggins sets a rare table. You should bring him a bottle or two of this."

"Aye, we must!" Kíli agreed. "I still owe him an entire barrel of ale, from my last visit."

"So you go next to the Shire and thence?"

"I've begged Kíli to show me where he was born—"

"The Blue Mountains," the dwarf prince put in.

"—so we shall go there first, before the Shire. Then we shall make our way back home, crossing the Misty Mountains at the Redhorn so that we may see the Mirrormere, where Durin himself received his crown."

"You shall soon have traveled more extensively than I," Legolas observed. "I'm glad you finally have your wish."

She smiled, clearly grateful for his benediction.

Tauriel and Kíli were, Legolas observed as the evening drew on and the sparkling liquor in the decanter ebbed lower, a handsome couple. Despite the obvious physical difference between them, there was something very complementary in their looks: Kíli's broad dwarven strength and dark coloring against her slender elvish grace and fiery beauty. Yes, now that the pang of jealousy was past at seeing Tauriel favor another at a time when Legolas had so longed for her admiration himself, the elven prince could admit that Kíli was not at all ill-looking for a dwarf. Though how Tauriel put up with that scruffy half-grown beard, Legolas could not imagine. Kíli would surely be much handsomer clean-shaven, but it was charming of Tauriel not to complain.

The elven prince had never seen Tauriel as she was with Kíli now. She, who had always been bright and eager, was more of both and more easy and sure of herself, too. Perhaps she still could not think of herself as a princess, but she bore herself with the confident air of one who entirely knew her great worth. Such was Kíli's doing, he was sure, and Legolas was glad she had found this unusual dwarf to draw her free, free of herself and free of the forest that had once penned her in.

And so later, when they bid their goodnights, Legolas told her, "I'm very happy for you, you know."

Tauriel seemed to understand that he was telling her he was not hurt that she had chosen Kíli over him.

"Thank you," she said, and kissed his cheek.

"You know," Kíli said when he and Tauriel were back in their own rooms, "I may even like your elvish prince."

Tauriel smiled, remembering the first real encounter between her beloved and her old friend. That morning on the lakeshore when Legolas had curtly interrupted the dwarf's heartfelt parting, Kíli's sharp look of jealous frustration had been far from friendly.

"I'm glad, meleth. Yet you should know, I have only one prince." She came over to the bench where Kíli sat taking off his boots and bent to kiss him. "Your highness," she murmured, her nose still caught against his.

"You're yet higher, my Thatrûna."

Tauriel smiled, not at all surprised by such a return. Overwhelming as Kíli's regard still often was, she no longer protested his lofty praise. His words, she understood fully now, were the true expression of her worth to him, and she treasured them.

She stood looking down at him as he continued to undress, unlacing his shirt, taking the embossed silver clasp from his hair. As he pulled the shirt up off his head, he met her eye.

"I don't mind if you stare at me, but you could get undressed, too."

"Yes, your highness." Tauriel laughed softly and turned away, the warm flutter of anticipation already settling in her stomach.

She unclasped her slim tooled leather belt, which she preferred to any more ornamental design of gold or silver, and then drew her hair forward over her shoulders. As she stood with her arms twisted back to the laces of her dress, Kíli came up behind her and she relaxed as the ties swished through their loops under his careful hands.

"I feel like I'm full of stars, from your elvish drink," he said. "And I've another star here in my arms." He slipped his arms about her waist, inside the loosened silk of her bodice, and kissed her below the curve of her shoulder blade, pressing his face against her so that she felt all the prickles of his beard scrape her skin. "And about him she cast her fiery hair, and her arms like moonlight glimmering," he sang against her, his deep lilt giving the tune a much wilder feel than when they'd heard it sung in the Hall of Music several nights past.

"Kíli, you are drunk," she observed, a smile tugging at her lips. She drew her arms free of sleeves and let the dress fall.

"Only a little," he corrected, hands sliding down over her hips. "Do you mean therefore to refuse me?"

"How could I ever possibly refuse you?" Tauriel laughed, entirely delighted by him. "Especially when you are full of stars?"

Kíli let go of her with a teasing caress, apparently inviting her to show just how much she did want him as well.

She turned and then, leaning over him near enough that she could feel the heat of his skin, though they never touched, she draped her hair over his shoulders. Then meeting his eyes with a very arch look, she stepped slowly back once, and again, so that all those loose, soft locks slid over him.

As her last curl fell from his neck, Kíli reached for her, but she was too nimble, skipping back out of his reach. He lunged, and she let him collide with her, tumbling them both atop the feather mattress.

"You know, that's the loveliest use my Khuzdul name has ever been put to," Kíli remarked as he smoothed Tauriel's hair down over her cheek. Before tonight, when Tauriel had by some inspiration addressed him thus in a moment of passion, his true name, Lakhad, had been reserved for rare ceremonial and legal use alone.

She made a happy sound against his chest and curled closer to him as he sat up against the carven headboard.

"How can I possibly sign Lakhad on some dry old legal document now that you've sweetened the word so? Surely, t'would be a profanation."

Kíli felt her face twitch against him and he knew she smiled.

"I suppose henceforth, you must choose some other name. 'Kíli,' too, will surely no longer be permitted, after the number of times I've called on you by that name."

He chuckled. "And what shall I go by?"

"Bornîf. It means "red-faced" and is quite hideous, so I shall be sure never to call you that in a tender moment by mistake."

"You're very clever, my love." He tucked his chin down to kiss her brow.

Lightly, he traced his fingers down her neck, over her shoulder and the lean, graceful muscles of her arm, his hand resting at last in the curve of her waist. By the Maker's sacred anvil, she was slim as a wand or one of those thin, flexible blades he saw the guard of Rivendell carry! If he hadn't known how strong she was from her performance on a battlefield (and from rather more intimate exercise in the bedroom) he would have feared her too delicate to chance bearing a sturdy babe of dwarven blood, or at any rate, half dwarven blood.

"Tauriel, tell me," he pondered, "When might we be able to hope for a child? Now would not be too soon to think of it, for a dwarven couple."

She shifted, stretching out those long legs beside his own and lying back to gaze up at him.

"Most elven pairs have a child within the first fifty years of their marriage," she said calmly.

"Fifty years?!" Why, he would be well into his second century by then!

She gave a soft breath of laughter. "Such would be accounted a short time by an elf."

"Yes, but Tauriel, isn't there anything..." He had only a vague idea of how these matters worked among his own kind, and no idea at all when it came to elves, but surely they need not wait so long for a first babe. And if they ever hoped to have a second—

Tauriel turned onto her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows to regard him. "But don't you see what else that means, Kíli," she said with a meaningful smile. "For an elf, it is several centuries at least before the first flame of love subsides."

"Oh." He had never considered this likelihood before. Every other elf he had seen was so cool and collected that, had he ever thought to imagine how they made love, it should not have been with the ardor he and Tauriel knew. More than once, he had half wondered if the spirit and passion she showed was unique to her, either because she was special or because she loved him, a reckless—yes, impatient—dwarf. And if the latter was so, who knew how long her desire might last, when he was a swiftly-changing mortal? But now that she spoke, he realized that it was more than likely he had never seen any elves who were recently matched. Perhaps they had all once loved as he and his Tauriel did now.

He ventured, "So, you mean we'll be this, well, interested in each other for the rest of my life?"

"I don't know. Yet perhaps. How is it for dwarves?"

"Most bear children between the ages of nine and thirteen decades, though some do continue after that, if their interests are not taken up by other tasks." Kíli certainly found it hard to imagine how his own desire could fade for a woman who would forever remain as fair and young and sweet as Tauriel would. "You know Bombur has fourteen children. He and his lady are still clearly very much in love with one another."

"Then it may be so for us. Truly, I do intend to make the very most of the time I have with you." She punctuated this statement by drawing her hand lingeringly along his thigh.

"And I will gladly let you. But still, Tauriel—" She glanced up, her lips still brushing his knee from having kissed him there, and Kíli's heart faltered at that sudden vibrant flash of green eyes. "I don't want us to wait fifty years for a babe."

"Nor I."

"So what do we, I mean, besides the obvious—"

Tauriel settled into the pillow beside him, her head at his side, and began drawing lazy patterns over his skin with her fingertips. "Besides, as you say, the obvious, I suppose what matters most is that we want a child. When it comes to conception, the desire, for an elf, is more important than age or season."

"You mean you just... decide to conceive?" Strange as the idea was, it would not have surprised him.

"Oh, no, it's not that immediate. Not so far as I have heard." She added this last phrase as a musing afterthought.

"Um...?" Did she truly mean she was as ignorant as he on the matter?

"Few elven children are born in these years. My knowledge of the subject is rather indirect, I'm afraid." Her fingers paused in their movement.

"Taur, if neither of us knows— Ow!"

She silenced him by tugging a tuft of hair on his chest.

"Silly, I do know that an elf's body follows her will," Tauriel went on, smoothing her fingers over him again. "So if I am willing to receive a child from you, my body's disposition will soon follow that desire."

"Soon, as in..."

"I do not know, but surely not fifty years."

Kíli sighed, relieved to know he need not expect to be halfway through his prime before he might first be a father.

"And Tauriel... Are you willing? I mean, now." He knew she wanted a child one day, but this conversation had made him once more aware that her idea of the passage of time and his might not be the same.

She lifted her head to look at him, and he thought her expression was mildly surprised.

"Yes, meleth, I am." She combed her fingers through the soft brown waves that lay tumbled along his neck. "I have always been eager for all that you might share with me. Second to marrying you, to bear your child has been my dearest wish for some time."

"I see."

She sighed happily and tucked her head under his chin. "So now, we must simply wait."

Kíli inhaled the woodsy, herbal scent of her hair as he folded his arms around her. He was glad to know that Tauriel shared his hope for a lifetime filled with all the joy and wonder and adventure that they could make together. This journey they took now, of course, already fulfilled many of their wishes. But since their marriage, a great part of Kíli's hopes had turned to the idea that he and Tauriel might share their love and delight with their children. The thought of those little beings, with all their newness and wonder, had quite captivated him. Not only would the world be fresh in their eyes, but they, too, would be creatures unlike the world had ever held. Both elf and dwarf, what talents and abilities and delights would they discover? And yet, elf and dwarf were two peoples so very different, perhaps even too different—

"I suppose it might be a while before we can be sure that what we want is truly possible," Kíli admitted softly.

"Yes."

Perfect as they were together, Kíli could not forget that Mahal had created his kind, the Allfather hers, and it might prove that he and Tauriel were simply not, well, made to conceive a child together. When he considered the possibility that they might not be able to bring forth new life of their own, he felt both impatience and dread in equal measure. If only there were some way to know now, before they'd cherished impossible hopes for too long!

"Tauriel?"

"Mmm?"

"What if tomorrow, before we leave, we ask Lord Elrond what he thinks our chances are that we might have a child? Perhaps, with all he knows, he's heard something that could give us an answer."

Tauriel settled an arm around him, the movement pressing the soft swell of her bosom to him. "Yes, we should."

He brushed the lovely, pale half-moon of her breast. "All right. After breakfast, then."

Kíli slid down the headboard till they were lying down, and Tauriel slipped off him to the pillow at his side. Turning to her, Kíli met her eyes.

"I love you, Tauriel."

Her wide, graceful lips curved into a smile. "My Lakhad." She caught the back of his neck and pressed to him for a kiss. "Le melon."

He laughed softly, remembering his initial surprise that she would suddenly think of his true name even at the height of their coupling. He imagined no dwarf for millennia had used a Khuzdul name in such a context, and he'd certainly never supposed he would ever want a woman to call him by that unromantic legal moniker during a moment of passion. Yet somehow his strange, beautiful Tauriel had made the gesture a very intimate and endearing one.

"Amrâlimê," he murmured, kissed her again, and drew the coverlet up over them both.

"We've questioned the orc prisoner, my lord. He'll tell us no more than we already knew. His raiding party is by now leagues away. We suspect they issued from Gundabad, though the miserable scum won't confirm it."

"I expected no better."

"Then we're to end the wretch's miserable existence."

"Yes— Hold! Gundabad, you say?"

"Aye. From the device branded on his stinking hide, he seems to have been from that fortress."

"Then like as not 'tis where he'll return."

"Sir?"

"I suppose the remnant of Azog's army would be interested to know that they might be avenged upon one of the very sons of Thrór who slew their captain and dealt them such a humiliating defeat but three years back."

"You mean... The youngest prince, the one who married that damned elf and is away now, consorting with more of her kin?"

"It's said he went west of the Misty Mountains. Suppose the mountain orcs were watching for him when he crossed back."

"Filthy elf-lover as he is, he's still of Durin's line! Would it not be treason—nay, a sin—to raise a hand against him?"

"You blockhead! Don't you see this is our best chance to be rid of him without his blood on our own hands?"

"Aye... So it is."

"Besides, the young fool proves he's unworthy of such reverence by willingly debasing himself for an elf. You don't want to see him back here with a half-blood whelp sired on that fairy witch?"

"No! And there's more of our clansmen here think the same."

"Oh, of that, I'm well aware."

"So, I'm to release the prisoner with this intelligence?"

"Yes, Captain."

Author's note:

Thatrûna - "star-lady" (Khuzdul)

Le melon - "I love you" (I've seen different translations for this phrase, but this was one provided by David Salo in an article about his elvish translations, so I'm going with it.)

The initial plot arc of this story follows Tauriel and Kili, but we'll get back to Fili and Thorin and everyone else in Erebor after that.