Things were different now. Not simply in the regrowth of the pines, the charred bark becoming less and less the norm. It would soon be just a memory the way the ash fell around his feathers, or clung to his toasted hide. It wasn’t even the addition on ravens on high, not the simple sort. The ones that kissed flames upon the totems, without burning, that drove ice into the summer air. Things had changed, the Chamber still sunk deep within the beating organ of his chest. It held something else too now, love perhaps?
The golden female that had irritated him so upon their first meeting, had grown on him. Spinning her words through his stone filled ears, chiseling at the mineral. Yards of silken thread no longer tripped him up, but wound their tendrils around his bulk, swathing him in warmth. The gemstone eyes so flighty, so seemingly filled with herself, only reflected his own now. Funny how the world worked sometimes. He had tried so very hard to drive a wedge between them, to separate himself from her chattering. To leave behind any errant thought of what a family could be, might be. He had completely and utterly failed at that task, and it shook him somewhere deep. He was never one to accept defeat, nor admit it, but time has a way of changing all things.
He could picture her swollen barrel, housing one of his many children in her womb. Raising a family, in the Chamber of course, there was no other place he would have it. He wondered if the halls of pine had ever rang with the voices of children. He had not seen a single child since he had arrived, and he doubted Erebor ever partook in child-like games of chase. He is somewhat stoic as she professes her love to him. Choosing to not soil the moment, instead taking it all in, capturing it.
”I love you too.” The words are gone, fleeting, almost as soon as they are said. That’s the thing about words though, they are not something you take back.
Dutiful Soldier|Captain of the Chamber