#her hot [dead very dead] wife that was also incredibly fem

[ronnyraygun]

Some more of my Earth’s Frankie doodles because this woman is a different breed [she is going to pummel you to death].

[fizzyxcustard]

Wrong Place, Wrong Time (6) - End of part 1

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

Masterlist here

Read the completed version on AO3 here

Summary: You find yourself in 1209AD after a science experiment has gone wrong, and you are now making a new life in a small village in France. However, Sir Raymond de Merville has his eye on you and will not take no for an answer. You both embark on a passionate love affair which leads to Raymond’s downfall.

Fandom: Pilgrimage (2017)

Pairings: Raymond de Merville x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Sexual references, violence, bad language, sexual language, smut

Comments/Notes: Re-post of original story which was posted on Tumblr last year in two 12-part stories. They will now be posted in two 6-part stories instead, just to condense the story down. Now has new name rather than it being a list of imagines for each chapter. If you wish to be added to a particular tag list, for a fandom, character or actor, message me or send an ask.

For a further few weeks, you and Raymond kept to your meeting place, the dairy barn. Each night you would make love, feeling the passion of your forbidden love rise. Raymond’s father had been pushing to dissolve your marriage, but he used this to his advantage, it becoming leverage to push his son into going on one last quest in their family name. “Raymond, you go on one last mission for me, and I will not see your marriage dissolved,” the old man had said, drawing a growl from Raymond.

“Whether I go or not, my marriage to her still stands,” Raymond hissed.

Then, finally, Raymond’s father had had enough of trying to make his son see sense. “If you do not go, I shall have her killed. If we go, then I shall spare her.”

Raymond knew that if his father made a threat then it was incredibly rare that he did not follow through on it. If he did not go to meet up with the travelling Irish monks on the road who were carrying a sacred relic, then you, his world, would be killed. And there was no way that Raymond could risk you, especially when you gave him news that evening.

“I think I’m pregnant,” you said softly, smiling.

Raymond swept you into a kiss, his hands brushing through your hair. “My love, I swear that after this last quest with my father then I shall remain by your side; we shall move from this god forsaken village, and I will bleed my father dry of everything. No one threatens you and my unborn child.”

“Make sure you come back to us,” you told Raymond, kissing the ring you had given him which was around his neck on a cord.

Raymond fell to his knees and lifted your dress, kissing your stomach. “I will return to you both, my love.”

The next morning would be when Raymond left, so you made sure you savoured each other in the barn that night. You made love way past the midnight hour, your cries falling onto empty air. Both of you fell asleep in the hay, wrapped together with your clothes over you for warmth.

*****

For the next few weeks that you were without Raymond, whilst he was travelling, you exchanged letters via pigeon. Every other morning and the same pigeon would come to the barn, dropping a small piece of parchment into your hand. Raymond would declare his love to you and your unborn child in each letter, swearing that his quest would uphold your honour and your vows as husband and wife.

Each letter you kept in a small wooden box which Etienne had given you as a wedding gift, a box which he had made himself, carved with roses coming into bloom.

But, suddenly, the letters from Raymond stopped.

*****

Your Raymond was dead. He had died staying true to his word and honouring you through betraying his father, trying to bring the bastard down and take away what he truly cared about. Upon hearing the news and you had fallen to your knees, weeping. Then you stormed out of the barn where you were working, kicking open the door and screaming into the open air.

Raymond’s body was brought back to the village, wrapped in a burial shroud. You kissed the fabric, your tears falling onto him. In a fold of the fabric, where you kissed, your lips touched something cold. You opened the cloth, and there across his chest, protruding from a hole in his leather gauntlet was an arrow. The sun shone down on the weapon, and on the very edge of the curled, modified shaft, you could see a small droplet of blood.

From the very day that your beloved Raymond was buried, you vowed to avenge his death. Firstly, you took his sword from his body along with the arrow, and watched in secret from behind a tree as his body was placed into the ground. His bastard of a father stood before his son’s body, his arms crossed.

He would be first.

Revenge was coursing through your body, filling your blood so it was red hot. Raymond’s death would not be in vain; you would make sure that every man who was responsible for your husband’s passing would feel pain, excruciating and raw.

The night of Raymond’s funeral and you gagged his father after sneaking into the back entrance of the house. The old man squirmed on the bed beneath you after being woken by your knees pressing into his chest. You held a dagger above the man’s body and drove it slowly downward into his chest, hearing him scream around the gag. Something dark overtook you and a sly smirk crept onto your lips as you watched the bastard die slowly, choking miserably on his own blood. But before he died you whispered in his ear, “Raymond’s child grows in my belly, and he will rise to take everything you own.”

You left the town, watching on in sadness as Etienne slept soundly, not knowing what fate would await you. In your bag you put rations of food, weapons, clothing and your box of letters from Raymond. His sword was snug in its scabbard at your waist and the arrow was placed in an inside pocket of your tunic. The few riding lessons you had had with Lucille and Henri would prove useful as you took one of the horses from the stables and left the village for good.

Word had spread in the village whilst you were there, remaining away from Raymond’s family, but still listening for news, that Raymond had been killed by a mute. This mute was tall, broad and had a cross tattooed on his back. That was enough information for you to begin searching.

You travelled far, inquiring where you could about the mute. Your sickness began, rendering you unable to travel during the first half of the day, but your resolve to see Raymond’s murderer dead was enough to keep you going. At night, lying beneath the stars or in abandoned houses, you would look upon your late husband’s letters, crying yourself to sleep.

Finally, you got a lead. He had last been seen approaching the coast, ready to get a boat to England to move back into Ireland. You stuck to the shadows, keeping your hood up out of your face. You ate at night just before sleeping and travelled by day.

In your pocket you fingered a small bottle which you had picked up from an apothecary. It was used during surgical interventions to paralyse parts of the body, but also used as a poison if it got into the wrong hands. An overdose could easily paralyse someone completely or slip them into a coma.

You found him. You saw him sitting alone at a tavern, his dark eyes watching everyone as they walked through the building. You kept your hood up and walked in, keeping to the edge of the room, your eyes smouldering in anger. You would make the fucker pay! All the people you had asked for information had served their purpose well, guiding you to him.

Being a woman may work to your advantage here, you thought. You looked across the room, through the masses of bodies, and approached him. You sat beside him, smiling and slid your hand down onto his thigh. Repulsion racked through you for touching another man who wasn’t your dearest Raymond, and more than that, this was the man who had murdered him.

An hour later and you found yourself in one of the upper rooms of the tavern, having brought a room for the night, and you were in the arms of the mute. He was kissing you, drawing all the disgust out of you, but you were doing this for Raymond. You stopped for a moment, quickly slipping the liquid from the bottle in your pocket into the ale, and then handed him the cup. “Come and drink,” you whispered. So far and he had not noticed your slight of hand.

He drank from the cup and moved forward to kiss you again, but suddenly stopped and collapsed to the bed. A grunt of frustration rose from him as he tried to move, his eyes wide in shock.

Laughing, you straddled him, and tied his arms to the bed posts, making sure that he could not move one inch. “You’re probably wondering who I am,” you told him, grinning at him. He stared at you, swallowing hard, his body completely paralysed. “This will answer your question.” From your inside pocket of the tunic you wore, you pulled out the arrow. You slid the metal down his cheek, onwards to his chest, his eyes widening even further. Slowly you ripped open his shirt, looking at the scars across him.

His body arched as you dug the metal into his thigh and twisted. Then you followed with the other thigh. Followed then by just above his chest, digging into his collarbones, each one in turn. “This is for my Raymond, you bastard!” you growled, forcing the arrow into his neck, in the exact same place that your husband had been bitten by this animal before you.

You slipped away that night, leaving behind the bloodied and mutilated body of the mute, satisfied that your beloved had finally been avenged.

**** FIN (Part 2 is on AO3 and can be posted here if people request) *****

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Anything Richard Armitage tag list: @inkededucatednnerdy @crazytxgradstudent

Raymond de Merville tag list: @hails270105

[silver-leaf-girl]

so I read Record of a Spaceborn Few

so, I just finished the audiobook of Becky Chambers Record of Spaceborn Few last night, and haha do I have some feelings. it is a beautiful, and lovely book?

mild spoilers, and initial review-y thoughts below?

I think a lot of my friends will be familiar with Becky Chambers’ stuff, but for context (since context is such a theme in this book) - they’re queer-positive, fairly soft sci fi, focusing on the relationships (shipmates, romantic, rivalries, friendships) between individuals in the world, rather than colossal Events of Galactic Significance (esp. compared to stuff like Ann Leckie, who I also like a lot). they’re also focused on humans (and their creations, <3 Lovelace in Book 2) as a kind of marginal and hardscrabble recently discovered species that’s not up to much, rather than casting us as the kind of ‘Humanity F- Yeah!‘/humans are special/have a unique manifest destiny that a fair amount of other sci fi does (a lot of people compare Chambers with the Mass Effect universe, which I genuinely don’t like because of this).

RoSF is very much in the tradition of this kind of small-scale ‘cosy’ sci-fi, dealing with the Exodan Fleet and its inhabitants who fled an environmentally devastated Earth, and who are under the three strains of the loss of one of their Generation Ships to metal fatigue, the visit of a well-meaning but intrusive alien anthropologist (whose broadcasts back home to her wealthy alien planet are really well-captured), and the issue of emigration/immigration/decline (?) of the Fleet. It follows a variety of plot lines - a fleet archivist, a recent immigrant, a restless teen guy, a caretaker (a kind of priest/funerary worker, really interesting), and a harried mum who’s considering leaving the fleet. It really inhabits their everyday lives and concerns; it indirectly tells a bigger story about uncertain cultural identity, but is focused on these small intimate stories.

The big through-line in the book is a sense of community, shared history, and what we owe to the past. The ships of the Exodan Fleet are maintained and patched together from their own scraps; people carry on identities, meanings and (as is discussed in one rather haunting bit towards the end) even bodies and ways of living as relics from a planet they will never set foot on; and (a really key theme) the nutrients of the bodies of the dead are recycled in a really emotive and heartfelt funereal ritual. How different people struggle with the past - rejecting it, chafing against it, seeking it out to fill holes in themselves, finding meaning in it, preserving it, making it - is so key throughout the book, both in the fiction, in the language, and the structure (bookended by two naming ceremonies, using a form of words that is so beautiful I feel I have to put it in a reblog), and it puts together a beautiful picture of a changing society where people are trying to preserve the values they built it on. The notion of recognising the fleet/the fleet you grew up in - is really powerful, and honestly a bit heart-in-throat.

But the notion of keeping shared history for its own sake isn’t enough - what’s worth preserving? Politically, it’s v. interesting too - there’s quite a lot of (well-blended-in) exposition and description of how the Fleet operates, and it’s ... well, if not Post Scarcity Fully Automated Luxury Gay Pacifist Space Communism, then at least Low Scarcity Labour-Egalitarian Lib Fem Space Anarcho-Socialism. The way that humans live and coexist alongside each other - where people come together, and where the faultlines between them are - is really well-illustrated without becoming didactic, and the idea of the fleet as this utopian, half-realised, desperate-but-now-slightly adrift project is really beautiful and well-evoked. The book is hopeful and convincing about the liberatory potential of this project (there’s a beautiful bit towards the end about even people leaving the fleet still being part of it and embodying what it values and means, but is ultimately clear-eyed about the fact that it’s the marginalised, minority part of a species that is nothing special on the galactic field and is surrounded by wealthy and powerful neighbours. It’s clear about the lingering crud of human social structures, about being undercut by intense, tragic disaster, by unequal external trade and internal corruption, and about the dubious appeals of the austere space-borne (and spaceborn) life compared to what the capitalist world beyond offers - but it’s hopeful nonetheless that people can make something of it, and that the fleet can carry on.

In terms of ~queer content~, it’s not quite as rich a vein as some of the previous books (first one had a lot more queer aliens and relationship structures, second had an incredibly strong trans metaphor as a through-line with an AI working out embodiment), but it’s got a lot of stuff that works with this too? Isabel, one of the main characters, is in a beautifully described and lovely wlw relationship, and her date with her wife where they’re remembering how they met is one of the most lovely bits of the book? Sometimes it’s OK not to have difficult queer feelings be an important part of the book. Sometimes just happy elderly lesbians is all you want/need! There’s also some interesting stuff with Sunny - a sex worker - and his relationship with Eyas, a funerary worker/caretaker - about the concept of ‘caring for bodies’, and the emotional labour that goes into that?

In terms of writing, it’s beautiful and lovely, just as much a warm hug and cup of hot chocolate as any of the other books in the series - it’s not super-lyrical or evocative in its use of language, but that’s not the point - it’s heartfelt and evokes real, flawed-but-good people in messy but fixable situations. The narration by Patricia Rodriguez on the audiobook version that I listened to is fantastic - I particularly like the way that she subtly changes language and accent on the different viewpoint characters to evoke the way different cultural perspectives and denaturalising the protagonists’ narrative voice.

So yes - it’s a small, beautiful, character-focused book with an extremely evocative sense of community and history. I cried a few times listening to it.

I’d definitely recommend it - probably on its own, but ideally in the context of the other two books before it, to flesh and round out the world(s) it evokes.

[fizzyxcustard]

Dead End

Pairings: Thorin Oakenshield x fem!reader

Warnings: Suicidal thoughts and contemplation, bullying, fluff

Comments/Notes: This imagine was originally posted on my old account and on my Instagram account. I then wrote a short piece, but was quite nervous about posting it because of the themes. If you would like to be added to any of the tag lists, or even removed, message me or send an ask. 

Follow Forever tag list: @shikin83 @deepestfirefun @houseofrahl @nowiloveandwilllove @mynameisnoneya1991 @blankdblank @captainrainbowpanda @cd1242 @c-s-stars @thorins-magnificent-ass @patanghill17 @trees-and-ink @inumorph @leah-halliwell92 @greendragonette @msjava1972 @thequeenoferebor @bespectacled-bunny @ghostlyandee @raindancer2004 @dottiechan @captain-almighty

Hobbit tag list: @fentah @hails270105

Dead End tag list: @inhabitant-of-the-void @sunnysidesidra

Since you had come to Erebor and been formally welcomed by Thorin, you had never felt a part of the people who occupied the mountain. Whispers echoed around the halls as you walked past, going about your daily duties which you had signed up for. Women whispered and nudged each other, their eyes following you around rooms. One woman in particular, the head chef, named Neldra, had made it clear to you that you didn’t belong in Erebor.

Every day and you held the tears at bay, constantly reminded that you would never belong anywhere. Even in your home world, the place you had been so quickly and violently pulled away from, and others your own age scoffed you. You were unmarried, had no children and enjoyed the solace in travelling to foreign shores. Was there anywhere in this universe that you actually fit?

It seemed as though no one cared enough about you to stop you leaving. The pain was becoming tighter in your chest and to the point that you wanted to be free of it.

Each evening and you dashed into the kitchen, grabbed your food and disappeared to your room. The anxiety was balled in your chest and stomach and you shook the closer you got to the kitchen door, knowing that Neldra was behind it. She hated you, despised you, and would no doubt spit on you if she had half the chance.

***

Thorin paced his main study, his mind in knots. Not even Dwalin and Balin, his closest friends and advisors could settle this uprising.

On Thorin’s desk was a piece of parchment, the ink only just dried. It was asking you to accompany him for dinner that evening. He had a question to ask you. A very important question. The answer he both dreaded and anticipated. If your answer was no, could he face that soul crushing rejection?

To steady himself, Thorin sat down at his desk. Even out on the battlefield, facing possible death, and he had never felt this vulnerable. And he knew that this decision could cause many rifts within the community of the Dwarves of Erebor, who were already suspicious enough as outsiders. But to entertain the idea of one of them being Erebor’s new Queen? Disgusting. Such an inconceivable thought.

Thorin’s letter was shortly afterward sent to your bed chamber, via one of the hall guards. However, waiting proved painful for the King.

He sat in the main dinner hall, anticipating your prescence. You never arrived.

Thorin asked after you. However, he asked one of his trusted guards, not always believing the spiteful comments of the kitchen women.

“I have not seen her all day, my King,”the guard replied. “She is normally early for duty, but she did not report today. I thought Neldra had informed you. Maybe she is ill.”

“No, she did not inform me of it,”Thorin growled.

“Is something wrong?” Neldra asked, stepping out of the kitchen and into the hall, holding a tray of piping hot, fresh food to replace that which had not yet been eaten.

Thorin narrowed his eyes at Neldra. “I shall see to you later,” Thorin spat.

The King went to your bed chamber first, knocking. When you didn’t answer, he opened the door. Thorin stepped inside, seeing your bed tidy and all the pillows neatly stacked in place. Something was wrong with this. When Thorin had been to your bed chamber previously, making sure you had settled in, he noticed that your bed was always unmade and your table was full of books from the library. However, your room looked now as if no one occupied it. The only piece of evidence that you had ever resided there was your folded night dress on the end of your bed.

Thorin picked up your white nightdress and held it to his nose, inhaling your scent. It stirred so many emotions; love, joy, sadness and fear. Had you left him? Of course you hadn’t left him. Thorin was nothing to you. He was a King of Dwarves, not of you. You had your own ruler in your home world. Thorin had merely been the leader of a group of Dwarves whom had found you on the road, and they had protected you along the way. The bottom line was Thorin was nothing to you, despite him always hoping that you held him in your heart somewhere, even if just in friendship.

***

There were no tears, just a broken heart. It had been shattered by missing your home world, feeling isolated and being bullied by those that should have accepted you. Your breaths became pants as you looked over the stone balcony, seeing staircases beneath you. It would be quick, hopefully no pain. From such a height you had no chance of survival once you had hit the bottom.

When had your world changed to become this? A black hole of nothing but pain. Nothing was keeping you holding on to life anymore. You were merely existing and not thriving as you should have been. Everything was taunts, off-handed comments, feeling out of place, sadness, memory…

More than that and you were holding an incredibly fragile secret at the centre of your heart, and the weight of it, was keeping you awake at night. Every day and it meant you were plodding through life, nothing making sense anymore, not even your secret. You dared tell no one, not even Fili, who had become your best friend. Not even Fili could advocate such a thing as you loving his uncle.

Slowly and carefully you got up on the balcony, climbing up the cold stone. Your heart was hammering, counting at a faster pace than the tools which you could hear in the distance, assisting in the re-building of the kingdom. For a second you looked around, imagining the wind blowing through your hair. You missed the breeze of nature around you as you had become closed in under the mountain. It was beautiful. Your heart may have always been with nature, clinging to the sight, sound and smell of trees, flowers, streams, but you couldn’t deny that Erebor was magnificent in a whole different way. Nature showed the talent of Middle-earth’s gods; the colours like the palette of a painter. This kingdom showcased the talent of a race of people, mortal. They were not divine. For a split second, you felt awe.

Then the last few months of your life played. You had woken up in this foreign world, terrified and alone, taken in by a group of travelling Dwarves. They, at least, had made you feel welcome for that short stint of time. At the centre of it all, hiding beneath the surface, you knew that you were different, and always would be. Their customs were not yours.

Your whole body felt weak and a holt bolt of fright shot through you. You wept, clinging to a stone pillar, your feet only an inch from the edge.

“What are you doing?” a voice came, stung by shock and terror. “Come down from there.”

Thorin watched the shudder of your shoulders as you cried, your arms wrapped around your head. “No,” you sobbed. “No one wants me here.”

“Who has made you think such a thing?” Thorin hissed in frustration, not quite sure how to handle this situation “I came looking for you, wanting you to join me for dinner tonight.”

You raised your head from your arms, catching sight of him out of the corner of your eye. He was mesmerising, beautiful, strong; a man who constantly haunted your thoughts as you clung to an impossible dream. In the dream you were his wife, his lover, his Queen, mother of his children. Your love was fierce, unbreakable. How stupid to dream.

“Dinner?” you whispered, your gaze turning towards him. Your eyes focused through the tears and you saw the fright in his face. Was it the fright of potentially losing you? Did the mere thought of being without you scare him? Fear was an emotion you believed that Thorin never felt, but in those seconds, you could recognise it. His eyes were wide, his eyebrows furrowed and his lips just slightly apart. Words were failing him. “Why would you ask me to dinner?”

Frustration hit Thorin as he listened to your words. Why on earth would he ask you to dinner? “Are my intentions and wishes not obvious enough?” He shifted forwards slowly, and with a trembling hand, reached up. “Come down from there, my dearest.”

Breath hitched sharp in your throat. There was nothing but sheer sincerity in the King’s eyes. Never had you known a lie to pass his lips. Honesty was an integral part of Thorin, and your trust in him had never faulted. Even in the midst of Dragon Sickness, you had understood that the real Thorin was buried, pulled down and weighed heavily on by a mental state that was not his own.

Tears began to fill Thorin’s blue eyes. The silver drops fell down his cheeks. “You cannot leave me,” Thorin said, his voice quiet and stricken with grief at the thought.

Your hands touched and all you could focus on was Thorin. Nothing else seemed to matter anymore as his fingers laced in yours. The warmth radiated through your hand and on instinct, you began to descend from the balcony.

As your feet hit the stone floor, Thorin pulled you towards him, holding you tight. His shoulders racked whilst he sobbed against you. “Why? Why ever would you consider ending your life?”

To hear his pain broke you and you wept also, gripping him tight.

“No one wants me here, Thorin,” you told him, pulling away from your embrace and rubbing your red and swollen eyes.

“I DO!” Thorin boomed. “I want you to take the place beside me; to rule, to wed, bear our children. That was why I wanted to ask for you to join me tonight for dinner. I wished to…” His voice trailed off. “This should not be about my wishes. You are my concern and I want you to be happy, content and feel loved by all of us.”

The ache of loving Thorin grew tenfold and you gasped, stepping backwards. You backed into the balcony, jumping as you felt nudge into your lower back.

Thorin dashed forward on instinct, terrified of you having the urge once more to throw yourself from the balcony. His hands caught your hips and you looked up at him. “People have made me feel like I don’t belong here, and it’s because I’m different. I’m not a Dwarf. It doesn’t matter how I behave, how I dress…I will never be one of you.”

“What are you saying?” Thorin asked, his voice on the edge of breaking. “You do not wish to stay here?”

“If it were completely up to me and there would be no consequences, I’d stay with you always. I’d be your wife, and live to love, serve and honour you until the day I die. But it’s not up to me. Your people don’t want someone who isn’t Dwarf ruling as Queen. They need someone like Neldra…”

Thorin growled as he heard her name. “She is behind a lot of your bad feelings. I am not blind to the behaviours that have been going on around me, but I had no idea that her words had cut you as deep as this, my love. And for that, I should have intervened sooner. After the events of this evening, she will no longer have a place within the kitchens, and will never speak to you in such a manner again. Should she dare, she will be cast out.”

“She always made me feel different and as though I don’t belong here,” you began, ruminating on the abrupt Dwarf woman’s words. Those words had caused you intense fear and pain, and so often that many mornings you vomited before going for your duties. The thought of her made you begin to shake and Thorin noticed.

Thorin’s hands were still cupping your hips and slowly he pulled you closer. “You belong with me,” he whispered, your body touching his. He tilted his head whilst his eyes studied you.

A tear of joy fell down your cheek, hearing Thorin’s words. All the sorrow was temporarily pushed aside for those seconds whilst you shared your first kiss with the King. As your lips met, you felt his tongue begin searching for yours. Your heart was racing, pleasurable shivers shot through you and without evening realising it, you groaned. The dream was coming true.

“You belong with me,” Thorin whispered again as he drew away and your gazes met. “Believe in that.”

Rationality seeped in once more and you pulled away from Thorin reluctantly, sighing and hanging your head. “I don’t. I’ll never belong here because I’m not one of you. Your people honour their race, and I can’t be the one to blow that apart. I should leave here and…”

“Go where? Do what?” Thorin snapped. His blue eyes were wide in anger and frustration. “I have done nothing but treat you well, give you your comfort…” His words trailed off, and he looked down at the stone floor, closing his eyes.

“That is you. That is the rest of the Company, not the kingdom. The people who have come here from the Blue Mountains and Iron Hills won’t allow me to be Queen.”

“That is not their decision!” Thorin hissed again. This time he looked at you and you saw tears welling in his eyes. Rejection, fear, anger.

You sighed again and approached Thorin slowly, reaching out and brushing his arm. “You have to let me go because it’s the best thing for your people. You’re a King, Thorin, and you need to do what’s right by them.”

“And that means forfeiting my own future and happiness?” Thorin’s voice was on the verge of breaking, but he held onto his strength and composure just a while longer. “You came to us in fear, with nowhere to go, in a foreign place, and we made you a part of our group. We trusted you, have loved you, protected you. Who is to say that when you leave here, you will find others who will also accept you? I do not know how to see you back to your own world, but I want to make this home for you. Even if you do not accept my proposal and we do not wed, my love, you will always have a home here. I cannot see you leave and go into the wild alone. I cannot protect you out there.”

Suddenly you heard voices echoing in the corridor leading off behind you to your left. Thorin looked around suspiciously, and then gently took your hand in his, guiding you away with no more words spoken.

Both of you walked in silence, hand in hand, descending two sets of stairwells and walking down a long corridor to the largest bed chamber of all: Thorin’s. He opened the wooden door and released your hand, brushing your back and allowing you to walk inside first. “I shall have food sent to us. Give me a moment,” he told you, and disappeared back down the corridor, in search of a guard.

You walked into Thorin’s bed chamber and looked around it, seeing the enormous bed with its head against the back wall. It was covered in furs and pillows. Behind the headboard were tapestries and mounted swords and axes. On the right hand side of the room was a large desk, full of pieces of parchment, quills, inks and a single, empty glass. Candles were burning in various places around the room, causing shadows to dance on the stone walls. Beneath your feet was an intricately woven rug. Then you looked to your left, seeing a large leather seat and a small table on which a stack of books stood.

The man you so dearly loved was opening his heart to you, offering everything he had, but were you prepared to accept that love?

(To Be Continued....? You decide)