The new chapter of 'In Whiskey, Wisdom' is now up - I promise I am prepared to be yelled at by @lathalea xD
We clocked in at 6.9k and I think there’s only one chapter left in this tale now... maybe... next up: Dori and Erebor.
In Whiskey, Wisdom - Bofur/Eyja(OFC Dwarf), Blue Mountains | Ered Luin, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gimli is a little shit and a matchmaker, Journeying across Middle Earth, post-hobbit canon, instances of Canon-Typical Violence
The first person Bofur recognised as they walked into the Drunken Trout wasn’t actually someone he saw.
Instead, Eyja, her hand warm in his, gasped out a familiar name, towing him along as she made for a corner table with an unobstructed view of the door.
“Nori!” Eyja exclaimed, her cry hoarse with emotion. Bofur squeezed her hand once though he let go when he caught Nori glancing at their linked hands before he wrapped his arms around Eyja’s shoulders. Bofur tried to convince himself that his ears weren’t burning.
He was not very successful.
“Nori,” he greeted, nodding at his fellow Companion – friend, too, and at one time occasional lover. It seemed so long ago now.
Nori grinned at him, a crooked thing full of mischief, before he pressed his forehead to Eyja’s greeting her with a gentle kin-blessing.
The sight made Bofur’s heart hurt, wondering how long it had been since anyone had done that last – perhaps when Dori left Ered Luin? He vaguely recalled that the Ri-siblings had been waved off by a blonde dwarf, despite being too focused on his own family to do more than note the addition of the three ri’s to their party. The beautiful sorrowed smile on Eyja’s smile was one he recognised; soft sorrow and yearning – Bofur had seen it more than once on the journey when her thoughts turned to Dori, though he had not asked after her relationship with Nori at all, something that felt like an oversight now. Bofur silently readjusted his vision of how well she knew Dori’s family. The people for whom Nori would show genuine fondness could be counted on his fingers; and even the addition of the Company to the list of people he cared for had not moved much on the list of those to whom he would show it. Nori grinned, knocking his forehead gently against hers in parting. Despite Eyja’s belief that the fault for their rift lay on both sides, Bofur was convinced rather more of it rested on Geisli’s shoulders, and more still on Eyja’s uncle’s; he could not, even in his own mind, picture the two cousins sharing a moment like this, so common to their people, and yet Eyja looked like she had done so with Nori a hundred times before.
“I missed you, sunshine,” Nori muttered – the words almost lost in the loud bustle of the busy taproom – into the small space between them. Bofur tried not to envy the casual intimacy of the gesture – would she accept him like that some day? Had Nori ever wanted what he now craved, having Eyja’s hand in his as the hammer fell on their forging? “But don’t –”
“Tell Dori I saw you?” Eyja continued, interrupting him with a small chuckle. She put her hands on his shoulders, holding him away from her far enough she could see his face, his crooked grin mirrored by her own. “Back to your old tricks, eh, Nori?”
