4Tauriel did not one day wake up next to the dwarf she married a century ago and thought, this is not the face I met in the forest. The progress of his age had been subtle, setting like twilight veiling the face of a hill.
While the lines around his eyes deepened and strands of his hair began to show gray, her aspect was unchanged. Every inch that grew on his beard marked the passage of time, as each ridge that cracked his skin was a reminder of his mortality.
But as his body matured and hers remained ageless, her love for him never wavered, and the years had only strengthened their bond. Every moment she spent with Kili was a memory made, and it was memory that she would hold on to when he was no longer around in this world to hold.
Kili was the age that Thorin had been during the Quest for Erebor, and it was no far leap to draw the resemblance between the prince and the late king. No longer was he the green lad that had flirted with her in the dungeons of the palace. Kili was a ripened dwarrow, handsome and sturdy and sure of himself without the conceit of youth. But despite the physical and inward changes, Kili was still Kili, and she still cherished and desired him as she had on the night of their bonding.
"Kili," she called out as she peaked on his tongue and dug her hands on his peppered hair, the rush of her fire humming in her ears.
The stars above her were blotted by his face smiling down at her, a sight she loved even more than the light of the stars.
He traced a calloused finger over her collarbone, making constellations of her freckles. "I think I see a new freckle," he said, kissing the spot where the supposed new speck was. She gasped as his teeth caught the skin on the side of one breast, and she heard him chuckle to her reaction. She would have replied with a saucy remark, but the ministrations of his mouth on her skin continued, cutting her breath short into heated pants. In one fluid motion, she spun him onto his back and straddled his waist, moving against him until he too reached the highest point of his ecstasy and he growled out a Khuzdul curse that echoed on the walls in a niche of the mountain. Chest heaving and eyes hooded, a languid smile curved on his lips, and she drowned it with a long, dewy kiss.
"I think they might have heard you from here to Thranduil's Halls," Tauriel said, finding the idea of the Elvenking being interrupted and jarred by the moans of her husband satisfyingly amusing.
"You were pretty loud yourself," he replied, his balmy breath misting on her neck. He gently nipped her ear, eliciting yet another shudder from her.
They laid in silence, and she absently played with dense hair on his chest. There was a scar right in the middle of his sternum, a fine elf's hair width away from his heart. They'd been so close to never having shared even a kiss. The scar no longer bothered her; the pain it used to bring her was as faded as the scar itself. Kili had other telltale marks across his skin, some more stark and white than others, depending on when and how he'd received them. They were symbols upon the map of his body.
His build had hardened over the years, stockier and tough as a deer's hide, but not so much that her touch didn't stimulate him as when he was a young lad.
Kili fell asleep shortly after, having spent the last of his energy on her. On colder nights, they would not be here bare in the chill of the mountains, but because it was spring, they made camp in a nook on the base of Erebor. Nobody but the night watch was around, further up on the slope, and if they did hear or see them, they did not acknowledge it.
Any place they made love- under the mountain, in open field, among the trees, or even in water- she wanted that place to be imbibed with their love, so that when she returned to these sites alone after he passed, she would feel his spirit within and around her.
"Amrâlimê," she said, using his word for her. She placed her pointed ear against his delightfully shaggy chest, and listened to the song of his heart. She was not thinking of the day when this song would fall into silence. Her mind and heart were on his existence, on the life that they had now.
