Summary: The story of Thorin, captain of the Oakenshield, and his seafaring crew.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or names herein. Much of the plot is influenced by The Hobbit, as well as actual historical events.

Delphinus

One time Dori said that a sunset over the grassy gold of sun-dried Virginia hills could bring a king to his knees and squeeze the tears from his eyes. He said it was the most beautiful sight a man could ever hope to see on either side of the ocean, but Kili wasn't convinced. Granted, most of the sunsets in Kili's memory occurred over the sea, so he had little else to compare them to; but to him it seemed that every night the sun set better and brighter and prettier over the water.

Kili loved every sunset more than the last because she gave the most gratifying goodbyes, and because sunset meant he had his true favorite, the moon, to look forward to.

This evening's sunset did not disappoint. It was dusk, and Kili was yards above deck, where he belonged. He secured one hand around the nearest outhaul and wedged himself there in the wake of the wind and lost his breath in the seconds between the sun and the horizon. His hair tangled in his lips but his view was none the worse for it.

Slowly, tenderly, the sun dipped forward to kiss the bowl of the ocean and stain it pink, or yellow, or the unnamed orange between them that Kili liked best. And on that warm, unwritten gold, a lounging edge of violet dimpled the water in the way only an ocean knows. He watched the colors tuck themselves beyond the borders of the world; watched like it meant something, like he was supposed to write a song about it that might never be sung.

Kili heard someone closer to deck call his name, but he was feeling greedy and the sun was over half-hidden already, anyway. He pressed one thigh against the yardarm and listened to the wind until it drowned out any particularly determined crew members.

The motion of another man in the rigging folded the edge of Kili's vision. Unabashedly stubborn, Kili only took a deeper breath and his lungs relaxed in the cold, inevitable dark seeping over his shoulders. He let his eyes unfocus on the shrinking sun and sucked in the last droplets of warmth.

The moment the sun disappeared, he closed his eyes and watched the back of his lids go from pulsing scarlet to dark and waited for the imprint of the light to fade out.

When he opened his eyes again, Fili's face was there, his chin rested near the lines next to Kili's knees, his top teeth dug into his bottom lip in a half-smile. Kili rolled his eyes and felt his neck turn red.

"What do you want?" he demanded, not unkindly.

Fili's answer was soft and playful. "Just making sure you didn't hang your damn self up here in the rigging."

Kili grinned and relaxed his arm, let himself swing by the bones from the buntline, braced against the yard there as if to prove his safety.

"Balin was calling for you," Fili continued.

"Was he?" Kili asked innocently, glancing at the jaundiced line over the horizon.

"You know he was."

Kili tried not to smile. He finished tying off a knot he'd started almost twenty minutes earlier before turning back to his brother. With practiced ease, they picked apart a path between the sheets to the deck.

Training his eyes on his feet to hide his grin, Kili endured the first mate's half-hearted lecture for his inattention or carelessness or something similarly vague. He knew, from experience, that if Balin meant to strike fear in Kili, the best way to go about it was put Thorin himself on the job. If it didn't come to that, then they both knew his indiscretions weren't too severe.

Kili took a peek at Balin's face, which was stiff in that way that didn't want to commit to amusement. "It won't happen again," Kili lied, and received a wink in return.

For as long as Kili could remember-which was as long as Thorin had turned a cold shoulder to him and Fili-the first mate, Balin, had been like a second uncle to them. That's not to say he let Kili get away with just anything, but twenty minutes stolen for a sunset was perfectly forgivable in practice. For show, he assigned Fili and Kili a late-night watch, knowing as well as either of them how lenient a punishment it really was.

Before he lumbered between them for his own cozy cabin, he leaned up to whisper something in Fili's ear, and Kili stared without shame before he disappeared below deck.

No matter how long they went without seeing land, Kili could always count on Balin to look tidy and whole; most of his clothing was showing its age, threaded with fine but dingy trim and the life lessons of the ocean's edges. Personally, Kili couldn't bring himself to care so much for the details of his appearance-certainly not every day-but he loved and admired the way Balin took care of himself. The only other member of their crew who went out of his way to look presentable was Fili. Kili made sure to tease him endlessly for this, so as not to give away the deep mixture of envy and respect he felt every time he watched his brother buckle his boots and his belt and pull his hair into a thick flaxen knot on the back of his head.

Now that bundle was falling in strings around Fili's face the way Kili liked best. Fili would tidy it up if he knew, so Kili kept his mouth shut, even though it fizzled on his tongue how the rakish sweep of gold made Fili look more like the real captain he would be someday.

Behind them, the tuneless noteheads of a practicing flute warbled.

"Bofur!" Kili called amiably as he sidled next to the shipwright. He waved a hand at Bofur's pipe. "Got something new for us tonight?"

Bofur leaned back in his seat and laughed. He pushed the brim of his floppy hat up with his flute and said, "Oh, lad, I don't think these old fingers could learn any new tunes even if I tried."

Kili's face brightened. "We could get out our fiddles and play along!"

"That sounds like a joy," Bofur said, relaxing further into his seat, "but I've got first watch. I heard you two are on middle, so you'd best get a good nap now."

"I could take a minute to-"

"No you don't!" Fili interjected. "You're not having any more fun tonight. You got me stuck with the mid-watch and you'll lie in bed until then, awake and bored you have to, and you'll like it."

He said all this with a broad grin, though, which made Kili roll his eyes before excusing himself. Bofur gave them a nod and began a bright dance on his flute which faded behind them.

Fili's and Kili's bunks were tucked near the ladder in the fo'c'sle. Thorin rarely gave his nephews special treatment, but when they laid immediate claim to the best bunks below deck, none of the other crew members had disputed them the privilege.

Kili climbed into the niche above his brother's and, after removing his boots, leaned carefully over the edge. "Aren't you going to sleep?" he asked. Fili was still fully dressed, though he'd released his mane to hang loose across he pillow. He stretched under one of Nori's maps, scrutinizing it closely.

"In a bit," Fili said without looking up.

Kili studied him for another minute. Before long, though, the pressure from the blood in his forehead began to verge on an ache. He flopped back on his thin cushion of blankets, covered his face with one arm, said a cheerful good-night into the woodwork, and slipped easily into sleep.

Kili's heart waxed and waned with the night sky.

He loved how it brought out the best in his brother. When Fili mapped it out with his fingertips it was all so elegant and clever and untouchable to Kili in a way that made him feel irresponsibly safe, like sitting on the floor with a bowl of his mother's colcannon.

Fili knew all the signs in the stars. Kili memorized the important ones, but Fili knew all of them. So Kili never passed up a chance to climb the rigging and twist himself there, comfortably nestled in the folds of the canvas and the breeze, back-to-back with his brother where he could crane his neck toward the constellations and listen while Fili read them all like a story book.

It never bored them; the stars were always shifting, so the brothers tucked themselves away in a different corner of the ship every night and leaned back at a different angle and Fili knitted the little lights together with the same truth and the same passion every time. He never recited like a professor. He participated in the pictures the night painted for him.

Kili liked to make up new constellations, or pit the old ones together in fresh, fantastic myths. Out loud, his brother always grunted in protest, but the curl of his lips and the reflection of Kili's inventions in his eyes always betrayed Fili's joy.

"The dog is always chasing the fox," Kili would say, looking sideways at Fili to see how much he could get away with. "Maybe the fox was actually the one chasing the dog. Maybe the fox chased the dog all the way into the sky and laughed at him for getting stuck there."

"Maybe," Fili would answer. "Maybe the fox will let him come back down someday."

Tonight, relegated to the darkest and sleepiest watch, Fili and Kili nodded to Bifur-the taciturn blacksmith stuck watching the helm for the night-before ambling to the bow, where they burrowed shoulder-to-shoulder in the coils of rope, mostly hidden by the curtain of the staysail. The view of the deck was mediocre, but the view of the heavens was spectacular.

There under the lopsided discus just past a full moon, they settled back and got their bearings between the drift of the Oakenshield and the outstretched arms of the night sky.

Kili spotted Sirius first, as usual, followed by the Big Dipper and the North Star. And Fili murmured that the dog was circling, and sniffing out what he would never see.

"Where's the dolphin?" Kili asked abruptly. "I like the dolphin."

"I thought you liked the dog?"

The dog was his favorite, Kili allowed, but he liked the dolphin too, and it was always harder to find. And because he could never deny his little brother, Fili craned his neck toward the quadrant where he knew the dolphin swam. His hair, still loose, draped across Kili's shoulder, where Kili gave it a playful tug.

"Stop it, brat," Fili scolded. "Lean over, then," he instructed, "and see over here?" he pointed to a spot just off to starboard.

The the starlight angles of the dolphin leapt from the ocean and hung there, rocking low over the horizon.

"He's the one who convinced that woman to marry Poseidon, right?" Kili asked.

Fili said yes, but that dolphin was also part of another tale.

Kili twisted so he could look his brother in the eye. "You're making that up," Kili tested.

"No, I promise," Fili shook his head earnestly. Kili narrowed his eyes, but knew well enough that by now, Fili would have owned up to any jokes or pranks. So he leaned back to look at the constellation again and asked, a little shyly, "will you tell me?"

Fili smiled and stretched out his legs and his eyes glossed over as he called up the story. "There was a man called Arion who wrote poetry and sang music. He was a great artist, and he spent years abroad perfecting his crafts, and he became wealthy. But he also grew homesick."

Lazily, Kili's eyes drifted to the endless water sprawled between them and the stars. He thought about the immeasurable distance between him and the dolphin, and between the dolphin and the sea, and how from the little stronghold of the Oakenshield, the air shrank, and all those things seemed within reach.

"Arion missed his home so much that he packed up all his riches on a sailing ship and set a course to return. But the crew was greedy. They mutinied and claimed his gold as their own and bound him up. They threatened to toss him into the ocean to drown."

Kili shivered.

"Arion knew his life could not be saved. So he made one last request: He asked to sing a dirge. The crew allowed it, and the song was beyond any beauty they had ever experienced. And, buoyed by immense pride, Arion flung himself in the ocean so that the crew could not kill him themselves.

"What Arion didn't know was that, from the heavens, the god Apollo heard the song, too, and it captured his spirit and moved his heart. He deemed that Arion should not die that day, and called upon the creatures of the sea to rescue him. When Arion fell into the water, a dolphin appeared, and carried him many miles to the safety of the home he longed for.

"Arion was grateful, and he built the dolphin a shrine. And Apollo was proud. He placed the dolphin among the stars so that mankind could honor him forever for his friendliness and his courage."

With that ending, Fili's voice dissolved into the sails and into the mist and the brothers took several minutes to look thoughtfully into the sky.

After a comfortable pause, Kili smiled. "He looks like he's jumping out of the water."

Fili nodded.

"Isn't he sad?" Kili asked.

"Have you ever seen a sad dolphin?"

"No," Kili permitted, "but he might be. He's always stuck there. He'll never get back to the sea."

"Some of the stars were forced into the sky," Fili said noncommittally, "but not him. He's Apollo's dolphin, and Apollo placed him up there because he loved him. So, in theory, his home is the ocean ... but he's never even seen the ocean."

Kili leaned his head on his brother's shoulder and hummed in agreement.

"You know how dolphins are always playing games," Fili went on. "I don't think that dolphin needs to come back down. I think he's happy jumping just for the fun of it."

-o-

Author's Note: Here's a tidbit; I have not been this excited about a WIP in awhile! The story is outlined, but not written, and I would wager a guess updates will be slow. If you're interested, I post pictures and research and such on tumblr where I'm known as queenmab-scherzo :)