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When Hrera had first met her husband to be, she had been appalled. A king of Longbeards, and he had barely four braids in his hair and beard together! And Hrera shuddered to call them braids at all. There were almost always a few little strands escaping the disgustingly simple braids, and very often she could see honest to Mahal tangles only half hidden in his dark mane.
The first morning she had been there to see his morning routines she had felt like screaming. Thrór had tugged the comb through his hair like the tangles were orcs to be beheaded – while reading a missive at the same time!
“Give me that”, she had snapped and snatched the comb from his hand. Thrór had blinked in her direction in confused surprise. “No husband of mine shall go around looking like such a disgrace”, she had sniffed and started combing his hair with gentle efficiency. “I wouldn’t go to a dark broom closet looking like that. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
A strange expression had come to her husband’s face then, and to her surprise he had not voiced a single word of protest. For all his earlier impatience he now sat still as a statue. There was a peaceful, relaxed expression on his face Hrera had never seen before, not even in his sleep.
In the following months Hrera had attempted to teach her husband even the basics of proper braiding, but Thrór seemed to lose all dexterity in his fingers as soon as he touched his hair. In the end Hrera had thrown her hands out, declared him completely hopeless and mentally allotted a half-an-hour from each future morning to doing her husband’s hair.
It was only very many decades later Thrór had confessed he had been making a mess of his braids purposefully whenever Hrera tried to teach him. Hrera would have liked to be angry, but her husband had smiled with such longing in his eyes and said her doing his braids had always been the best moment of his day and he had not been willing to give it up for any price. Hrera had slapped him upside the head for that. He could have just said, foolish dense husband.
******
When the dragon came and she passed from the world, she had spent the first days in a state of shock and grief. When she finally felt like she could breathe again, when she finally could bear seeing her broken family left behind in Arda, she had taken to following Thrór around almost obsessively.
“Your braids are a mess”, she whispered when she watched him walk slowly, his head bowed and his shoulders hunched. She said other things – screamed at him to speak to his family, berated him for being so stupid and told him again and again to pick himself up, to be the king their people desperately needed.
But Thrór did not hear her voice. He was lost to his grief and his madness, the madness Hrera had tried to fight back alongside her husband for so many years. Ever since she finally started to understand there was something wrong in his mind. Thrór had stubbornly refused to talk about it, of course. But there had been ways to help, ways to make his eyes focus again and truly see the things around him. Ways only she knew – so who would do that now? Who would drag him back from the distant worlds he got lost in? Not her son, who was lost in bitter grief as well, unable to help others past his own pain. Not young Thorin who was struggling under the heavy burden of making decisions for his father and grandfather – a burden he should not have carried for at least a century. Not Frerin or Dís who were far too young to even fully understand their own loss.
Hrera took to watching Thrór sleep. It was easier to bear than his apathy during the day. Though the nights were painful as well, in their own way. Thrór would wake up screaming every night. Sometimes calling for her, sometimes calling for his father or brother in a much younger voice. She could not soothe him any longer.
Still, she kept watch. She watched Thrór get up far too early, when he could no longer bear his night terrors. She saw him sit quietly for hours in the grayness of early morning, eyes fixed on nothingness.
Hrera sat down on a stone, watching Thrór. He had never looked as old as he did then. Hrera wanted to slap him, to shake him… but more than anything she wanted to pull him close and never let go. It was a feeling she struggled with every day, and the longing did not get easier to bear with time – no, it only grew worse.
Thrór blinked his eyes tiredly. Her husband let out a long sigh, leaning his forehead in his hand before running that hand through his hair. His thumb caught on a tangle.
“That’s what you get for not taking care of it”, Hrera sniffed. She had given up on trying to make him hear her through sheer determination, but she couldn’t help the occasional comment. Even though it hurt every time when he did not answer her – he had never once ignored her, when she lived.
Thrór had frozen and now carefully disentangled his hand from his hair. He tugged the tangled strand in front of his eyes. “You would disapprove”, he said, his voice rough from disuse.
“I would”, Hrera whispered, reaching out. She let out a shuddering sigh when her hand passed through his hair and his hand, curling her hand to a tight fist in her lap.
Thrór looked at the strand for a long moment. Then, very slowly, he drew out a comb from his pocket and started to disentangle his hair, one strand at a time. He had his eyes closed, and his motions were not his usual impatient strokes. No, he teased out the tangles carefully yet at a brisk pace – like she had always done.
Hrera closed her eyes and left, a single tear falling into the whirling pool of starlight.
Hrera watched Thrór wake up early every night. She watched him comb his hair, always with his eyes closed. She watched him braid it wrong time after time, always redoing it until it was time to move again. She bit her lip raw to hold back the instructions he would never hear.
There were other words, words that got stuck in her throat – pleads to just stop trying. She didn’t care if his hair looked horrible, if he would only pay attention to the council desperately asking for him to make decisions for his people. He could run around his hair in mad snarls for all she cared, if he would only look at his grandchildren like he used to.
“They used to be your entire world”, Hrera whispered when little Dís turned around and went back to her brothers, having waited for ten minutes for her grandfather to notice her. Thrór kept braiding his hair.
Hrera watched him get better and better. She had always been convinced he couldn’t learn even if he truly tried. But he did. There were fewer mistakes day after day, try after try.
And then came the morning when Hrera could not spot a single mistake, a single flaw. Thrór was braiding his hair in the cold, gray light of pre-dawn, his eyes closed as they so often were. There was not a single tangle, not a single unevenly divided strand. Not a single hair escaped the elaborate many-stranded braids.
Hrera often made mistakes when she did braids, and simply fixed it when she noticed. Thrór did not make a single one.
Hrera stopped breathing for a moment as Thrór put the last clasp in place.
“It is perfect, love”, she whispered. “You should do Thorin’s next. His hair is a mess.”
But Thrór did not rise. Instead he opened the clasps and methodically took apart every single perfect braid. He did them again, and again, and again. Until it was time to start moving.
Hrera returned to the Halls, firmly closed her door and cried and cried.