"This needn't be real," he says. All the dead never lost, all the land never poisoned, and oh-- he stops, suddenly, because they would never—how had they been to one another, five years ago? Less kind, certainly, less tender and without the crucible of the world coming to an end, unlikely to find themselves in the same circumstances that had led to wedding.

He looks away from her, turns his head and focuses instead on the wall of a nearby house? Cave? Whatever the dwarves choose to name the places where they sleep and eat.

“He has vowed that such a thing is possible.”