Work Text:
In Ered Luin the baths of Erebor had been — were — legend. Not that Ered Luin's own carefully tended, well-frequented and capacious baths were not gems in their own right, but familiarity made for, well, familiarity, if not precisely contempt. (They were Dwarf-Made: no Dwarrow would hold them in less than some minimum of respect. But they were ordinary, by their standard. Built, not delved, with close-laid walls and corbeled roof. Bifur had never seen the Council's private baths, but imagined them to be much the same. More decorative perhaps, not deeper. Ered Luin's rock held iron, and little enough of that, these days. Neither wonder nor veins of fire.)
Legend, thought Bifur as he sank into the spring-fed heat of the first deep pool, had not understated the splendor of gold and gems and ancient, Maker-wrought and Dwarrow-polished filigree of crystal. But words did not convey the gleam of water lit from below, or the caress of mineral-scented steam. Had entirely neglected the sheer, enveloping comfort of being wholly beneath earth and stone. That was something no mere roof, however well-made, layered, insulated or embellished, could hope to match. No, legend had fallen far short of Erebor's reality in that.