50 Prompts: AU Silmarillion by Urloth

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Prompt: History (OC, Balin son of Funduin)

Barely scrapes the Silmarillion line. Return of OCs but ah, I love her.

Summary: Balin talks to a little acknowledged figure in history

Warnings: OC centric, Balin and OC talking

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She is Thulin, daughter of Kulin, and impossibly at this age, she is a Dwarf of Belegost.

Balin, son of Funduin, is most honoured to have her agree to visit him and tell her history.

He prepares tea, tells himself he is not worried at all, and stokes the fire a little higher in the inn parlour that he has reserved.

There is a knock, the door opens and a woman swarthed from head to toe in indigo cloth enters. He rises and bows. She bows back and sheds the cloth.

“Balin son of Funduin,” she greets him in rolling khudzul with an accent that does not exist anymore, “I am honoured to meet a historian such as you.”

“Thulin daughter of Kulin, I am honoured you considered accepting my request.”

“I was surprised, “ she admits in westorn, “most historians are not interested in me.”

He looks at her. She is far too tall for a dwarf. Her beard is a long silky mane of gold to her knees, intricately braided and beaded. The rest of her hair is likewise adorned, and pulled away from leaf shape ears with delicate points, and permanent rings of mithril set through them.

“They are fools,” he says instead of trying to defend his fellow scholars, “when I saw that my master had made mention of you in a text, I wondered why he had not talked to you himself. He was most fascinated with the era you grew up in.”

Indeed she is mentioned very little, here and there, and usually only noted for her unusual birth and lineage. He would have thought her first hand knowledge would have been mined out by now.

“He did ask, and I answered, but he did not want to know about my mother and my other father, and so I told him nothing.”

“Your other father?” he asks.

“My other father,” she confirms, “for I had three parents, Râu, Thandâ and Kulin.”

“They were, uh,” Balin reaches for his papers and with her permission begins jotting down this information.

“They were a trinity, as my mother’s people call it, three hearts who make up a one. Sometimes it happens.”

“I see, I see,” well no wonder his master did not want to know about it, he had been a rather uptight and fussy man who disliked scandal and lewdness; a threesome would have been most improper.

“Please tell me,” he says, straightening, “in your own words, of the story of your parents and how Kulin of the Broadbeams came to have a daughter woven of sunlight.”

She tilts her head back and laughs, “oh who wrote that description of me?” she asks.

“I believe Volli daughter of Olli.”

“Oh Volli,” Thulin, daughter of Kulin, smiles with a memory, “I loved her, she was a dearest friend for many years, and then for a while my beloved until at last Mahal took her to her Husband.”

“Well then Balin son of Funduin,” she straightens herself and seems to ease back into the past, “let me tell you of a wandering tribe of Elves, descended from those who remembered a Great Lake in the East that gave life to them all. And in that tribe there were two lovers, Thandâ who was an artisan, and Râu, she was a warrior.

But there was something missing. Someone they reached for together, not knowing who it was.

To a Mountain, they did travel, for their usual migration route was devoured by danger for those were dark and violent times. A mountain that embraced them with loving arms; its forests plentiful with game, and its trees thick to block the coming winter winds.

Within that mountain lived a child of such, a mountain child with smith-brother’s breath within his lungs; he who was the Star that guided my parents feet, and illuminated the road of their life. Warm hands that my parents clasped gratefully, finding what they had reached for all their long lives …”

It takes a long time, more than one sitting, for her to tell the history she knows. She tells it from her point of view, half dwarrow and half elven as she is. Her hands flutter in her lap sometimes, or sometimes she whittles or carves as she speaks.

All the while she tells him of a history that is so different than the ones he has read. Wittles and carves out stories with her archaic, rolling voice as deft as her scarred, and calloused hands; bringing depth to characters, and fine details at odds with what he has imagined, during his long years of pouring through his books.

Come the end of their time together she presents him with a pipe, a lovely thing with a bowl carved of alabaster, and swathing her body once more in indigo she joins a travelling group of similarly clothed elves.

“Will I see you again?” he wonders.

“Will you? I do not know Balin son of Funduin,” she says thoughtfully, “what more could I tell you?”

“I would like to think after so many hours talking that we might call ourselves friends,” he replies.

“Then I will return next year,” she tells him, “and you will tell me your history.”

“I don’t have much of a history yet,” he splutters.

“You will one day,” her words are ominous, “but I would know how a young dwarf as yourself becomes the only man to ask me for my history, and not try and edit it as I speak.”

“Then I suppose I will tell you next time I see you,” he is bewildered though as what he will say.

“Good, farewell then Balin son of Funduin, I will see you next winter,” then with one foot in front of the other she joins her mother and her second father’s people on their never ending journey, on and on through roads and unchartered lands, her history never ending.