A Dwarf's Memories by LadyBrooke

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Fanwork Notes

Originally posted for the Silmarillion40 event.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

An excerpt from the memoirs of a Dwarf of Belegost, concerning her childhood in Menegroth.

Major Characters: Dwarves, Original Female Character(s)

Major Relationships:

Genre:

Challenges:

Rating: Teens

Warnings: Violence (Moderate)

This fanwork belongs to the series

Silmarillion40
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 398
Posted on 12 October 2017 Updated on 12 October 2017

This fanwork is complete.

A Dwarf's Memories

Read A Dwarf's Memories

At the time, they said that the King of Doriath wanted the Nauglamír because of its beauty, and the Silmaril he wished set within it because he was owed it in return for the life of his kin, who had been slain by the maker of the Silmaril.

I accepted his basic argument at the time, and still would. The Noldor had slain his kin, so he was owed recompense from them for it, and jewels can serve as well as anything else.

But our kin had been slain by his elves, and we had made the Nauglamír. If we followed his logic to its conclusion, the Nauglamír should have been ours. I can remember arguing this point with one of my friends, who happened to be the daughter of one of Thingol’s guards. In the end, all we could agree on was that the dead cannot be returned to life (save the King’s daughter) and both were owed something.

My mother had left Menegroth prior to the slaying of the King, taking me with her to her home city of Belegost. She was unwilling to stay and give the King even a moment of belief that we would give him the jewel he wanted and set it in one of our greatest works.

My father stayed behind. He had been of Nogrod, and as later events would prove, they were ever more willing to openly oppose the elven King. He said that he would be happy to reforge our greatest jewel with the greatest jewel of the elves, and then refuse to give it to the elves.

He was one of the first to be killed in their flight from the Halls after slaying Thingol. He specialized in delicate work with jewels, not warfare or flights in despair. My friend wrote me only to say that he had been killed near the river we had played in, and his bones had been swept away in the rapids.

Her father, she wrote, had been killed by those from Nogrod, along with many of their greatest warriors. She ended saying there was no recompense that could bring back the dead, and both our people had been fools to think there was.

She never wrote to me again after that, and I have often wondered if that was from free will, or if she herself was slain in later events.

Comments

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This is unbelievably sad. Of course, we know the story, tragic for both Elves and Dwarves, but there is something particularly moving that your protagonist seemed unemotional. And yet, the last paragraph packs a punch in the gut.

And I thought, all of that grief and death because a bunch of demigods couldn't keep their mouth shut, only they had to demand the Silmarils. They should've known better.

Greatly done!

This was very moving, all the more so because your character is (now) so far removed from it. The individual fates of the "supporting cast" of the Silmarillion can be just as heart-breaking as the big events, and your story illustrates this perfectly.

Oh, ouch. This packed quite a lot into such a short piece. An interesting argument for Thingol to make, that the Silmaril was owed to him for the life of his kin, and one that left him very open to the dwarves' claim of the Nauglamir. And of course, the human fallout...