A Dwarf's Memories by LadyBrooke

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.