Outsiders of Gondolin Mutual Defence League by Himring

Small Sizes

Salgant and Maeglin in a short exchange about body size.
Maeglin has a comment to make about cultural relativity.

‘I was slender just once in my life—when, after long starvation, we reached the Hither Shores, crossing the Ice.’

Salgant actually sounded wistful, even though all Gondolin agreed about the horrors of the Crossing. Maeglin looked sceptical.

‘You don’t believe I could ever be slim, under any circumstance?’

‘What I think is: half-starved would not be a good look on you. Your bones are more—dwarvish than other people’s.’

‘Thanks for the compliment!’

‘You think dwarves are ugly? But you’ve never been to Nogrod. A few days completely surrounded by dwarves—Salgant, you’d start feeling impossibly spindly. Even you!’

Chapter End Notes

The Tolkien 100 prompt was: Upon this Hither Shore.

In my take on things, Maeglin has no real friends among the Dwarves, because he was never there long enough, or in relaxed enough circumstances, to do so. But he has learned things from them, and it is not meant to imply he is anti-Dwarf.

1 x 100 words in MS Word