Many Journeys by Elleth

The Chosen

A young female dwarf is initiated into the customs of her foremothers, and has a surprising encounter.

Kjós the brewer grins, glad it’s hidden in her beard, when she passes through the beerhall with the barrel hefted on her hip. There’s lots that the menfolk drinking there don’t know - and shouldn’t, because it’d take a bad end for them. This is the women’s festival, this is the women’s night for revels, this is the women’s night for more than bears saying aloud. Breathing a single word to the men would spoil it.

For while the winds screench outside, while the snow piles so high on the mountains that the rock creaks and groans, while the frost chips away at the stone, while the white wolves come howling, there’s a fire in the belly of the earth that burns high and hot, there’s clay trampled wet and slick between her toes in the dancing, there’s the chant of women’s voices, singing songs the men must never learn in a language they don’t know and that’s kept jealously guarded, there’s a goblet passed from hand to hand, and stories told of offerings, there’s mead and beer poured out into the earth, and finally the crescendo of the chant:

Earth-Mother to whom all mountains crumble, Earth-Mother who nourishes all living things, Earth-Mother, Smith’s Companion, come to us and grant your blessings!

The fire goes out. The dancers scatter, and it’s Kjós only who remains, with the lot upon her as it was on every woman born before her. Her heart beats up her throat, not just from the dancing, but from the burden placed on her: It’s an honour, but it’s heavy, near as heavy as the snows upon the mountains, because that’s what she’s doing away with, to ensure the next year’s fortune, blessing harvest, keeping order, holding the dark at bay another year.

There stands a figure in the shadows, half-wreathed in vines that reach for Kjós as well. She grips the goblet tight to not spill a single drop, and kneeling offers it to the Lady of the Earth – for it’s said that it was Her, when Mahal was busy throwing the Fathers, She brought more clay, insisting that He make Mothers, too.

Her voice is sweet as berries when She speaks, finally laughing like a dwarf-lass: “Aþara, come now, rise and let us dance,” — and her hands, when she takes Kjós’, are loam-soft, her body pliable as clay – and finally Kjós understands – She is the earth, and is her mother, too.

Chapter End Notes

First written for a request by Iavalir.

I played with the idea of the Dísablót and Disting in writing this (because I did actually want to make the character here Dís originally, and the similarity in names probably isn’t a coincidence). The rest of it popped up when I was looking for more names. Kjós, unless I’m very much mistaken, means "The Chosen", from the ON verb kjósa, "to choose" (as in Valkyrie, the Choosers of the Slain), and then things came together with the idea that one of Yavanna’s monikers is Earth-Queen (Kementári, let’s just pretend that’s another Elvish translation of a Valarin title that has its equivalent in Khuzdul) and the Valarin name for Arda (Earth) is derived from/influenced by Aþâraphelûn, "Appointed Dwelling", so things kind of came full circle there. 

(And of course the particular kind of dancing, or what they do after the dancing, is entirely up to the reader. ;))