Whims of Time and Fate by QuillAndInkWrites

---

Chapter 1

 

 

---

“...And so Durin I carved from the stone all his children, and they were filled with life when his work was completed. Dis, the eldest, became the Longbeard queen after Durin I died, and then her son Dimir the king after her death. Duris was the first Longbeard zatakhuzdȗn and a great stonemason, known most for their beautiful statues of their siblings and father. Dari married Giyani, from the Orocarni Mountains, and lived there until their death as a renowned storyteller with her spouse and her two children. And Dulin, the youngest… Faris, can you tell me what Dulin is known for?”

Faris frowns at her teacher, then down at the notes she’s been taking since the class began, lines of neat Cirth that are the deep envy of half her classmates. “Dulin was known for… um…”

“Take your time, Furisul.”

“He was known for…”

For his deep love of his father and for his impatience, Mhete thinks without thinking, tapping the end of her charcoal stick against her white slate as she watches Faris fumble with the question two rows ahead. She raises her dark hand, the other still tapping away in a constant rhythm.

“Thenisul?”

“Dulin stayed at his father’s right hand until he grew tired of the monotony and left to make a name for himself apart from Durin the Deathless,” Mhete says, confident and matter-of-fact as she tends to be. “He died on the road before he could.”

Scholar Nerar frowns. “Thenisul,” she says, “where did you get this idea?”

“The library, Scholar,” Mhete says after a moment of pause. “You told us to read anything we wanted pertaining to Durin I.”

“Please give me the names of the librarian and the book they gave you when you finish for today, then. Dulin died at his father’s side.”

Mhete nods, pressing her lips together like a vice to prevent herself from saying something more, and settles back into her seat to listen. Scholar Nerar turns back to the board, beginning to explain the beginning of Queen Dis’ reign as the second leader of Durin’s Folk, and Mhete’s charcoal continues its even rhythm against her slate.

When Scholar Nerar finally, finally dismisses the classroom of growing Khazâd, Mhete nearly flings herself toward the door, keeping her head up as she inserts herself within the crowd of classmates funneling through the doorway and out into the bustling stone halls outside.

“Thenisul?”

Mhete’s dark eyes study the back of Girin’s bright, curly head as she moves with the others, passing through the doorway with a breath held captive in her lungs.

“Mhete!”

But Mhete is out the door and already walking at the fastest pace she can take without drawing much attention, her satchel tucked securely under one arm as she does everything but flee from her teacher. Scholar Nerar has another class immediately after hers, a welcome notion today, and Mhete can at least hope that by tomorrow the learned dwarrowdam will have forgotten to ask Mhete for the source of her faulty information.

There was no book, in truth, nor a librarian that led her to this knowledge. There was no place she found the knowledge, for she simply knew.

Mhete would rather not consider the ramifications of it too hard.

  

By some Mahal-sent miracle, Scholar Nerar doesn’t ask again the next day.

She does give Mhete a few searching looks during class, though, silent ones Mhete is unable to discern much of anything from, and Mhete’s tapping rhythm is faster today than it was the day before. Surely Scholar Nerar doesn’t care this much about a fabricated book in some unspecified library of the many throughout the great city. Does she?

Mhete refrains from raising her hand even once during class, an oddity for her, instead letting her classmates answer every question right or wrong and listening to it all with the quiet harmony of her tapping charcoal. She would point to her body’s changes for this, but Scholar Nerar never mentioned anything about strange gut feelings when she spoke of a young Khuzd’s slowly changing body, nor did her ‘amad or ‘adad, and she thought she was done with all of that as well. It can’t be that, but if it isn’t that then what is it?

Class ends quietly, with a smile from Scholar Nerar to her students and a kind, “Off with you now, there are more entertaining things to do with the rest of your day than sit here and study the Seven Fathers’ lineages.”

Mhete stands to pack her things with the rest of her classmates, her slate sliding into her satchel with ease and a perfect fit.

“Thenisul.”

Mhete’s deep brown hands still in the midst of picking up her stick of charcoal.

“Yes, Scholar Nerar?”

“Stay for a minute, please. I want to speak with you privately.”

Mhete nods her assent, a lump swelling deep in her throat, as her classmates file out of the octagonal stone room one by one and two by two. Faris glances back at her in the doorway, hesitating for a breath before leaving as well, and Mhete meets Scholar Nerar’s eyes with the most unbothered look she can muster.

Scholar Nerar leans back against the edge of the desk across the aisle from Mhete, her thick, graying beard shifting as she moves. “You left quickly yesterday. I wanted to assure you that I don’t think lowly of you for searching for knowledge, Thenisul. Nor do I think, in the event that there was no book, that you would lie without reason.”

Mhete can scarcely breathe, nor barely think of replying at all, within the long moments of silence that stretch out within the empty classroom.

Scholar Nerar’s eyes soften as it becomes clear that she doesn’t intend to respond even after a time of waiting, watching Mhete with a look of mixed confusion and sympathy. “You aren’t in trouble, nor will you be for telling me the truth. I only worry for you now; you look scared.”

“I thought I was correct,” Mhete says, her voice thick. “Forgive me, Scholar, I wanted to be correct.”

“I know, Mhete. You always do, and it would be folly of me to somehow lose my trust in your constant integrity over so little. Will you tell me where you learned this?”

There is, again, a long silence as Scholar Nerar waits with a kind patience Mhete has yet to learn.

“I didn’t,” Mhete whispers, finally, and part of a weight very suddenly drops from her shoulders. Though, judging by the sudden shift in her expression, it seems Scholar Nerar didn’t expect this answer. Neither did Mhete, for what it’s worth and for all that she tried to ignore the fact yesterday.

“You didn’t?”

Mhete shakes her head, her dark brows closing in on each other and her jaw clenching, and Scholar Nerar moves forward from her leaning position to gently take Mhete’s hands. Her charcoal stick has crumbled between them, black dust trailing down the front of her clean tunic and pants to scatter itself on the floor and her boots, and when Scholar Nerar gently opens her hands her own much lighter skin is immediately covered in the substance as well. 

Mhete really couldn’t care less about her tunic, pants, or boots when her eyes are beginning to well with confused tears. They will wash, and she has others if they do not. She only has one beloved scholar of histories.

“Did you think of the story yourself, then?” Scholar Nerar asks, her voice kind but confused as Mhete fights to keep the tears welling in her eyes from falling down her face.

“It isn’t a story,” Mhete says, her voice thick with unshed tears. “It… it is the truth, Scholar. You have to believe me, I— I would never lie to you, you know I would not, and there was no book or carving that told me what truly took place; I just knew.”

Scholar Nerar is silent.

The moments pass just as slowly as before, agonizing and painful. Mhete begins to lose her battle against the hot tears  rising in her eyes, and she cannot look Scholar Nerar in her eyes.

The first tear trailing down her cheek seems to snap Scholar Nerar out of her stupor.

“You just knew,” she echoes, her tone not one of disbelief but of dawning understanding. “You knew something that happened an Age ago, something no Khuzd alive today could have seen, something which history itself seems to have recorded incorrectly.”

“And I don’t know how,” Mhete says, nodding her head like the little spring-loaded toys one of the Broadbeam merchants in the market closest to her home always sells. “I only know what I saw and what I felt. It felt so real, Scholar, learning of his death. But how could I have seen such a thing?”

“Perhaps I should skip ahead in what I have been teaching you,” Scholar Nerar murmurs, and lets go of Mhete’s charcoal-covered hands to walk over to her wooden desk with a single-minded focus, wiping her own, similarly black-dusted hands on her skirt as she goes. “Mhete, have your ‘amad or ‘adad told you of Durin II?”

“Durin I’s reincarnation?” Mhete asks, to be certain she understands correctly. “Only in passing, as a story of Khazâd-dum. Every pebble hears his name.”

“Did you know his name was also Glain?”

Mhete blinks. “What?”

“Durin II was not the name he was given at his birth,” Scholar Nerar says, pulling a short stack of leather-bound books out from one of her desk drawers to set on the desktop and beginning to rifle through the first one as Mhete wanders closer. “He was first Glain son of Frain and Golris, Frain being his parent from the line of Durin — though Frain himself never sat upon the throne.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Scholar Nerar looks up, her fingers stilling on the page as she looks deep into Mhete’s dark eyes.

“Because even he himself did not know he was Durin II until he was already walking and talking,” she says very gently and slowly, “and because we do not know when or how the next Durin will return to Middle Earth.”

“I don’t understand.” 

“I will not say anything with surety,” Scholar Nerar says, “only you can do that. But I will give you this book” — here she comes back around her desk to hand Mhete a book bound in leather the color of Durin’s blue — “and let you learn and decide for yourself. Perhaps you are a seer like those who derive fortunes from runes and bones. Perhaps you are not. Only you can say who you are, understand?”

Mhete nods slowly and hurries to swipe the charcoal coating her hands onto the lower part of her tunic, Scholar Nerar waiting patiently for her hands to be moderately clean again. Mhete takes the book as carefully as she can, the remaining dust on her hands unavoidable until she can find a rag and some water — some soap, too, preferably. It isn’t heavy, but all the same it feels weighty in a way Mhete isn’t sure she can fully quantify in this moment.

“Keep this,” Scholar Nerar says, and a soft smile curls across her lips. “I won’t ask for it to be returned to me, but you may if you wish. Read it or set it aside and forget about it’s very existence, I care not. I only care that you follow your heart; that you do what feels right to you. Can you do that?”

“I can try, Scholar,” Mhete murmurs.

“Good. Then you may go.”

Mhete bows her head in honor to the esteemed scholar as she backs away a few steps, carefully slides the book into her satchel, then turns and leaves the room. Her heart feels strange, unmoored and drifting in a sea of confusion. She understood well enough what Scholar Nerar was saying to her, and understood at least part of what they left unspoken as well. It is simply strange to her, and almost unfathomable when she tries to comprehend the deeper parts. Mhete will try, though. She has always sought to learn about the unknown.

The book in her satchel still feels as though it burns a hole through the leather as she walks home.

  

“Mhete?”

With a slow blink of weighted lids and lashes, Mhete squints at the Cirth in front of her, the shapes blurry past tired, dry eyes. “Adda?” she says, rubbing her eyes with her fists for a long moment to clear them.

“It is past midnight,” Mhorbok murmurs, entering her room from the doorway to sit next to her on the bed. “You have classes tomorrow, and ‘Amad wants you to come to the courts with her in the afternoon as well. Are you alright?”

The silence stretches for far too long, Mhete staring down at the book she’s halfway through as the runes refuse to become clear to her again, and soon enough her ‘adad’s arms curl around her with the gentle pressure she has adored since she was just a pebble.

“What occupies your mind so thoroughly, kurkarukê?”

“Memories that aren’t my own,” Mhete finally whispers, and she feels her ‘adad’s arms still unnaturally. “Yet memories that feel like home to my heart.”

Mhorbok is silent for a long stretch of time, long enough that Mhete begins to shift nervously, almost pulling away.

“Do you remember ‘Amad and I first trying to tell you how pebbles are made?” Mhorbok finally says, his arms returning to motion so he can hold his child close in his arms.

Frowning, Mhete sifts through her memories — hers, not the faint impressions and sensations and brief, unclear, flickering tableaus that feel like hers-but-not and make her head spin if she focuses on them for too long. “I think so,” she says. She does remember sitting with ‘Amad and ‘Adad in their bed, younger, with hairs on her chin so short that they could barely curl twice. They had asked her a question and she had said, without a single moment of hesitation… “ ‘Pebbles come from shaped stone.’ ”

“That confused us both,” Mhorbok chuckles, leaning his head against hers until the edges of his fluffy beard tickle her forehead and make her nose wrinkle. “I thought to myself, ‘why would a little pebble think first of the stories of Durin I? Surely Mhete has yet to learn of him in her classes.’ “

“Beyond what you and Amma told me, I am only learning more of him now,” Mhete says, nodding along as she feels her dark eyes grow wet with tears for a second time today. “Adda… did you know?”

“I did not know anything,” Mhorbok says, his hand rising to card gently through Mhete’s long braids, “and still I do not. Only you can know anything about yourself with complete surety. What do you think, Mhete?”

“I don’t know what I think. I know many things that might fit together, looking at them now, but the whole picture… it terrifies me, Adda.”

“Then wait to look at the big picture.” A kiss is pressed to the top of Mhete’s head, and she wraps her arms tight around her ‘adad to chase his paternal comfort. “Take your time. Look at the smaller things for now, and only widen your scope when you feel ready. Does that feel less daunting, do you think?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Sleep will help too, I think. Will you be prepared to visit the courts with ‘Amad tomorrow, or should I instead tell her you’re going to stay home?”

“I will go,” Mhete decides, carefully closing the leather-bound book she had been poring over so intensely for what, it seems, had been hours. “I want to see Ugmil’amad and Ugmil’adad.”

“Then you had best wear another tunic,” Mhorbok says, looking at the one Mhete wears now with a raised eyebrow and an amused smile as she extricates herself from his arms to begin readying herself for sleep. “This one is stained with charcoal.”

Oops.

---

Chapter End Notes

Neo-Khuzdul Translations
-ul — A suffix that means ‘child of ___’
Zatakhuzdȗn — The Khuzd term for nonbinary Dwarrow, lit. ‘one who embodies both’. Many thanks to determamfidd on AO3 for coining the term years ago, it's incredibly useful.
Khazâd — Dwarves
Kurkarukê — 'My tiny raven', a term of endearment
Irak’adad — Uncle
Ugmil’adad — Grandmother
Ugmil’adad — Grandfather