A dwarrowdam named Dhunis awakes to nothingness.
Darkness surrounds her, and there is no heat or chill in the air she cannot see. She would shiver, her flesh bare and soft as a newborn babe’s, only her thick hair to warm her, but something intangible curls around her like an embrace and she feels suddenly, undeniably safe. There is a floor beneath her body, the only thing she can feel, and it should raise goose pimples on her arms but instead she merely marvels at the feeling.
The floor is smooth stone that cradles her. That welcomes her. That feels, inexplicably, like returning home.
Dhunis lifts her fingers. No longer do they creak and groan, strong and slow as the stone she was carved from; instead they move like they did when she was younger and swifter, so long ago now that she has almost forgotten the feeling.
Dhunis knows that she is dead, and it doesn’t frighten her. She lived a long, rich life, full of people who loved her and people who she loved deeply in return. Many of them died before her, her spouse and her first child, many old friends, her ‘amad and mama.
They must be waiting.
“Clever daughter,” a deep voice says, filling the space around her and even the very air she breathes.
Wonder at her new limbs forgotten in a rush of sudden awe, Dhunis stumbles to her feet and squints into the eternal darkness.
“Mahal?”
“I am they,” Mahal says. Their voice rumbles like thunder, like the roar of a forge or a hearthfire. “Or Aule, or any other name or title you wish to call me.”
“Then I am dead.”
“You already knew that, did you not?”
Mahal, the Great Forgemaster, Maker of the Dwarrow race, husband of Yavanna the Green Lady, Vala of Ea, sounds amused.
Dhunis can only attempt, and then fail, to hide her smile. “I suspected it, my Lord.” Dhunis stretches curious hands up and around her, feeling the warmth of the space, the emptiness that yet isn’t. “Is this one of your Halls, as in our stories?”
A hum fills the air around her, so deep it feels as though it should shake the very earth. Yet she stays steady, and the feeling of safety blanketing her doesn’t diminish for even a moment.
“This is my forge,” Dhunis’s Maker says. “You cannot see the room, and will not until your new eyes learn to see, but there is a large forge and smithy here and here is where I create Khazâd.”
A shock runs through Dhunis.
“Our souls are forged here?” she asks, and her voice is weaker than before. She is bared to her Maker in every way, like a new child entering the world for the first time and looking upon their first face. She is safe and loved here, standing before Mahal, and a gentle hand brushes against her cheek, incomprehensibly large and small, gentle and callused and strong and made of song. She can feel the echoes of almighty thunder course through her body but she is not afraid.
Dhunis leans into the hand.
“They are,” Mahal murmurs, as if they can understand her thoughts before she speaks them.
“And our bodies?”
“Yes.”
“Then how…?” Dhunis’ voice trails away, and she swallows through the lump in her throat.
“Speak freely, beloved daughter.” Mahal’s voice echoes through the space, large and infinite and small all at once, and the hand cradling her cheek gentles further.
“How can you give so many of us bodies that do not fit?”
Mahal hums, quiet and gently earth-shaking.
“I begin your body,” they say. “I forge it and sing to it before I release it to Middle Earth. But that body is that of a babe, small and new.
“I begin your journey,” Mahal continues, “but you choose your own song.”
You choose your own song.
Dhunis stands there, new and younger again, and thinks.
Her tattoos are where they have been since the day she got them, mourning marks and marks of victory, marks of family and marks of love. She can feel them under her fingers, the differences between inked skin and plain skin under thick, familiar hair. Her body is how she made it during her life, and she is grateful to Mahal for this, but…
“What about now?” Dhunis asks. She tilts her chin up, hoping that she can guess where Mahal’s face sits and gaze toward it. The hand on her cheek moves with her. “Can you reshape our bodies when we enter your Halls?”
“I can,” Mahal says.
“Can you reshape mine?”
“I can,” they say again, and their words are gentler than a parent’s hands cradling their perfect newborn child. “How would you have me shape your new body?”
Dhunis’s breath leaves her in a rush, but still she stands.
“I want the body of a bearing dwarrowdam,” Dhunis murmurs, words she has spoken before but to her family, not to her Almighty Maker. “Still sturdy and strong, still myself with my tattoos and thick hair across my body. The same nose and eyes. The same smile. But I want wider hips, a softer jawline, all else which I was not given in life.”
“I suppose your family can wait a little longer,” Mahal muses. “I will give you all you desire, Dhunis. I hope you can forgive me for not seeing your true self sooner.”
Dhunis shudders, the sound of her name on her Maker’s lips leaving her breathless. There is nothing but dark, soothing silence for a moment, a space to recover in, and Dhunis breathes and does just that.
“Like you said before,” she says, quiet and sure. “I chose my own song.”
Mahal chuckles. A sense of pride and joy washes over her, fiercer than a raging wildfire and softer than a new lamb’s coat, enveloping her until it is all she can feel, warming her to the core of her being. The hand on her cheek withdraws and instead takes her own.
“Come,” Mahal says. “I will guide you to my anvil.”
Khemir comes to with a choking, violent drawing of breath.
His limbs shake, weak and scared, and the sounds of battle and death ring in his ears like a symphony of despair. The smell of blood is thick and cloying around him, the memory of saving his life by losing his arm so strong he can almost feel the Orc’s blade through his forearm again.
“Breathe, my son.”
Khemir sucks in a shuddering breath, then another, as love blankets him wholly and completely. There is no fear besides his own dredges, when he focuses on the feeling. There is no fear and there is no pain and there is no—
“Am I dead?” Khemir whispers.
“Yes,” the voice says, simple and kind.
“Fuck.”
“You fought well,” the voice continues, a reassurance and a promise, “and you saved many bright lives with your axe. Is that not what you entered the battle wishing to accomplish?”
Khemir says nothing, slowly registering the stone beneath his bare skin. He can feel whispers through it, the echoing memories of large boots and the crash of a sunfire hammer against impossible stone. He listens closer and shakes at the feeling of a sunfire hammer against reborn mithril.
“Are you Mahal?” he asks, faint and thready.
“I am,” Mahal says, and utters his darkname with such gentleness and familiarity that Khemir shudders, overwhelmed, and has to slowly breathe in again to steady himself.
Khemir carefully pushes himself to sitting, the arm he lost in battle only a few minutes ago returned to him as if it never left.
“Has the battle ended?”
“No,” Mahal says. “It may soon, but even I cannot see the future of the song in all ways. Today I welcome my children into my Halls, nothing more.”
Khemir considers this, rolling the words through his head as the adrenaline of his last battle slowly, painstakingly fades.
“My ‘amad is here,” he murmurs, “and my ‘adad.”
“They are. Even now, they wait for you.”
“Where?”
“Beyond a door set within the stone, one you cannot yet see.”
“Why can’t I see?”
Mahal chuckles. “Curious son of mine,” he says, “just as I made you. When you died, I fashioned a new body for you to live in within the Halls. Every living creature, when they are new, must learn how to see, just as their body must learn how to let them see.”
“A new body?”
“Yes.”
“Then…”
Khemir trails off, bending his legs and lifting his arms to rest them atop his bare knees. He certainly feels the same as he did when he was last alive, minus the bleeding stump of an arm and the sweat, grit, and gore covering him and his armor. He feels new and clean, safe again and whole again.
He feels the same.
He wonders at that.
“Can you reshape our bodies when we return to the Halls?”
“I can.” Mahal’s voice is warm, filled with fondness too deep for Khemir to fully comprehend, a melody of love that sinks into his very soul.
“Then I may have the body I have wished for since I was a child?”
“You may. Tell me, what would you have as your new shape?”
“I would have a flat chest.” Khemir pauses and sucks in a slow breath, grounding himself in this new, glorious reality. “I would have the body of a siring dwarrow, if I was born as one.”
“And would you keep the rest of your form the same?”
“...Would you make me any taller if I asked?”
Mahal’s laughter is booming and sonorous, echoing throughout the space Khemir is unable to see. It goes on and on, and yet Khemir knows that Mahal doesn’t mock him. He is safe here, above all else. This is his time with his Maker, and his Maker loves his creations with all his mountain-vast heart.
“I may,” Mahal says, laughter still curling through his speech. “Perhaps I will let you wait and find out.”
“I was told Mahal wasn’t cruel,” Khemir laughs in a burst of bravery. “Clearly I was told wrong, for height to be the one mystery I cannot learn even when I die.”
“And for that, I will give you an inch more than I would have before. Cheeky dwarrow.”
This time, Khemir and Mahal laugh together.
“‘Amad?”
“Yes, pebble?”
A small, young khuzd wrinkles his freckled nose in thought, looking down at the parchment he’s been scribbling delightful shapes on for the last few minutes as he listens to his ‘amad speak.
“But if three is for if you’re a dwarrowdam and two is for if you’re a dwarrow then what about if you’re a zatakhuzdȗn?”
Golris smiles, the light skin around her eyes crinkling fondly.
“Then you may wear a braid with four strands, if you wish,” she says, and lifts one of the neat braids framing her face. “Like the ones I have, see?”
“But what about if you don’t use they or akhi?”
“Like me and how I use she?”
“Yeah!”
Golris chuckles, scooping her dear child into her lap and making him giggle. “Did you notice that I have two pairs of braids in my hair?”
“Ooh…”
“The smaller braids closer to my ears tell dwarrow what my heart is,” she continues, “and the larger ones closer to my face tell them what to call me.”
The pebble grins, gap toothed and gleaming. “Can I have braids too, ‘Amad?”
“Would you like some? You can change them however many times you want, and remove them again if you ever don’t know what you want them to be.”
“Yeah!”
“Well then, little Durin,” says Golris with a smile, and brings her callused hands up to cradle the young Durin’s face, two similar shades of pale, ruddy skin. “Let me get my hair oil.”
“I’m not a dwarrowdam,” the young Khuzd says to break the gentle silence surrounding the two of them, gazing up at the sky as the sea of grass around her brushes her temples like a caress.
Atandil, the Man lying next to her, turns to face her, a questioning sound on his lips. “You aren’t?”
“No.” She watches the bright, fluffy clouds roll by overhead, shading her eyes against the sun when it’s revealed high in the sky to shine down on the two of them. “Khazâd don’t have only dwarrow and dwarrowdam, like Men do. I am zatakhuzdȗn, ‘one who embodies both.’ “
“Men don’t just have two either,” Atandil says, quiet and simple. Now it is the Khuzd’s turn to face him, watching his light brown face and his dark, deep eyes.
“You don’t?”
Atandil laughs. “We don’t, or at least my line does not. I would never have it another way, for then my sister’s spouse would be sad and I would be sad for him as well. Besides, when has Middle Earth ever been that simple?”
“When indeed,” the Khuzd agrees, laughing along with her friend — her companion, her partner, her safe haven. Her beard shifts in the breeze, wiry curls shining a deep and warm brown in the sun from the rich oil within. Her hair looks almost black in the shade, but smoke-darkened copper in the sun just like her ‘amad’s, complimenting her dark skin beautifully. “Arda has never been simple.”
“You say that with such surety!” Atandil says, laughing again as he rolls onto his side and props himself up on one brown elbow. “Come, my lovely Durin, tell me your secrets. How complicated has Arda been?”
“Well,” Durin begins, and feels a rush of fondness in her chest as she shifts to face the love of her life — this life, though this love will follow her into the next and the next just like other loves do now. A grin is stretched across Atandil’s face as he watches her, his skin looking warm to the touch from the sun just like hers is, and his brown eyes twinkle so effortlessly that it’s a wonder she doesn’t fall silent just to gaze into them forever. “I should start at the beginning of the complications, shouldn’t I? Years ago, before your great-grandfather was even on his way to birth, there was a handsome young Dwarrow who was the talk of every Khuzd in Khazad-Dum.”
“No!” Atandil gasps.
“Yes!” Durin counters with a laugh, and playfully hits him on the chest. “I was so handsome then, you would have fallen for me all over again. My ‘amad then was very stern about me keeping my beard properly oiled, and like a good Dwarrow I listened to her from the start.”
“A good Dwarrow. Couldn’t save any for this life, hm?”
With a laugh and a rallying cry, Durin tackles her love against the grass and together they roll down the hill.
“‘Amad?”
“Yes?” The dwarrowdam pauses in the doorway on her way out, looking at her child with kind eyes and two gray brows raised in question.
“Will you braid my hair?” the Khuzd sitting on the bed asks with a vulnerable voice, their brown eyes hazy as they look too high to meet their ‘amad’s own.
“Of course I will,” Khírvim replies, her voice soft and wet as she reenters the simple, undecorated stone room. She sits with her child on the edge of the bed, strong and thick hands rising toward their hair before falling again, a moment of hesitation and a moment of waiting. “As you always had it in your home?”
“You know how I braided my hair once I was older?”
“I watched you every day, ‘ibinê,” she says, eyes wet as she nods, “and a few days more.”
“What did you see?”
Khírvim shifts further onto the bed at her child’s invitation, crossing her legs beneath herself and taking their waterfall of black hair in her hands when it’s offered, holding and carefully making sure every strand is behind their back for when she braids it. This trust and vulnerability is a gift, one she has not been given in one hundred years, more years than even that, and one she will honor in every way she can now that her child is by her side once more. She has hair oils and a comb in her belt pouches from a silent hope when she felt the pull to Mahal’s great doors, a set of carved bone clasps that her own ‘amad had made for this very purpose, and she frees her hands to remove them and set them on the bed.
“I saw you protect your family,” Khírvim says as she uncaps the oil and begins to spread it evenly down her child’s thick hair. “I saw you fall in love and raise a bright pebble, then another to join the first. I saw you defend your home and your people, be the ruler I knew you would be from the beginning. I saw you be just and selfless, and love your people with a fierceness worthy of the stories.
“I saw you be you, Durin,” she completes in a voice gentler than a pebble’s careful hand on fine stone, and kisses Durin’s brown cheek as her child cries with nearly-seeing eyes. “And I am so proud of who you have been.”
“ ‘Amad…”
“Let me praise you,” Khírvim whispers, turning her child’s head until they rest nose to nose and brow to brow, their breath commingling in the space they share. It’s an old, traditional affection for parent and child, for siblings, for friends, for elders and guests, for partners and for spouses, one from her clan that she taught her child when Durin was young. “You have been the model Khuzd, ‘ibinê, and I can’t say whether my words alone will ever gain the ability to fully express my pride, love, and joy at seeing you lead our people with such goodness. Your name will be on the tongues and the minds of those in Middle Earth for a very, very long time, and for good reason.”
“ ‘Amad,” Durin laughs, their cheeks hot; though Khírvim cannot see the blood rushing to their face under their brown skin, she knows from long years spent with her child that it’s there and that their ears must surely be burning just out of view. “Please, at least wait until I can see clearly to finish showering me in praise.”
“As you wish,” Khírvim hums, a teasing smile on her face. “Though I’m not sure Gibrin will obey the same plea when she returns.”
Khírvim can only imagine the increase in the temperature of her child’s cheeks and the shells of their ears.
“She’s my wife,” Durin sputters as Khírvim patiently combs through their long, thick hair, right back to acting like they did when they were seventy in the face of their ‘amad’s teasing after so long apart. “I’ve heard every syllable of praise possible from her, ‘amad, she died only two years before me.”
“You truly believe that?”
“I— Well—”
Khírvim laughs, bright and clear even in her age as she begins to comb through their hair, and Durin’s expression wrinkles just like it did when they were a pebble and they were told that ‘no, you cannot join the mining expeditions at only ten years old’. They refrain from arguing, though, seemingly preferring to sit and let their ‘amad comb their hair and beard free of any small knots gained between entering the Halls of Mahal and now rather than continuing their futile attempts at claiming that their wife has already praised them in all the ways she can think up.
Soon Gibrin will return to the room with hearty food for Durin and Khírvim and herself, sit with the two of them on Durin’s new bed and speak in quiet words as Durin’s vision continues to return to them. Khírvim will braid Durin’s hair and beard each in a thick three-strand plait for bed, Durin will sleep and let their new body prepare itself for the new day, and when they wake Khírvim will braid their hair in the style they wore for years: a style fit for the ruler of Khazad-dum.
Narvi awakens with a scream ripping through her fragile throat.
Khel, she wants to cry, and finds that her voice fails her in the darkness of failure, only a guttural cry choked with tears able to pass through that veil between silent and piercing. Khel, umralê, rûrîkumrazê, oh—
“Be still,” a great rumbling voice says, shaking her to her very core despite how utterly gentle it is. “Be still, Narvi. You are safe here.”
“Khelebrimbur is not,” Narvi cries as well as she can, her eyes burning with hot tears like liquid fire between each pained, desperately gasping word. She is dead and all is dark and oh, Khel, forgive me.
“There is nothing you can do for him now,” the earth-shattering voice replies, almost sympathetic. “Be still for now, Narvi, and save your strength for when you most need it. Be still,” they repeat, and utter her darkname before they fall silent once more.
Even though her grief-clouded mind, the sound of her darkname on her Maker’s lips is enough to raise every hair along her arms and shoulders. It spears through her unlike anything she has ever experienced before, piercing her chest, lungs, heart, her very soul. She shudders deeply, but though her screams and choked cries may subside her sobbing does not and her shaking does not either.
A great, gentle wind blows through her spring-tight and unbraided curls, faintly cool, the goose pimples along her arms and legs rising further as it passes around her. It is sweet and almost too other to comprehend.
“Be still,” her great Maker repeats, even a gentle murmur causing her to shake. She is safe, though.
She is safe.
Long minutes pass, and Narvi is unaware of how many come and go as she weeps. They are gentler tears than before but filled with heavy, cloying grief nonetheless. She does not know what will become of Khel, but she struggles to foresee how safety could be found when the Deceiver walks among the Elves and even now, perhaps, has taken him away to torture and kill.
How Narvi wishes, in such an unimaginable event, that she could welcome him into her Maker’s Halls. She knew from the beginning that he would outlive her, but she did not think that the time between their deaths would perhaps be so brief as it may yet be.
Oh, Khel, Narvi thinks for the third, fifth, seventh time, I am so sorry.
Then she rises to her feet and directs her still-blind eyes toward Mahal.
“Please,” Narvi says in an unsteady voice, her dark hands trembling and tears still trailing wetly down her face. “My lord, I beg of you to give me the body I desire so that I may meet Khelebrimbur at the remaking of the world in the form that I choose.”
“I will grant you this,” the great being before her says, quiet and all encompassing, “just as I have for any child of mine that has desired it. I cannot rewrite the pain of losing him, but I will reforge your body so that your reunion is all the sweeter.”
“We will see each other again and be glad,” Narvi says in determination, a fire of hope blooming within her chest. “Khel will weep with joy and so shall I, and he will praise the new body you have granted me with gladness.”
“Any with a kind heart would be glad for you,” Mahal murmurs, and Narvi thinks she can perhaps hear their great smile. “Come, now, I will guide you and you will awake when I am finished. Then you may go and greet your waiting kin.”
Narvi steps forward.
“I am dead, then.”
“You are.”
Kelben sits up, crossing their legs beneath them and shivering at the cool stone below their buttocks and against their ankles. The air around them is warm but the floor is not, and the difference feels strange. They are used to warm air and warm stone, or cold air and cold stone, and the difference between air and ground suggests a recent fire.
“Are you making something?” Kelben asks the shapeless voice, and the deep voice they cannot see chuckles as if it holds an avalanche within.
“I just did,” their Maker says, vast and amused. “I made you.”
That explains the cold floor, then.
“So… I am remade,” Kelben says, and pats blindly at their chest in unhindered curiosity, the hurt of their death forgotten for now. “In the same shape as when I died?”
“Curious one,” Mahal muses. “Yes, you are as you died, though hale and whole as you were not. Your beard is undyed, as well, but all other things remain unchanged.”
“Can they be? Changed, I mean.”
“Would you like them to be?”
“Yes,” Kelben says, sure and eager, before remembering themself and clasping their hands in their lap. “If that’s allowed, my lord.”
Mahal’s second round of chuckles is just as all-encompassing and earthshaking as the first, and Kelben cannot help but feel warm and safe through the duration.
“It is,” Mahal says, and utters their darkname with care and presicion, each syllable unthinkably vast on the Great Maker’s tongue. “Stand and follow me to my forge, then, and I will reshape you in the image you choose.”
Kelben’s darkname spoken on their Maker’s tongue causes them to shiver as they stand, settling deep within their chest in a way even their darkname on their ‘adad’s tongue never did. It settles so warmly it feels almost hot, burning within the soft planes of Kelben’s heart. It fits into place next to every other deep care and love Kelben holds dear. This, the sound of their truest name, from the great tongue of the one who first carved it into their heart.
The carved runes are inlaid with gold now, changed yet fundamentally the same, and Kelben follows the Great Craftsman to be reforged in that same deep, gleaming glow.
Mahal looks up from his anvil, their great sunfire hammer raised above their head in preparation to strike, as a knock echoes from their smithy door.
“Come in,” he says, crackling thunder welcoming the Khuzd on the other side, whoever they may be. Mahal finds it dull to know all before it occurs.
The door swings open and a strong Khuzd enters, familiar and unafraid. Boots with steel toes and thick soles, their clothing dyed a deep, rich blue, and eyes of mithril look up at Mahal without hesitation. This Khuzd is the only one who can look upon Mahal like this, save for the thirteen other forefathers of the race.
“Back again, Durin?”
“My heart’s wishes have changed,” Durin the Deathless says, and smiles faintly at her Maker. “They have countless times before and they will countless times more until the remaking of the world. As ‘adadê khathiz you know this.”
“I know it well. Tell me, then, what does your heart yearn for?” Mahal asks, the seventh time this month — an auspicious number, and one they are glad their shining daughter can bear in ways such as this.
“From the look in your eyes,” Durin says, “you already know.”
“Humor me.”
Durin laughs and her chest shakes with delight and amusement, a smaller echo of Mahal’s booming, endless thunder. “My heart yearns for the body of a bearing Dwarrowdam, as I was during my third life.”
Mahal smiles down at their born and reborn daughter, her face shining like the sun as she watches them with endless trust. They set their hammer down on their anvil with a resounding boom and step toward Durin, one star-draped, endless hand reaching out to take hers. Their forge is already lit, and they have woven this song of choice, breath, and body more times than even they in all their infinity can count.
“Close your eyes.”
The pebble Durin is Durin II, the Durin speaking to Atandil the Númenórean is Durin III, and the Durin in the Halls with their 'amad is Durin IV. The only strictly non-chronological part of this fic is that Narvi died before Durin IV, the rest is fine to see as taking place in the order it was written.
The Plus One Durin isn't one specific reincarnation, but a combination of all the previous lives (in this case, at least to IV). I see this as a form of plurality, potentially medianhood (though I don't know as much about medianhood as multiplicity) -- Durin the Deathless is multiple souls (I, II, III, etc) that combine to form one soul: Durin the Deathless. Each Durin reincarnation is a unique person, and the Durin of the halls (Durin the Deathless specifically, not Durin I) wouldn't be themself without every single Durin within. I have a lot of thoughts about Durin and will probably be posting more fanfic about them someday in the future. If you're curious about plurality or specifically medianhood, I would suggest taking a look at Pluralpedia.org online for more information.
Durin III is black, her father is a Blacklock from the Orocarni Mountains. Durin IV and their 'amad press their noses and foreheads together in a manner of platonic affection based heavily on Polynesian cultures, as I imagine them both as such. This action is meant to be paired with the two parties breathing in together, symbolizing the breath of life. In Hawaiian culture this is called a honi, and in Māori culture this is called a hongi.