I never knew of the kingdom that was; I was born after the dragon and the flames. All that I can recall is a life on the road, traveling from one place to another. And that is where I was told I was born, on the road, neither here nor there. No definitive location, no place to call home. My sister was also born on the road. During our travels between one man village to another.
My father was a blacksmith, a maker of some of the finest swords and axes ever weld after the flame. He raised me as a son, though I was born a daughter. Said it was unsafe to not have a home and the first born to be a girl, there was no way to protect me. So being raised as a son, I could provide my own protection. A female dwarf was a rare and valuable thing. After my sister was born, Caril, (Kah-rill) my mother refused to allow my father to raise her as a boy. She always said when they would argue that she wanted to 'keep' one of her daughters.
Mother never looked me in the eye, ashamed of what I had become. Even after father died
she did not speak or look at me, talking through my sister. She did not live much longer after my father died, too bitter with fate and life to carry on. I managed, even though it cost me greatly, to have my parents buried together. I chiseled words of the old language, by my sister's instructions on how they looked and were written. Mother made sure she knew the way to write old language and traditions of our people, while my father taught me about smithing and how to be a man.
Caril's and my story begins after the death of our parents, when we first met Thorin Oakenshield.