When the last elf, save Maglor, had traveled across the sea, the dwarves remained. They weren't sorry to the see the elves go, exactly, but they didn't rejoice either. They were wise enough to know the change it heralded.
When the last ent walked its forest, he didn't realize he was the last, only that it had been long since he had ventured forth to meet his brothers. The men, by then, spoke of ents only as legends.
The dwarves kept records of them, brought by Gimli an age ago. The dwarves remembered, but they didn't keep track.
No one knew when the last ent fell, and even the ent didn't realize what it heralded.
When a hobbit ventured outside the Shire for the last time, it was to the dwarves she went. The men had forgotten her kind already and were astonished at her appearance.
The dwarves of Erebor remembered.
They didn't know - the hobbits didn't know - that the lass's adventure would be the last of its kind, for the world grew ever darker, and the hobbits ever more insular.
When the last king that could truly be said to have the blood of the Numenor in him died, none remarked on it. He died in battle, not at a time of his choosing, and so did many a king after him. Who could say how long they would have lived had they survived the wars?
But the dwarves . . .
The dwarves dwindled like a mine slowly being emptied, and there came a generation when only males were born, and few enough of them.
If they were elves, they would have lamented and died of grief there and then. If they were men, they would have refused to accept their fate. (If they were hobbits, the situation never would have arisen in the first place.)
But they were dwarves. They were used to hard fates, and they were not such fools as to not have predicted this end.
Well. This beginning of the end.
They had reclaimed Khazad-Dum, but there were other ancient halls long lost to them, and the orcs were not so numerous as they once were. There were other dwarves of other lines - no more numerous, no more hopeful, but more all the same - that would be glad to reclaim the homes of their fathers.
They would not wait inside their mines and bury their fellows one by one and hope for the kindness of men to bury their last. They would not rage against silent stone.
They were dwarves, and they had fought dragons that elves had fled rather than face. They were dwarves, and they had refused to let Sauron's will rule them, even through his cursed rings. They were dwarves, and even though they had found little favor and been given little grace, they had made something out of themselves, hadn't they? They had earned their place in Mandos's halls.
They were dwarves, which meant that they were greedy.
(Was it greed to wish to go home, even if that home had been stolen more than an Age ago? Was it greed to wish to lay eyes on evidence of your ancestors' skill and might so that you could be consoled that their work would endure?)
They were dwarves, which meant that they were proud.
(Was it pride that kept their backs stiff or mere weariness? Was it pride that kept their language secret, or just one last defiance of the waiting dark?)
They were dwarves, which meant they were stubborn.
(. . . Aye. They were stubborn. And a good thing, too. A weak willed people would have given up by now.)
Their people hadn't made a habit of dying peacefully in their sleep. Certainly not of fading like a lovesick elf. No. they would go out properly with a fight for their ancient halls.
And because they were not just stubborn but fierce, and not just proud but strong, they reclaimed those halls, too, until only the first hall of the Ironfists was left.
There was but one dwarf left to fight for it, and he was no Ironfist. He was a Longbeard, with a passing resemblance to Durin that would have been more remarked upon had he been born before the last incarnation of Durin had been brought to the world.
One dwarf, against the last stronghold of the orcs.
He could have gone and sought aid from Men. He could have wondered where the wizards were or dragged a hobbit or two from the Shire.
But he was a dwarf. The last of the dwarves.
And in the end, he couldn't help but think that he liked the look of those odds.