Ambisinister
January 2891 T.A.
The next following weeks were a bit rough for Maggie. Waking up every morning bright and early was a pain in the ass. She was accustomed to the habits of Hobbits, from waking not quite so early in the morning, starting chores, and then leaving the rest of the day up to fate and whatever food happened to be found (suffice to say she had become quite lazy despite the lack of any 21st century accommodations). With the elves, though, she was up at just before the crack of dawn, washed, dressed, and thrown into Thannor's teaching room once the sun winked over the horizon.
Thannor gave no concessions to her lack of knowledge on elven routine or the fact that she yawned through the first half of his lessons. Maggie was acutely aware of one or two sour glances sent her way. He kept her busy through the morning, working her brain and twisting her tongue over her words and pronunciations. They poured over his personal works on the study of the language and Maggie felt herself gag from time to time with the guttural noises that stuck to the roof of her mouth and clogged her nose.
Even so, muttering angrily in broken Khuzdul had a certain hilarity to it that pacified her frustrations. Plus, the utter look of why that crossed Thannor's face was a reward well worth her embarrassing attempts. Aside from her mornings, the lord of the home had seen a need to advance her skills and so thus had scheduled her with nearly all of the artisans and masters within the homestead to find what best suited her. All in the name of education, of course.
Painting was out of the question. Her first attempt with her hands was laughable. To her, at least, but the elves around her had been painfully polite and 'hum'ed and 'ahh'ed appropriately but she knew better. Nope, paints and painting was not in her future. From there on she had been sent to weaving. Not as bad as her attempt at paints as she had no trouble thinking up designs and patterns, but executing them. That is where she fumbled. Using a loom was nothing like using a sewing machine (and even that was a nightmare) and so most of her time there had been spent giving the elves ideas on what patterns would look interesting.
All taken in good humor, of course, because she was still a dwarf, and so many of her design ideas were vastly ignored. It was another heavy sting to remind her that despite how generous they could be at being sociable with her, it wasn't always in their best interests to incorporate her into their lifestyles. Point painfully taken, she huffed.
Gardening was fine, but not where she was wanted. She was too huge footed and flat paced to be of any use in a swift and well-organized garden. Not that the Hobbits were willy-nilly with their gardening (nearly half the neighbors would be puffed to the cheeks with the offense) but they weren't as structured or as organized as the elven garden. Oh sure, she realized that they didn't play with the land as much as a Hobbit did, didn't use pots or fences, or much else of the sort to create a farm or garden, as nature abhorred a straight line, but there was still enough of a touch that made it unnatural and even.
And huge. They were cheating, she could feel it. Beyond the actual act of gardening, though, she could help with the lifting. Here she was unafraid of her strength and applied it liberally. Elven structures and works looked delicate to the untrained eye like hers and were easily assumed to be fragile. Not so, she found out readily, as baskets of thinly woven straws and cloth were thrust into her hands that bulged with vegetables and nearly popped from her arms as she held them. A glorified pack mule was Maggie, but it was something to do and it allowed her to better memorize the lay of the homestead without a suspicious gaze following her.
The biggest embarrassment came with the blacksmith and his forge. The elf in question was spidery and quick-eyed and barely spoke more than a handful of words to her in any given breath. He had an immense amount of patience for his craft and treated it with the utmost care as one would a child, but he had a miniscule amount of care for Maggie. She barely learned a thing as she was immediately sat to one side and told to watch and stay out from underfoot. She mouthed his words as he spoke in Sindarin, memorizing what she could to take back to Thannor for a translation. Forge. Smith. Metal. Fire. Those were easy enough to deduce, but things like bellows, tempering, chisel, clamp and anvil threw her for a loop.
They also threw Thannor for a loop and Maggie ended up laughing herself to tears with the poor game of charades between them in an attempt to discern each other's words.
The only thing that seemed to click was pottery. Six weeks into her stay with the elves and the rotation she had been placed on to find a skill set that would suit her, it finally came sailing home. Pottery, of all things, was the furthest thing from her mind when she imagined herself with a trade to market (not that she would, she would never think in a thousand years she would have anything good enough to sell), but it clicked. They had set her up with a flat, round table that spun, something she only learned when she leaned on it to heave herself into her seat and promptly tumbled off when the table turned. Choked and muffle laughter echoed around Maggie and her face flared with heat across her cheeks after she sat back in her seat securely. Darfin, the elf who ran the pottery workshop, was kind and gentle and painfully soft-spoken. His hands were perpetually stained with browns and reds, his elbows flicked with faint paint strokes from his decorating, and a ghostly smile was permanently home upon his face.
He rarely left Maggie's side the first few days after her lessons with Thannor. The other elves knew their way around the workshop and supplied themselves, but Darfin would help Maggie with preparing her clay, putting her through an ungodly amount of attempts to smack the clay onto the spinning table, and would sit next to her and murmur words of advice as she worked. Maggie would have been unnerved by the constant attention laid upon her by the quiet elf, but he was about as intrusive as a breeze and usually stayed just out of her line of sight to allow her to work with no distractions. She appreciated it greatly, because aside from Thannor, he was the only other elf that treated her like she had a brain and could use it.
Her first pot she could produce with any sort of acceptable shape came two weeks after, and she held it up proudly to a blinking Thannor.
"It's a pot, Margaret," said Thannor once he glanced at it and looked around to her.
"It's a present, Thannor." She replied waspishly. "I'm giving it to you. My very first pot."
"Again, but in Sindarin this time." He murmured. Maggie sighed, Thannor was never one to do things simply, and she muttered her words again in her broken tongue. Only once she had did the thundercloud elf reach out with crooked fingers to take the pot by its handle. It was small, barely bigger than both her hands put together, and wouldn't hold much more than a single cup of water or perhaps a small flower and painted a deep red and brown to match the hearth of his room. Thannor's dark eyes inspected the pot critically, much as he did when he checked her handwriting, and turned it over gently. Maggie's throat bobbed with the press of her heart up against the underside of her tongue as she waited.
"Passable." Thannor muttered begrudgingly. Maggie beamed to the point of dimples. Praise was rarely given from the storm that was Thannor, but even a 'passable' was the short version of a long winded 'you did better than I expected.' Insult wasn't Thannor's game and Maggie allowed herself to bounce on her heels with her hands braced on the surface of his work desk. She was every inch a child home from grade school with a misshapen project as a headpiece.
"Darfin said I can move on to something bigger next week, like an actual watering pot or maybe a vase." Maggie chirruped happily. It had been a long time, ever since she had fallen stomach first into her new world, that she had felt this competent. The Hobbits had spent an unhealthy length of time trying to teach a young adult to read and speak again, and the chores she had been trusted to do were few and far in between. Making a pot, a useful item that could be a tool or a decoration, could be sold if she so dared, was vastly different from doing laundry or dishes or cleaning.
"Again, Margaret, in Khuzdul." Thannor commanded. Maggie groaned loudly and dropped her forehead heavily on his desk. She completely missed the smirk that touched his lips and its disappearance as soon as she came back up for air, growling the words gutturally through her nose. Thannor gingerly placed the pot on one far corner of his desk and stared at it for a long moment. Maggie fidgeted and wondered with a glance between it and her mentor. Finally, either he had pieced together his thoughts or believed her tormented enough, he reached over and deftly placed a pair of writing quills in the pot.
Maggie's grin practically split her face.
The month known as March came upon her swiftly. It was announced by the unearthly sound of hundreds of swarming bees that were scattered into the trees around the budding garden. Maggie, not knowing if her allergies had transferred over as well, deftly kept her distance and threw herself into the depths of the pottery workshop for those dreadful weeks. Darfin allowed her to work by the kiln and firing the pots to maturity. It left her glowing at the end of the day, bouncing and running along the halls at sunset to get to Thannor's room before bedtime and show him whatever small creation she had, or whatever new words she had learned.
"She's become rather fond of you, I see." Elrond's study was quiet as the night grew. The hearth silenced due to the warmer weather and the light of the sun had faded to give way to twilight. Thannor sat back on a high backed chair, legs akimbo and his good arm thrown up to steady his tilted head.
"Would we be so bold as to use that word? Fond? She's still a dwarf." Thannor countered with rusty words.
"You believe that no more than you could believe she is truly malicious. She's curious, thoughtful, and before you, lonely." Elrond added. His gaze remained down on his work, a tattered book from the depths of an expedition, gently being restored.
"She has Enelya." Thannor grumbled and his long legs shifted.
"Enelya treats her like a child." Elrond smoothly rebutted. "She is not incorrect, but Maggie is well beyond infancy and prefers to be treated as such." Another page turned, softly cradled to one side and smoothed out to be wetted with a light resin. "Do you mean to tell me after all these months, she remains the same dwarf to you?"
"She will always be the same creature to me, her physiology does not change." Thannor sighed and rubbed his temple. "... She's not what any of us expected. I cannot yet tell if this is good or bad. Does this work in her favor, because we shall treat her with... a different level of respect? Or worse, because if she returns to her people, she will be ostracized."
"She is a crafty mind." Elrond responded with a short glance up. "And at this moment, Margaret as made it clear she will not be returning to the folds of her kin."
"She cannot avoid them forever." Thannor answered blithely. "It would be foolish of her to think she could. Why else would we bother teaching her Khuzdul? Or a basic understanding of it, at the very least."
At his words, Elrond paused and a thoughtful twitch of his lips touched his otherwise passive face. Thannor caught the look and tilted his head curiously. He shifted in his chair and sat the smallest amount straighter in his chair.
"She's a touch more different than one would think, isn't she?" Thannor murmured. His long legs moved to tuck in closer. "She would not say more than to admit she is not from here, but as to where she spawned from, that is anyone's guess."
"She is a unique case. One that Mithrandir and I decided would be best to study here." Another page was turned in Elrond's hands and Thannor's gaze dropped to it for a brief moment. "Just before the end of fall, she shall return to the Shire. By her request." Elrond added the last firmly as Thannor's face shifted in protest.
"She will forget most of what she has learned." Thannor would not pout, but his mouth hardened nonetheless. "Four or five months to retain the information and then two or three to go without using it?"
"Doubtful." Elrond replied quietly. He frowned at a page and a gentle finger pressed out a wrinkle. "Maggie is clever, as I've stated. She shall use her knowledge to her advantage. From what I have heard of her life in the Shire, she is overtly attached to the youngest of her adoptive family."
Thannor's nostrils flared. "I will have to make her aware that sharing Khuzdul outside of her people is punishable."
"So should you, until she is better acquainted with her kin, it is best to save her what torment we can." The Lord responded readily. The book in his hand finally split down to its spine as Elrond reached the middle. He looked up to Thannor and watched as the master straightened in his chair. "There is still much to teach her. I believe she plans to return here regularly."
"Yearly, you mean to say." Thannor stated, the determination upon his student's face flashing through his mind. "I feel she would be quite cross with us if we abandoned her now."
Elrond smiled softly. "Aye. For a dwarf, I am quite surprised she attaches herself so quickly to others. Perhaps she shall start a new movement of friendship between our people."
"I would not bet on that quite so soon." Thannor laughed as he relaxed back in his chair. "She is a monster with the twins, though they do not openly taunt her, she is swift to retaliate for any slight."
"So I have heard." Elrond answered fondly. "My sons had come not two nights before covered in mud and dripping wet."
Thannor smirked. "An accident, she claims, they startled her while in the garden with Odelia."
Elrond chuckled. "Unfortunately for them, I am inclined to believe her more than not. I am not blind to the terror that my children inflicted upon the household, guests or otherwise."
"Heh." Thannor straightened in his chair for a brief moment, his back giving a slight pop and his lame arm shifting to his lap. He sighed and rubbed at his temple to avoid the silence that fell between him and his lord. After a few beats of nothingness, he relented and looked to find Lord Elrond watching him intently.
"I will watch out for her." Thannor promised, surprised at his determination. "I will see to it that she is prepared for the world, whether she wishes to be a part of it or not."
"This is all I ask for, my dear friend." Elrond accepted with a minute bow of his head. Thannor sighed heavily once more and stood from his chair, the ache of his years suddenly bundled at the small of his back and between his shoulders. So much to do and so little time to accomplish it.
NOTE: Oh my lord. Why. Whhhhhy did I wait so long? Thank you, thank you, thank you - for all those who continued to review and leave me notes, I appreciate your dedication! Here is your reward.
