North

This land was abominable, Yavvanna concluded after three days of walking and walking and walking, with hardly any pause for rest and not one sight of anything that wasn't this terrible shade of bruising purple. This was worse than what Rohan or Fangorn had become, she couldn't even feel the draw from the roots under the earth here, she couldn't even hear the whispers of their soon birthed voices.

Whatever power in her that she might have retained in this land, where the dead ruled, felt gone here. She was as powerless as a man in this landscape, and she was beginning to feel the weight of it. Her very bones ached within her skin, and all around her even the sky itself had turned a dark, ghastly shade of purple. If she were so lucky as to survive this, and return to the land in which was hers, she'd never again wear such a terrible colour.

'We have to stop soon,' came the voice of the child, the hobbit boy who had promised her husband to lead them North. The child who did not seem tired in the least, he should have been the weakest of them, for hobbits were the gentlest, the most delicate of all mortal species. Yet, the child had not tired, not even slowed once during their three-day pursuit of…of what she could no longer remember. It could not be Fëanor, for not even Fëanor was mad enough to make his home here, in this land. Perhaps it was nowhere, and in the end, they would only reach their way when they all finally dropped.

'Where?' Snarled her husband, who had tired far quicker than either the boy or herself. 'There's no shelter, and if you stop in front of one of those…not trees again, I shall beat you harder than your father should have.'

Yavvanna froze, her fury raising its hot head once again. 'Aulë!' But the child spoke for himself, almost as if he had not really heard the threat in her tired husband's voice.

'I don't have a father sir, and even if I did Drúadan law forbids such beating against a child, or any member of the tribe who hasn't committed an offense on the lines of murder. Look over there, there's a tent.'

Yavvanna squinted into the distance and frowned, for she could only see…oh, yes there it was, a tent. Brown, leather and most likely larger than it looked from atop the purple ridged hill they stood on now. And there, again in the distance, was another one and another one, so many things that were not purple. A camp, oh lord, other people that were as alive and as breathing as they were. Clearly her overwhelming joy must have spilled over onto her companions, for the child laughed and cried out.

'Race you down.'

And then he was gone, running down the hill at too fast a pace to avoid tripping and stumbling. Yavvanna did not scream after him to stop, for she was running too hard and too fast herself down the hill. Yet, she could certainly hear her husband's voice, raised in anger behind them. Far behind them, still stood atop that most ludicrous of hills.

This was a dead world…Aulë could see it now, a terrible graveyard stretching from here all the way to the sunset. There may have been no grave markers, or stones, but the bodies were there …just under the surface regardless. He just didn't know where, and it was that thought more than anything else that froze him on top of that hill.

Did Yavanna notice? Did she feel the death radiating from the very soil under their feet, probably. But if she did, she clearly didn't care, running down that hill with such abandon as she was. No, it was just Aulë, just Aulë left alone on his hillside with his silly little thoughts…again. He couldn't move, could hardly let himself breathe, the stench of death in the air was so strong. They didn't have this back on Valinor, this constant need of men to bury their dead in the ground…they barely had death. Their last had been before the first age of Middle-Earth and even then, they hadn't buried the poor sod in the ground like some kind of fetish death cult – they'd tied weights to their ankles, thrown them in the sea and let their body sink down below the splashing of the waves.

That was the way it was supposed to be done…but then Middle-Earth was a strange land, even his children the Dwarves weren't entirely free of its more bizarre customs. They buried their dead too, although they at least housed them in stone…but Aulë didn't often think of that. How the dwarves buried and sank their dead was no problem to him, for though their bodies were mortal their spirits most certainly were not, and they all returned to him in the end.

'So, said the maker to the toy.'

Turning around with a jump, his heart did a summersault inside his chest, as he looked down and beheld what had actually spoken to him.

It was a hobbit.

It was the hobbit that had sent them here.

The people did not come out to meet them, perhaps that should have been their first clue. But right then as they clattered down that terrible hill, all Yavvanna could think of was that for one brief moment, she could feel the sharp bite of the air on her face, her hair flowing out in a wave behind her, and she was happy. Not scared, not worried, not even angry, for one brief moment she was well and truly happy, and then they reached the bottom of the hill.

The structures, for there was something far too substantial in their make to simply call them tents, were large and loomed over the two travellers like some kind of sinister spectre. They were a patchwork of different kinds of boiled leather and fur, and Yavvanna found herself strangely drawn to them. Right then she wished nothing more than to stretch out her hand and run her fingers down the soft downy fur of the structure's walls.

Aulë had never been able to see the beauty in such things, had never been able to see the wonder or appeal in rubbing your face against something soft, warm and alive. And then Yavvanna's thoughts shuddered to a stop, because these structures weren't alive, they weren't creatures or rabbits, or mice, they were homes. Markets, and healing places, and homes if she reached out now, she wouldn't just be irritating one single jumping rabbit, but a whole colony of people who most likely did not care to have their walls petted.

Before they could move to a less conspicuous location the tent-flap fluttered open, and a young hobbit maiden, with sea-shell ear-rings, strode out. Her smile was warm and welcoming, almost as if she had been expecting them.

'Good evening weary travellers, you are welcome to our home. Please follow this girl, and we will show you a place to rest, and welcome you with meats and mead and wine a plenty.'

Yavvanna didn't know why exactly, but something about the girl felt off to her. No, it was more than that, there was something about her eyes, deep blue with a tinge of hazel that felt altogether wrong to the Valar of the Earth.

Still, it was too late to turn back now.

Aulë struck the hobbit…or rather where the hobbit should have been, but there was nothing there only thin trails of smoke…and laughter, there was plenty of that as well.

'Hush now Smith, one would think you weren't pleased to see me.' Said the sneering voice from behind the great smith. He whirled around, and again he tried to grab the hobbit, by the neck this time. But again, the wicked creature avoided him.

'Oh, so close, perhaps if we were to play this game for just a little while longer…what say you Smith? Up for a game of keep away, or has the Old man just become too old?'

Aulë looked up, into the branches of the tree the Valar could have sworn was not there before. The hobbit sat, like a child with his legs swinging from the largest branch on the crooked thing.

'No…no this "game" ends now. I thought I knew your kind halfling. All the halflings I have known in the past have been gentle sorts with kind hearts. Brave, and loyal and I thought they were the standard for their race…but clearly, they were the exception. If you're the truth than clearly, I was wrong, and the hobbit race is nothing but the clingers on to a more noble story.'

Aulë expected to be laughed at, to be jeered at, to be taunted but none of that happened. The hobbit just sat there, his legs still swinging rhythmically like a child sitting in too high a chair. Sat and looked down at the Valar with judgement in his eyes…as if he were expecting something more than to be treated like a wayward offspring.

'And how many hobbits have you known Father Aulë? Thousands? Hundreds? Or merely two?'

Aulë did not reply, he did not need to.

The hobbit snorted at that.

'Aye, two is a fair number for snails…or worms…but hobbits are more than that. They are more than the Baggins, more than the Tooks or Brandybucks, even more than the gentle Gamgees. They are the East and the West; they are the North and the South. They are this land lord Smith; they are the land that came before, and you most of all would do well to honour them for that.'

'Why "Me most of all", what has a hobbit to do with me?'

'Ah, my lord…. you're getting close to the question you should have been asking all along.'

'And what exactly is that?'

'You ask what hobbits have to do with you, when you should be asking what a hobbit is anyway ?'

Aulë growled.

'Alright then, what is a Hobbit anyway?'

'Why sir, I'm glad you asked.'

And suddenly Aulë was no longer standing on that terrible hill any longer.

They followed the girl, even though she'd not given them her name or any other indication that they should trust her. She led them down a long twisting, interconnected pathway through the various smaller structures nestled tightly together, under the roof of the large tent they'd spotted from atop the hill.

'I hope you won't mind me asking,' said Yavvanna trying her best to keep her voice kind and gentle, which wasn't always the easiest thing to do. The girl stopped and turned back. Her young face held absolutely no expression at all, which was really one of the most uncomfortable things about this situation. People like the elves, tried to claim that they could make their faces go blank, devoid of any and all emotions, but it was never really true. In the end all they really ended up looking was slightly judgemental – oh it might have looked serenely blank to a mortal, but Yavvanna was no mortal. And she had thoroughly believed that there wasn't a face in all of middle-earth that she couldn't read, until now that is.

'Who are you?'

The girl cocked her head, her long curly mass of hobbit hair falling completely to one side, obscuring half of her expressionless face – which was more of a relief to Yavvanna than she cared to admit.

'I do not understand the question,' said the young maiden, the deadpan of her voice sounding all the more terrifying by how close to a child's it was. 'But we cannot dawdle out here, Lady Yavvanna, for our leaders have wished to speak with you as soon as you and your husband did arrive on our shores.'

They moved on then, at a much faster pace this time and Yavvanna decided not to try and ask again, clearly there would be no point to it. Finally they arrived at their destination. It was another tent, only this one was made of cloth, a deep red-lilac colour that seemed to swim before their eyes like the crashing of waves against rocks. The girl pulled back the flap of the tent and gestured for them to go in.

Aulë saw change, Aulë saw mountains move up and down, oceans recede and rise, and time move faster than it should have. But none of that mattered, for what Aulë saw last wiped the memory of what had come before clean from his mind. Because Aulë saw change greater than the passage of time, what Aulë saw was change to the plan that Eru had set out.

The Dwarves were meant to wake last, that was the condition the Great Creator had given him when he had permitted them their lives. Wake after the elves, after the Ents, after everyone, that was what had been agreed on, that was what the great plan had set out. But that was not what had happened.

They had woken, but before, before everything, before the elves, before the men, even before the Ents. They had been awake in Middle-Earth, his most beloved and treasured of creations… and Aulë had never even known. The Great Smith watched, a silent spectre in all this as Durin and his seven brothers awoke and spread themselves and their kin all across the land. He'd known all of this would happen of course, a dwarven family in all regions of middle earth, it was why he had made seven of them, but it should not have happened so soon.

He watched Durin, as he grew his home, his mountain and his family. The First child a girl, Uada, then another girl Uma, and a boy Thor, all born before the year, before the moment the Dwarves were meant to have woken. And then that moment came, and the Dwarves did not even remark on it as special. He watched his people grow and form laws and societies all without his aid, or even his proper guidance – he watched as the leaders of his people exiled the strange, the squat, the deformed and the villainous until they were so great in number that they could form communities of their own.

He watched the Exiles approach Durin for permission to stay at the bottom of his mountain, and when the great Dwarven Father gave his consent, Aulë watched the Girl – Uada – meet, love and fall pregnant by one of the exiles. A furious Durin took the boy's head, and his heartbroken daughter fled in the night with the rest of the exiles. They ran deep into the night, away from the land of her father, into a land that was green, and great of trees. Durin would never see his daughter again.

Aulë watched time pass in a flash of his eye, the son of Uada was born and grown before the Smith had even stopped to scream that this was wrong…that this was not the way things were supposed to play out. The Exiles had become greater than what they had been, they were a people – a Dwarven people all of their own. Smaller and leaner than their broad-shouldered kin, but they were dwarves still, they were his children still. He watched them build great halls of their own, he watched Uada rise to be their Queen and he watched them flourish. And for less than a second, he was happy, he may not have seen this, he may not have known it was happening, but surely it could not all be so terrible if such joy was brought from it. And then, like a stab to the gut, that joy was gone.

The Exiles were no longer alone in this land, this green land of Beleriand. A new people had come, and they were strange, and they were taller with ears of pointed tips, and they were terrible. Aulë watched as these creatures claimed the land as theirs, even though they had barely set a brick of their first settlement. He watched as the exiles attacked, trying to scare them away, or if they had to, put a knife in their belly just to pre-emptively stop what was sure to come next. And come it did.

The creatures, now calling themselves the elves of Doriath began slaughtering Aulë's people, not just to protect themselves and their children, not just because they believed the Exiles were a threat, but for sport. And the exiles, the people of Uada, were christened a new name by their hunters: Noegyth Nibin – Petty Dwarves. Elves had never been kind or gracious to his people, but he had never thought them capable of this butchery. Uada died, drowned to death in a trap set by the elves, her body hung and skinned on display in Thingol's hall.

He watched the terror in his people grow and grow, believing they had been abandoned by him. On and on this went, even when the elves met the larger Dwarves, who carried weapons to trade and did not attack them, it didn't stop. For years, decades, this carnage went on – and the grandsons of Uada were grown before Aulë had even known it. Ronult, who would meet his end on a butcher's knife much like his grandmother; Cael now his father's heir, and Hobbick who had had enough. Ronult was dead and Hobbick and his bride decided they no longer wished to live here, no more than that they no longer wished to be Dwarves at all – so in a move that was as sacrilegious to Aulë as one could get without actually striking him, they and their followers, cut off their beards.

Aulë stood frozen as he watched the now beardless dwarves rejoice in their newfound freedom from his rule, for many years in fact they rejoiced at this freedom…this desecration of a maker that had completely and utterly abandoned them.

Hobbick's people had grown away from the confines of following Aulë, and over the generations they were no longer dwarves, they were something else entirely. The Petty-Dwarves had always been smaller and lamer than their greater kin, but now they grew soft, and tinier still. Now their chins grew no beard, but their feet had become large and leathery over their years of walking and had sprouted the stiff curly hair that should have come to their chins. Though strangest of all was their ears had grown pointed and leaf shaped. They no longer called themselves dwarves, but took on a new name, to honour their new father: Hobbits.

Aulë comes back to himself in front of the tree and the sneering fool.

He was shocked, horrified at learning the truth, and yet there's a sort of calmness that washed over him.

It was pride he realised.

Pride at how well his children had adapted, had managed to survive without his guiding hand.

It was a terrible thing to have happened, but surely it had all been in Eru's plan. After all, had Aulë not failed so spectacularly to protect his children from the wrath of the first born, then surely hobbits – the race that had successfully destroyed Sauron for good, would never have existed at all.

All in Eru's plan then.

All for the best.

These are not thoughts that the Fool seemed to enjoy coming out of his creator's mouth.

'Excuse me?' Said the sneering creature.

Aulë who had not truly been paying attention to the thing on the branch before now turned his eyes upward, to gaze at the hobbit. No, to gaze at his child. For they were his children, these wonderful, beautifully brave creatures.

'I said, I am glad that you told me. For I would not have been pleased to find this out from one of the first born, but now that I know I am pleased. Pleased that my work could have such an impact on the fates of all races.'

It was meant to be a compliment, but a gift of words had never been Aulë's talent and the hobbit fool scowled.

'You are pleased at this news?'

'Why should I not be? Haven't your people proven they are a race to be proud of – Eru was wise to set you on the path you are on now. Truly, it has saved us all and for that I am wholly grateful.'

Aulë gave a small bow to the hobbit, hoping to better display his pleasure with deed than with word. But the hobbit still wasn't smiling back, no instead he was trembling, trembling with what seemed to be a burning rage.

'You think it was a good thing, what they did to us? Hunting us? Slaughtering our children? Murdering our mothers? You think that was all just part of your God's plan for you?'

'Everything is my son,' said Aulë with utter certainty. He may not have been exactly happy about how it had come about, but no one could deny that hobbits were a race worthy indeed to be called his.

And the hobbit in front of him, suddenly smiled – though whether at the words the Valar had just said, or the thought in his mind Aulë could not be entirely sure.

'Of course, you are,' said the hobbit fool. 'Why wouldn't you be, after all we hobbits have served the Western God's plans well. Why shouldn't you be pleased at our creation – no matter how dark and terrible its beginning is.'

Aulë began to nod along, pleased that the creature was finally seeing sense.

'I mean the children of Hobbick chose to be as we are – not like the poor children of Cael.' And then, at the look of confusion that crossed Aulë's brows at that. 'Oh? Didn't you know? Did I forget to say? How terribly forgetful of me. You see my Lord, my crooked smith, hobbits weren't the only race born from the first-born's crimes.'

Aulë shook his head a sudden sickness overtaking his senses, as suddenly the world around him began to shift and change. To a world, and a secret long best forgotten.

He sees them, the people, the dwarves that were left behind by the followers of Hobbick. He watches as they mourn for the loved ones that have abandoned them, that have turned their back on their creator and fled into the wildness of the world.

Because these dwarves, they never stop believing that one day he will come and save them. Not Durin, or Hobbick, or some other fabled hero, but Aulë – Mahal, himself. He will save them, because what else can he do. They are his children, his beloved creations, so he will come.

This is what Cahal, now the only grandson of Uada left, tells them. Assures them as he assumes his father's crown on the old Dwarf's deathbed. He will repeat these words over and over again over the course of his reign, this will not make them anymore true of course. Because Mahal is never coming, not because he has forgotten them, or even forsaken them in anger, he never knew they existed.

But it won't stop Cahal from believing he will come – he believes it right up until the day he gets a spear right through the eye. More of the Encroachers are coming, these from the far West. They want the mountain, Bar-en-Nibin-Noeg, they want it for their own and now they have murdered the king and the small people of Mahal have no army that could truly face them as equals.

So they will not try to.

The girl, the child, the Princess Yada, daughter of Cahal, will take the strongest in her personal guard and sacrifice themselves creating a distraction, so that the weak, the vulnerable and the children may have time to escape. Her Last words of 'Come at me you Fucking Elf, Death is only the Beginning' will be immortalised in the legends of her descendants for millennia to come.

Because and this is the truth that no Elf, no man, no God can ever make themselves believe – there were others after her. Mim was not the last of the Petty-Dwarves, merely the last to still look like a dwarf or bear its name. For the others, well, they fled down those escape tunnels and away from the swords of the mighty Noldor. They fled deep down underground, into cave and tunnels that led them past the land of Belriand and into the mountains of the land soon to be called Middle-Earth.

They will stay hidden there, in layers below the ground, hidden deep in the upper passes of the northern lands of Middle-Earth. They will not see the light again for many a generation, and by the time they do they will no longer be able to stand it on their skin. For many things will always come to pass, and although they resisted it at first, eventually all the Exiles of Belirand turned away from their creator.

They had to.

For he was the maker of Dwarves.

And they were no longer Dwarves.

While the children of Cahal might have had many better names for themselves, the one they became known as…well, that was given by their cousins, the sons of Durin and his like. You know my lord, you've heard it before when you fell into their kingdom.

Come on.

Say it with me.

'Goblin.' Said the father of Dwarves, Hobbits…and Goblins alike.

There we are, I knew you'd get it in the end.

And Aulë, well he screamed.