Ch. 1: A Gift From The Mountain Mother.
There was darkness, stone, comfort. Then harsh light, and then nothing was the same. Her eyes strained against the icy water that ran down the tendrils of her hair, blurring her vision. She worked her palms gently over her eyelids, trying to clear them of water. She pulled herself up, surveyed herself and her surroundings with newborn eyes and a wizened mind. She had form now, after ninety years of life she now had a physical form all her own, and that form stood in a river bed. She had knowledge of a series of sensations that were slowly becoming real to her where before there had only been vague notions, words the mountain gave her, a mission, a direction. So she began to step uneasily as she remembered words and their use. Naked, wet, walk on, cold, noise, walk on, ash, water, walk on, wind, the hiss of an arrow and the sound of its metal head striking stone.
The men of Dale could not possibly have been prepared for such a sight as that day. Their eyes often turned to The Lonely Mountain and it was never absent from their nightmares, so when a streak of fire sprang from the peak they could only assume it was the work of the Drake. And when their scouts peered from the edge of the city and saw a lone female dwarf wandering wet and naked just outside their walls how could they not construe it as a ploy of the beast? Some spell, trickery, or other foul work?
She knew that unfriendly arrows did not often miss accidentally,so she knew that they did not intend to kill her without cause. For her mother had not been blind or thoughtless since the dark days before Mahal had seen fit to bind the will of Durin's I wife into the stone, granting her a second, if cursed kind of life. She had observed much since then, passing her knowledge on into the birth of this… this one?
It was then that the young dwarf woman realized that she required a name. Her mother had not prepared her for the existential repercussions of having a single body, as mother had never had one; others had simply named her The Lonely Mountain, and her halls Erebor. It was as the dwarf girl considered this that she realized the men were speaking to her.
"—r doing in the river? Did you originate from the mountain?"
The man was very tall and lean, with straight thin blonde hair flowing over pointed features. He did not seem distrustful so much as concerned, not for her of course, but what she signified.
"I am of the mountain Erebor, for she is my mother. I have come to seek those that would be my kin."
If possible the men paled even further. They offered no argument and no question, only, "Please leave us in peace."
Clearly they thought her insane.