Chapter 7
"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." - Carl Gustav Jung
Sunday afternoon, the cobbler Valis sent her to was also a dwarrow-dam, one with dozens of berry red twisted braids bound in rose quartz beads hanging around her four foot four body and a lovely curled beard tied together with a pale pink ribbon. Big bright green eyes and skin nearly as dark as Erdene's. Her husband was maybe an inch or so taller with long brown-black hair bound in what looked to be jade clips embossed with gold in a trellis pattern. His beard was tightly bound in two different braids starting on each side and meeting in the middle to split into a fish braid that ran down to his waist.
They said something to one another, their tones low when Erdene presented the note in common to them.
"Look at her feet." The wife, Zarin daughter of Zedan said, put her hands on her hips and nodded at Erdene's shoes.
The husband, Harel son of Harjl, huffed at her.
"Stop being rude! Look." She pointed down at Erdene's borrowed slippers. "Those shoes will kill her come winter." Zarin tapped one foot impatiently. "She came from Valis you stubborn mule of a dwarf."
Erdene had gone to Valis this morning to pick up her dress, leggings with tunic and some underwear. Her bra from earth was finally starting to die, with it being over two years old to begin with when she arrived in Arda. The sports bra in her gym bag didn't work with these clothes. Too much hang versus too much restriction.
Each piece Valis gave her was absolutely perfect, not an odd or twisted stitch anywhere. Everything fit her like a glove. The tunic went just past her bottom, and the leggings came up to her navel with a panel in the stomach to keep them from rolling.
Valis instructed her to, "move, stretch, make sure there is give." As Valis walked around Ery assessing if alterations needed to be made. Ery squatted, turned, twisted and bent. The tunic and leggings stayed in place. Valis seemed quite happy with it. The leggings were a dark walnut brown, rich and smooth, heavier for the winter. The top was a deep, dark indigo, with small bronze color stitches zig zagging around the high scoop neckline, hem and cuffs.
Erdene had looked at Valis curiously, thinking back to what the dwarrow-dam had said originally about paying more for embroidery. "This is all beautiful Valis." But she wasn't sure she could afford it.
Valis must have caught her touching the designs. She waved one hand, "don't worry about that. How does it feel?"
She would not tell the girl about the dream Valis had the night the girl first came to her shop.
A dream about walking for miles across the face of Arda only to see Erebor before her at the end. How Valis in her dream had wept like a babe seeing her home standing as if the dragon had not taken it. There were signs of damage, and dwarves working on the repairs. In her dream a pregnant Erdene had lit up like a torch upon seeing her, hugging her tightly. In the dream the child of men wore the darkest of azure dresses, glittering with agate gems from the mountain and bronze beads twisted in her curly hair.
Valis took it as an omen, a good one. Aulë only graced visions of the future to those who were closest to the vision.
When the clothier came with the newest materials, Valis saw the indigo of the tunic included and bought the bolt.
"Perfect," Erdene smiled so happily at Valis. It reminded the dwarrow-dam of her dream.
She glanced at Ery's stomach, a little hopeful. "You're not with child, are you Ery?"
The deep set, sad frown that crossed the girl's face. "No?" She touched her (mostly flat in Valis' opinion) stomach looking almost guilty. "I'm just," she shrugged, "fat."
Valis nearly smacked her. Fat? Buxom, yes. Hips, thighs, breasts all well endowed on her frame but she carried it like she was meant to. "You are not fat. Mahal, what do those men teach you? Your body is what it is child. Stop that."
Teary eyes met hers. "But you asked if-"
"Not because of your size!" No lie that. "I need to know if I'll need to let it out for a babe. When winter comes the daughters of men tend to have a barin or two."
Daughters of men. Oof. Even the language was sexist. "Women."
It was Valis turn to be confused.
"I'm the daughter of my mother. We shouldn't be daughters of men when my mother is the only one who brought me into the world." Erdene told her. "I'm a woman."
Valis, gazing at this headstrong child who was no doubt less than a quarter of her age, smiled. This girl reminded her so much of the dream Valis had. So much. Her fire, her spirit. In it this young girl had been so happy to see Valis, she cried and hugged her despite the belly and the faceless dam scolding her to stay seated, (your ankles my lady! What will your husband say? And Erdene's quick reply, my husband can come carry me if he wants me off my feet!).
"As you say, woman." She winked. "Bet your man loves that fiery spirit of yours."
Which sent Erdene into a bright red blush that colored her eyes a dazzling gray-blue. "I don't," the girl stuttered, "I'm not, oh my god."
Like many dwarrow-dam, Valis held a match-maker streak a mile wide. Mayhap she is the one that sets the whole thing in motion? "You aren't? I know a few who like a bit of fire if you'd be interested."
The blush became brighter, red from scalp to ears to neck and bosom. "No, no I mean, I just…I met someone, I think and I…I caught him looking at me and he has caught me looking at him and…" She waved her hands wildly before nearly smacking her own face to cover it.
Valis' sly grin echoed that of a cat with a second bowl of milk. "dwarrow fella?"
Big eyes, almost gray with emotion. "Valis!"
Good on her. "Oh he is, is he? Well if he asks you to sit with him and offers you a comb and bead in front of witnesses, especially his family, he's asking to court." She held out the dress, "go change into this. I want to see the fit."
Erdene, still blushing head to toe, scurried off to the back changing room. When she returned, much less pink and flustered, Valis picked right back up.
"What's his name?"
Erdene bit her lower lip. "I only just met him. I don't want to jinx it."
Jinx. Valis didn't know that word. She asked as she assessed the dress and fit.
"Um, bad luck. Bring bad luck." Ery answered plainly.
Valis nodded, "if it is that new, yes, I understand. What drew you to him?"
Her small hands twisted with nervous energy. "He…I…" She's a dwarrow-dam Ery, she'll probably get it. "The way he moved when he was smithing. I could watch him work for hours."
Now that was a thing a dam would say. Valis put her hands on Ery's hips, then her waist. No, she felt like a daughter- a woman. Small ribs, small hips, small shoulders, even with the plush of her body she lacked the muscle that went with being dwarrow born. "And you didn't see his face."
The girl went pinker than a fresh strawberry. "No. Not for almost two months."
Valis hummed. It was similar to the stories she heard every time one of her fellow dwarrow met their one. The instant draw of fascination with no reason why. "I look forward to making your wedding dress."
Which only made Erdene squeak like a mouse.
Valis wrote her a note, stamping it with her seal before sending Ery off in her new dress. A smooth spruce blue-gray dyed wool, also scoop neck in which Valis put pockets and belt loops. She stitched sapphire blue star bursts into each cuff and along the collar and hems, the starbursts were silver and sapphire. It was one of her best creations in some time.
Erdene tried to pay her more money.
"None of that." Valis muttered.
"But the embroidery-"
"It suits you. Go on now, Ery. Use that money to buy better shoes. A pair of high boots for the winter. Come back in a few weeks and we'll talk about what else you want."
Ery twirled and the skirt flew out like flower petals around her ankles. "Thank you so much Valis."
Thus Ery was now with the arguing couple.
The husband exited toward the back room muttering under his breath while the wife came around the counter. "Come on and sit love. Let's get rid of those for a bit, yeah?" Zarin motioned to a chair. She meant Erdene's shoes.
Gratefully Erdene pulled them off, letting them hang from the tips of her fingers while the cobbler assessed the size and shape of Erdene's feet, ankles, and calves almost to her knees. "What are they stuffed with?" Zarin asked as she worked.
"Um, various scrap cloth." Erdene answered shyly.
Zarin tried to keep the scowl off her face. She did try but, "your family letting you walk around in those."
"Not exactly family." Ery answered. "I'm not from here. They were kind enough to take me in while I figured out my place in the world."
The dwarrow-dam hummed at that. "What about a husband? No barin to speak of?"
"Oh no. I never married and I never had kids. The only people I left behind are my family, who stopped having a use for me when I stopped being under their thumb, a good friend and my cousin who was traveling to find herself." Erdene told her with a small shrug. "The people I stay with are nice enough, if the father would stop trying to pressure me into a marriage with strangers."
Zarin paused in marking measurements to look at the girl. Valis' note said the girl was fiery, headstrong and much too sweet for her own good. Pretty creature, possibly a dwarrow in her ancestry. Eyes that shift color with emotion and light. Warm skin, the color Zarin's mother was in deep summer. "You've declined, yes?"
"With venom." Ery told her as Zarin moved to her other foot. "I'm not getting married or having a baby until I meet the one, you know?"
That made Zarin smile, she nodded her head toward the door her husband went through. "He is my one, but Mahal is he stubborn. Took him ages to work up to admitting he wanted to court and then, fumbled it. I love rose quartz, you see?" She tipped her head, sending her beads clicking gently. "He brings me a comb made of oak and a bead of gold." Her eyes rolled. "If I wasn't so in love…" Zarin shook her head. "They make us crazy."
Thorin's eyes when he said goodnight, and bowed his head. Erdene's heart jumped in her chest. Blue eyes watching her from the blacksmith's place. The warmth of his hand on hers. His small, relieved, almost smile when he realized she wasn't married.
Ery sighed. "They do."
Okay…so…Valis wasn't upset that she, Erdene, was possibly interested in dating a male dwarrow. Erdene hummed quietly to herself as she traversed her way out of the dwarven district and back home. Like, Valis had been more than okay with it. She teased Ery about it. Offered to set her up with a dwarrow who liked a little fire in their women.
Erdene was a water sign so a little fire was usually all she had.
Did that mean that male dwarrow did take human women for wives? How often? Every dwarrow-dam she met, granted it was just Valis and Zarin, assumed she had an ancestor who was dwarrow.
Which…okay her dad had been short and her mom had been tall. Erdene got her height from her father as well as her brains, her coloring, her eyes and her hair. He was supposedly four foot eleven. Her mama, standing at five foot eight, towered over him.
She had one good photo of him tucked into the back of her cell phone case. Him and her mother on their wedding day. The photo was from 1992, before her mother shipped home from the Peace Corps. Before he went to Chile and died during some kind of excavation.
Her father was a forensic archeologist and anthropologist. His idea of a date was taking her mom to remote spots and telling her about the history. He loved all things ancient in South America. The Incan, Aztec and Mayan cultures prior to the invasion of the conquistadors were his primary fields of study.
But her father was human.
Short. Brainy. Handsome.
Human.
Right?
dwarrow didn't exist on Earth.
Right?
But, if people fell through to Arda (and possibly other planes of existence) then wouldn't it stand to reason the doors/gates/holes people fell through went more than just one way? It should go in the reverse, one, and two it might stretch to the other worlds as well.
How many much worse places could she have ended up in?
Doctor Stone? Trapped as a living statue until Tsukasa decided to murder her or Senku managed to unpetrify the people of the United States?
Exandria? Hell no. Sure, relocating to Whitestone might be cool. If, you know, it was during the third campaign. Which I probably won't get to finish.
One Piece might have been cool. Also won't ever know what the One Piece is or if I was right about the ending. Going to miss Luffy's Gear 5. Twenty-four years of watching bloop, down the drain. Wonder how bad Netflix's adaptation was. Hopefully not as bad as Cowboy Bebop.
The Last of Us? Fuck that. I would be better off dead.
Shivering, Erdene pulled her cloak tightly around herself. The days were getting colder, but her train of thought was not helping. Stop being morbid. She turned her big old brain back to her original train of thought.
If everyone thought she was part dwarrow, maybe that was why Valis was okay with trying to get her to date one.
Dís had been opening letters when he came down stairs. Dozens of them. All perfumed, some more so than others. All in varying shades of blue.
She gave him a morose, tired shake of her head, "all of the same dam as last year."
As he expected. dwarrow-dam could be stubborn when they had their sights set on something. Or someone. Attempting to marry the heir to the throne was a lofty, expensive pursuit. One costing their race more than a dozen potential matches and children.
This is why he no longer encouraged their attention. The number of dam seeking to make themselves his consort had dwindled significantly in the last fifty-five years. Yet still, the thirty-two who maintained hope.
Dís allowed her long wavy black hair, similar to his with fewer silver streaks, to fall over one shoulder as she worked on opening each letter, recording the dam's name on a slip of paper next to her and then opening the next one. Her beads, a widow's obsidian for Théli, one golden tiger's-eye for Fíli, one red brown jasper for Kíli, and her silver beads with the crest of Durin.
"I am dreaming." Thorin's confession drew his sister's attention immediately. Why wouldn't it? None of them, Thorin himself, Frerin, Dís, expected to hear those words uttered from his mouth after all this time. Not at his age.
The letter she was holding was put aside. "Thank Mahal! I'll put the luncheon budget to the courting ceremony instead." A genuinely joyful smile took up his sister's features. "When can I expect to meet my new sister? Which house is she from? Is that why you're coming home later?"
His mouth formed a flat line. "I do not know. I am only dreaming." He didn't blame Dís for her confusion.
"You haven't met her?" His sister asked after a long moment of silence.
"I have not met anyone." That is not entirely true. He has met Erdene Thoroughfare. "No dam at the very least."
His sister's brow furrowed deeply. "But…"
"Aye."
Dís sat back against the chair, both arms crossing her chest. She stroked her short beard, clipped like his in mourning, looking up at him. "In passing perhaps?"
"None." He took the position outside the dwarven district because the dam who lived in the district rarely left the district.
"Do you see her face at least? Will you know her when you see her? She might be in the district. Visiting family. I could make some discreet enquiries." Dís added after another few moments of thought.
"Not clearly. I have seen our children."
His sister bolted upright from her seat with a loud, excited cry of, "Children? How many?"
He too cannot keep from smiling. "Two female, two male. Possibly a fifth."
Grinning from ear to ear, "five barins at your age. Mahal. What are the Valar thinking?" She smacked his shoulders with both hands. "Well I am going to turn all of these away. They're the same old, and your one may not want to tolerate their conniving and scheming should she arrive before Durins Day."
Dís began to gather each perfumed letter. "This will be the first Durins Day in fifty years, I can honestly say I am looking forward to. I can't wait to meet my new sister and, Aulë willing, she'll agree to court before Yule."
Thorin, who had begun to gather his coat, glanced back at his sister. "Yule?"
"Oh aye," she said as she piled letters. "You know how some of us can be. Stubborn as the day is long. Théli, bless him, fought our connection day and night for a tenday before…" her cheeks turned red. "Well before you, Frerin and amad found us that time."
He remembered. The two were found much too close to becoming lovers. Amad had not been pleased. He and Frerin, as Dís brothers, had been obligated to deal with Théli for a breach of their sister's honor. The only thing that saved Théli's life was that Dís claimed he was her one.
"The draw of your one," Dís went on, bypassing any further discussion of her husband, "isn't something you can fight against. You know this, don't you?"
He did. "I won't." He'd waited nearly two centuries for her.
(Unfortunately he has yet to realize that he was fighting it. Unintentionally.)
When she returned the house was all tizzy with movement. Not excitement exactly. The air felt tense. As if something was wrong. The girls were calling out to one another as things were relocated, put away, and the good crockery taken out. Warren's wife's heirlooms were being removed from the trunk in Erdene's armoire and being placed at Warren's discretion downstairs.
Erdene, wearing her new dress, took all of it in with a heaping pile of skepticism. She closed the front door behind her, moving around the furious cleaning of the main room to escape up the stairs.
Where she came face to face with Warren. Rather, face to chest because he was approximately five foot eight and she was much shorter. He looked her up and down and ew, no. Gross.
He had a certain kind of appreciation in his gaze that Erdene did not want from him.
"That is a new dress Miss Erdene." Warren's voice took on a deeper octave. He drew out the syllables in her name. And his hands landed on her upper arms to push her back so he could get a better look.
She shrugged him off, stepping around and past him. "Yes. It is." Before walking away to her room and closed the door behind her. This time she shuddered from the look Warren had given her.
Warren was a man in his late forties, with typically unkempt gray-brown whiskers that severely needed to be shaved off. His hair was equally gray-brown, more gray than brown and had been since she arrived in Arda. He wore a perpetual frown, and clothes that at least once a week smelled like serious B.O.
Sure, there were probably a dozen widows out there that might take him up on whatever thoughts he had just had about her. But she wasn't going to. Ever.
One day, maybe, when her brain got over Thorin and his hands, arms, blue eyes, voice, she could, would entertain getting hitched to somebody who caught her eye and treated her right. Of course,there was always the possibility that despite everything, his status, her lack of it, the difference between their two societies-
Who are you, Fitzwilliam Darcy? Shut it down.
The door to her room opened as Erdne was setting out her new tunic and pants to wear rather than the dress. She didn't want Warren looking at her like that again. Alysa looked almost relieved. If harried with her dirty blonde hair in a light frizzy halo around her head.
"Oh. Good. My father said you'd already be dressed for dinner."
Fuck my life. Seriously.
A fake smile on her face, "so I am. I assume for whomever is coming to visit?"
Alysa smoothed her skirt. "Catherine's intended. He would like to meet her family. Father requested your presence."
Don't break anything. This is not your house. This is not your family. These are not your kids.
Except, her mom and best friend, the two most influential and important people in her life, taught her to be a feminist. And this world's disregard for women was getting on her last damn nerve ending. She had to force her fingers to unclench.
"Oh? Really?" Erdene's smile was ice cold sweet tea on a bitter mid-December night. "Ain't that just the sweetest thing."
Alysa couldn't be certain, but she felt almost as if Erdene meant the exact opposite.
A clearly elderly man, bald on top with a ring of gray-brassy yellow hair in a horseshoe around his head from temple to temple, wrinkled with hard, small black eyes and zero smile lines. Clean pressed clothes, high quality material. He smelled like he'd bathed.
The girls had all been terrified of him.
Cathy most of all. She was forced to sit next to him. He'd pet her hair, her back and shoulders and poor Cathy pulled away from him only to be scolded repeatedly by Warren.
Erdene tried to be polite. To mind her own business and keep her mouth shut. She did honestly try.
"Excuse me," Erdene's polite drawl cut through Warren's sycophantic posturing, "sir, might I ask how old you are?"
The elderly man's (who Erdene now despised with a venom she hadn't felt since this past February) cloudy eyes (probably cataracts) met hers as he frowned, patting his mouth with Warren's deceased wife's heirloom cloth napkins. "I just passed my sixty-third year, Miss Thoroughfare."
She nodded, setting both arms on the table and crossing them to lean over them. "And there were no willing fifty to sixty year old women who would be a far more appropriate match available for you to negotiate a marriage contract with?"
"Erdene!" Warren snapped, the girls all jumping where they stood or sat.
She ignored him. "Here's what I think is happening. The cataracts are making it hard for you to see, but you don't want to go without one last hurrah. So you made a deal for a pretty young wife who you could get your jollies with before you go completely blind. You rape her into getting pregnant and now your wife will be obligated to take care of you when you're old and feeble instead of relying on your older children to do it because you can't guilt them into it. They have lives. Ruin and destroy her life to keep yourself happy."
His expressions were telling. Disdain and disgust. The elderly man's polite veneer now gone in exchange for blatant loathing. "Watch your tongue young woman."
Erdene slammed her own fist into the table, harder than Warren or the man ever could. She set the simple ceramic dinner plates rattling. She used to break boards at competitions. This table wouldn't stand if she didn't want it to.
A flash of fear went over the old man's face before dissolving into anger.
Warren reached to grab her. She knocked him back with a well timed shove to his forearm.
"You're selling your daughter to an old pervert, and I'm the problem? Do you even know how many times Cathy said no tonight?" She counted them off, "Fourteen. She said no six times, please stop three times, no thank you twice, I don't want to twice, and I don't like that."
Catherine burst into tears, running from the table up the stairs.
"Control your daughter!" The old man snarled at Warren.
"Gwen," Warren snapped, "get your sister. Erdene, you are a guest in my home, you will control your temper and your outbursts in front of my guests."
Next to Erdene, Gwendolyn also burst into tears, burying her face in her hands.
"Alisa," Warren bid his eldest, "go."
The girl let out a shuddering breath, crossed her arms over her chest, leaned back in her chair and silently remained in her seat one chair over from the old man. Alysa, as her father turned his attention to her to plead with her to go after her youngest sister, mimicked her sister's posture.
A little bit of pride threaded through Erdene. Cognitive dissonance and peaceful protest.
"Is this how you run your home? Disobedient children?" The old man demanded of Warren.
Warren, sweating now, "no my lord, I do not. Girls, your mother would be ashamed of you."
Gwen's tears doubled, while Alysa and Alisa began to cry as well. But they didn't move an inch.
"I think she'd be more ashamed of your behavior Warren. Selling your daughter to an ancient pervert."
The old man eventually left after another bout of vitriol. He would not be so insulted. A threat to not take Cathy at all.
"Excellent," Erdene clapped once, loudly. "On Catherine's behalf, we accept. She doesn't want to marry you either. You're too old."
He fumed, turning his attention away to a red faced Warren. "I expect the advance I've given you back!"
"My lord, Catherine will still-"
"Over my dead body she will." Erdene snapped. "How much was the advance?"
Both men ignored her.
Warren begged, the old man postured like a bent out of shape rooster, and the girls began exiting the room while crying their eyes out.
Erdene dropped her purse on the table. "I'll give you twenty gold right now to leave and never come back."
That did stop their argument.
"He owes me thirty-five." The old man sneered.
Erdene didn't give him the satisfaction of getting upset. "And Warren will pay it back."
Warren went on the warpath a half second after the man was out the door. Yelling at his daughters, threatening Erdene. He would not be paying the fifteen gold due, she would be.
It was a rough night.