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Language:
English
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Published:
2013-01-22
Completed:
2013-02-03
Words:
4,643
Chapters:
13/13
Comments:
92
Kudos:
216
Bookmarks:
44
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4,102

I Went Into A House, And It Wasn’t A House.

Summary:

Home is where the heart is, but each Dwarf’s heart is different. A collection of recollections, based on the themes Home, Language, Tradition, Differences, and Memories.

Or, more plainly: An essay about migration and all the struggles (and not) that go with it, written in Dwarves.

Notes:

The Dwarf ages are based partially on the movie, partially on the book, and partially on ‘creative license’. The Dwarves born in Erebor are: Balin, Bifur, Dwalin, Oin, Thorin; the Dwarves born during the wandering period are: Bombur, Dori, Gloin, Nori; the Dwarves born in the Blue Mountains are: Bofur, Fili, Kili, Ori (with Bofur as a ‘teen’ when the others are kids, and Ori as the youngest).
The Dwarf ages I'm using are being converted by this website: http://axebow.lcwsites.net/archive/0/comparativeages.html
The title of the story belongs to a silly little poem by A.A. Milne.

Chapter 1: Ori: Conversations Above The Head

Chapter Text

Ori doesn’t get it.

Neither do Fili or Kili, he knows, although they pretend that they do. And of course, neither does Gimli, but that doesn’t count because Gimli is 10, practically a baby. All Gimli knows is that when the adults are talking, sometimes their voices go quiet and hard, and at that time it’s good to not make any trouble, better yet to be as quiet as possible, and best of all to scamper.

Ori is almost 27 and thus too old to scamper, and he often envies, but doesn’t possess, the natural grace and fitting-in-everywhere-ness of the king’s nephews. So when, for celebration-days or for remembrance-days, the adults meet up, he’s forced to just sit there, looking at his plate or at his hands or simply at the ground.

All around him, the adults are talking, and sometimes even laughing and singing. But he can’t laugh and he can’t sing because he doesn’t know the people they’re talking about and he doesn’t know the lyrics or the melodies. And he definitely can’t talk because what if he says the wrong thing? And it will definitely be the wrong thing, because Ori doesn’t get it.

Kili said the wrong thing once, Ori still remembers that, and the silence afterwards had been terrible. More terrible than a shouting or a smack or a taking away of dessert.

No, Ori doesn’t want to say the wrong thing.

So he stares at his plate, and when the words dragon and Erebor and Khazad-dûm start appearing in the adult’s conversations (and they always do), and the voices start become softer in volume and harder in tone (and they always do), he just stares more firmly.

He doesn’t get it, and he’s afraid to ask, because he doesn’t want to say the wrong thing.

So he pretends not to see it when the king murmurs to Dori your youngest brother appears to be the quietest by far, and he pretends not to see Dori’s confused and helpless shrug in return (I don’t know what’s got into him; here I was afraid he’d make a huge mess!).

No, Ori doesn’t get it, and when he hears the hardness and the brittleness in the adults’ voices, he’s not sure he wants to either.