Work Text:
His amad always held her accent
like her favorite pair of brass knuckles
well-worn, well cared-for,
and strong enough to bust a busybody’s nose.
And, like those brass knuckles,
she passed it on down to him and his brother
in a thick, brisk brogue
Caught between her two good hands
and held there until it began to slip into theirs.
She’d learned syllables of Westron
under a too-bright sky
and chewed them up
and spit them back
until they didn’t all sound the same anymore
And the sky inside her mouth was
dark and lit with stars,
flavored by the tongue of Khazad.
Sometimes she spoke the west-east tongue
just like she used to dance, ni ‘abad,
before the fire and the dragon
and the life where there was no time left for dancing.
When they were in danger
she spun her orders like daggers,
rapid and unflinching
Even though her tongue could never quite lie flat enough
to give up the music of Khuzdûl
between the harpsichord keys of her teeth.
Sometimes she spoke hushed
so all her words blended together
in the raids and festivals of a
people that didn’t use to know quiet
But it snuck up on them
and spilled out
until there was too much of it
Too many voices that would never
dance again,
never speak with the fire of salsa
and the clap of wind id’abadirak.
But always when she spoke,
words pushing up against one another
like the abutments of a battlement,
decorated with firm lines
and the last of the family gold,
her accent was a stubborn compass
pointing back to their ancestry,
pointing forwards with a people
whose hands were all they had.
So when he helps his brother with the housekeeping
and hums a song she remixed while
waiting for her common-voice to arrive,
he remembers the way her lips could only barely
stretch themselves around sound in her excitement.
Or when, out in the markets of Men,
he hears the familiar music of
an accent like hers
an accent like his
and then a meeting with a stranger in a
foreign crowd becomes a family reunion.
Accents remind him,
a letter from his mother
of all they have won, all they have lost.
He remembers the smell of the spices
she used when cooking their meat,
runs a finger over the
braided keychain of her hair
that is all he has of her presence
outside his mind.
The quiet of the mountain is too still
and the thrushes don't sing
and there are no ravens outside
in the Khagal'abbad where Thorin's Halls lie.
But there are his people,
his brother and brothers-in-arms,
and the memory of his mother.
