A Most Unlikely Dance Partner Prologue

Credit to Fantasyinallthings

Summary:

Erebor holds a masquerade ball. Another thinly veiled attempt by Dis to get him to find his One. Despite her good intentions, Thorin sees this as a pointless endeavor. He has no One. Little does he know that things have been put in motion far beyond his understanding that may lead to this being the most memorable masquerade ball of his life.

When the world was young, and the elves had not yet awoken in their birthplace of Cuiviénen Aulë, the Vala of invention and crafting secretly forged into existence beings of his own. They were his children, strong in body and mind. Driven by passion and creation just as he was. He gifted them all his knowledge in such matters, but the only thing he could not give them was the spark of independent life, a soul. That was something only Eru Ilúvatar could grant. When Ilúvatar learned that Aulë had tried to exceed his power, he was not pleased. In the wake of his god's wrath, Aulë forged a great hammer, expecting to be forced to fell his creations. Right before his hammer fell, pronouncing their destruction, Ilúvatar stayed his hand. He accepted Aulë's creation, granting them souls, and decreed that they may wake only after his first children. Aulë was grateful but also saddened by what he had almost done. When his wife, Yavanna, Vala of all things green and growing, saw his turmoil, her advice was to grant the dwarves a boon. The gift of unconditional love and everlasting companionship. But as said, he could not create a new soul and had only been permitted so many. His solution was to take up the very hammer he had intended to smite the dwarves and instead use it to separate the souls into two parts. Not every soul was destined to find each other, but when they did, it would spark a love that burned brighter than any forge.

What Aulë did not know was that it was Yavanna who asked Ilúvatar to grant her husband's creations true sentience. Her love for him was great, and she knew that destroying something he had put so much of himself into would break his spirit. At first, Ilúvatar denied her, but she would not be dismissed. Moved by her act of devotion, he granted her two gifts to her husband's one. First, he gifted her the Ents to act as protectors of her forests should her husband's creations seek to overstep. Second, he gave her hobbits. Small folk who would honor and tend her lands. They were not adventurous or mighty people, but they were hardy and as loyal as she had shown herself to be. Yavanna wept with joy. She was not so different than her husband. They were both beings of creation who wanted to share their love for the world they had helped sing into existence. Her only regret was that she and Aulë's creations would always live a world apart and never know what they could learn from each other. That night, she stole away into her husband's forge and, using her own magic, fused the soul of one of her hobbits with one of his dwarves. When done, she took up the great hammer and split that soul into two beings.

Then, with all the patience of a loving mother tending a slow-growing garden, she waited.