Half of her da's face had flattened and stiffened as if its maker had swept a masonry trowel across it. One eyelid sagged and his tongue and mouth hardly moved and most of what he shouted from the sling across their porch came out in jumbles. She sat on a stool beside him with the adze in her hand and all her senses on the slab before her. On the shape of the chin. On the bridge of the nose. On the smooth strip of cheek. On the cuts and chops and scrapes needed to render such things from unforgiving stone. Her da jabbered on but listening meant confronting what he'd become and what he'd never be again. She didn't listen.
After a while he calmed down enough to speak sense again. "Isn't anythin left te do but the thing ye won't. Best finish what that brute started. Just a little higher than where he struck, right across me neck."
Her hand slipped. The adze scored below an eye. She wiped a cloth across it as if wiping a tear. "Ye need te stop talkin like that or ye won't get better."
"Don't tell me what I need. Only one thing left I need, and ye won't do it."
She turned her head. Spit had started in the corner of his mouth again. Half his face had screwed up and reddened. "Please stop askin," she said.
"I'll ask as I damned please. Goin te til ye do like ye should've. If it's too much for ye yer welcome te stand me up out at the horn. Gravity will take care of the rest."
She shook her head and looked back at the slab. "Help me with yer granddaughter."
"No helpin that."
He watched her try and fail to smooth the scratch under the eye.
"Ye won't get anywhere with that adze," he said. "Fine work's pick's work."
She flipped the [alpenstock] in a quick easy motion and clasped its head with the soft tissue between her thumb and forefinger. She laid the tip of the pick against the place where rough stone lips met and worked the grain of the stone hoping to shape a smile today. Her da always told her she had her ma's smile. Maybe she could pass it on.
She leaned into the pick but it didn't move. She put more weight into it, and more, and more, and her sweating hand shook then slipped and the pick jumped across the face and scratched a long gash down its cheek. She dropped her hands to her knees and sat away from it.
"Yer edge is too soft," he said.
"Aye."
"Yer goin te need mine for it."
"I don't have yers."
"Don't I feel it every day. Can't feel my legs nor arms nor nothin, but I feel it missin. That orc don't know what he's got. Probably usin it te pick the poor old Karakos out of his teeth."
"The Karakos weren't eaten."
"Hope he slices his damned tongue off."
She saw him shift as much as he was able but it wasn't enough to hide his tears.
"Get out of here," he said.
"Ye've been askin for a granddaughter for forever and when I finally set to it ye won't let me stay long enough te make any meaningful headway."
"Forever's passed lass. Yer chance is gone. Too bad. Do what needs doin or leave me be. I don't want me helpless image settin in te shape the memory of yer old da that ye be carryin around long after he's gone te dust."
She looked away. It was too late for that.
***
That night she made herself try again with Khaz. He smelled like burnt powder and the oiled up rags they used to chase rust out of their longarms. He held her after and she held him back hoping to feel anything but used. She knew it wasn't him who was using her. It was something bigger. Something baser. Something worse than the orcs who came across the span in the middle of the night. Something that had dwarves and humans and the rest of them by the neck, pressing them all forward faster than their feet could keep up, pressing them down and forward like they were made to be ridden into the dirt, and the faster they ran the harder it pressed until the whole world below their feet was a blur and they had no eyes for anything but their next step and no thought for anything but going faster and faster and faster until their legs gave out and they were run right over. And in the night she realized that something was what set the orcs against them in the first place.
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She looked at Khaz. Maybe he felt it also.
He saw her looking. "How's yer girl comin?"
"No better than this."
She felt his hand deaden on her shoulder. He didn't move it nor did he tell her to go but she rolled away and dressed and left without saying more.
Next morning she was back before the granite with her da in the sling.
"Ye shouldn't have gone yesterday," he said.
"Ye told me to."
"Well ye shouldn't have left me alone. I made a damned mess. Called for ye. Hollered enough te break my face. Made a mess anyway."
"Oy da." She stood up.
"Leave it. Thayne fixed me up. Still ye shouldn't have left."
"I only went cause ye said."
"I'm a damned fool and ye shouldn't heed anythin I say."
"I forgive ye." She turned back to the slab spinning her [alpenstock] in her hand. "Now help me with this."
"No use, Mym."
"Too soon for givin up da. Thayne's only just back te billowin. The forge'll heat right on up and ye'll soon be movin and flowin again like the black heart of the world."
"Don't care bout no billowin forge," he said. "Isn't goin te change what needs changin."
Her da watched the rude dwarf coming out of the slab. He said, "If ye cared bout yer daughter half as much as ye care bout yer damned self she'd have been done years ago and already be helpin all the delvin come back te life. But ye don't care. Ye never have. Any other time, any other mountain, I'd love ye for yer stubbornness. I wouldn't understand, but I'd love ye. Head harder than an anvil just like yer ma. But this isn't any other time or mountain. It's this time, it's my mountain, and yer my daughter. How can ye still only be thinkin bout yerself? All dwarves are dyin for good and for always but Mym o Waz is only thinkin bout Mym o Waz."
She lowered the [alpenstock]. "Ye think I'm doin this for me?"
"Hell no. Yer doin it for me, and that's half yer problem. Course I can't go back and change ye. Not sure it'd be right to, but ye never can know what's right til ye do what's wrong. Makes ye wonder if anythin's right if the only way te know it is te do wrong first."
"What am I doin wrong?"
"Nothin lass. This isn't about what yer doin. It's about what wrongs I've done ye."
She stood up. "What the hell am I supposed te do with that?"
"Told ye already."
"No da. So long as yer livin I'm not buryin ye."
"Suppose ye won't. That doesn't matter now. What matters is what ye choose te do. I only have one thing left te do. No choice in it. It's all there for me, all laid out straight as the delvin's road and there's only one way te walk it. Ye got a bigger problem lass. Problem big as this old mountain and gettin bigger every day, with a hundred ways te go about it but only one of em is right, and ye can't know if what ye choose is right unless ye do all the wrongs too. Hell I don't envy ye one bit. I got it easy now. Yer the one who's got it tough, and I don't know if I did what I was supposed te te get ye ready for it. Hell. Is there ever a way te know?"
He didn't eat after that. Not that day nor the next. He just laid wrapped in his sling and watched or turned his head the only way he could and stared at the side of the porch. When he finally slept he snored softly and she attended her rough daughter seeking the kind of mismatched cure children administer to their parents: the damp rag to fix the stains of blood, the favorite blanket to fix the ruined crop, the lighthearted story to fix the stillborn babe. But the slab flaked and crumbled like a hard cheese no matter what she did or how sharp she made her tool. Da was right. Steel wasn't going to do it. She needed shard of the sky.
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> ...A dwarf denying their revenge is like you or I denying our thirst. The fiercer our resistance the harsher the need... +1 Vengefulness (6/10)
> -2 [Belonging] ...the way he told it it didn't take her no time at all to figure that all the things changin around her weren't changin what was within her. I don't think he blamed her for wantin to get away. The whole delvin was a pressure cooker and she was like to be the plug. You ever been a plug? It's harder than it looks... (4/10)