Dwarf Poem

First blood, splashed on the stones. The first coming of dawn. The cave-mouth, the gaping maw belching us forth, all but those who were willing to stay and talk to the gods.

Can't hear on the surface. For a while, couldn't see, and we were forgotten. The tall ones gave us their secrets and we gave them ours. Sometimes they killed us and sometimes we killed them. It was easy. Not like home.

Home was never easy. Gnawing stone and bleeding iron, copper wire twined around bristle-black hair, the glow-worms like stars, candles rendered from the fat of blind fish.

The Vault Keepers smashed small comforts like fossils. We fought for a hundred years. We lost for a hundred years. They cut off our head and watched us writhe and snap at nothing until they were tired. They took God away from us; the black bones of the earth are not known to us.

Now it is the axe, and the hammer, and the pick, and the endless stare of the eye.

We have endured the tall ones' folly.

We have endured the dead.

We have endured the splitting.

We have built our small comforts here; broken bones and broken wood, teeth on chains, the glitter of gold in the eyes of the tall ones, the bright dancing flames of the fire.

Our Gods come up one by one from below, and we endure their unkind touch, even as we change and are changed.

Soon the Vault Keepers will come to smash our small comforts again. They will not hear. They will not see. Will fear the endless stare of the eye.

Always ready.

The gleam on the edge of the axe. The scrape of the whetstone. The stars, brighter than glow-worms ever were.