Title: Fire Under the Stone
Fandom: The Hobbit
Rating: Teen
Length: 288 words
Author Notes: Part of my combined AUs (Flame of Durin and Gaearon Rhûnen), and echos/parallels Suliol Stone-Smith. Suliol is a dwarf of the Yellow Mountains, at the other end of the world from Erebor.

Summary: Suliol sees the fire and the Flame, and knows how close they can delve to both.

She can feel the fire beneath the stone, the veins where it runs hot still and where it has cooled to leave behind the richest treasures. She knows when they're digging too close to the fire, where it will burn them if they encroach any closer. It's clear to her as the daylight for those who can see the sun.

Reaching as deep as they can, deepest in the south, where the fire runs sluggish and cool, embers in ash waiting to be breathed to full life again by an eddy of the deepest currents. Under the nothernmost halls of their mountains, under the heights, fire burns bright and swift, grass-fed flames that burn everything in their path. The best for baths and for the finest of gems as it cools.

Following words north, over water and down into the deep stone, she can see where the stone is burnt with a different sort of fire, echoes of Flame still held within the rocks, coiling and twisting in a snarl until a whisper runs along the lines and snaps them to crystal order. Cracking the rock open and letting them travel through, before another whisper snarls the lines again and leaves the way safely shut behind.

The flames in the furthest north, under the mountain that sings homehomehome, are sun-bright, elf-swift, and dragon-hot. Dangerous and beautiful, promises bountiful for those she claims as her own, warnings dire for those she will not bear again. A place for those who are Fire-Smith, Metal-Smith, Stone-Smith.

She smiles to the heart of the Mountain, the Forge-Master and King-Smith, the bow of greeting deep with her respect, her voice light with the joy of home-coming. She is Stone-Smith, and she is home.