Title: Shoemaker's Children
Fandom: The Hobbit
Rating: G
Length: 432
Content notes: N/A
Author Notes: many thanks to Morgynleri, Zana, & Athena
Summary: Thorin makes and mends



Men, for the most part, made things for Men, though they would sell to anyone. Elves seldom made for any but themselves, and sold to others almost as rarely. Dwarves, on the other hand, knew well the necessity of shaping their wares to whatever market might be open to them, however little they liked it.

Thorin was known as a metalsmith, a blacksmith skilled at shaping iron and steel to both use and beauty. Redsmithing too: bronze and brass and copper useful and sought-after singly and in combination with harder metals. There was call for cold work - whitesmithing of tin, pewter, lead, and the like, though little use for more difficult and subtle things such as nickel, zinc, aluminum or titanium. That he could work in precious metals - silver, mithril, platinum and gold - went without saying, though there was even less opportunity for jewel-smithing.

He had been Made for leadership and smithcraft, but he did not scorn to turn his hand to whatever work might be needful. Needle and thread, awl and sinew were not strangers in his fingers, though many who were not Dwarves would be surprised to discover that fact. (Even among Dwarves there were those who seemed to regret that their Lords should be reduced to such plain and common crafts as cobbling their own shoes and nalbinding socks. Thorin had no patience with that attitude. Need, use, beauty — any or all reason enough for Making. And none of those things was any respecter of rank.)

Last evening, Balin had drawn the Company into a new and closer unity with the tale of Azanulbizar, and this evening saw that displayed in easier discourse between the family groups, less of a division between Longbeard and Broadbeam, Line of Durin and Durin's Folk, Erebor and Ered Luin. Everyone had some small-craft or mending to hand; even master Baggins had out his tablets -- notebook, as he called it, and it was a proper book, not wax or slates or even vellum pages oiled and painted to wipe clean for re-use with a properly prepared cloth, the writing held fixed and unsmudged until that point. No, Tharkun's Burglar had a bound book of new blank pages to record his thoughts as an ordinary object. He did seem to be making good use of the treasure, his hand neat and small.

Thorin laid out his roll of small-tools and mending kit, and set to repairing his footwear. It would do no one any good for something that could so easily be fixed go unmended, and be a hazard to travel or battle thereby.