Snuggle.

"Yeah, sure. Let's go see."

The landing is oddly smooth and regular, rising from the lake bed like it was carved there. The floor of it is perfectly even, except for a ring of raised stones around -

A sleeping dwarf?

She has her hands crossed over her chest, and skin like stone, and she isn't moving at all except for the glacially slow and steady rise and fall of her chest.

Pretty...

Alaudala squirms out of River Gold's arms to take a closer look.

He lets her down! Though he is kinda confused and a bit suspicious about this turn of events?

She's so so pretty!!! She doesn't look like a natural person. She looks like a work of art, crafted with loving care by an artisan. A statue, an embodiment of every Ideal rather than a person. Just. An inexplicably breathing statue.

"Just look at it... I wonder who put this here?"

"...Random ?dwarf? under a mountain sounds like Aule's kind of thing, honestly."

"Who's Aule?"

"Vala - uh, god - of crafting and all that stuff. And also the guy who made the original thirteen dwarves."

"Oh."

"Is this one of those, then?"

"...Maybe? They all woke up and wandered around and had kids and died and stuff. But waking back up after you die happens all the time."

"Ummmm not usually I think. For hobbits, anyway."

...Hrm.

"People normally wake up in the Uttermost West, but Men aren't allowed there so I don't know if hobbits and dwarves would be..."

"You should have somewhere safe and known to go when you're killed though. It's sad you don't know where you go."

"Yeah."

"I don't really plan on dying anytime soon, though."

"You shouldn't."

"I won't."

"Do you think she's gonna wake up?" She reaches out to touch the dwarf-statue.

Her skin feels like granite - 

But warm.

And her eyes snap open at Alaudala's touch. 

Squeak of alarm!

"Who are you?"

"Um, my name's Alaudala?"

"What year is it?"

"Uhhhhh twelvety-el...even? I think the guy said. Uh, second age? Whatever that means."

"...It's been a while, then."

"What year was when, um, last you knew?"

"Early in the Second Age, around the year five hundred..."