LOTR/Hobbit Imagines

Kíli - The Odd Ones Out

Introducing my OC Tullaina, you'll get to see her in a few stories :) 

Kíli x OC (platonic)

Summary: Tullaina and Kíli were best friends from day one. Getting into a fight to the death together tends to do that to you. Of course, it wasn't actually to the death, but Kíli kept insisting it had been a close call. This is the story of how their friendship started.

Warnings: bullying, young Kíli (Tullaina and Kíli are 34 and 33 in this one, which is the dwarven equivalent of a young teenager)

*

Kidizbuhâ. Friendship.

What exactly is friendship? What defines it?
It's something Tullaina always wondered about.

According to one of master Balin's many books, it can be described as a state between two or more individuals, a mutual affection that is strictly platonic.

Your best friend is even more than that. They are that one special person who sticks with you no matter what. You talk about anything and everything, have fun together, comfort each other, and you accept one another with all their flaws.
It's almost like finding your One, but without the romantic love.

Tullaina had often dreamed of finding that one true friend...

Born and raised in the mountains of Ered Luin, she had a pretty normal childhood as a pebble. With only a few friends and a loving family, she was as happy as a young girl could be.

When she grew older, her friends' appearance started to change.

They grew wider, more muscular and their facial hair started to grow out. Each of them turned into perfect examples of how a sturdy dwarf or dwarrowdam should look like.

Tullaina however stayed exactly the same. She grew in height, but kept her lanky figure. She filled out the appropriate places, but not as much as her friends or peers. Her freckles became more pronounced and the increase of birthmarks started to raise questions among those so-called 'friends'.
And on top of that, as if she couldn't be ridiculed enough already, she lacked the pride of every Dwarf... facial hair. A fine layer of down hairs where her sideburns should be was all she could grow, and it was barely even visible.

There was no denying that she looked different than your average Dwarrowdam at that age.

And that's when the teasing and bullying began.

One by one, she lost her friends, none of them wanted to be associated with the 'elf child' or khathzith, as they started calling her.

Everywhere she went, she could hear the dreaded word, whispered among the people of the Blue Mountains. And after a while, Tullaina started to believe them. Maybe she wasn't a Dwarf after all?

No matter how many times her parents had tried to convince her she was of full Dwarven descent, a proud Longbeard, she never stopped asking whether what they said about her was true.

Maybe she was a late bloomer, like her mother sometimes said in an attempt to comfort her. When Tullaina's tears had dried up, she usually told her daughter the story about her late auntie Marthosia whose beard only started to grow after she turned 30, and it turned out to be the most glorious beard of them all. The Dwarrows stood in line to ask for her courtship.
And every time Tullaina would simply roll her eyes and thank her mother.

By the time she turned 30, there was still no trace of a beard or proper sideburns. Not that Tullaina had expected anything, but she couldn't deny that there was a tiny sliver of hope left that maybe, maybe she was like auntie Marthosia after all.