Disclaimer: While the character name Motzerelli was made-up, she was alluded to in the Lord of the Rings trilogy in that Glóin married and had a son, Gimli, both of which are famous Tolkien characters. This story is how I think Glóin met his wife. And yes, it is Cinderella inspired. I did get the idea for female dwarves having beards from the movies; I am not sure if Tolkien ever mentions that or not but it makes sense to me! Please enjoy!

Motzerelli was a female dwarf who worked in the Lonely Mountain. The late Thorin Oakenshield had just reclaimed the mountain only a few short months ago and King Dáin was still trying to set the mountain back to its former glory. Unfortunately, most people did not realize this! You see, though there are female dwarves they are unfortunately generally mistaken for men because they have beards. Motzerelli actually had lovely auburn hair and a beautiful beard which she kept in two herringbone braids on each side and the middle was left loose. To make matters worse for identifying her gender, her voice was quite deep and she had the tendency to be rather unladylike. She could actually burp louder and longer than most of the male dwarves and enjoyed drinking their grog with them, though never enough to get drunk, of course. In fact, Motzerelli got the reputation of being so rough that it surprised many people that she was female! She was an orphan; her mother had died giving birth to her and there were no female relatives to raise her, so that job was left to her father. He died tragically in a mining accident when she was a teenager; she had been on her own ever since then. It soon became necessity for her to be rough because it meant she could hold her own against the male dwarves, even if most of them never knew she was a female. She preferred it that way. Motzerelli could mine with the best male dwarves and particularly enjoyed finding gems, as most dwarves love. She was lucky enough to get a position in the Lonely Mountain where she was able to explore it and help discover new places in which to mine. King Dáin was quite kind to her but tended to treat her like a male (he was aware of her gender but had promised not to tell anyone without her permission), but she did not mind.
Glóin found himself working with Motzerelli more and more often. She rarely told people that she was female, so he naturally assumed she was male and talked to her just like he would any of his close friends. Motzerelli was glad of this and found it fascinating to hear him speak of his journey with 12 other dwarves, a wizard, and some creature called a hobbit, to find and reclaim the Lonely Mountain. Unfortunately, she could not share much with him since she had not been many places and was young, thus had little experience of anything.

One day King Dáin had a question and proposition for Motzerelli and Glóin. “Hullo you two. I cannot find my father’s spyglass. I am afraid that evil dragon Smaug either moved it, consumed it, or did something else equally horrible with it. I am recruiting the two of you to search this entire mountain until it is found. Do you think you can handle that?”
“Of course!” they both replied at once. “Could you draw us a rough picture or give a better description than just a spyglass? I think we will need more to go on,” Motzerelli said.
Dáin was able to give them a rough picture and description. Soon the pair was off, starting with some passages that had yet to be fully re-excavated. As usual, it was the last unexcavated passage where the spyglass was found hanging off of a wall sconce. King Dáin was ecstatic, as one can imagine, at the finding of his father’s spyglass and declared a royal ball to celebrate. All the dwarves were invited, even the poorest of the poor.

Dwarf balls are a unique and special event. The female dwarves normally shave their beards and wear fancy dresses, which attracts the menfolk immensely (in fact, dances are a prime location for couples to meet each other). There is always a smorgasbord of delicious food that tends to be eaten up before the night ends, for dwarves enjoy this time of revelry so much that they dance well into the night. Interestingly, the food is occasionally eaten with the same picks that mining dwarves use in their work, but such a procedure is normally done by the more uncouth dwarves.

As rough and uncouth as Motzerelli was, especially for a female, she enjoyed balls of any kind. Thus she shaved her beard and dressed in her finest according to custom. Actually, none of the men she worked with had ever seen that side of her–recall that they all assume she is male and she has never told them otherwise. Her coworkers almost fought over whose turn it was to dance with her; she was a lovely dwarf maiden, her long auburn locks freely swinging as she danced, yet even so she was not the belle of the ball (that fortunate young lady was Dáin’s daughter, Dianna, but she is irrelevant to our tale). Glóin had the best time with her, as well as the highest number of dances. However, he was so entranced with her looks that he forgot to ask her name and where she was from. He did find out that she was not quite the lady her looks portrayed her to be, noticing that she ate Viking-style with a pick. One would think that if he noticed this strange maiden’s way of eating, he would have put two and two together and realize that she was the one who left the pick behind (he discovered it while cleaning up after everything was finished). So over the next few days, Glóin went around to all the sections of the Lonely Mountain to ask if anyone was missing their pick. All the replies were the same, “No!” At last he came back to his own section of mining.
“Is anyone here missing his pick? I found one when I was cleaning up after the ball.”
“I am!” It was Motzerelli. “Thank you so much! I have been borrowing a pick belonging to my father, but it is just not the same as my own.”
“Wait a second, Motzerelli. I do not recall seeing you at the ball! Were you hiding?” Glóin mused.
“No, I was not hiding. I saw you numerous times; you danced about seven dances with me!”
“Preposterous! I would never dance with another man! Have you been into the grog?”
Motzerelli laughed. “No! I am actually a woman; see how my beard is just starting to grow back from where I shaved it?”
Glóin looked and sure enough, her familiar long beard with the herringbone braids was missing. This newfound knowledge of her real gender of course changed their relationship completely. Soon Glóin was daily courting Motzerelli. A year later they were wed. Another year passed and a son was born: Gimli, who would become quite famous later on in the War of the Ring.

And here ends the tale of how Glóin acquired his wife and son.

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