Unremarkable

My name is Borin, and I am, by most measurable standards, unremarkable. I know this because my school report says so. Every year. In red ink. Underlined. Professor Grumthar even added a small drawing of a shrugging dwarf last semester, which I thought was a nice personal touch.

I'm forty-six years old, which — before you make that face — is perfectly young for a dwarf. We don't even start growing our third chin hair until fifty. I'm in my final year at the Underpeak Academy of Practical Sciences, in the great dwarven fortress of the Rumbling Deeps, where "practical" means they make you carry rocks up stairs for reasons no one has ever satisfactorily explained.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You'll want the basics.

I'm an orphan. My father, Dorin — a miner of some reputation and very little caution — died in what the official report called "an unfortunate interaction with an unstable ceiling." The unofficial report, told to me by his colleague Old Brek over too many mugs of stonebrew, involved a bet, a pickaxe, and the phrase "watch this."

My mother, Helga, is technically still alive. She's in the garden. She is the garden, mostly. The trolls got her three years ago on the road to Granite Falls. Turned her to stone right between the rose bushes and the cabbages. She looks dignified, I think. The birds seem to like her. I talk to her on Tuesdays.

So that's the sad part. Here's where it gets complicated.

I am in love.