I am the king under the mountain (oddly appropriate for this story), and I have returned!
And also this is the first post on this thread.
So... I have mixed feelings about this one.
On the one hand, it was very well-written. I enjoyed and was sympathetic towards both of the main characters - the sad nomadic dwarf, the curious little witch-girl. The craft and the pacing were both very well done. I always appreciate a story where doing the right thing leads characters to rewards that they didn't even dream of.
On the other hand, this story tripped on one of my personal pet peeves. I have very little patience for content-free conflicts. If your villain is going to be a force of nature - ruthless and merciless and implacable - then you damned well better make it worth it! I expect pillars of ultra-violet death-force, burning disembodied eyes, the very idea of evil given form and will. If your villain is going to be a person - and Rachel's people were definitely people - then you have got to explain their motivations in ways that make sense.
"They thought we were stealing their luck" just doesn't cut it. Who thinks things like that? Where does it come from? Even the most basic and absurd human stereotypes are based on some kind of truth, even if it's a highly biased truth with serious sampling errors. I'm quite certain that even a primitive tribe of humans wouldn't massacre a bunch of dwarves for absolutely no good reason.
So, that took me out of the story.
But did it overall, overshadow the story? I don't think so. If this had been a novel and the content-free conflict between humans and dwarves been part of the blurb, I probably would have passed on it. But it was a short story, and I enjoyed it well enough for the time it took. I give it three, tiny, magical zeppelins (out of five).
Before I hit "Post" I want to say to Dave: Tirion is not a dwarf. I mean, he's not a Dwarf dwarf. He's tiny deformed human. In a human-only context you can call him a dwarf, but if we're talking about Dwarves, he's not a dwarf. Let me put it this way: in a world with humans and elves, if there was an elf born with a deformity that made him ugly and cost him his magical abilities, would he be a human? No! He'd be a screwed up elf! And the humans would probably be offended at the comparison.
Hey, that's an idea...