Turn All Your Flesh As Gold by anthropologyarda

This is a hefty piece of work! (I am nearly as out of my depth as Aule was about consider living bodies!) I don't know where to start. I enjoyed it very much. Aule's investment in the formation of the core of the earth and creation of its rocks, minerals, volcanoes, etc. is fascinating and straining my pitiful little mind which runs along the lines of imagining and creating character-driven fiction, all about people talking and interacting. And yet you are able to embody Aule with ambition, desire, curiosity, and appetite--all of those same impulses that I think so much about in my writing.

I like the use of the name Aa8;ūlēz. Has an authentic ring. Also like the encounter with Mairon and how Aule is comfortable with rocks but insecure with living organisms. The concepts are beautifully dealt with. Nice job.

that was terrifying. 

it takes a lot of nerve to assume the point of view of a god, but you really made it convincing. aargh !

(but how do you say the name with the strange letters ?)

This was terrific! So strange and yet it made perfect sense. The juxtaposition of the rocks and fire of Aule's form and the fragile and wet bodies of the Maiar was so well done, just how it feels when you cut your skin on a sharp piece of stone. Thank you for sharing this!

I love how alien and strange Aule and the Maiar are, here, and how disturbing.

The kelvar and the Children were to be made of such mutable and unstable stuff, wet and fragile. 

And the idea of Mairon acting as his helper for the making of beings, practicing his skills with . . . wet, fragile tissue: shudder.

It is quite worrying to think of those early experiments of Sauron's!

Although it makes sense that Aule needed some input when creating the dwarves, because for what seems to be a first attempt, they turn out surprisingly successful, don't they?

Really well written! 

This is an amazing contribution! Thank you for sharing :)

Oooh, excellent. You've done a fantastic job at depicting the alienness - and the limitations, a topic dear to my heart! - of the Ainur, especially of Aulë, and you've created an atmosphere that is at once primeval and beyond human comprehension, and yet readable for human readers. I'm intrigued by the idea that Aulë would have turned to some of his Maiar for help. It's a little ironic that he reprimanded Mairon for his (however horrific) experiments when we know that soon after, Eru Himself will have a word or two to say about the creation of the Dwarves...
I love how you dealt with the matter of their pre-Quenya names, BTW! There seems to be a little glitch, though; on my computer, at least, Aȝūlēz appears as Aa8;ūlēz (that is, with letters and numbers where the yogh should be), which makes the reading kind of awkward! Not sure whether other people have the same problem, and of course it has no bearing on the quality of your writing!

Great depiction of Aulë: superhuman, inhuman, walking on the tightrope. Sauron is pretty scary. It's not surprising that he (and Saruman) would eventually choose the Dark Side!

Great story!

Wonderful! I love how Aulë, despite being a Vala, is still learning about Arda and about how he might create things within it.  (And the way that he thinks about things!) Your use of names is very deft, it really anchors the story in the time before the Valar had encountered the Children.