[non-Algol] The Boulder-Wives of the Dwarfs

Multiple theories, such as that Dwarf-Women were bearded and indistinguishable from the Dwarf-Men, or that Dwarf-Men kept the Dwarf-Women secluded in seraglios within secret Dwarf-Cities, have been advanced for the notable absence of Dwarf-Women; in actuality the answer is remarkably simple and could be considered to have been "right before our noses."

The Boulder-Wives of the Dwarf folk range from four to six feet in diameter, with a gray, stony, smooth body, featureless aside from the vague anatomical suggestion of some interior division into four lobes, with a small pore at one end, and a small tight-lipped, cross-shaped orifice at the opposite end.

Supposition holds that the Boulder-Wives are some form of mindless invertebrate, although Dwarf-Men insist that they communicate with and have a relationship with their "Mates." The Boulder-Wives have a n especially slow metabolism, respiring and absorbing moisture from the atmosphere via osmosis through microscopic organs in their tough cuticle in the fashion of many forms of vegetation; they excrete a tiny amount of crumbly, pebbly black matter from their pore, and receive nutrition and fertilization through their tetrameric orifice.

A Boulder-Wife become fertile for a short period of time once every hundred years or so; after a decade an un-fertilized Boulder-Wife excretes a fist-sized Boulder-Maid, whereas a Boulder-Wife that has been fertilized will instead excrete a tiny pebble-like egg.

The Dwarfs place these eggs in a golden tray containing a mixture of gold dust, manure and liquor, which eventually produces a Dwarf-Fingerling; a tiny, maggot-like creature with tiny hairy, bearded Dwarf-head which will live in the mixture within the tray for several years, gaining a significant amount of mass, before pupating and metamorphosing into a child-sized Dwarf-Man.