You know, since I'm supposedly so off base about halfling lore, I'm curious if people can answer a lore question.
What happened between halflings and dwarves? Stout halflings have a sentence, and no more, that states "some say they have dwarven blood". If we assume this is true, or even that the rumor has some basis then there had to be some sort of incredibly close relationship between dwarves and halflings to create an entire subrace of halflings. But, they had to have also had a massive falling out.
Why do I say that?
Because Dwarves and Halflings don't seem to like each other terribly much, according the PHB green box text. Dwarves don't take halflings seriously and halflings think dwarves are too dour. Halflings also live in the plains and farmland, while dwarves traditionally have mountain strongholds. Halflings actually live mostly with humans, and very rarely in dwarven lands that I've ever seen. I've also never seen a dwarf-halfling couple ever depicted, nor and half-dwarf, half-halfling children. Dwarve are in fact notable in the fact that they rarely seem to enter into any relationships with a non-dwarf. Humans famously sleep with just about anything (elves, dragons, vampires, lycanthropes, fey, celestials, fiends, elementals, giants, ogres, orcs, think I've seen some goblinoids once, it is a long list) but they don't really have relations with dwarves. Yes, I am familiar with Muls from Darksun, but that is a setting specific race, they don't appear anywhere else, while most of the things I listed do appear in multiple settings. And Stoutfolk are canonically in a lot of different settings.
So, what is the connection between dwarves and halflings, how did it lead to the Stoutfolk halflings, and how did they have a falling out?