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There are a lot of things about the Elf, he realises, when the barren hills of Eregion have flowed past them for a fortnight. So strange. Never still. Never in the same place for more than a fleeting moment; bird-like and fluttering. He tarries at the back of their party, long legs easily letting him keep up or lag behind on purpose, all eyes for potential danger. He runs ahead to scout, light on foot and every so often exclaiming some joy or other, a flower he has seen or a strange bird. These lands, Gimli realizes, are as foreign to him as they are to the little ones - strange, that one so ancient should have new things to discover.
At times, the Elf walks beside Aragorn, or afront, striding backwards with ease - and they speak together in Elven tongues that rise and fall like a woodland brook, hands gesturing mutedly or glances exchanged, some inside joke that Gimli will never begin to understand. Not that he wishes to. He does not need to. It is simply curious.
Some days, the Elf walks with Boromir, by the side of the pony, one hand on its muzzle and smiling, animatedly speaking of great hunts and feasts in the forests of his home, eyes alight at the glee of telling tales. He sings, sometimes, and Boromir will hearken, occasionally teaching him new tunes, man-songs for battle or glory. They sound out-of-place in an Elven mouth. Strange.
Then he walks with Gandalf, he teases and jests - boldly, he dances around the old wizard, sings ditties and trilling notes full of fun and childish joy. He must feel young with Gandalf, Gimli realises. Fey and young, a lad as he looks, and the wizard nudges him off with his staff as if he were a boy-prince, chortling into his beard. Curious. Strange.
He goes to the Hobbits - Frodo first, speaking slightly slower in his liquid Elvish so that they may converse - Of what they speak, Gimli does not know. Frodo is quiet but amused, and when Sam gains courage they speak at length. The Elf is virtually interrogated about the cookery and the gardens of the Greenwood, though in the most proper fashion. Poor Sam flusters and babbles when the Elf bid him drop the titles, that they are friends now, companions on this quest.
He goes to Merry and Pippin, and finds fellow minds in them, and quick to laughter they all are. He runs and climbs, quick as a squirrel and light as a swallow up into trees and over eddies and through bush and glen; he goes into the treetops and fetches them prizes - acorns and pinecones and shapely stones to fill their pockets, berries and tiny robin's eggs for them to snack on.
He weaves flowers into chains with skill and ease, and soon there are daisies crowning bold Boromir, Gandalf's hat has a clover in its brim. The Hobbits delight in it, linked bluebells for Merry and bright dandelions in Pippin's wild curls; Frodo seems joyful and young with a violet behind his ear, and Sam's golden hair burns with poppies. Aragorn, rugged ranger though he be, is not spared! No, he glitters with anemones, white and clear with leaves in between as a crown for the coming King. The Elf himself has taken a diadem of cornflowers in the brightest blues.
Gimli walks without. This, too, he does not mind.
...He wakes with wild strawberry flowers arranged in a halo around his head, not touching but almost, and finds he does not mind this either.