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His eyes snapped open.

“Thorin?” he called tentatively. There was no answer but the resounding of his own voice echoing back at him from good sweet stone. “Thorin? My lord?”

Nothing.

Gimli son of Glóin, Lord of Aglarond, called Silvertongue and Elf-Friend and Lockbearer (and a fathead troll by his sister), groaned a little and rolled onto his side in order to get to his feet. He grew stiff some mornings, and had learned to compensate for his aching joints: he would not want Legolas to worry –

Legolas.

With a burst of strength he didn’t realise he still possessed, Gimli was upright in an instant. Pushing his hair back out of his eyes, he tried to make out anything in the darkness. “Legolas?! Legolas, kurdelu, where are you?”

“He is beyond even your voice, child.”

The voice was a roll of thunder, it was a bolt of molten lightning through his skin and bones. Gimli quailed, but then he squared his shoulders and swallowed. “And who are you to part us? Others have tried and failed!”

The voice laughed, low and fond and rueful.

Gimli scowled, his fists bunching. “It’s no laughing matter! Tell me where you have taken me! Last I recall, I was taking a nap in our little house in Eldamar. Celebrian was singing to our friends in the courtyard beyond, and I was speaking to my kinsman and guide and-”

He stopped abruptly.

“Yes,” said the voice, slowly and with infinite understanding and pity. “You were.”

Gimli looked up into the endless velvet black. His throat felt too tight as he swallowed. “And so I’m…”

“Yes, my son.”

“And you’re…”

“Aye.”

“Well, there’s a pretty pass,” Gimli said, and sighed out explosively. “Oh, my poor love, all his tethers cut at last. I hope he disnae linger long in his grief.”

“And do you grieve, Gimli?”

Gimli squinted around, trying to find the source of the voice. Giving it up as a lost cause, he shrugged. “I am not sure. I knew it was coming. But forgive me some confusion, my Lord, for my first greeting! For I thought I was still abed in Valinor.”

“You are,” said his Maker. “Even now Legolas discovers you.”

Gimli stared into the dark. “He will weep. And for that, I grieve.”

“Tireless are the Elves,” said Mahal, and Gimli closed his eyes. “Not for nothing was he the swiftest of the Three Hunters. He will be here, in due time.”

“He swore to find me, and I know well the fleetness of Elves. I will make a much easier quarry than a band of Uruks.” Gimli let out a long, shuddering breath of pure reaction.

“Peace, my splendid child. You know well what awaits you, for you have lived beside these mysteries more wholly than any other living Dwarrow. You know that you will have the power to see him and walk by his side, just as your kin walked by your side every step of your life.”

A great desperation lurched in his breast. “Will he hear me?”

There was a great hand that loomed out of the dark then, blurred and indistinct. It cupped Gimli’s chin and tipped his head up as though he were a small child in need of reassurance. “No, my son. That Gift was given but once, and once was enough. Too many barriers were breached in its making, both my own and those of my brethren. Irmo will not forgive me a second time, no matter how many star-memories I forge for him.”

Shaking like a new leaf, Gimli’s hand rose to touch the giant fingers upon his face. “Then I cannot speak to him. He will be alone, and my words will be but dust in the air.”

“Gimli, you have always perceived things clearly, if not quickly,” Mahal said, gentle as the slide of sand upon the ocean floor. “Yes, the Gift was given but once. To whom was it given?”

Gimli’s breath caught.

“He cares for you like a son,” said Mahal. “He would speak to your Elf for you. He would walk worlds with you. In fact, he has.”

His eyes blinked open, and Gimli gripped the gigantic fingers with all his might, ignoring the shivering awe that cascaded from them in waves. “He’s here? I heard him, as I lay… he called me. He said…”

“They’re all here,” said Mahal. “All my children come home in their time. Now they gather and wait to greet you with eager hearts and bated breath.”

“My dear guide,” Gimli breathed, and he pressed his face against that huge, scarred hand while his pulse hopped madly in his throat. “My mother and father, my uncle, Aunt Dís, my cousins and friends...”

“And more,” said Mahal, and his voice lowered to a subterranean rumble. “So many more wait for you. They wait for the most renowned Dwarf of this Age, the mightiest Dwarf since Azaghâl himself. You should anticipate a hero’s welcome, Gimli.”

“Pah!” Gimli said loudly, and he screwed up his nose. “Me? I’m but one Dwarf. I did what any Dwarf would do.”

“But not every Dwarf did it,” Mahal murmured. “You did.”

Gimli blinked a bit, as that idea settled upon him. “No, that they did not,” he said eventually, “But not every Dwarf had the opportunity, either.”

“Hah.” Mahal’s hand slid from Gimli’s chin to stroke over the fall of his hair, soothing and fatherly. “Well said, Sansûkhâl. Truly you see clearly.”

The sound of his dark-name in the mouth of his Maker! It was the sound of love and power itself, and Gimli shuddered at the icy thrill that skittered up his spine. He had never heard his name sound so much like himself, as though it were the soul of him made into a word.

Still trembling, he leaned his head further into that hand. There was love and comfort there – but not, perhaps, the love and comfort he sought most. That alone came from a pair of long-fingered hands with bow-string calluses.

Then there was the sense of a lightning-and-stone scented kiss being laid gently upon his head, and though it burned like a furnace Gimli knew he was unmarred. “I wrought my best work in you, my son,” Mahal said softly, and Gimli nearly shivered out of his skin. The power that emanated from his Maker was unbearable; full of love and joy and strength. “I am so proud of you. So proud. I have not the words.”

Gimli blinked and blinked, his lashes wet. “I am as you made me.”

“No,” said Mahal. “You are as you became. I will leave you to your loved ones now, Gimli, Star of Aglarond, Silvertongue, Lockbearer, Reunifier. Rest and wait for your Elf.”

Then the hand was gone, and the presence of Mahal faded into the rock until only the sensation of that kiss remained, skittering like static through his hair. Gimli stood, dumb and mute and shaken, for a long moment.

Then he pulled himself together and shook his head roughly to clear it. His hair tumbled down before him, and with his blurred vision he could see that most of it – or all? Was red. Red again.

That made him frown, and he picked up a lock to peer at it more closely. These new eyes did not work well yet, it appeared, for there it was again: red hair. He had not worn red hair for at least sixty years.

Then the possibilities struck him all at once, and he began to pat at his face, his arms, his legs. Indeed, his tattoos remained, he could feel the difference in the texture of his skin, and his piercings also – but now his limbs moved with the ease of his youth and the strength of his warrior days! He lifted his hands before his muddied vision, and yes: the knuckles were smooth and not gnarled, the skin clear and supple, not loose and spotted as it had been in the fullness of his great age. His wrists and forearms were thick-muscled and sturdy, the ink black and fresh and not faded to bluish-grey.

“Well,” he said at last, still peering myopically at his hands, “Legolas won’t mind that one bit, I’m guessing.”

It did not bother him unduly that he was unclad. After living so many years with Legolas, Gimli found he had developed something of an Elven unconcern with nudity. However, he was rather more disturbed that there was no obvious way in or out of this dark nothingness, and no apparent light-source for the dim gloomy miasma in the air. “Well then,” he said to himself, and he slapped one hand against his stomach to feel his old core of strength in these new muscles, “best to find a door, I expect.”

Stumbling forward, he reached out with his newly-powerful hands and groped into the empty air. The floor beneath his bare feet was smooth and clear with no rubble to trip him, but he still could not see the edges of the room he was in. It took some time before his questing fingers finally touched a wall: stone, clean and sweet-ringing, sang beneath his palms. He smiled to the darkness and gave it a fond little pat.

“Lovely,” he said to it. “Lovely, you are! Why, I’ll bet Bofur enjoyed meeting you…”

“Aye, he did,” was the low answer, familiar and rough with emotion, and Gimli startled, his mouth falling open in shock.

“That’s…” and he turned.

Thorin was standing there, half-lit in the misty shadows of the great room. “Hello, my star.”

Gimli could only stare at him, hardly believing his own hazy eyes.

He was really there, his guide and friend, his teacher and great mentor, really standing before him as real and true and large as life! Just as he remembered – ah, but not quite, for his beard was chest-deep now and caught up in two thick braids either side of his face to reveal the embroidered collar of his blue shirt. And was that a bonding braid?

“Thorin?” he managed, and his voice rang out soft and wondering even to his own ears.

Then his feet moved without his direction and he was falling forward to grab at his guide with all his renewed strength and haul him into a tight, glad hug. “Thorin!” he gasped, and Thorin was gripping him just as tightly in return. “You’re – you-”

“I waited for this for so long,” Thorin muttered into his hair. His hands fisted tight upon Gimli’s upper arms. His breath was ragged. “My star, my star! A light in the darkness you were for me!”

“You were the voice that led me through it,” Gimli gritted back, and he pressed his forehead against Thorin’s and glared through his tears into those familiar ice-blue eyes. “No, Melhekhel, I will not have you ascribing me with gifts I have no knowledge of! You’ve been with me every damn step, every danger, every doubt…”

Thorin shook his head, his chest heaving. “If not for you, I would have sunk into my anger and hopelessness…”

“You, my King? Doubt it. You’re too stubborn to stay there,” Gimli laughed, rough and raw, gasping and heaving through his words. “Legolas, my Legolas - I left him behind me, he will be putting me in stone, I am afraid that he…”

“I know,” Thorin said, his own words tumbling out, and he grabbed Gimli’s shoulders to look him full in the face, strong fingers pressing hard into the thick muscle under his tattoos. “I know, Gimli, my son, my star – I will show you how we watch the living, we will go to him and I will tell him you are here, you will be by his side…”

Gimli buried his face against Thorin’s shoulder, and Thorin’s arms came up around him to hold him close and tight. There he stayed, trying to master himself, for a long moment. “All right,” he said at last, his breath whistling through his teeth.

“It will be well, you’ll see,” Thorin said, slower and calmer now. “Here, come. I have a blanket for you; your skin is newly forged and no doubt you shiver. Do your eyes work yet?”

“Not exactly,” Gimli mumbled as Thorin settled the blanket around him and wrapped him tight. “Sort of. Hard to explain. It’s all fuzzy unless I really concentrate.”

“I’ll help you,” said Thorin gently, and he laid an arm around Gimli’s shoulders and began to guide him onwards.

“You always have,” said Gimli, and he lifted a rather wobbly smile up to his friend.

Thorin smiled back, tremulous, almost as though he could not help himself. “Aye, there you are, our brave lad Gimli. Look at you! Just as you were when you founded Aglarond, I’ll wager.”

“I’m nearly of a height to you,” Gimli said, in some surprise. “I thought that…”

“Ah, but I was lost when you were but sixty-three, remember?” Thorin said, eyebrows raising. “Step along now, nearly there, Gimli. So, small wonder you remember me as far taller than you. Fundin’s line still has both of ours beaten, sad to say.”

“Where are we going now?” wondered Gimli.

“Surely you didn’t think I was the only one,” Thorin said, leading Gimli carefully through the endless dusk. “There’s so many outside it’s a regular marketplace, and so our Maker told me to come in alone. Said I would be best suited, considering my role in your life. Your father is fit to be tied: he wanted to be the one to greet you.”

“Da,” Gimli choked, and Thorin’s fingers tightened on his arm momentarily.

“Yes, he’s here. He nearly fought me for the right to walk into the sepulchre. He may yet, when we emerge. This is not usual, you understand. Normally our Maker greets us, and then the doors open for our loved ones. But you… you always have to be different, don’t you?”

“How do I get out, then? I need to see them,” Gimli demanded.  

“I’m taking you now! Mahal below, lad, you’re no more patient than you ever were. Didn’t you live with Elves?” Thorin chided him, but there was a smile in his voice.

“Pfft, the legendary patience of the Elves? If you know Legolas, you know he is as impatient as me, if not more so,” Gimli retorted, and then they both chuckled together, their laughter bouncing from the walls with the exact same timbre, a low Ered Luin rumble that neither had ever quite lost.

“Here’s the door before us,” Thorin coaxed. “Watch yourself. You’re about to be mobbed.”

“If my father is out there,” said Gimli, “then I highly doubt the chances of anyone else getting through to me.”

“You make a fair point,” Thorin said, and he reached out and pushed open the door.

The sudden light was not, in truth, very bright. But it was enough to make Gimli’s new-made eyes smart and sting, and he winced against it and made a sound of protest.

Then there was a sudden roar of voices all clamouring at once, and Gimli squinted and staggered against the onslaught. If Thorin had not been holding him up, he would have fallen, of this he was quite sure.

“Mobbed was definitely the appropriate term,” he croaked, and then there were hands as familiar as his own – the exact size and shape of his own, in fact – pulling him into a hard embrace. Red hair filled his blurry vision to overflowing, and a set of well-known beads pressed against his chest, digging into his bare skin.

“Inúdoy, inúdoy,” crooned Glóin, his breath coming in huge gulps and starts. “Gimli, my son, my mighty son – my star, my wee Gimli! Ach, you wonderful boy, you wonderful, wonderful – no, don’t speak, just let me hold you, I’m here, you’re…”

“He’ll be at that for a while, I imagine,” said Dis’ voice, laconic and dry.

“Shut it, you lot,” Glóin growled, and he pulled Gimli in tighter.

“I missed you, Da,” Gimli breathed, and he threw his arms around his father and held on in return. “Missed you.”

“Come on,” Glóin said, and he pulled back to smooth his hands over Gimli’s face, over his beard and hair and neck. His lip was quivering even as he smiled, his face half-crumpled in pride. “Let me see you! Aye, there’s a proper Dwarrow. That’s my son. There you are.”

“Here I am,” Gimli said, and his tears had somehow renewed themselves when he had not been paying attention. “You’ve the red in your hair again.”

“So do you,” Glóin laughed. “Except that old silver stripe over your brow: that’s still there.”

“Gimli,” said his mother, and Gimli could not stifle his gasp nor his cry of joy. “Gimli-love, can you see me yet?”

“Amad!” Gimli said, turning to her blindly and reaching out. “Mum – Mum, come here, I can’t see where you are, please…”

“Here we go, inúdoy,” she soothed, her tone wavering, and Mizim came into focus all at once, her silvery hair and lovely eyes nigh-glowing in the torchlight. “Darling, here I am. You’ve come so far, Gimli. I’m just -” she gulped a moment, trying to control herself, “Gimli, I’m just so proud of…”

Gimli found he was dry of all words – him, speechless! Legolas would laugh – and simply tugged her into a rough embrace. The scent of her hair-oil and the odd mineral tang of her jewellery-polish made his throat tighten in remembrance. She kissed him over and over, his cheeks and brow and even his hands. Then Glóin clasped them both tight to him, together a small knot of shaking, heaving, crying Dwarves, a family nearly complete.

“And that’s just the start of it,” Thorin murmured. “When you’re ready, Gimli.”

Gimli just held onto his parents with all his strength, and tried to breathe.

“Pull that tighter,” Mizim said at last, and she tugged the blanket around his shoulders and tucked it around his chest. “Gracious, Gimli, these arms of yours. You nearly cracked my ribs!” She gazed at him a moment longer, her glorious eyes glossy and wet. Then she smiled once more and nodded a little. “Thorin’s right, let’s greet the others. Then we can take you further in and get you warm and fed.”

“Your mother insists on feeding everyone; between Mizim, Bilbo and Bombur we’re never likely to want for anything,” said another, well-loved and well-remembered voice. Gimli felt it like a blow to the gut.

“Uncle Óin?” he tried, and his lips felt numb and rubbery.

“Aye.” Óin’s face swam into his vision then, and his hair was that reddish fawn colour seen but once before in the sickly light of the Dwimorberg! Gimli gawped, and Óin waggled his beard at him as he grinned. “Not as you remember me, I’ll guess! Now, I’ve a bone to pick with you, my brave bonny lad. You’ve gone frittering our words and our wisdom across every land in Arda, and a few that aren’t! You scatter secrets like birdseed! You reckless little idiot,” he added, soft and affectionate.

“Me, reckless! That’s a fine slander, and wasn’t it you in the pool at the Gates of-” Gimli bit off the rest, gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut. The memory was as clear and painful as ever, and he pressed his hands against his eyes. Óin yanked him from Mizim and Glóin’s clinging grip to press his forehead hard against Gimli’s own.

“It’s all right now,” said Óin, quietly. “I’m here. I’m all right.”

“Gimli, Óin,” said Thorin then, and he touched Gimli’s shoulder. “Óin, turn him so he can see.”

“Hold yer damn horses, my King,” Óin snapped, not moving a muscle. Thorin huffed in amusement.

“What is he talking about?” Gimli muttered.

“Oh, fine,” Óin grumbled, the peevish tone of his voice so familiar that Gimli could barely stand it. “Here, lad, turn this way. Not sure you’ll see them all, but there – ah, there you go! Look, Gimli!”

Gimli screwed up his eyes, trying to make the scene come into focus. It was blurred at first, and then with a sudden shock he understood: the wash of conflicting colours before him were all Dwarves, many Dwarves – perhaps hundreds. He gaped myopically at them, stunned. “Uh…”

“Azaghâl belkul, ugbal zabadel,” came a solemn voice - Balin’s voice - and as one the crowd bowed low for him.

“He’s going to get a swelled head,” murmured Kíli from somewhere.

“Shut it, nephew,” Frerin’s voice hissed. “Bow!”

Gimli could only blink at the sight, and then he bent his head in return. “I did as any of you would have done in my place,” he said, his voice thick. “And I did not do it alone. Thank you.”

“Whoops, wobbling a bit there,” said Óin, and he propped Gimli back up. “Might want to save the bowing for when you’re a bit steadier on your feet.”

“So many,” said Gimli breathlessly. “So many! Ach – Lóni, Frár! There you are, no older than the day you left! And Ori, and there is my teacher Náli as fierce as ever! Look, Nori has his foot again, and there is Bofur my brother!”

“There’ll be time for all that,” Mizim said gently. “You’ve made quite the name for yourself. These are only a small fraction of the Dwarrows who wish to meet you.”

“Aye, Thorin insisted that we not crowd you too much,” said Balin, and his eyes were twinkling.

“And it is not just Dwarrows, these days,” said Thorin, tipping his chin to where the willowy shapes of Elves loomed, slender and graceful, amongst the throng.

Gimli glanced at them, and then back at his guide. “The ones who laid the path? I would speak to them.”

“Later,” Mizim insisted. “Let’s get you back to your room.”

“I have a room?”

“They appear as Mahal wills them, so it seems,” Bofur shrugged. “Damn sight easier than carving them out of the rock ourselves!”

“We missed you,” said Dís, in her mithril-and-diamonds voice. Her hand upon his cheek was so, so gentle. “I’ve missed your tales, nidoyel. Go sleep now.”

“Aunt Dís,” he choked.

“Go sleep,” she repeated firmly. “We’ll all be here in the morning, and you’ll see us clearly.”

…

It was the work of moments to slip away. Gimli was here, he was safe, he would adjust with time. Gimli had ever been adaptable, after all, was the thought that came to Thorin as he ducked around another corridor and leaned his back against the wall. His was a peaceful end, not a violent one.

Just a brief rest, a quick respite now, to recover himself against the storm of feelings he had weathered.

So. His star had been snuffed out – for now. But he was here. He was here. Thorin’s arms now knew what it was to hold him, his more-than-son, his dear friend, his safe place.

Yet there was one left behind. When Gimli recovered he would be heartsick and worried.

A frown crossed his brow. Without a moment’s hesitation his feet at once began to turn back, towards the chamber of Sansûkhul, and the living world.

Aman was turning to dusk when he arrived, and the stars were already peeping through the thin gauzy wisps of cloud that scudded across the purpling sky. The white-gold trees of Valinor stretched their fingers high towards the stars, as though in supplication.

Thorin shook off the clinging light of the pool and stepped forward, his head whipping this way and that. “Legolas? Legolas?”

There was a movement between the trees, and Thorin followed it. As he made his way through the twilit trees, the sound of a voice raised in aching song began to come to him.

 “Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni unótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lisse-miruvóreva
Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
ómaryo airetári-lírinen. 

Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva?”

It was Galadriel, and she was singing softly to herself as she laid out – no. Oh no.

The lump in Thorin’s throat was too large to swallow.

“He would want to be below stone,” said Legolas, his voice dulled and hollow. His eyes were empty, yawning pits in his face. “He would want…”

“We will see to it,” Galadriel said, gentle and serene. “I will not touch his hair, mellon nín. That is for you to tend. I will clean his feet and hands, and see to his jewellery.”

Legolas gave a sharp nod, and the muscles of his neck stood out painfully hard. With the fierce light of grief in his eyes he seemed nearly mortal, and yet in that grief he stood rigid and fixed and eternal. His hands clenching and unclenching, he looked up to the sky for a long while, as though listening to the air. “Olórin will be here soon,” he said at last.

“And your mother and Elrond to follow,” said Galadriel. “You will see him beneath stone, as he wished, and then you will take your last journey.”

“I do not know the right words to say. He always had the best words,” Legolas said brokenly, and he laid a hand against the proud, still chest, his fingers tangling in the long white beard. The evening winds tugged locks of it this way and that. “Nor do I know the rites his people use.”

“He would not want words,” Thorin said, and hoped against all hope that Legolas would hear. “He would want you by his side.”

Galadriel inclined her head. “I will fetch water.” Then she glanced down at the short, sturdy figure upon the bier. “Until the second song, my champion,” she said, nearly soundless.

Her feet made no sound as she left, and her starlit eyes were darkened.

As though her presence were the only thing keeping him upright, Legolas collapsed upon the figure all at once. His fingers smoothed over that thick fall of white hair, then they traced, shaking slightly, over the shape of the Broadbeam nose, along the straight Durin brow. He keened a little as his fingers found the scar buried in the hair at the temple. “Back to the stone, he always said,” he moaned, and his fingers stroked the pale cold cheek. “From stone he came, and to stone he returns. Ai, that I cannot follow yet!”

“And from stone he is remade,” Thorin said. “Legolas, hear me! He is awake, he has been forged anew in the Halls of our Forefathers!”

But Legolas was too deep in his new sorrow, and could not hear.

“The fire of his spirit is cold now,” Legolas whispered, and he lifted the great gnarled hands and pressed them to his own face. “The stars are gone out, and the night is upon me. Ah, nan belain - he followed me, for so many years. Followed me into danger and terror and joy and impossibility. Now I must follow him. Yet I cannot leave him here, for though this fire before us is quenched I have loved it so. This hand, this face, this flesh! Ai, ai, I have loved him so! I cannot put it behind me.”

“He lives, Legolas,” Thorin pleaded. “He is safe, he is…”

“He will not hear you, will he? Give it time, Thorin.”

Thorin whirled at the new voice, and there stood Gandalf. Or perhaps, it had once been Gandalf. For just as Gandalf the White had been a distillation of Gandalf the Grey, this new being was in turn renewed and rejuvenated. All the cares and strife of Middle-Earth had been cleansed from him, and his face was calm and untroubled, though his expression was full of pity.

“Gandalf,” Thorin said in relief. “I would give Legolas comfort. Gimli has awoken in the Halls, he has been reunited with his family. Even new-made and stumbling, he worries for Legolas above all things. Can you not tell him?”

“I will try, old friend,” Gandalf sighed. “But if the voice of his grief is louder still, then we may be begging the storm.”

“Regardless,” said Thorin. “I feel I must try, for my star’s sake.”

“And for Legolas’ own sake also, I deem?” Gandalf raised his brows enquiringly. “Ah yes. How times do change.”

Thorin huffed, and folded his arms. “Tell him.”

“Dwarves,” Gandalf muttered to himself, smiling a little and shaking his head. Then he moved to where Legolas was slowly combing out the snowy river of white hair, plaiting it in jewels and flowers. “Legolas Thranduilion,” he said softly.

Legolas’ hands stilled a moment, and then they returned to their task.

“Legolas, I have news from Gimli’s kin. Thorin is here,” Gandalf said, and he laid a hand upon Legolas’ taut shoulder. “Will you listen?”

Legolas lifted his eyes. They were wide and wild and awful, and Thorin turned away from their stare. “What does he say?” The light Elven voice had turned to grated glass.

“Gimli is awake in the Halls of Mahal,” Gandalf said, and he smiled encouragingly at Legolas, who blinked and swayed like a river reed. “He is awake and safe. He awaits you.”

“His hair is Firebeard-red once more, and he seems no more than a hundred and forty-five,” Thorin said. “He has his old strength again, or so my ribs can attest! He missed you, the very second he awoke. He called for you at once. He will join me and we will accompany you as you travel over the teeth of the Pelóri and through the forbidden realms. I will be here to give you his words, I swear it.”

Legolas breathed in sharply as Gandalf repeated this. “Thank you, King Thorin,” he eventually said, and his terrible gaze fell back to the body upon the bier. “I must finish this task, and then I will be away as soon as my farewells are made and the last stone laid. I would welcome your company.”

Then his eyes squeezed shut and Thorin breathed easier away from their painful light. “Was he…”

“He is well,” Thorin said gently. “He will sleep and be himself, just as you remember him. His father and mother care for him now.”

“Is there – and are there rites I must say?” Legolas asked, his head bowed. His eyes remained closed. “I cannot bury him as a Dwarf would, so I must guess at what is right.”

“No words would be right, for this is not a farewell,” Thorin told him. “And Gimli did not wish to be buried by a Dwarf. If that were his wish, he would never have sailed.”

Then he hesitated. “But I beg you, do not inscribe his dark-name in any place for others to see. That truth is for you and you alone.”

Legolas’ lips curved upwards the slightest amount. Thorin could have shouted in joy to see it. “That, at least, I remember well.” His head lifted, and his eyes opened. The terrible light of first grief was fading by some small amount, and he seemed much more himself. He bent to attend to the braiding of Gimli’s hair once more, his fingers steady and with a new purpose in his movements.

“Well done, Thorin Oakenshield,” Gandalf murmured as he moved away from the bier. “Yes, well done indeed.”

“He is dear to Gimli,” Thorin said, feeling a little defensive. “And all right, yes, I care for him too. I would not see him swallowed by needless grief.”

“It was kindly done of you. I will see him through the next part, and you should return to Lord Aulë’s Halls.”

“If you are sure,” Thorin said, reluctant to leave Legolas alone with his dead and his sorrow. Yet he supposed he had done what he came to do: there was no further action he could take. And Legolas did seem more composed. He would have better news for Gimli.

“I like the beard, by the way,” Gandalf added conversationally. “Most suitable. Did Bilbo have a hand in that?”

“As often as I can arrange it,” Thorin said without thinking. And then: “That – wait, that is not an appropriate question!”

…

The rest of the evening was a blur, though Gimli knew he wept at least twice more. The sight of himself in any passing reflection made him jerk and stare on occasion. His parents fed him and put him to rest in a simple room with a plain cot in one corner, and Óin brushed out his hair and plaited it for him before leaving him to sleep.

The cot was twice as long as a usual Dwarven bed, and it was that gentle consideration which made him weep for the third time.

When he woke, his time-sense told him it was early-morning, and his belly was growling. He groaned and rolled onto his side, carefully favouring his stiff leg and trying not to jostle Legolas…

…and remembered.

He leapt to his feet, the sleep-tunic swinging around his legs. He couldn’t remember putting it on. A pile of clothes had been laid on a chair tucked neatly by a dresser; a chest and a cabinet completed the room. He dressed as quickly as possible, though even in his rush he recognised Dori’s familiar stitching upon the sleeves of the blue shirt.

The boots were new, and it took some shoving to get his feet into them. The leather would stretch in time, he hoped. New boots for an eternity sounded miserable.

Wriggling his toes inside the fur-lined leather, he tentatively opened the door. “Da? Amad?”

“There he is!” Glóin looked up from a desk, his eye-glass strapped around his head. “Thought you might sleep for longer, but then you never liked to be idle, did you? Hungry?”

“Aye, starving.” This was surreal. Gimli half-felt as though he were a stripling lad of sixty again. “But where do we go?”

“The lads thought they’d take you there,” said Mizim, coming forward and smoothing back his forelock. “There were far too many gathered to greet you last night and they missed their turn, so they’re keen as cut crystal to spend time with you. I’ll plait your beard if you like first, nidoyel. I know you’ve a better standard of grooming these days! I’ll have to think of a way to thank your Elf for that.”

Gimli nodded, lost for anything better to say.

When he was deemed presentable, Óin led him through endlessly-repeated corridors to another set of rooms. Whispers followed him as he went, and Gimli caught a few eyes staring. “Am I so strange to them?” he muttered to his uncle.

“They treat Thorin an’ Dáin the same way, laddie,” Óin said in sympathy, and he patted Gimli’s shoulder. “It’ll settle in time. You should have seen the way they gossiped when Tauriel and Khel got here!”

“They’re as bad as Hobbits,” agreed Gimli, and he allowed himself to relax a little. Óin gave him an understanding look, and then he turned and knocked heavily at the door.

“It’s us!” he yelled. “Oi, get up you lot!”

“Oh mahumb, where’s my comb?” came a plaintive voice, and then Fíli’s unmistakeable snort of laughter followed.

The door was thrown open by a small Dwarf with lucky hair, his blue eyes bright. “Almost ready,” he said. “Idmi, Gimli! I’m Frerin son of Thráin, haven’t actually met you formally. Though honestly I feel like I’ve known you for ages and ages. The idiots are nearly ready. We’re to meet the rest of your little gang at the dining chamber, I’m told.”

“My idea! It’ll be like Borin’s tavern all over again!” Kíli yelled. “Tauriel, I really can’t find it! Did you move it?”

“It’s tangled in his hair,” Fíli said, grinning as he appeared beside Frerin. “Gims, give me a hug! Damn, but it is good to see you! I’ve had to put up with the cracked quartz in there on my own for all this time! No grumpy little cousin to kick his shins to get him to stop.”

“I refuse to believe you never kicked his shins,” Gimli laughed, and he gave Fíli a tight hug, slapping his back several times to cover his sudden emotion. “You are a sight for sore eyes, laddie! Not a bit changed. I cannae believe I was ever so young as you.”

“You were a tiny cranky red puffball with legs,” Fíli said, tossing his braids. “Thanks, Óin! We’ll bring him back in one piece, I promise!”

Óin rolled his eyes. “I’m more worried about you, Fíli. Gimli can hold his own.” But he touched Gimli’s arm in reassurance and nodded to him, before he stumped off down the hall.

“Found it!” said Kíli, and he was exactly as Gimli remembered also. Though they both seemed so slight now, and so very young. Yet Kíli’s grin was still wide and ready, and his hair was still a mop atop his head. “It was caught in my hair!”

Fíli, Gimli and Frerin all hid their smiles simultaneously.

A pair of long arms then circled Kíli’s waist, and the Elf Tauriel laid her chin over Kíli’s shoulder. He leaned back into her. “Are we ready?” she asked, her voice musical and low. Gimli’s breath caught at hearing the Silvan accent he knew so well in the mouth of another: he had grown used to the rounder vowels of the Vanyar in his later years, but the Silvan accent was firmly his favourite.

Perhaps he was biased.

“Ready,” said Fíli.

“First you had better come here, lad,” Gimli growled, and he pulled Kíli in for his own hug. “I missed you. Can’t believe you an’ Tauriel, either. We were so sure we were the first!”

“Always following in my footsteps,” laughed Kíli against his shoulder. “Our feisty shadow, copying our every move!”

“Ah, but you’ve still barely a beard to speak of,” Gimli said, grinning back at him and clapping his shoulder in mock-sympathy. “I’ll not copy you that far!”

“As though you would,” Frerin said, and gave Kíli and Fíli a sly look. “These two have less on their heads than you have on your chin.”

“I don’t mind,” Tauriel said, smiling. “Though I imagine it took Legolas some time to grow accustomed to it!”

“As it happens, Legolas is extremely fond of it, Lady,” Gimli said, and he sent Kíli an innocent-seeming wink. His cousin pouted a little. “It is my honour to meet you, at long last! Êl síla erin lû e-govaded 'wîn!”

“Show off,” Kíli grumbled.

Tauriel laughed. “Mae govannen, mellon nín! My heart is lighter for meeting you! We must speak together, you and I. I have many tales to tell you of our years beneath the eaves of the Greenwood.”

“Embarrassing ones, I hope,” said Gimli, and she gave him a mischievous little smile.

Fíli rolled his eyes. “This way, Gimli!”

“Who else is coming?” Gimli asked as they wound their way through the dizzying, repetitive corridors. Kíli wrinkled his nose.

“Oh, the usual dining hall will be full, I expect. It’s breakfast time after all! But instead of sitting at our usual family tables we thought that perhaps you’d prefer something different. So, Lóni and Frár and us of course, and then Dáin and Thira and Dwalin and Orla and Thorin and Bilbo and Bombur and Alrís and Bofur and Bifur and Ori and Nori and…”

“So, everyone then,” Gimli said, and he set his jaw and squared his shoulders. “And after this breakfast, I may go to Legolas somehow? How is this done? Is it a mirror, such as Galadriel used?”

“Pay up,” Frerin said at once. Fíli and Kíli hissed in displeasure, but they handed a couple of coins to the youngest Dwarrow without objection. “They said it’d take until after you’d eaten before you asked after Gimlîn-zâram,” he explained at Gimli’s puzzled look. “But I knew you’d ask as soon as you could – within the bounds of politeness, of course.”

A pool? “And where is it?” he asked slowly.  

“I’ll show you,” Kíli said with a little shrug.

“Uncle Thorin will have your ears if you do,” Fíli warned him. “He wants to show Gimli himself.”

“Yes, fine,” Kíli said dismissively, flipping a hand. “I won’t step on his toes.”

The occasional whisper still followed him as he passed through these strange Halls, and Gimli tried to catch sight of the whisperers. None came forward to make themselves known, however, and so he was craning his neck and looking about in vain.

“I can hear them,” Tauriel assured him. “They do not speak ill of you. Quite the contrary.”

Gimli huffed and scratched at the back of his neck. “Never enjoyed being the focus of this sort o’ thing. I didn’t even much like being called Lord. This’ll take some growing used to.”

“Thorin ignores it,” Frerin said. “Dáin laughs at it.”

“I suspect I’ll be somewhere in between,” Gimli said, and then his breath snagged in his chest as they rounded the corner. The corridor opened out into a great banquet hall, lined with mighty carven stone pillars. Dwarves of all clans were everywhere, at tables and upon ledges, smoking pipes or resting or talking. There were even a few who whittled and sang, and great firepits and cookpots could be seen at some gatherings.

“This is just one of the communal dining halls,” said Fíli, smiling at Gimli’s awe. “There are a lot of them.”

“And if you don’t like the noise, you can always retire to the kitchen in your rooms,” added Frerin.

“But then you have to do your own cooking, and why bother when there’s a Hobbit and a Bombur?” Kíli said, snorting. “There’s our usual table – you can see Great-Grandfather and Great-Grandmother already, but Grandfather’s not up yet. He likes working late and sleeping late. Fundin’s family take that bench on occasion, and that’s where Narvi and Khel usually sit. Glóin and Mizim are usually by the long firepit there, and Dwalin and Mum sometimes join them. You’ll soon get the hang of it.”

Gimli followed Kíli’s finger to the table indicated, and oddly there was a Dwarf there already, deep in a book and with a fork poised halfway to her mouth. Yet it was not one he knew. “If that’s where Da and Amad sit, who’s that then?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t… have met her,” said Frerin, faltering a little. “Um. She died at Azanulbizar. Like me.”

Gimli frowned at the young Dwarf, at his reddened cheeks and downcast eyes - and then realisation struck him like a hammer-blow and he whipped around to gape to the seated Dwarrowdam in shock. “That’s my…”

“Aye,” said Fíli. “You should go introduce yourself.”

But Gimli was already moving, drawing up the chair and sitting opposite the Dwarrowdam. His heartbeat was skittering a little, but above all he was eager. Here was the Firebeard to whom he owed his hair, his axes and his temper. Here was the best axe-dancer of her age.

She glanced up from her book, and then she fell back with a slight yelp. Her fork clattered to her plate, and she pressed her hand against her chest. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” she gasped. “Damn it, Gimli, you’re as wool-footed as the Hobbit!”

He bit his lip, trying to hold back the laughter that tried to bubble up. She had the thickest Thaforabbad accent he had ever heard, even more pronounced than Óin or Glóin’s. “You’re Haban. You’re my grandmother.”

“Aye, that’s me,” she said, beaming. “Call me Nan.”

“I want to know you,” he said, beaming back. “I want – damn it, I want to cross axes with you!”

“That’d be my distinct pleasure,” she replied, eyes glowing with challenge. She had his nose too, he realised with some delight. “You’ve more to see than one old Firebeard, laddie. Off you pop now. I hear there’s some sort of party organised.”

“Borin’s, I tell you!” Kíli announced, with a grand wave of his arm.

“I hope not, not at this hour! It’s not even gone eight of the morning!” Gimli said, and he took his grandmother’s hand and gingerly kissed her cheek. She smelled of apples, oddly. “I’ll be seeing you, Nan.”

“Get on with you, lad,” she said, eyes twinkling. “You made me lose my place!”

He laughed again and stood. “All right, you lot. Show me this table now.”

The breakfast was bedlam. Dwalin headbutted him so hard that his eyes smarted, and then Balin gave him a thorough lecture over how many deep secrets he had let spill. Gimli nodded obediently, and privately decided to ignore every part of it. Lóni had pulled him into a rough clinch that it took two Dwarrows to break, and he didn’t seem likely to let Gimli out of sight for the next decade. Nori tried to interest him in a ‘business venture’ which Gimli neatly side-stepped (negotiations as Lord of Aglarond had to come in useful for something) and then Dori tutted briskly over how little he was eating, and how untidy his braids were. Bilbo shook his hand so enthusiastically he thought his elbow might unhinge itself, and Bifur had planted two great smacking kisses on either of his cheeks.

At least Bombur’s food was still excellent, he mused ruefully, as Dáin and Bofur began to joke and sing. However, there was a pig trying to gnaw on his bootlaces, which definitely detracted from the whole experience.

Finally, Dís had to step in and quell the crowd with her leaden stare, and Gimli was able to put something of his meal away while the spell lasted. All the while he could feel Thorin’s eyes on him, fond and yet tense. And Gimli knew that the time was nearly upon him; that soon he would learn of this pool of stars and he would see his Legolas.

Something tight and painful began to knot itself in his belly and chest.

“I sorely hope the fuss dies down soon,” he muttered to Dís. “I can’t imagine every meal being like this.”

She tugged at his lineage-braid. “They missed you, little star,” she said. “Allow them a few weeks.”

He looked up at her, young and dark-haired and smooth-skinned as she was in his earliest memories. “But I have another I chiefly wish to see, and all this…”

She inclined her head. “For a moment more. Then my brothers will show you.”

“You will not join me?”

She looked away, across the chamber to where a merry-faced Dwarrow with a myriad of honey-coloured braids sat at Thrór’s table. “I’ve done my waiting,” she said softly.

“Here, Gimli! We need to add your name to the practice bouts,” said Dwalin then, and there was an almighty cheer. Nori immediately began whispering furiously with Bifur, Bofur and Frár: making bets, no doubt.

“And you might finally get your comeuppance!” laughed Dáin, and Dwalin threw a bread-roll at him.

“Or you might!”

Gimli’s patience, never very fulsome at the best of times, was stretched close to its breaking point by the time the meal had finished. Wiping off his mouth with his napkin, he stood and met Thorin’s eyes.

His King nodded slowly, and then his head tipped towards the large banquet-hall door.

Dáin squinted at this, and then leaned back in his chair. His foot sparkled in the firelight. “All right, I think he’s had enough lads,” he said. “Go on, you randy bugger, go see your Elf.”

Gimli’s face flamed. “I will fight you,” he promised darkly. “Later.”

“Five on Gimli,” Bofur murmured to Nori.

Frerin scuttled after them as Thorin led Gimli away from the raucous group, his smaller legs racing to catch up with the two older Dwarves. “Hang on, this bit is my job,” he puffed. “You’re not going without me, nadad!”

“I wouldn’t dare, nadadith,” Thorin said, his lip twitching. “This way, Gimli. We look for the door wound about with pearls, diamonds and mithril. That is the entry to the Chamber of Sansûkhul.”

Gimli halted for a moment. “That’s its name? But it sounds like…”

“Aye.” Thorin glanced over at him. “Believe me, I’ve thought upon the irony several times: a door of clear-sight in which to see you, over and again. Too, the pool is named Gimlîn-zâram.”

“That’s unnerving,” Gimli muttered into his beard.

“It takes some getting used to,” Frerin said.

“I’ve been hearing that a lot,” Gimli replied with a sigh. “Does it work like the Mirror of Galadriel, then?”

Thorin paused at a great double-door, studded about with pearls and diamonds. “Just come and see.”

And he led Gimli through into the chamber swept about with billowing curtains of pale stone. Gimli cried aloud in wonder. Fluting columns and drapes all made of that glimmering translucence – why, it was as though Aglarond’s dark starlit walls had been lit from within! Fair and luminous as the tip of Legolas’ ear, eternal as the night itself and as warm as flesh! It breathed like a living thing, and he yearned to touch it, to speak to it as he knew he could. He wondered what the Song of Stone would tell him, here in this place.

“Fíli knew you’d appreciate it,” Thorin said, smiling and folding his arms as he watched Gimli gawp and gasp.

“It’s glorious,” he said, awed and soft. “See how the stone sighs and caresses the air!”

“Just you wait,” Frerin said, grinning broadly. “This way, Gimli.”

He led Gimli to a large bench that sat beside a pool, the water lapping gently by their feet. “No, not there; that’s Thorin’s spot,” he said, and gave Gimli’s shoulder a little shove. “Sit there instead, you can go between us.”

“Thorin’s spot,” Gimli echoed, and he looked back at his guide with one eyebrow raised.

“He’s put the imprint of his backside into that seat over the decades, and you’ll get growled at if you take it,” Frerin snickered. “Let’s go!”

Well, that made no sense. “Go where?”

“Just look at the water,” Thorin said with a little sigh of irritation. “Nadad, really?”

“What? It’s true!”

“Watch the water,” Thorin said, and if he sounded somewhat long-suffering then Gimli supposed that was fair enough.

“This meeting of exasperated elder brothers now in session,” he murmured, and felt rather than heard Thorin’s quiet huff of laughter.

“Oi!” said Frerin indignantly – but then there was a glow beneath the little ripples before them. Gimli frowned at it, and it seemed to him that it grew in brightness even as they waited.

“Is it cave-luminescence?” he wondered, and Thorin’s hand gripped his tightly.

“Watch,” he ordered, voice low and firm.

Gimli stared at the pool, feeling a mite foolish. Then the haze of light began to dance, motes like fireflies scurrying in dizzying patterns, as though the radiance of stars had been captured in the skin of the water. He sucked in a quick breath.

“That’s it,” said Thorin. “Don’t look away now.”

The light glistered and glittered, swaying hypnotically, and Gimli felt his heart begin to pound. The hair upon his neck was prickling fiercely. Then all at once he was plunging into the light, into the depths of the pool, and the brilliance of the stars whirled about him, disorienting and half-blinding him as he fell down – down –

And then it stopped.

Gimli found himself kneeling, his hands clutching at morning-damp sod and his chest heaving rapidly as he panted. “What,” he gritted, “was that.”

Thorin walked steadily towards him, as casual and unaffected as you please. “That was how we made our way from Aman to Arda,” he said, rather smug.

“Like I said,” Frerin added, “takes some getting used to.”

“That’s dreadful,” he rasped. “Does it improve with time and practice?”

“Not noticeably,” said Frerin. “Sometimes it’s worse.”

Hauling himself to his feet, Gimli shook his hair from his eyes and looked around. They were in a wood, and he recognised it immediately.

“Valinor,” he said at once. “Just south of Alqualondë. I know that tree, growing out from the limestone crag: it is a great favourite of my husband. Our house is not far from here.”

“I came here last night and visited Legolas,” said Thorin, and he reached out and laid a heavy hand upon Gimli’s shoulder. “He mourns your loss, even though he knows you walk and breathe anew in the Halls. This will not be easy for you.”

Gimli met his eyes. “Was it ever easy for you?”

Thorin said nothing, which was as good as an answer.

Taking a deep breath, Gimli tried to swallow past the lump lodged in his throat. “Well,” he said. “At least I will not be waiting eighty years for my One to join me, I suppose.”

“I watched you all grieve us,” Thorin said, and his voice was unsteady, even if his feet were not. “It was… a beginning, for me. But a painful one.”

Gimli nodded once, curt and brisk. “Did he hear you?”

“None have ever heard me as you do,” Thorin replied. “Gandalf gave him my words. I can only hope that his ears are not now stoppered with his sorrow, and that he may learn to listen with something of your skill.”

“Then that must be my hope also,” said Gimli, and he drew himself up and set his jaw. “It’s this way.”

There was no sound but the piping of the birds as they made their way between the great white boles of the Mallorn. Golden leaves carpeted the grass, and the smell of autumn was in the air.

“It’s almost like really being there,” Gimli said eventually.

“I’ve forgotten myself on many occasions,” Thorin said. “I would reach out to touch someone, only to have my hand pass through them.”

“Don’t do it,” Frerin advised him. “It’s depressing. Now wait, what’s that over there?”

His younger eyes had caught a movement, and Gimli turned to where his hand pointed. Shading his brow against the eastern horizon, he squinted into the sunrise. “Can’t make it out,” he said. “Let’s get closer.”

“Are you…” Thorin said, his eyebrows drawing together. Gimli shook away his concern.

“I’ll be better when I see him,” he grunted. “And better still when he’s on his way.”

The scene opened before them, and Gimli had to reconsider his words. For there was Legolas indeed, and he looked wan and drawn. His hands were covered in rock-dust, and his eyes were bruised and black-ringed.

The twisting knot in his chest threw another loop around his heart, and pulled tight.

“His name is written,” Legolas said to his companions. “Gimli son of Glóin, Elvellon, Lockbearer, Silvertongue, Lord of Aglarond, Husband - all in the cirth runes. I have chiselled them as best I may, though I believe it to be ill-done.”

“It will serve well, for though other hands may have more skill they could never take more care,” said Galadriel. “We will keep his resting-place for you, Thranduilion.”

It was at that moment that Gimli noticed the smooth white tomb before him, surrounded by nodding grasses. It lay at right-angles to three smaller ones: the graves of Bilbo, Frodo and Sam.

It was a good thing that Thorin and Frerin were either side of him and ready to catch him, for he nearly staggered and fell once more.

“Must you?” said Aelir, wringing her hands. “I have had you for no time at all, a mere beat of a wing. And now you must leave to join him in the dark, and I will never see you again.”

Legolas moved to her, fluid and dangerous and beautiful as always, and Gimli’s heart thrashed painfully against his ribs at the sight. “I must, Emil,” he said, and he gently untangled her fingers and held them fast in his own. “I will not be parted from him. He has followed me to the heart of Elvendom; he sailed unhesitating into the mysteries and mists of the Eldar for me. I will do no less for him.”

“Legolas’ mother?” Frerin whispered.

“Aye,” Gimli returned. His teeth grated and ground together as he spoke. “Aelir. She despaired at the darkening of the Greenwood and grew weakened and sick, and so she departed for Eldamar long ago when Legolas was but several decades old. That is no time at all, for an Elf.”

“Explains an awful lot about Thranduil,” muttered Frerin.

“And Laindawar,” Thorin agreed. “But hush! Legolas is giving his farewells!”

“But to lock you away in the dark and the cold,” said Aelir, her voice thin and thready. “My bright little leaf to wither beneath the earth for all time!”

Legolas laughed, though it was brittle. “There is nothing dark about a Dwarven city, Emil,” he said. “They are a joyous riot of noise and lights and colour! And Gimli will keep me warm. I am glad to have known you and loved you again for this short while, this brief wingbeat. When Adar arrives, he will know better than I what to say.”

“I cannot believe that he would want this for you,” she said bitterly.

“He did not.” Legolas gently kissed her hand, and then he met her eyes with all the intensity that an Elvish gaze could muster. “Yet he could not stop me. And by the end, he knew better than to try.”

She held that gaze for a moment, and then her eyes filled and she bent her fair head.

“Do you leave with the light?” asked Elrond. “For the day slips on, Legolas. If you intend to brave the Pelóri then I would do so at once. The late fall will bring storms with it.”

“I leave within the hour,” Legolas said, standing tall and turning away from his mother to address the others gathered there. “I thank you for your care. He is laid beneath stone and his memory is preserved forevermore. He would be glad, I think.”

“Steady,” murmured Thorin in Gimli’s ear, as he gulped and shook. “Steady, my star.”

“No beast or bough shall trouble these graves,” said Gandalf. “You have my word on it.”

“Then I will take my leave, my friends.” Legolas turned to them and then laid his hand over his heart, bowing gracefully in the manner of the Silvan Elves. Elrond, Celebrian, Gandalf, Galadriel and Celeborn all bowed back with heart-stopping elegance. Aelir dropped her face into her hands, but the set of her shoulders was resignation, not resentment.

“I will be happy, Emil,” said Legolas gently. “If I am with him. He brings me more comfort, more laughter and joy than I have words to express. You have known the endless creeping tendrils of sorrow and parting: you would not deny me safe harbour.”

She shook her head slightly, but did not lift her face.

Legolas kissed her brow and then her cheek. Turning away, he laid a hand across the cool white marble for a moment. “Soon, meleth nín.”

All at once he spun and strode away, his head carried high and the light of determination in his face.

“Speak to him!” Gimli begged, rounding upon Thorin and grabbing his arms. “Tell him I am here with him! I cannot bear to watch him mourn me when I stand here not a handsbreadth away!”

“I’ll try,” Thorin said, and he pressed his forehead briefly against Gimli’s. “Give him a moment to gather himself, and then I will speak. It may not work, I must warn you. It is inconstant and uncertain, especially when I must win out over the voice of grief. Yet he is much improved from last night, Gimli. He no longer mourns in truth. He is readying himself for the journey; he prepares himself for the dangers ahead, and to meet with you again. His tears are done.”

Gimli stared blankly for a beat, and then he said, “He was that bad, then?”

Thorin winced. “Perhaps I have said too much.”

“Boot in mouth again, nadad,” Frerin sighed.

Pressing his hand over his mouth, Gimli tried to gain mastery over the maelstrom inside him. “Ghivashelê,” he said eventually, nearly soundless beneath his own palm. “We will move past this terrible moment, I swear it. I will not leave you alone.”

“Be wary of the oaths you swear in this twilight,” said Thorin with a wry quirk to his lips. “I can attest to their danger.”

Gimli looked up at him, brown eyes meeting steady, sympathetic blue. “Aye. But this one I have no trouble making.”

Frerin glanced between them, his small face uncharacteristically serious. “Come on, you two,” he said at last. “He went this way.”

Giving his head a shake and wiping his hand over his numb face, Gimli nodded. “Yonder lies our house.” And he began to follow in the same direction that Legolas had gone.

When they arrived at the little cottage, Legolas was already throwing clothes and tools and food about the place, flinging and spinning as a sandstorm does in his haste. His travel-roll lay unbundled upon the bed, and he was shoving tunics and hose and bottles and the leaf-wrapped lembas bundles into it without any particular order. “He’s going to crush the food again,” Gimli groaned. “He never packs right, it’s always a scattered mess.”

“You should wrap the waybread carefully, Legolas,” said Thorin.

Legolas’ chin shot up. His eyes were huge. “King Thorin?”

“Just Thorin,” he answered, even as Gimli grabbed his forearm and hung on with all his strength. “Ach, not so tightly,” he then muttered to Gimli. “You’re going to leave bruises, balakhûn!”

“He hears you!” Gimli nearly cried in relief.

Legolas shot to his feet, the mess tipping around him in heaps. “Is Gimli there?” he demanded at once. “Is he well, does he seem himself as ever he was?”

“I’m here!” Gimli wept, and he reached out with his free arm for the Elf, standing like a spear of golden light in the warm dim closeness of their little house. “I’m here!”

His hand passed through Legolas’ smooth cheek, and then Frerin’s small one closed over the top of his wrist and pulled it back. “Don’t,” he said, though he sounded sympathetic. “It’s not worth the aftermath.”

“He’s here,” Thorin assured Legolas, even as he tried to pry Gimli’s other hand from him. “And causing a ruckus. So he is most assuredly as Gimli Gloinúl as before!”

“Gimli,” Legolas repeated, lost and longing. “He’s with you now.”

“Aye, and won’t let go of me.” Thorin eventually managed to prise Gimli’s taut fingers off him, with some difficulty. “There now! My star, talk to him! Do not stand and weep!”

“You’re packin’ it all wrong,” choked Gimli, and he was dimly aware of Thorin patting his back, of Frerin’s tentative little hand upon his own. “Protect that lembas! It will be battered about upon the dividing range, and it must last you for at least a month. And stopper those bottles properly! You would not want them to leak over your clothes!”

Thorin wrinkled his brow. “The first words you would have me give him are chiding and bickering?”

Legolas blinked, and then he laughed. “Of course,” he said, and a tremulous smile played about his lips. Gimli wanted to kiss it, to taste it and to nip at that sweet soft mouth. “Of course he would.”

With a small shrug, Thorin turned and passed on his advice, and Legolas listened with barely-concealed impatience. Then he shook his bright head. “I care not for the lembas, Gimli,” he bit out. “I must be off as soon as I may, for the morning drags its fingers across the sky and the year rolls further towards the snows with every second, every minute that slips away.”

“Twenty minutes to pack properly will not cost you overmuch, and it may save you great pains later,” Gimli told him. “Do it for me, kurdelu. Ease my heart and do the job properly.”

With an irritated flick of his braided head, Legolas picked up his travel-roll once more and began to lay out his possessions in neat piles. “Better?”

“Could do without the attitude,” Gimli grunted, barely mollified. “And you are so weary already. I can see the circles beneath your eyes. You should rest first. Do you eat enough, Legolas?”

“Stop fussing, Gimli,” Legolas muttered. “I will be well when I am with you again.”

“I am not fussing!”

“You are,” murmured Frerin. “As bad as Bilbo in a snit.”

“He has been frantic with worry for you,” Thorin told Legolas, as kindly as he was able. “His friends and family do not quite understand, I think, and have sought his company when all he wished for was yours.”

“He had to recover from his reforging too,” Frerin added.

“Yes, yes, he knows all that, I told him last night,” Thorin brushed that away. “Or Gandalf did.”

 “Why can I hear you now, then?” Legolas asked, and he picked up the wrapped lembas and with exaggerated movements he pointedly – even sarcastically – tucked it in a safe place within the confines of his clothes. “Satisfactory, my Lord of Aglarond?”

“Cheeky elf,” Gimli growled. “I’d kiss you now, were I able. Stop your cheek at the source.”

“I am not repeating that, Gimli,” said Thorin, with dignity. “Grief is louder than I am, Legolas. In the freshest storm, you heard little else.”

Legolas sat back upon his heels, his quiver held loosely in his hands. “I cannot believe you will be exactly as I knew you, meleth,” he said. “For you are now shut away under the stone that bears your name and your deeds. The hands that span an axe at the Hornburg, that held my waist as we rode upon Arod, that braided my hair at our wedding; those hands are still and quiet forevermore. But you say he is Gimli just as I knew him to be.”

“Perhaps not exactly,” said Frerin, glancing at Gimli with a critical eye.

“Mahal saw fit to remake me just as I remember myself, but you shall judge,” Gimli said, and he could not hide the note of yearning in his voice. “I seem like myself, the self I recall being when first I loved you.”

Legolas tilted his head in that familiar birdlike fashion of his. “It will be strange to see that, but a welcome strangeness,” he said at last. “For though I loved the snow, my heart was first given to the fire.”

Gimli just gazed at him, allowing the sight of his Elf to fill his eyes until his chest felt as though it might burst.

“This is getting…” Frerin shifted and rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Um. Gimli? Legolas? Others are in the room, thank you.”

“Be grateful you don’t have to repeat all this,” Thorin muttered. A flush crested the tops of his cheeks.

Eventually Legolas was packed, and even Gimli had to admit that he had done a tidy job. Hefting his bag upon his shoulder, Legolas stood in one swift movement and hesitated at the door. He ran his fingers along the doorjamb for a second, wordless and still as stone himself.

Gimli reached out, slow and careful, and laid his hand a breath apart from that pale, long-fingered one. So close - so achingly, unbearably close.

To one side, he half-saw Thorin bend his head, as though remembering something that hurt.

Then with a whirl Legolas was moving again. His bow was looped about his back and he took up a coil of rope and slung it from his belt. “I will move at haste,” he announced to the seemingly-empty house. “I do not doubt that Gimli can hold the course for hours, but I know he will not hold the pace, not even at his old strength. No, do not argue and chide with me, Gimli! Go and attend to your recovery; I know you will have interrupted it to see me. Come join me again when I reach the foothills, for that is where I shall make my camp this night. Tomorrow, I climb the Pelóri.”

“I could keep up with him,” Frerin objected. “I did before.”

“No, lad, you really couldn’t.” Gimli watched, his heart yammering and howling, as Legolas began to lope away. Those long legs stretched out before him, and his head was bent low in his habitual hunting manner, his eyes fierce and keen. “Our trip across Rohan was not his top speed, you’ll find. Well, not so surprising when you think upon it: he was hampered by Aragorn, after all.”

“And not at all by you,” Frerin said, grinning and nudging his side.

Gimli ignored that, and let out a long, drawn out breath. “Until later, sanâzyung,” he whispered to the rapidly disappearing figure.

“Close your eyes,” said Thorin quietly. “The stars will do the rest.”

…

Upon their return to the Halls, Frerin scurried away to meet with Ori and Bifur, and Thorin brought Gimli back to his chambers to recover – and to avoid the ever-present whispers.

“Tsk!” said Bilbo, tutting over the state of them. “You’re a wreck, Gimli, and Thorin you’re not far behind! Good gracious, he’s been dead less than ten hours! What were you thinking? I’ve a mind to sit on you to keep you still, then you might actually take the trouble to rest.”

“I’ve no objections here,” said Thorin, and he ducked his head for a kiss. Bilbo tugged one of his braids familiarly and his hands curled around the thick shoulders with the ease of long closeness.

“Legolas might complain, should you try,” Gimli said, smiling at the sight. Thorin cleared his throat awkwardly and he straightened, pulling away from the Hobbit slightly. “No, don’t you dare on my account, my King! I’m right glad to see you happy at last. I well remember your sorrow upon the day you told me.”

“And I well remember you being a stubborn fool upon that same day,” Thorin retorted. “Now will you finally admit that I was right?”

“If we are holding a stubborn fool contest, I feel there will be too many winners,” Bilbo muttered. “You! You’ve been crying and your hair is a mess. Sit, sit! I’ll bring out Elevensies.”

Gimli found himself looking around a pleasant and airy room, sparsely decorated but homely. A weapons-stand was placed at one corner, but it held gardening trowels beside a Dwarvish battle-hammer, and the wood of the stand was carved about with flowers and berries. The walls were lined in bookshelves, and the fireplace was topped with a pair of swords in the Elvish style, one long and one quite small and startlingly familiar.

There were also several large cosy chairs, and it was into one of these that he sank down with an appreciative groan. “That was…”

“Aye.” Thorin squeezed his shoulder once, and then flopped into his own chair and let out an explosive breath. “It’s often like that.”

“You did that for years upon years,” Gimli said, and the full import of Thorin’s self-imposed vigil fell upon him like an avalanche. “For hours and days at a time, always at my side through the thickest dangers. A ghost upon the breeze, never to touch, barely to speak. Watching hands work where yours could never reach.”

He stared down at his new, too-stiff boots. “It must have been a knife to the heart of you.”

Thorin regarded him with a level look. “It was.” Then he leaned back and a faint smile crossed his lips. “It changed. I changed. And part of that was you, my star.”

“Centuries, even,” Gimli said in awe. “Why?”

As though in answer to Gimli’s question, at that moment Bilbo returned with a tray (steel, etched with ivy and grapes) laden with buns and jam and a teapot and cups. He laid it on a small table, and began to pour the tea.

“Here we are! Oh, Gimli - Nori stopped by earlier, he wanted to talk to you but I shooed him off. He’ll come around to Glóin and Mizim’s rooms later, I think. So, a jolly good thing you’re hiding out here, isn’t it? Eat up now, before the bottomless pit gets started.”

“Are you referring to yourself now, idùzhib?” Thorin said, taking a bun and tearing off a bite.

Bilbo sniffed. “I’m not the one who ate the last of the raspberry preserves. Now tell me truthfully Gimli, are you all right? Your eyes are red.”

He halted in the middle of reaching for a cup. “I…”

Bilbo’s eyes softened, and he perched himself upon the arm of Thorin’s chair and leaned in. “Now, I know you don’t know me as well as I know you,” he said. “But you are dear to Thorin and you were dear to Frodo, and that means the world to me. I’m also particularly good at keeping a secret, so you might as well fess up and have done.”

“You’ll do yourself no favours should you demur,” said Thorin casually. “He’s more obstinate than I am.”

Gimli’s mind boggled at the thought.

“Hush, I only want to know if he’s all right,” Bilbo said.

“He nearly tore my arm off, and you ask him if he’s all right?” Thorin said, with some indignation.

“I did not!” Gimli snapped, stung into speech at last. “And I thank you for your care, Master Baggins. I will be fine with time. But seeing Legolas, I did not expect – ach, what can be expected in such a place? So much is different so quickly. My Maker’s touch; I shall not soon forget it! Faces long dead greet me with careless ease and call me a hero, of all things, and all these whispers dog my heels at every turn. I cannot catch my breath nor find my footing.”

“It’s the first day, dear boy, give it time,” said Bilbo kindly.

Gimli nodded his head, silent and aching.

Thorin looked at him, his eyes understanding. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

Gimli paused, torn and reluctant, before he let his head fall back against the chair. “I fear that I will be a stranger to my Elf, for did he not lay my body into its tomb with his own hands? We had a lifetime together – my lifetime - and he cherished every new thing it brought, every small change it wrought upon my skin. And now all that time is erased as though it never happened. I startle myself each time I see my own reflection!”

“I can sympathise,” Bilbo said. “I had much the same experience!”

“That is not all. The last of it now, Gimli,” said Thorin.

Gimli glanced up at him. The knotted snarl inside him jerked and twisted. “I would not-”

“You forget that I know you,” said Thorin, tipping his head meaningfully. “And you have never been able to keep a secret.”

Gimli let his head fall into his hands. “Aye, the last of it, and the worst. My Legolas is alone, and he walks into the gnashing teeth of the Pelóri without me. He has gone where I cannot follow.”

“He will not be without you,” Thorin said, firm and low. “We will follow him, every step of the journey.”

“Will I be able to help him? No, I will not. I am with him but he is without me.” Gimli swallowed hard. These boots were quite definitely Alrís’ work, he thought moodily. “And what I am now is not the Gimli he knows.”

“From what Thorin tells me, your Legolas is a very competent fellow,” Bilbo said, and he patted Gimli’s knee. “The most tireless of the Fellowship, he said! So, he’s more than capable of making it to you. And don’t be foolish, young Dwarf; of course he will know you.”

Gimli lifted a lock of his long red hair, and gave Bilbo a sardonic look.

“Don’t tell me you’re displeased,” Thorin said, amused. “Surely your hands itch to hold your axes as they once did?”

“Aye, I’ll not deny it,” Gimli said. “But if I am so strange to Legolas, then I would remain as I was. Creaky and white-bearded, but loved.”

“He will know you,” Thorin said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Our Maker rebuilds us as our souls see ourselves. Legolas knows your soul, Gimli, no matter the skin it walks in.”

Gimli sighed. “Very well. I will wait, and watch, and hope.”

“Besides, you’ve forgotten the simplest thing of all,” Bilbo said. “Your name, Gimli. Pardon me, I mean your Dark-name. He knows it, yes?”

Giving a cautious nod, Gimli’s eyes flicked to Thorin, who shrugged rather helplessly. “Bilbo was there at the Morannon, I’m afraid. He heard you.”

Uncle Óin will scold me for eternity, Gimli thought, and he winced a little.

“So all you need do is share it with Legolas when he arrives - in secret, naturally, I’m not entirely ignorant - and then he will know for sure and certain that it is you, and none other,” Bilbo said triumphantly, and he took a sip of his tea. “That’s a really very clever idea that Mahal had, you know. Terribly clever chap. I’m terrifically proud of mine.”

Gimli felt his mouth hang slack for a moment. “You have a…”

“He asked for one,” Thorin said, pride in every word, and he slid an arm around Bilbo’s waist and tugged him close. “Audacious, marvellous Hobbit.”

“Ridiculous Dwarf, you nearly spilled my tea,” Bilbo complained. But he kissed Thorin anyway.

… 

Eventually Gimli decided to brave all the whispers and gossip. Thorin hovered like a bird with one chick, but Gimli gently waved him away.

“I’m a grown Dwarrow, and I think I’ve proved I can manage myself,” he said dryly. “I’ll come hollering if I need you, how’s that?”

Thorin shook his head with a rueful smile. “Frerin accuses me of smothering him too. All right, Gimli. You know where to find me.”

At first Gimli simply wandered. There were chambers here that put even the beauty of Aglarond to shame, and deep sunken lakes that glowed with their own inner fire. He found massive forges in which the bellows were pumped by fifty Dwarves or more, the forge-dance a dizzying whirl of thousands of feet all at once. He even found a cavern of ice, and watched his breath steam in the air as his reflection bounced back at him over and over, shiny and distorted upon the jagged crystals.

Finally he discovered a wide set of rooms that held some familiar faces. An audience was gathered all about the walls, and in the centre square two figures were squaring up against each other, their weapons dulled and blunted. A training bout, then. Tauriel was crouched low, her knives ready in her hands as she faced Dwalin’s dual axes. Her eyes were narrowed as she levelled all that keen Elven focus upon her opponent.

“Two on Dwalin,” murmured Gimli, and a few heads turned to see him in the doorway.

“Gimli, you found us!” cried Lóni, watching from the edges. “Come on, come watch. This is their third bout, and we’re hoping it might break the stalemate.”

“So they’ve each won a round?” Gimli fell in beside his friend, and Lóni wrinkled his nose.

“So Náli says, and he is our judge for today. I think he showed favouritism in that second fight, myself, but Dwalin conceded. Will you take up an axe today?”

Gimli watched Dwalin slash and swing, and Tauriel danced backwards as lightly as a leaf upon a breeze, her knives flashing in the lanternlight. “Perhaps, perhaps not,” he said. “I do not have my axes, so I will have to borrow one.”

“Oh, I doubt you’ll have any trouble finding an axe to borrow here,” interrupted Bofur, his hat and ready grin as present as always. “You’ll have your pick of the lot! Nori’s been taking wagers ever since you arrived. There’s some money riding on you, brother.”

Gimli rolled his eyes. “Just watch the fight, Bofur.”

“Sound like your sister, you do.”

“I could snap and chide like Gimrís too, if that’d make you happy.”

Bofur looked a little sad for a moment. “Aye, well, you’re not nearly as pretty as her, so perhaps save it for Legolas.”

Tauriel lashed out for Dwalin, who brought up the haft of his axe to block the blow. Gimli watched his teacher reverse his direction and swing his other blade around for Tauriel’s legs, but she leapt with ease and elbowed him neatly in the face. He swore and kicked out with his heavy boot. She stumbled, but landed squarely.

Dwalin’s form was as vicious and powerful as he remembered. Yet he could not pin down Tauriel, who was as swift as any Woodland Elf Gimli had known, and had a sinuous, fluid strength. Despite the disquiet in his mind, the old thrilling exhilaration began to pound in his blood as the bout continued.

Eventually Dwalin knocked Tauriel to the ground with a huge blow, but even as she fell her knife flickered out and the dulled edge swiped across his shirt, right over his belly. Gimli stamped his feet along with the rest as Náli declared her the winner, but only just. Across the room, Kíli was whooping madly.

She flicked back her hair and smiled as Dwalin held out his hand to haul her up. “Best out o’ five,” he gritted, and she laughed.

“Next lot!” Nali called, and he slammed the butt of his long-staff against the ground. “Dáin, you’re up!”

Dáin slapped his thighs in glee and took the centre of the floor, even as the rest of the assembled groaned a little. “He’s a battering ram,” moaned Lóni. “I had my arse handed to me last time! I’m not getting up against him again, not for all the beer in Arda.”

“T’is a brave one to go up against the Ironfoot,” said Gimli, and he leaned back and grinned, anticipating a show.

“Why don’t you go, Gimli? Why not the Ironfoot versus the Silvertongue?” Lóni nudged him. “Go on, you could do it. You could take him!”

“No fear! I’ll not fight Dáin Ironfoot, thank you lad. I’ve enough on my mind without adding a bruised backside to my worries.”

“Here, what’s this? Gimli versus Dáin?” said Nori in a loud and carrying voice, and Gimli held up his hands and tried to quiet the murmur of excitement that flooded the room at this. “I’ll give you very nice odds, Gimli. You were always me star performer, weren’t you?”

“You bastard, Nori, you did that on purpose,” Gimli said in resignation. Dáin was chuckling at his expression, his hands upon his hips.

“Nori’s been wanting your axe in this room for nigh a century, laddie. I don’t think you’re likely to slither away without at least a swing or two.”

“Ah, but does it have to be you?” Gimli retorted, and Dáin shrugged easily, scratching at his chin.

“Well, you could always cross axes with Orla. She’s beaten me five times. Or you could try Dwerís. She’s practically undefeated.”

“Go on, Gimli!” Lóni urged him, and he sighed.

“Right, someone give me an axe, let’s get this over with.”

“Don’t need to sound so enthusiastic, Gimli,” said Dáin, and he lowered his voice. “Lad, if you’d prefer not to fight today, that’s all right by me. I’d like to keep my place on the board, anyway.”

“Nori will stab us in our sleep if we back out now,” Gimli said, and he stomped forward into the fighting circle rather ungraciously. Dwalin handed him one of his blunted, hooked axes, and then squinted at him.

“You need two?”

“Spinning axe, if you’ve got one,” said Gimli, and he flicked his wrist, testing the weapon. Dwalin’s hooked axe was beautifully balanced, but it did not whirl with the dexterity of his old family axes. It was lighter than his old double-headed axe and had a longer reach besides: Dwalin was taller and could use the extra leverage.

Orla handed him a thick-handled spinning axe without a word, but the look she gave him was eloquent enough without any.

“Kick him off the board, Gimli,” Dwalin said, and clapped his back. Gimli shook his head.

“I’ve not done this for close to sixty years. I’m woefully out of practice.”

“Never too late to get your hand in again,” murmured Orla with a small smile. “You might find you’re more ready than you know.”

Náli barked out, “begin!” and both Gimli and Dáin dropped at once into a fighting crouch.

“So what place are you on the board?” Gimli asked as he circled, his eyes darting all over the other’s stance, trying to find his tells. The iron foot was, of course, the obvious target. And so no doubt Dáin knew a thousand and one ways of protecting it. Too, he would have to avoid the head: Dáin was famed for that devastating headbutt.

“Sixth,” Dáin said, grinning. His bearded axe was not painted red as Barazanthual had been, and the handle was decorated all over with boar’s heads patterns. It swayed low and dangerous, like the head of a snake. “I’m yet to beat Tauriel, Dwalin or Orla, and Dwerís is second.”

“And first slot?”

“Khel,” said Náli shortly. “Pay attention to what you are doing!”

Gimli flipped Orla’s short-handled axe around in his hand a few times, trying to find its balance-point. Both these weapons were too long for him: he was better suited to the great axe. Before he was ready Dáin was rushing him, and his arm moved in the answering block without a conscious thought. Up came the hooked axe, around with the spinning axe: tight arcs, hard to steer but devastating when perfected.

Dáin sucked in a gasp and pulled back his attack, falling into a defensive manoeuvre. Gimli pressed the advantage without hesitation. His body – this new body – fell into the old rhythms as easily as breath itself.

His pulse pounded in his ears as he brought the spinning axe into a figure-eight pattern, the head blurring before him as it whirled and flickered. Dáin’s bearded axe clattered against it for a second, but he could not break its momentum.

Then his blade was whistling through the air at Gimli’s knee height – an attempt to break Gimli’s attack – but Gimli leapt over it and turned fast as a whip, bringing the hooked axe around in a backward-arc to slam the blunted edge heavily against Dáin’s hastily-raised handle. If he had been a half-second slower to block, it would have been a chest-blow.

“Damn it, boy, thought you didn’t want to fight,” Dáin puffed, pushing back against Gimli’s blow. Gimli blinked a moment at that, his nerve somewhat shaken by just how easy this was.

Dáin’s bearded axe was up and swinging, and Gimli bit off a curse. “Trying to distract me, zabadâl belkul?”

“Dunno, is it working?” Dáin hollered, and he lunged for another strike. But Gimli’s spinning axe was ready for it again, and this time he sent it reeling into the dizzying, shining circles he had become famed for upon all the battlefields of Middle-Earth. “Well, that answers that, I’m guessing!”

He dodged as Gimli brought down the hooked axe in his other hand. The extra length of its handle meant that the angle was off, and so Dáin was able to escape another glancing blow with no more than a slight stumble. Gimli grunted in annoyance, and tossed it lightly, reversing it mid-air. As Dáin regained his stance, Gimli used the butt-end to poke him in the gut, as hard as he was able.

As Dáin doubled over, eyes boggling, Gimli used the hook to tug the weapon from his hand. The spinning axe came to an abrupt halt, half an inch from Dáin’s nose.

“Ah. I think we can call the duel yours,” Dáin said, nearly cross-eyed to focus upon the blunted edge. His voice was pitched much higher than usual. “Mahal’s mighty bawbag, fighting you is like fighting a bloody mincing machine!”

Gimli let his arms drop even as the walls rang with shouts. He stared at Dáin, his mind whirling as fast as any axe. “That wasn’t… but how? How did it all come back with such…”

“Well done.” Dáin grinned, and he clasped Gimli’s wrist in congratulations. “I’ll get you a beer. Damn me, that was beautiful! Two beers! You’ll need one for fighting Tauriel. She weaves and flits like a horsefly, and she bites just as hard.”

Gimli shook his head, and let the axes dangle loosely at his sides. “I’m done, I think. Done for today, though I’ve no doubt I will be back. That was grand, and I thank you for the bout. But it has given me much to think upon. I’ll be poor company until I’ve stewed upon it for a time.”

Dáin looked at him with wise old eyes set in a too-young face. “Aye, no doubt it’s stirred a few things about.”

Then Lóni and Bofur were crashing into Gimli and grabbing his arms, cheering fit to bring down the roof. Nori was looking tremendously pleased with himself, and he gave Gimli a satisfied little nod as he pocketed his purse. Náli was punching the air and crowing, and Dwalin was scowling the scowl of the professional teacher.

“Need to get you a great-axe, a big damn heavy one,” he muttered. “That thing’s too long for you.”

Once he had passed back the axes and wiped down his face, Gimli found himself standing beside Kíli and Tauriel. “I’m going to sign up for a round against you,” said Kíli, his expression set and determined. “I’ll bet you’re not so tough when faced with a swordsman.”

Gimli raised his eyebrows, glancing down at his cousin. “I used to duel with Aragorn.”

Kíli opened his mouth, and then snapped it shut. “Right. Of course you did. Damn it.”

“You are most skilled,” Tauriel said, her eyes dancing with merriment. “I will enjoy our contest, when it arrives.”

“I thank you, Lady,” he said, and bowed briefly. Kíli hit his arm.

“None of that, she’s your cousin now.”

“You’re married then?” Gimli asked, and he leaned back against the wall as Dori faced off against Genild. His heartbeat was beginning to settle at last.

“Yes, although you and Legolas beat us to that particular milestone,” said Kíli.

“Can’t win ‘em all,” Gimli said, grinning. “And if you’re you, you can’t win at all.”

“Shove off, Gims,” Kíli growled. “See if we help you with Legolas now.”

His slowing heartbeat paused, and then began to race again. “What? What do you mean?”

“Well, we were going to go into Gimlîn-zâram with you and Thorin next time, so that Tauriel could give directions. But we won’t if you’re going to be a prat about it,” said Kíli airily, lifting his scruffy chin.

“Please, Kíli!” Gimli grabbed his sleeve, and memories of their childhoods in Ered Luin came thick and fast before he shook them away. “Look, I’m only teasing. I’ll not do it again. Please, please, Kee, I need your help! Legolas must get here, he-”

“All right, fine, yes, yes.” Kíli flung an arm over his shoulder and tugged him into a rough clinch. “Because you asked so prettily.”

“And because he knows what it feels like to be parted,” said Tauriel, and her starlit eyes were tender and warm as she looked upon her young husband. “He has ever sought to knit us all together, his kin and their loved ones. Our happiness is his reward.”

Kíli flushed violently. “And. That too.”

“Thank you!” Gimli exclaimed, and he impulsively wrapped Kíli up in a huge hug that lifted his boots off the floor. “Thank you, thank you!”

“Y’r welcome!” Kíli croaked. Gimli hurriedly put him down, and Tauriel covered her laugh with her hand at the expression on both their faces: Kíli dazed and red, Gimli embarrassed and stammering.

“Forgot,” Gimli muttered. “You were always bigger than I. I mean. Before.”

“When do you go back to the star-chamber?” asked Tauriel, delicately changing the subject. “We will meet you there.”

“Tonight. Legolas makes camp at the foothills.” Gimli looked up at her. “Tell me truly: do you think he will be able to make it across the Pelóri alone? It took the both of you to make it last time. I am heartsick and frantic that he will be hurt, that he will perish upon those dreadful blades. I gave him the path as Thorin described it, but what do I know of what lies beyond those peaks?”

She knelt before him, swift as a bird stoops in the sky. “He is strong,” she said, fervent and low. “One of the strongest of our people. Celebrimbor’s inventions still mark the places where we lay and sheltered, and Legolas is an experienced tracker. No, he is a hunter to his fingertips! He has the path, and we will help him. We will help you.”

Gimli allowed Kíli to shake his shoulders in reassurance, even as he digested this. “This half-life is a mixed mine; the mud with the diamonds,” he said at last. “I thank you, Tauriel. I will need all the help I can get.”

“You always did,” said Kíli, and he gave Gimli an encouraging little squeeze. “Not everything can be solved with an axe!”

…

After a quiet meal in their family rooms, followed by a quick wash (apparently all of his tattoos were back, which was highly disconcerting. Did Mahal tattoo him personally? He wondered if he might ask one day), Gimli dressed to meet his companions at the Chamber of Sansûkhul. Legolas would be setting up camp within the hour, if he was any judge. His heart keened madly to see his Elf again, his wild woodland love, proud and fierce and true as an arrow.

“Don’t you spend too much time in those waters without a decent rest,” Mizim said firmly as she bade him farewell, Glóin washing up the dinner-plates behind her. “Thorin once fainted in there after spending a week with barely any sleep and hardly a bite.”

“I can’t leave him,” Gimli objected, but she shook her head and smoothed down his embroidered shirt.

“Nobody is suggesting that. Only that you take time for yourself as well as for him. He would not wish you to harm yourself in your zeal.”

“Heard you gave Dáin a thumping,” Glóin said, beaming, his hands up to the wrists in soapy water. “That’s my boy!”

Mizim raised a brow, her foot tapping. “And that’s not helping, old bear!”

“I will be sensible,” said Gimli, feeling all of a mulish forty-five rather than close to three-hundred.

“That’ll be the day,” she smiled, and kissed his forehead. “Off you go, inúdoy.”

It was growing easier to gain his bearings, and Gimli found his way to the pearl-and-diamond encrusted door without too much trouble – and only one wrong turning. He waited impatiently for the others to show themselves, shifting his weight from foot to foot as the time dragged on.

Finally, Thorin and Kíli rounded the corner, and he let out a rough sound of frustration. “There you are! Does Tauriel join us?”

“She’s coming in a moment or so,” Kíli said. “Been waiting long?”

“Longer than he wanted to,” Thorin said. “Calm down, my star.”

“I’m trying,” Gimli grated. His hands fisted themselves at his sides. The tangle pulled itself ever tighter, knotting itself around his insides.

“Do you think we don’t understand?” Thorin pressed his forehead briefly against Gimli’s: a quick, firm reassurance. “We do. Completely and fully, we understand what it is you are feeling at this time. Breathe.”

“He’s so close,” Gimli rumbled, pained and unhappy.

“Aye, and he will be closer with every passing day.” Thorin cuffed the back of his neck affectionately, before he stepped through the chamber door. “Let’s take our places.”

Kíli sent him a sidelong glance as they took their seats around the starry pool. “You all right?” he whispered.

Gimli nodded, not trusting his voice. He barely noticed the tall silhouette of Tauriel sliding beside Kíli, so intent was he upon the glimmering lights that danced and dived upon the surface of the water.

The stars gathered him up in their rough embrace, and flung him out into the living world.

The sound of night-birds calling was the first thing to reach him, and Gimli staggered forth into a purpling dusk, the starlight sloughing off him and his eyes smarting. “Ach!” he heard himself cry, and he was falling to his hands and knees before he could find his bearings.

“That was better than the first time!” said Thorin.

“It was?” said Kíli, sounding very dubious.

“I am not overfond of that,” Gimli grumbled, getting back to his feet a mite stiffly. He felt every one of his two hundred and eighty-two years, in that moment. “Worse than horses, worse than boats.”

“Better than Eagles or barrels, though,” Kíli said. “Be grateful you didn’t have to deal with that, little cousin.”

“We are near to where I first met Silverhand,” said Tauriel’s light voice. She leapt, light as down, to the top of a tumbled log and peered about the glade. “It is just to the south of this place. I remember the voices of these trees: sleepy and content, like children who have never known fear.”

“I imagine that the voices of the Greenwood sound quite different,” Thorin said wryly. “They’ve known fear enough.”

“They’re still not the most belligerent that I could name,” Gimli murmured. “Which way, Lady? My pardon, I meant Tauriel,” he added, as Kíli frowned.

“Here,” she said, and she dropped down from the log and began to lead them onwards. “The path begins at Celebrimbor’s dwelling, where he built the hooks and the auger-flet and the pulleys. There may even be something of use left behind, for we travelled as light as we could.”

“Legolas will not be able to carry a heavy burden across the mountains,” Gimli said, and his worry began to prick and tug at him once more. “I do not doubt the brilliance of Khelebrimbur. My heart misgives me, however, and I would not load my Elf with more than his balance can handle.”

Tauriel took Kíli’s hand as they walked, her hair swaying behind her. “The peril of these mountains is not only in their size and steepness,” she said. “It is the nature of the rock. They will crack and shatter as you grasp them, and you will be sent sliding down their shoulders into the jagged teeth below. Legolas will need more than his hands and feet to reach the other side.”

“Right.” Gimli trudged along gloomily after them. “That’s comforting.”

“There he is,” said Kíli, pointing. “Looks like he just arrived.”

Kíli’s young eyes were true as gold. His pale hair lank and his chest heaving, Legolas was bent over a small stream that passed beneath the huge mallorn, sipping water from his cupped hand. His pack was thrown to one side, although his bow had been carefully placed against one smooth white trunk.

“I have not seen him in so long,” Tauriel said, and a slight cloud passed over her lovely features. “He has changed. His soul is torn, it sings in sadness and hope intermingled. Such terrible, beautiful songs.”

Gimli huffed pointedly.

Thorin bent close and muttered, “You know Elves better than I. What in Durin’s name is all that about?”

“Elves need not speak to feel another’s feelings, should they care to share them. Remember?” Gimli said. “Also, Tauriel can easily hear you. Her ears are sharper than ours.”

They both glanced up to see Tauriel’s lips curve in a faint, enigmatic smile.

Thorin looked as though he were only barely restraining his scowl. “What should I tell him?” he asked. “Where is this forge where Khel lived for so long?”

“It lies further up upon these foothills,” Tauriel said. “There is a cave beneath the lip of the cliff there. His forge lies within.”

Gimli was no longer paying attention to the others. As though he were iron drawn by a lodestone, he was moving to where Legolas splashed his heated face, his eyes fixed on his Elf. Sitting down by Legolas’ side, he watched the fair profile glitter with drops of river-water, as though it were bedecked with thousands of tiny fragile gems. “Hello, lad,” he said, soft and aching. “Hello, my love. I’m here with you, as I should be.”

“Legolas,” said Thorin, and when this gained no response, he tried again. “Legolas!”

“Call him a pointy-eared Elvish Princeling,” Gimli mumbled. “Always gets his goat. He’ll sit up and take notice for that one.”

Kíli sniggered, even as Thorin rolled his eyes upwards as though asking for patience from the trees above. “Pointy-eared Elvish Princeling,” he said - albeit somewhat stiffly.

Tauriel’s eyebrows rose sharply as Legolas’ head snapped up at once, and his lips pursed, even as his eyes shone bright with relief. “So says the -”

“Please understand that I was asked to call you that,” Thorin said wearily. “It was not my idea. At all.”

Legolas sat back on his heels, shaking his head with rueful acceptance. “Of course, and I know precisely who to blame. My apologies, King Thorin.”

“Just Thorin. Gimli is beside you.”

“Really?” Legolas’ hand crept along the ground to his side. “This side, or the other?”

Gimli shuffled as close as he dared, his gaze fixed to where Legolas’ hand lay.

“That side,” Thorin allowed. “You will not be able to touch – your hand will pass straight through him. We are as insubstantial as mist.”

Legolas let out a soundless sigh, and his fingers gripped the grass by the river-bed. “I now begin to see how Gimli has felt, all these years. To have your loved ones so close, but so unbearably far away.”

“You’re doing well, hearing him,” Gimli murmured. “Took me decades and a peek into Galadriel’s pond. Must be the pointy ears.”

“You are not so far,” said Tauriel. “Not so far at all.”

Thorin gave them both an exasperated glare. “I am not repeating you both! You must take turns, I am no raven to cart about your messages for sport!”

“Who do you speak to?” asked Legolas. “Is it not Gimli alone?”

“Nay, we have company.” Thorin sat, drawing up his knees and making himself comfortable. “Tauriel your friend is here, and my nephew Kíli, who have more news of the path over the dividing range. You are near to the cave where Khelebrimbur lived for many years.”

Legolas’ face went lax with shock. “Tauriel?”

“Mellon nín,” she said, smiling. “I found my way. I’m not on my own.”

This phrase evidently meant something to Legolas, for his breath was juddering ever so slightly. “I am so glad for you, my sister,” he said softly. “So glad. You wrestled long with the shadow and the grief. It brings me joy to know you are safe and well and loved.”

“And now you must do the same, for your husband is anxious,” said Tauriel.

“Am not,” Gimli snapped.

“You nearly gave poor old Dáin a new piercing,” said Kíli. “And don’t think I didn’t spot you wandering the Halls this morning, your face like a thundercloud.”

“Poor old Dáin? He nearly clobbered me in the face!”

“One at a time,” Thorin growled. “I’m not saying that, Kíli! And Gimli, we will find you a workroom of your own. You need occupation to busy your hands and mind, not to drift in aimlessness and worry.”

“Where is Celebrimbor’s cave?” asked Legolas. “I would go there while there is still light.”

“You will not reach it before full night,” Tauriel said. “The sun is setting.”

“Then I will simply make camp there.” Legolas stood in one single fluid movement and picked up his pack. Re-slinging his bow, he asked, “do you think you will be able to accompany me?”

Tauriel gave the three Dwarves a dubious look. “We will need Thorin’s aid. But…”

“Now, let’s not be insulting, sweetheart,” Kíli said, folding his arms.

Thorin stood, brushing off his pants needlessly and firmly tugging his tunic down at the hem. An odd gesture for a Dwarf to make, Gimli thought. Decidedly Hobbitish, in fact. “The cave lies south of this place, in the foothills of the Pelóri. And we will lead you should the light depart: you forget, Legolas and Tauriel, that though we may not be as swift as the Elves, we have other attributes.”

“Neatly said,” Legolas laughed. “I am justly reminded. Very well, I will trust in your night-eyes. To the south? Then let us go.”

With that he was off, and Gimli was scrambling to catch up. “More running!” moaned Kíli as they jogged along behind the two Elves, who had quickly outpaced them. “Didn’t you two get enough of that?”

“This is easier, in truth,” Gimli grunted. “I’m not wearing a full hauberk of mail this time.”

Night crept on, and the purple evening slowly slipped into velvet blue. The slim boles of the trees appeared ghostly and washed-out in the moonlight, all their colour stolen by her cold glow. Legolas paused for a moment in a small dell, his eyes flickering this way and that. “I have lost the bearing,” he said at last. “I cannot see the stars yet, and the sun is gone. I may miss my target should I go on.”

“Without Fee or Bofur, Gimli has the best stone-sense of us,” Kíli said. “Which way is south?”

Gimli stamped his foot a couple of times, before he nodded. “Yonder, towards the tree with the forked trunk.”

Tauriel appeared very surprised. “I have never seen you do that, Kili.”

“It’s about – oh, there’s no word in Westron. Some stones pull to a direction, or to each other, and some of us can feel it. Like lodestones, but bigger. I’m a bit stone-blind,” he said, grinning. “So’s Mum. Gimli’s not bad, but Bofur’s the real master.”

“He passed the talent to his son,” Gimli said proudly. “Gimizh has the sort of stone-sense the old Masters dream of.”

“Gimli is boasting about Gimizh again,” Thorin told Legolas. “Some things never change. South is towards the tree with the forked bole.”

“I thank you,” Legolas said, and his mouth was twitching as he took to running once more.

Gimli sent Thorin a dark look. “Well, he does have the best stone-sense-”

“We know, Gimli,” said Kíli. “We know. Come on, they’re getting ahead again!”

At last, with only a handful more directions (and a little more bickering), Legolas was clambering up a rocky incline to the mouth of a narrow cave. The entry had been carved out in a sweeping arch, and elegant tracery adorned it in green gems and white rock, stark and bright against the grey of the mountains. A many-pointed star topped the lintel, and the door was made of plain pale wood. “Khel’s cave,” said Gimli, giving the inlay an appreciative look. “He was not idle in his centuries of waiting.”

“You don’t know Narvi yet,” said Thorin. “But let me assure you, she would not appreciate anyone who wastes their time and hers.”

“The path lies just above,” said Tauriel. “Near to that stunted pine growing from the rock. It curves left, and you will see the places we trod and the marks we left.”

Legolas pushed open the wooden door and walked inside, his eyes flickering about cautiously. “I will light a fire, if there is the means,” he said. “This place is cold since its master departed. It feels dusty and empty.”

“There will be the means,” Tauriel said, with wry understatement. “Celebrimbor had a forge. He would not ever step beyond a forge unless you made him, to tell truth.”

“Most Dwarvish Elf I ever met,” Thorin said, shaking his head. “He’ll grow a beard next.”

“Me first,” muttered Kíli.

Legolas found the wood-heap with Thorin’s help. In time there was a little blaze in the grate of a small fire-pit. In the shadows, machine-parts and half-made weapons hulked, and discarded scraps of paper fluttered in their piles.

“Yes, I know it is not as you would have done it, Gimli,” Legolas said, and he yawned. “But the fire is lit nevertheless.”

“I didnae say anything!” Gimli protested.

“You didn’t need to,” said Thorin, and he smiled at Gimli, gentle and knowing. “He knows your soul, undayuh.”

Gimli felt his face redden. 

To cover his confusion, he turned to Legolas and put his hands on his hips. “You should sleep here this night,” he said gruffly. “You will not have the chance for true-sleep on the mountain-side; only reverie will sustain you. It will make Caradhras look like a Hobbit walking party.” 

Thorin tactfully omitted the last line when he relayed this information. 

“I will sleep, beloved,” Legolas said drowsily as he watched his little fire, a half-cake of lembas dangling in his hand. “Tomorrow takes me closer to you. And I find that as I run, I begin to wonder and hope and guess at what I will discover. Will you still smell of smoke and salt and spices? Do you still sing like the soul of a Mountain made flesh?”

“My Legolas,” Gimli breathed. 

“Ach, not again,” he half-heard Thorin groan. 

“Awkward,” agreed Kili. “Again?”

“They did this last time, with Frerin and I. They will forget themselves and - oh, there we are, there’s the bedamned staring again. If they are not mooning over each other, they are bickering. Mahal save us all from the ridiculousness of our line in love.”

“Uncle, I don’t want to be the one to point this out, but…”

“Yes, I am including myself!”

Gimli ignored that. Settling himself by Legolas’ side, he let his eyes wander over the sharp jawline, the proud carriage of the neck, the long elegant fingers. “We should see what Khelebrimbur has stashed away, here in his little hoard,” he said at last.

“He prefers Khel, should you use his Dwarven name,” said Tauriel. She seemed fascinated by the closeness between Legolas and Gimli, by their obvious yearning and deep knowledge of the other. “Forgive me,” she said quickly when she noticed Gimli’s questioning look. “I had not ever thought to see Legolas this way. He has changed indeed.”

“We changed each other,” Gimli rumbled. “Did you never watch, Lady?”

Kíli cleared his throat. “Gimli…”

“Apologies.” Gimli rubbed his face. “Too many years spent as a Lord - and then I was a Dwarf alone, surrounded by the great ones of Elvendom. I am in the habit of it.”

“My grandmother would be satisfied that you learned your courtesies so thoroughly,” said Thorin. “Let it slide, Kíli.”

“No, to answer your question,” Tauriel said. “I did not wish to see the world I left. I spent my last breath fighting against the darkness, and when it was defeated forever I set my feet upon a new path. These days I seek out the starlight beneath the earth. It shines just as brightly.”

Kíli glowed with happiness and took her hand.

“Celebrimbor made us special soles to tie to our shoes, with steel points affixed to them for gripping the rocks,” Tauriel continued. “There may be some left. There are hooks and pulleys aplenty for your hithlain rope. The augurs and handles may be more difficult to find for we brought as many as we could carry.”

“You’ll need a harness as well,” Gimli said. “Do not forget, I’ve worked a mine before! You should be fastened to the side at all times, lest you fall.”

As Thorin passed all this on, Legolas was nodding tiredly. “I will see to it,” he said. “These spiked shoes, the augurs, the harness and pulleys and hooks… quite a sight I shall be, bristling like a pinecone! But if it gives me safe passage and eases Gimli’s fears, then I shall bristle and be glad of it. Too, I have my bow: would a rope-arrow be of use here?”

Gimli glanced at Kíli and Tauriel. “I’m no archer,” he said. “What do you think?”

“Well, I’m no miner or stonewright,” Kíli said, pulling a face. “I doubt you could punch the anchoring arrow in deeply enough to hold your weight.”

Gimli turned to Thorin. “You are a smith: is there anything that could achieve it?”

“A star-wedge bolt, perhaps, or an anchor bolt.” Thorin frowned. “But the power needed to drive it into rock is beyond thinking.”

“The bow of the Galadhrim,” Gimli said, relief washing over him, and he felt the tension in his shoulders ease. His heart grew less restive and fearful. A loop slipped free of the tangle. “Few can bend it, but Legolas does so with ease and grace. It breathes and sings and dances in his hands. Who could blame it?”

“Stop, he can’t hear you and I won’t pass on lover’s talk,” Thorin grumbled. “We will collect these things and leave him to sleep. The morning will bring peril enough to satisfy even your adrenaline-seeking ways.”

“Look, just because I fought Dáin once…”

“Quit while you’re ahead, Gims,” Kíli murmured.

…

Mizim said nothing when he stumbled back to their rooms, but the look she shared with Glóin spoke volumes. Thorin shared a quiet word with them as Gimli shovelled something hot and vaguely spicy into his mouth, and then he was falling face-first onto his too-big, too-empty bed.

The next morning saw Thorin, Gimli - and oddly, Bofur arriving at the poolside. “I’m here because Thorin asked,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’m told there’s a beer in it for me.”

“You’re consistent, I’ll give you that,” said Gimli, gripping his wrist and giving their heads a tap together. “Glad to have ye. We might be needing your miner’s knowledge.”

“No might about it,” said Thorin. “We will not stay long - no, do not argue with me, Gimli. We will not stay long this time, for we cannot climb beside him. We will see him on his way. Then we will find you a workroom.”

Gimli held his tongue, and resolved to sneak away as often as he was able. Then the stars ripped them out of the cool comforting darkness, and into a red autumn dawn. 

But it was not Khel’s cave with its elegant, inlaid stone lintel that they faced. Rather, a huge Gate bound in steel and gilt stood before them, its doors open to the morning and the meadow-smells. The jingle of harnesses could be heard as early-morning marketeers brought their wares and animals into the bailey from the farmlands beyond, and everywhere there were the signs of industry.

“Aglarond?” Gimli said, surprised. Then he tsked. “They’ve let the Deeping Wall get mossy. That needs scraping.”

“Why are we here?” wondered Thorin.

“Ahhh, might be my fault,” Bofur said, sheepish as he tugged at a flap of his hat. “I’m always here around this hour o’ the morning.”

Gimli cocked his head and was about to ask why, when the reason made itself known. A Dwarf with a puckish face was making his way through the bailey, cheerily ushering in the new day’s arrivals. His hair was a dark red, gathered into two long braids that hung either side of his shoulders, and his moustache was braided similarly. His brown eyes, bright and twinkling, were the echo of Bofur’s own. Yet his build was closer to that of Gimli and Glóin: thick and solid, powerful in the shoulders and arms.

“Get a wriggle on, you with the eggs!” called Gimizh, his voice carrying. “You’re holding up the milk-wagoneers!”

“Oh,” said Gimli, his voice barely audible. “Oh.”

“There’s a proper Dwarrow,” said Bofur proudly. “Look at my boy! Who’d have ever thought that one of the Urs would become a Lord?”

“One of the Urs is Queen of Erebor, and the other is Durin the Deathless,” murmured Gimli. “But aye, I take your meaning.”

“Ach, more potatoes,” Gimizh said, shaking his head at yet another wagon. “Pop ‘em over there with the others. Perry shouldn’t be allowed near any of the crops any more, we’re running out of space to keep the produce! We might need to build another storeroom; I’ll talk to cousin Albur. Ah yes, apples go into the storehouse to your left! Don’t tarry, there’s a lot more coming in! Keep those wagons moving so we can unload, and there’s a meal for you at the end of it!”

“He’s good at it,” Thorin remarked. “Firm but friendly.”

“I’ve not seen him in twenty years,” Gimli said wistfully. “He’s changed his hair again.”

“He keeps adopting the Blacklock styles,” said Bofur, watching his son with a mix of pride and melancholy in his eyes. “And Perry tries new things on him every so often. Not always successful things, mind.”

“Perry?” Gimli blinked. “That’s not a Dwarven name.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Thorin, and he looked as though he were trying not to laugh at Gimli’s face. “It’s short for ‘Peribold’.”

Gimli stared at Thorin. “No! Truly?”

“Your trade-deals with the Shire were more successful than you ever could have dreamed,” said Thorin, and then he lost the battle with his laughter. His chuckles rolled out, low and comfortable. “He’s a Took, of course. A descendant of Isembold Took, Bilbo’s uncle. I’m afraid I can’t tell you which line: the Shire still defeats me, even after all my years of study, sad to say! They met around sixteen years ago, when Gimizh visited the new Thain. Bilbo can’t decide whether to be annoyed or pleased.”  

“Gimrís adores him,” Bofur added.

“Gimrís,” said Gimli, jerking upright. “Where is Gimrís?”

“She’ll be in the stores at this time,” said Bofur, and the creases around his eyes deepened. “She can’t manage the crowd in the bailey anymore.”

“Not long to wait, Bofur,” said Thorin. “Soon enough, gamil bâhûn.”

Bofur sighed. “Why she married such a daft old Dwarrow I’ll never understand. She’s been so long wi’out me now.”

“I’m thinking that she loved you, and didn’t care about the difference between you,” retorted Gimli.

“Sorry, we talking about me still?” Bofur said, and he bumped Gimli’s shoulder with his own. “Let’s go visit my ruby, and then we’ll go see your Elf.”

He led them inside the great gate, and then down a side-corridor to a large Hall ringed with doors. This was the entrance to the granaries and stores. Gimli had learned well the lessons of the Storehouse Fire in Erebor. These were dug straight from the rock itself, and were not free-standing silos, but rooms. Most of these had been built in Gimli’s time as Lord, but from the number of doors it seemed that more had been added since his departure for Aman. Dwarves, Men and the occasional Elf thronged the space, delivering their loads to the rooms.

At the centre of the room was a desk, and at the desk was a white-haired Dwarrowdam, a blue jewel winking in her nose as she sorted through the delivery papers and harvest tallies. Beside her was a tawny-haired Hobbit with bright green eyes and a Dwarven cut to his jacket. There was an impish tilt to his lips, and an ornate golden bead in his hair.

“Oh, she’s gone silver too,” mourned Gimli as he took in his first sight of his sister in so long. “She was always so proud o’ her hair.”

“She’s still proud of it,” said Bofur. “And your line always went white fast, didn’t they?”

“Aye. Just never imagined that it might happen to her.” Gimli watched Gimrís a moment longer. After a while, the Hobbit, Perry, patted her hand and then scurried off. Gimrís rubbed at her eyes and sighed, before she jotted down another mark in a column.

Perry came back, balancing a cup of tea and a honey-and-almond Blacklock pastry on a tray. “Take a break,” he said. “You’ve been at it for a while. Let Albur take over for a while.”

“Albur’s busy up on the western lodes today, he needs to take it easier,” Gimrís muttered. Her voice had gone scratchy, just as Gimli’s had in his last years. “I’m nearly done. Harvest season only comes once a year, at least, so thank Mahal for that.”

“Gimizh is exhausted,” Perry agreed. “Look, just go ahead and eat that, Ma. You’ll feel better with something in you!”

She smiled. “Thank you, Perry, it looks delicious. Orish’s wife?”

“Naturally,” he said, sticking his thumbs in his suspenders. His furry foot scuffed the floor. “I wouldn’t dare serve you something subpar. I’d never survive the tongue-lashing. You’re sure you’re comfortable?”

“I’m all right here,” she assured him. “I’m even sitting down! And if the day has come, Peribold Took, that you can tell a Master-Healer what is best for her, you may hand me the pick and I’ll put myself in the stone!”

Perry grinned broadly. He had very pronounced dimples in each cheek. “I love it when you get all cross. Reminds me of Great Smials. Don’t forget to drink your tea before it gets cold!”

She laughed, a little helplessly. “You little rogue. Go on, get out o’ my beard with all your fussing. You’re as bad as my son.”

“I’ll take that as a great compliment, as he is twice as persistent as I am,” he sniffed. Then he kissed her cheek gently, and he was off with the uncanny soundless tread of his people.

Gimli watched his sister sip at her tea, and mark down another load upon her tally. “Age looks better on her than it did on me, I must say.”

“I told you she were the pretty one,” Bofur said, and if his smile was a little crooked, Gimli didn’t mention it.

“Legolas will be waiting,” he said at last. “We had best move on.”

They walked back out to the bailey in time to see Gimizh clambering up onto the wall of the courtyard pool. He had his hands cupped around his mouth, and was shouting to a great dray-cart full of pumpkins to move it, you pack o’ numpties, there’s a wagonload of cheese spoiling in the sun behind you!

“Oh no,” said Gimli at once.

“Not again,” winced Bofur.

“What?” Thorin said, confused, but at that very second Gimizh overbalanced and went backwards into the lily-pads and the water with a tremendous splash.

“He’d done that at least eighteen times before he was one hundred,” groaned Bofur.

Gimizh surfaced, laughing and spluttering. “You’re a disgrace,” sighed Perry, who had materialised from nowhere in the usual mysterious Hobbit fashion. He was already holding a towel, and he shook his curly head with fond indulgence. “Come here, you silly Dwarf. I’ll get Koris to do all the shouting for a bit.”

“You should get in, the water’s fine.” Gimizh chuckled low and swished his arms about, making the water ripple and slosh over the edges of the pool. “C’mon Perryyyyyyy, have a heart! Don’t you scold me none, I’m going to hear it from Mum a million times over anyway.”

“Get out of there, you’ll be freezing,” Perry said, his dimples flashing as he tried to hide his smile. “Can the Lord of Aglarond pretend to have a bit of dignity for half a morning, do you suppose?”

“Dunno, my uncle used to hold meetings with Kings in his shirtsleeves, and with ash or grime all over his face,” Gimizh said, still chuckling as he clambered out of the pool. His clothes hung sopping from his burly frame, and the surrounding wagoneers were grinning and sniggering at the sight. “I’m upholding the traditions he set for us, eh? Gotta make him proud.”

“Gimli,” said Thorin, lifting a brow.

“Ach, it was only Aragorn or Éomer,” grumbled Gimli. “Not like it was anyone I needed to impress.”

Perry began rubbing at Gimizh’s face, sending his beard and moustache into fuzzy red snarls. “You are such a silly,” he said softly, “silly Dwarf. Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”

“You askin’ me to strip, Perry-love? That’s a mite more daring than shirtsleeves, but I’m at your service…”

“Oh, shush!”

“Time to go, I think. Close your eyes and think on Legolas,” said Thorin. “Gimlîn-zâram will take you there.

Gimli took one last look around the city he had built, prosperous and happy and thriving. His people of all kindreds, gathered under the sparkling roof of Aglarond. “It does my heart good to see this,” he murmured. 

Then he closed his eyes and let the stars bear him away to a place made of knives and shifting slopes.

He did not stagger this time, but it was a close thing. His chest felt heavy, slow and tight, as though the sight of the family he left behind had filled it more than his body could bear.

Thorin took one look at his face, and immediately pulled him into a hug. “It strikes you that way, sometimes,” he murmured into Gimli’s hair. “I would see Dís and my whole soul would weep for a day. It grows easier to bear with time.”

“I miss my bright young lad, my madcap dreamer, that wild rascal,” Gimli muttered, and Thorin’s shoulder seemed a decent place to hide his face until he had mastered himself once more. “I want to know more of that Hobbit. An’ my sister – my sister-”

“Shh, now, my star,” Thorin said, holding him close. Gimli breathed deeply, and took courage from the familiarity of that voice. His guide and friend leading him sure and true through the chaos and tumult, as always. “Shh. It’s all right. It will be all right. Gimrís is hale and happy and her wit as biting as ever, even if she is a little lonely, and I’m to speak to Perry when the day arrives: Bilbo is fairly sure the Valar won’t want to deal with another Hobbit causing an uproar. And so you will have your terror of a nephew again, and his little Tookish tailor with him.”

Gimli squeezed his eyes shut and nodded without a word.

“It’s not easy,” Bofur said, rueful and quiet. “And I’ve had decades to get used to it.”

“Try centuries,” Thorin said, rubbing Gimli’s trembling back. “I would see you smile and laugh again, Gimli. It feels wrong to me to see you, of all Dwarves, so anxious and despondent. I know you grieve. It is all so new and odd and cold, and your worries build until you cannot hold them aloft. Let us see Legolas to the Halls; he will reassure you. I would hear that brave laugh of yours ring out once more.”

“My Elf, my light,” Gimli said, dashing at his eyes and pulling himself together. “Yes, yes you are right. Legolas, where is he?”

“Loaded up like a battle-boar,” Bofur said, jerking his head towards a slight ridge. “That’s a fair amount of kit he’s got there.”

“If Tauriel and Khel can be believed, much of it will end up lost on the Pelóri,” said Thorin, and he patted Gimli’s back one last time, before he turned and began to climb the rise.

Gimli took a deep breath, and swallowed a few times. His chest still ached, still throbbed with a desperate, ill-defined sorrow, but he steeled his nerve and pulled himself up after his King.

“Slate,” Bofur announced as they made the rise. “But not like any slate I’ve ever worked or known. This rock is the hardest stuff I’ve ever felt. Mahal must have been in a bad mood when he made this!”

“They were built on purpose, or so the old tales say,” said Gimli, dusting off his hands. “To ward the lands of the Valar from all others.”

“Nori’s the expert on breaking-and-entering.” Bofur grinned. “And Bilbo’s the sneakiest. Should get them involved.”

“The way this is leading, I wouldn’t be shocked if we need Ori to set up a roster again,” Thorin said. “Fíli would welcome the responsibility, I’m sure.”

“There he is,” said Gimli suddenly, and he began to sprint ahead.

Legolas had bound the spiked soles to his feet, and was testing them upon a small crest that led upwards and slightly to the south-west. He wore a pair of gloves, the leather toughened upon the palms, and upon his back was his bow, his pack, and a strange assortment of metal contraptions and bags and wooden slats. He leapt easily over a small crevasse, the spiked crampons biting the rock. Small crumbling slats sheared off the stone as he landed, skittering and bouncing to the gulch below.

“Idmi, Legolas,” said Thorin, trying to find a better place to stand and follow him.

Legolas’ head cocked, his hand outstretched for the next crag. “King Thorin!”

“Just Thorin. I’ve Gimli and Bofur with me to see you on your way.”

“It is slow and careful going, and I have barely begun,” said Legolas, and he began to scale the crag in earnest. “But thus far I find that Celebrimbor’s inventions are holding me safe. It is not yet steep enough for me to use the ropes or harness. I will climb until I find signs of their passage, and then I will gather my strength for the next leg of this journey. Ai, but this rock holds no love for Elves!”

“Nor Dwarves,” agreed Bofur. “This rock don’t like anyone. If it were a Hobbit it would have a ‘No Admittance’ sign on the side.”

“Bofur can read the stone better than any Dwarf I know,” said Thorin. “He can help you navigate its moods.”

“My sincerest thanks, Master Bofur,” said Legolas, and his breath was coming a little harder as he pulled himself bodily onto the next ledge.

“It’s slate, but it’s not like normal slate,” Bofur said, and he whipped his hat from his head and fiddled with it as he gave a few investigative stamps. “It sings of shattering and cutting. Normal shale or slate you have to split apart with a chisel and hammer to get plates or roof-tiles. This stuff will cleave at the touch of a hand. It wants to. When you take a handhold, it will pull itself away from the mountainside, just to spit in the eye of those who dare to touch it. Very unfriendly, if you ask me.”

“Is there a way to use its disposition against it?” Legolas said, standing still and frowning at the forbidding cliff above.

“Aye. Hold from beneath, not above.” Bofur prodded a bit with a finger. “Drill deep enough, and it can’t go splitting so easily: like I said, it calves in plates. So if you can get below the top two or three layers, you’re home an’ hosed. Probably.”

“Fortunate that I found an auger in the cave, then,” Legolas muttered. “But alas, I have but one. I must hope that there are others upon the walls above, and that they have withstood the test of time.”

“Celebrimbor’s work has withstood more than a cliffside,” said Thorin, with impressive understatement.

“And you, Gimli, have you no word for me?” Legolas said then. “For I hear Thorin, and he gives me the words of your sister’s husband, but I hear nothing from my own. Are you well, Gimli-nín?”

“Aye,” Gimli said, and his voice rasped more than a little. “Just looking at you, lad. You look better for some sleep.”

Legolas smiled, open and bright. “I woke with the sun, and with such a fire in my breast I could scarce contain it! I am coming to you now, Gimli. I am following the path, and I will see you before the moon waxes. What terror can these stony teeth hold, compared to such joy?”

“If you will not fear them, then perhaps I should fear for both our sakes,” said Gimli.

“Ie, meleth nín. You are the one who held out hope for us, even as we sailed into doubt and impossibility. I don’t mind carrying it a bit if you stumble.”

Gimli shook his head, and in spite of himself he could feel his cheeks creasing into a smile. “Determined to throw my words back into my teeth, sanmelek?”

“Did it work?” Legolas retorted.

Thorin studied Gimli a moment, and then he nodded in brisk satisfaction. “It worked.”

“Good.” Legolas’s answering smile was small and secret. “Do not huff and roll your eyes at me, Gimli. Now that my own grief is dimming, I realise that you have been at fever-pitch since you returned to your Maker.”

“You’re a bunch of conspirators,” Gimli sighed.

“Oh aye, what a trial it is,” Bofur sniggered.

“I know you, my proud Dwarf,” countered Legolas. “I know what you have not been saying to me, to spare me the trouble of your worry and dread.”

“It’s of no moment,” Gimli said, waving a hand roughly in the air. “I will be well when you’re here by my side, ghivashelê.”

“I am attending to that,” Legolas said archly. “It will take me a week to traverse this range, but I will make it to the other side, Gimli. Last night Tauriel gave me further word of the path, and now Bofur has given me the rumour of these stones - even Celebrimbor did not have such news! I do not intend to make light with my life. I well know that it is to be spent at your side, not upon the shards of the Pelóri.”

“Don’t even joke about such things,” growled Gimli.

“Do not fear, mir nín. Take comfort in me,” said Legolas, his voice light and his eyes keen. “Do you remember our first mountain, my love? Look, look - I go to find the sun, Gimli!”

And he turned and began to climb.  

“Cheek again,” Gimli said, his deep longing tearing at him as surely as any shard of stone as he watched Legolas leap and clamber sure-footed amongst the jagged rocks. “Fly safe, beloved.”

“Is he part-goat, d’you suppose?” Bofur said, tilting his head and squinting.

…

“You are unsettled,” said the thunder below the earth, the echoes travelling through every fibre in Gimli’s body. He was suddenly aware of how fragile he was: only bone, only sinew and flesh.

“I can’t…” Gimli stopped himself, and then sat cross-legged at the base of the massive anvil, like a child at lessons. “I can’t seem to pull myself together. I can’t find a solid place inside me to stand. I’m all knotted up inside. Legolas is counting on me to be strong, and I…”

“Gimli,” said Mahal, and those dark eyes glittered with the light of faraway galaxies. “You have dealt with much, over the course of your long life. But you have never had to deal with death.”

“Not so,” Gimli said, shaking his head. “I’ve faced my death a hundred times over. I am used to laughing in its face! Why do I find this so difficult?”

“Yes, you have dealt death, and faced death, and laughed at death in battle,” said Mahal, and he laid a hand upon Gimli’s shaggy, unkempt head. “Can you tell me that this is the same?”

Gimli was silent. Then he bowed his head under the weight of that great hand. “Aye. As you say, now I deal with death.”

“These Halls are made to keep you safe and content until the ruination of the world, and the renewal that is to come,” said Mahal softly. The thunder vibrated under Gimli’s ribs, shaking his heart. “They are built to do so, to hold all my children in the state they find best. I have filled it with those things that bring you comfort.  The pool of Gimlîn-zâram is one of these. Do you see how it bears your name, my son? For you and it share a purpose: to perceive clearly. Before, all you had was the rumour of the dead, but you see this place truly now. These Halls do not change, and they are static, and they exude a peace and an inertia that even the most strong-willed must succumb to in the end. For here they must last for eons.”

Gimli stared at the swirling starfire in the seven-bracketed grate, watching the stars burn and crash together. He could feel tears pushing at his lower lashes. He would not – could not – allow them to fall. “And will I be the sole Dwarrow left pushing against the peace? For I cannot find it. I do not feel I belong here! Legolas risks his very life, and I cannot be with him!”

“Do you know the last Dwarrow who came here, ill at ease in his heart, angry at the world and his fate?” Mahal smoothed back the recalcitrant lock at his brow, tucking it back against the white streak above his eyebrow. “Can you guess?”

Gimli looked up. The tears trembled, threatening to spill. “Aye, I might be able to predict that one.”

The great and beautiful face nodded. “As you suspect. Some are not so easily gentled. Some cannot find ease in peace. Some are restless, and grieving, and frustrated in their purpose.”

Gimli sucked in a shaking, shallow breath. “He seems to have found his, after some fashion.”

“It took many years, and much pain, for him to find his way. And so you will find yours.” Mahal stroked his hair gently, as gently as Mizim ever had. “You will see clearly again, Sansûkhâl. The target is shrouded in mists and your arrow is loosed where you cannot reach it. But you will hit your mark.”

“I’m no great archer, my Lord.”

“No.” Mahal smiled, and it glowed warm upon Gimli’s face like the rays of the sun. “But you can learn. You have threaded your way through many new paths, Gimli, and built many a new thing. Lift up your head, Silvertongue, and build anew once more.”

…

For all that Gimli was finding it difficult to settle into the Halls of Mahal, the Halls were quickly adjusting to him. 

His name was now placed at the sixth rung of the board in the duelling chamber, and upon discovering this Dáin slapped his back gleefully. “You’ve a queue forming,” he said with a wicked grin. “They all want to get pummelled by you after the display you made! T’is a great honour indeed to be the first to have my arse personally kicked by the great Gimli.”

Gimli coloured and ducked his head. “Must you, my King?”

Dáin chuckled and scruffed his pig’s ears. “Well, they can’t go staring at me like I crap diamonds if you’re the newest, shiniest thing in the room, can they?”

“You canny bastard,” Gimli said, resigned. 

One evening, Fíli and Kíli dragged him along to join in their impromptu game-night. None could match Tauriel at darts, not that it stopped them from trying. Arm-wrestling soon became untenable: neither of the younger Dwarrows could match Gimli in strength. “Who we really need here is Dori,” puffed Kíli, hauling at Gimli’s immobile arm.

“You’re doing very well,” he said encouragingly. “You nearly had me then!”

“Don’t patronise me,” Kíli snapped, throwing aside the rules of the competition and yanking at Gimli’s arm with both hands. “Fee, give me a hand here!”

Soon enough, Kíli and Tauriel were engaged in an archery contest, and Gimli became Fíli’s partner for ‘uzghu ma ziraku, or blunt battle - mostly because Kíli was disastrous at it, and Tauriel found it uninteresting. 

“You should pick up the fiddle again,” Fíli said at one point, moving a piece.

Gimli made his own move and glanced up from the board. “Oh? Why?”

“You’ll see,” Fíli said, his eyes glinting. “Oh, and I’ve collapsed your mine.”

Gimli blinked, and then scowled at the board. “Damn it. Best out o’ three.”

“Strategy’s not your thing, cousin,” Fili laughed. “But if you’re feeling masochistic, I’d be glad to beat you three times in a row!”

Glóin and Óin dragged him about the place, introducing him to all and sundry they met. His favourite meetings were the ones in which they were comfortable and easy with him, but sadly these were rare. Most Dwarves seemed to treat Gimli with a certain measure of awe still.

“It’s been no time at all,” said Glóin. “They’ll get used to you.”

“Once they’ve seen you drunk and dancing, the respect will disappear quick smart,” Óin added. “Believe me.”

Every single spare second that Mahal sent, Gimli was sneaking back to the Chamber of Sansûkhul. Thorin still accompanied him each evening to pass on his words, but that was not sufficient for Gimli, not remotely sufficient. He had sworn never to leave Legolas, and he would keep that oath.

He soon found that he could not follow Legolas up the path upon the cliff-sides at all: he was not made to perch like an eagle nor stick like a lizard! But he could cling to one spot, patient as stone himself, waiting and watching as Legolas clambered past him. 

Then he would return to the Halls for an hour - sometimes less - and then he would swim again through the stinging starlight to cling, wait and watch as his Elf made the torturous ascent.

Sometimes he would visit Aglarond, too, to watch his creaky sister snap and bark in her acerbic way. He idly wondered whether Thranduil and Laindawar had ever worked out the riddle of Gimrís: the sharper Gimrís’ tongue, the more she loved that which she spoke of.

“Strength, my sister,” he murmured, as she struggled with her stiff back and poor knees. “Get my azaghîth and his Hobbit to help you. Durin’s beard, I wish Aragorn were still around, he would have fixed your pains in a trice!”

Thorin and Dwalin showed him a corridor. “Pick one,” grunted Dwalin.

“Pick… what, exactly?” asked Gimli, eyebrows raising in confusion.

Thorin sighed. “Dwalin, ugbal bâhûn. The rooms here are workshops. You’re welcome to any of the empty ones.”

“I’m still no’ a smith,” Gimli reminded him.

“But you could be,” Thorin rejoined. “You picked up goldsmithing quickly enough.”

“Unlikely,” Gimli said, and shook his head. “All the filing near-made my elbow come off at the hinge!”

“They’re not all smithies,” Dwalin said. “Have a look round, lad, and see which one you might like.”

Gimli thought on the wisdom of protesting the word ‘lad’ for a second, and then decided that anyone who had been as preposterously old – and as preposterously dangerous – as Dwalin could call him whatever he liked. 

He poked his head into a few of the rooms to discover that some had been set up as forges and smithies of various types, but others were indeed plain workrooms. One in particular had a bright and airy feel, and Gimli took a breath as he stepped into it. It had a graceful light set into the ceiling, and mirrors were set around the walls, making it feel wider and more open. “This one,” he said, almost to himself. “But what to do here, I wonder?”

“Anything you like,” said Dwalin. “Make yourself another battle-axe, for starters.”

“When the Grinding Ice melts, aye,” Gimli said, a sarcastic lilt in his voice. “I was the worst student Master Garin had ever seen! I brought down the hammer with a warrior’s swing, not a smith’s. I blame you for that, by the way.”

Thorin shrugged. “You’ve the time to learn now, if you wanted. And I could demonstrate this time around.”

Gimli looked at Thorin, steady and serious. “I would like that someday. But for now, I fear it would bring me too many memories, and I am already full of apprehension for him.”

Thorin’s brows drew together, and then he seemed to realise Gimli’s meaning. “If you wish. But you’ve other crafts.”

“True enough. I’ll talk to Amad, I think. I’m a dab hand with jewels, especially after the setting of my Lady’s hair.”

Dwalin gave Thorin a significant look. “Aye, I remember. No particular reason why you’d go for pretty decorations over your mastery, then?”

“My mastery is in weaponscraft, not in weaponscrafting, Dwalin, as you well know! You were the one to give it to me!”

“Shazara, Dwalin,” Thorin murmured. “It will give him occupation, so leave it. I did the same for decades. And it will keep him from losing himself in the waters for a time.”

Dwalin crossed his arms and scowled thunderously. 

“Why does it matter whether I craft axes or cut amethysts?” asked Gimli. “I do not see why this is a matter for debate. Nor why it makes Dwalin frown and growl at me!”

“He wants to duel you,” said Thorin, and he clapped Dwalin heavily on the shoulder. “He’s first in the line.”

“Lovely.” Gimli pinched the bridge of his nose. “Perhaps I’ll go without an axe for a few centuries.”

“Now, that would be a real crime,” Dwalin grunted. “No, lad, Thorin and I will sort you out. We at least know what to do in a forge.”

“And if it is jewelling and gemcutting you wish to pursue, I would talk to Dís also,” Thorin said. “I’m down the hall, second on the left. Dwalin’s across from me. Ori is across from you - I warn you, do not disturb him when he is brewing new inks! Not only will he roar at you, but it reeks.”

“So this area is filled with our friends and family?” Gimli asked, and he ran his palm over the workbench absently. Smooth and well-finished. 

“Generally speaking, though there are a few you don’t yet know,” said Dwalin. “You’ve yet to meet Thorin’s grandmother, or his mother, or my mother. Damn, he doesn’t even know Thrór or Thráin, he was too young wasn’t he? There’s Narvi too, of course, and she’s at the end of the corridor with Khel. If there are explosions, just ignore ‘em.”

That gave Gimli pause. “...right.”

They left him then, and as he wandered his new workroom he overheard Dwalin in the corridor: “Thorin, he’s a mess. He won’t even try. What do we do?”

“Aye,” Thorin sighed heavily. “My mother said that he is the most restless Dwarf she has seen in these Halls - save one.”

“You.”

“It’s like you know me,” replied Thorin, chuckling softly. “Gimli and I have at least this in common: we are not made to watch in idleness and futility. Yet Gimli does not hold onto his pain, as I did. When Legolas arrives, we will have our merry laughing warrior again.”

“Hope you’re right.”

“I’m always right.”

“I’ve a scar that says different.”

…

“My grandmother, Frís daughter of Aís,” Fili introduced them, and Gimli bowed low.

“It is an honour and a pleasure to meet with you, Princess Under the Mountain. I am Gimli son of Glóin. Forever at your service and your family’s.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, distracted as she wound the thinnest possible wire around a string, pulling it taut and true. “Fíli said you play fiddle. I’ve a fingerboard made up here, but I’ve no clue as to what size the body should be, so stand up straight and I’ll measure you up.”

Gimli’s head snapped back to Fíli, who was grinning broadly.

“Come now, hold still and stick out your left arm,” commanded the small, golden-haired Dwarrowdam with Thorin’s blue eyes. She stood, taking up a tape and running it down from his collarbone to his knuckles. “Yes… as I thought. Fili’s usual would be too long for you, your arms are shorter for all that they’re wider! Let me jot that down.”

“I’m sorry, you’re makin’ me a fiddle?” Gimli said, astonished.

“Call it a thank you gift from a very grateful mother,” she said, and those disconcertingly familiar eyes creased in a smile. “My children have learned a thing or two from you – and sometimes more than one or two. But don’t tell them I said that. Frerin would object.”

“That’s-” Gimli checked himself and shut his open mouth with a click! “I thank you, I thank you very much! I would never have thought to seek one out, and…”

“Hush, dear,” she said, and took her seat again. “I’m working now. These strings don’t wind themselves.”

…

“Hello, kurdelu,” said Gimli quietly.

Legolas shivered beneath the meagre overhang that was his shelter for the night. The ground below was nearly lost to sight: only the sea could be made out thanks to the moonlight skittering and glinting upon its surface, far to the East.

He had found one of the flets that Tauriel and Celebrimbor had left behind. The wooden planks were brittle and nearly rotted, but he had lashed them together tightly and clipped his harness to the gigantic auger’s screw where it pierced the crumbling slate. With no tent or oilcloth he was exposed to the night winds at such a height. Even an immortal Elf would shiver, thought Gimli sadly.

The summit was close, but the descent would prove even more treacherous.

Gimli tucked his insubstantial body close to Legolas, and hoped beyond all hope that he could feel his love and be warmed by it.

…

He lifted up the green gem in his hand, studying it against the bright lamp-light of the workroom. It was cleanly done, but the cut was not yet brilliant enough to please him. It needed to be perfect, for no inferior emerald could grace the throat of his beautiful Elf.

“If you chip at it any more it will be the size of a pea,” said Dís. Beside her, Mizim covered her mouth to hide a smile.

“I still think I could get better scintillation out of it,” he objected. “Maybe if I cut back the pavilions…”

“It’s beautiful, inúdoy,” said Mizim, laying a hand over his arm. “We should set it now.”

“Before you start hacking at it again,” remarked Dís.

Gimli let his hand drop, holding the emerald loosely. His frustration battered at his ribs, as though trying to break free. “Aye, you’re no doubt right. Aunt Dís, have you any ideas?”

…

“That’s not a suitable axe,” said Haban, her lips pursing. “Too long, not heavy enough.”

“It’s what I could borrow,” said Gimli. “Will it serve for today?”

“Whose is it?”

“Lóni’s. If I nick it he says he’ll make me run through the Halls buck naked.”

Haban smirked. “And can he follow through with such a threat?”

“What do you think?” Gimli grinned back at her, his sharp Firebeard grandmother, lost to Arda before he was ever born. “Shall we?”

“Iron position,” she ordered, briskly turning and lifting her own beautifully-decorated twin axes. They were engraved over the blades with the symbols of Nogrod and the Firebeards: these were not weapons of war, but of ceremony. Of art. “Reverse river-fish. Steel position. Then move to the basalt pose… and go!”

Gimli spun on his heel and stretched out his leg, holding Loni’s axe high above his head. Then he threw the axe, its end spinning over him, and it landed solidly in his hand behind his back. He bobbed down onto his haunches and jumped its handle with only a slight wobble. His feet planted themselves wide and sturdy, the axe lightly clasped in his hand.

“Good form!” she praised him. “You’ll make an axe-dancer yet!”

“I’ve danced on rockier floors,” he laughed.

“Oh-ho, is that so? Then put your coin where your words are. Gróin, darling, can we have a beat?”

“This one?” Gróin began to stamp his heavy hobnailed boot upon the floor, his hands clapping on the weaker beat. 

“No, no, this one!” Fundin barked, and he began a more complicated pattern, with two stamps followed by three quicker claps.

Haban tapped her fingers on her axe-blade impatiently. “The same one, you two, if you don’t mind.”

“He’s not following me!”

“Just because you’ve got the rhythm of a brick…”

“This one, Grandda,” Gimli cut in, and he stamped thrice, followed by two quick claps. “That satisfactory?”

The squabbling brothers looked a little chastened. “Thank you, love,” said Haban under her breath. 

“Glad to, Nan,” he said, and took up the basalt pose again. “Now that we have a beat everyone can agree on…”

Her eyes glowed with challenge. “Watch closely, grandson. You might learn a thing or two.”

Legolas, you would be fascinated by this, came the thought, as they spun and threw in unison, their blades reflecting shards of torchlight through the air. I will have to show you.

I hope to show you soon.

…

“My dear friend!” cried Laerophen warmly, and he embraced Gimizh, enfolding him in his long-sleeved robes. “You look well! I have not seen you in too long, for that’s a new jewel in your eyebrow!”

Gimizh laughed and touched it fondly with a fingertip. “Name-day present from Perry. He said I should put in my master-stonewright’s beads, but considering that I never remember to wear them he’d make it impossible for me to forget! So now I wear it in my face. Does it suit me?”

“You look marvellous,” Laerophen beamed. “I have so much to tell you! We have discovered a place in the Emyn Arnen where the trees sing of iron, where the earth is reddish and crumbled. I have brought some of the soil for you to test, for I need your expertise!”

“Really?” Gimizh gasped, and he grabbed Laerophen’s shoulder. “We’ve not discovered iron in the White Mountains, that would be quite the find! I could stop hauling it down the Anduin from Khazad-dûm if we could tap a closer source: Durin does his best but it takes so long – and he’s got enough on his plate with the Goblins, so – Ach! That’s brilliant, Laerophen!”

“Will mining-works harm the trees in any way?” asked Laerophen, and a slight furrow creased his forehead. “I do not know how to proceed without disturbing them, and after so much work to restore them to full health and vigour-”

“Nah, we’re smarter than that, and we can go deeper with our tunnels. Not like the open-pit mines of Men! And you can reassure them that we won’t be nibbling at their roots, can’t you? Aw, I have to talk to Mum and to Albur, and gotta get Ashni on the job, they’re Head of the Mining Guild…”

“Then you will lend your skills and the knowledge of your people?” Laerophen said eagerly.

“Stop bein’ weird,” said Gimizh, and nudged him, his grin broad and open. “Course I would. We’ll work together, same as always. Show me what you have brought!”

Gimli watched them, and smiled to himself.

“I have so much to tell you, Legolas,” he murmured, echoing Laerophen’s words. “So much to tell you.”

...

Gimli was giving the emerald necklet a final polish when he felt the brush against his leg.

“What-” he began, and peered under his workbench. “What’s this? Why, hello there, and who are you?”

The great fluffy marmalade-and-white cat gave him a questioning, curious ‘prrrowp!’ and rubbed his leg again.

“How did you find your way to me, I wonder?” he said, and gave the cat a small scratch beneath its chin. It squeezed its eyes shut, and when he went to take his hand back it pressed its face forward for more. “All right, all right! Demanding, aren’t you?”

“Have you seen-” came a voice from the door, slightly out of breath, and Gimli glanced up from the cat to find that his visitor was a Dwarf he had not yet encountered; tall with a fierce beard and a scarred eye. “Ah, you found her!”

“She found me,” sand Gimli, and the cat pushed insistently at his fingers. “Very well, I’m scratching, you pushy creature!”

The Dwarf leaned against the door, and a smile pulled at his rather severe face. It changed him and made him appear softer. “Her name’s Custard,” he offered. “She’s mine.”

“How is she here?” Gimli asked. “I mean, I’ve seen Dáin’s pigs, a different one each day. I still do not understand it.”

“Nobody understands what is happening with the pigs except Dáin,” said the Dwarf, shaking his shaggy head. “One of the many mysteries of this place. As to Custard, she was mine as a child in Erebor. I had her from a kitten.”

“But how came she here?”

The Dwarf shifted uncomfortably. “When I awoke here in the Halls I was… ill. Very ill, and my cure was beyond me. Our Maker brought her to me one day, just as I remembered her, and said that she would help. And she does. She helps my son Frerin also, when the memories of war grow too loud. She is a good cat.”

“You’re Thráin,” realised Gimli with a jolt. Custard mrowled at him irritably, and ducked her whole body beneath his hand, which had stopped its patting in shock. “My Lord, I am so sorry. I would not have asked had I known that the answer was painful.”

 “Don’t ‘My Lord’ me either, Silvertongue, I like it no more than you do,” said Thráin, and his voice was gentle. “There is no harm done. As I said, she helps me. Perhaps she seeks to help you too?”

Gimli looked back to the cat, who had clambered onto his knees and was purring thunderously. “Then I must apologise for monopolising your companion.”

“Custard does what she will. Apparently she thinks she is needed here, and who am I to argue?” Thráin said, and he pushed himself away from the door. “She likes chicken. Don’t give her the bones, though, they’re not good for her. And don’t touch her belly: she will kick if you do.”

Then he paused. “And thank you, for comforting my daughter when she was grieving and alone.”

Gimli opened his mouth – to say what, he did not know – but Thráin had already left.

…

“Carefully now – gently does it,” Gimli muttered, as Legolas lowered himself down upon his rope. The harness, at least, was well secured around his body, but Gimli did not trust the slate not to slip and break at the worst possible time.

As luck would have it, the ropes above held for this descent. Gimli had lost track of how many times the breakages had sent his love skidding down the mountainside. There were cuts and grazes upon Legolas’ flawless face, and his fingertips were raw and red from the cold and from the teeth of the bitter rocks. His gloves were torn, yet he wore their shreds regardless.

Legolas slowly and gingerly put his weight onto the stone shelf, his crampons gripping as he tested its stability. “Come now, you weigh hardly anything!” Gimli scoffed. “Put your feet down, lad. You’ll need to set up your camp soon, for the sun will set within the hour.”

Legolas seemed satisfied with the ledge, at long last. With a practiced tug, the hilthlain rope came slithering down the cliffside, and he turned to set the augur.

As he did so, the entire ledge broke away with the horrendous sound of tearing rock, as though sheared away with a giant knife.

Gimli let out a roar of fear as the whole cliffside began to crumble and slide down the mountain. The auger was lost amidst the tumbling boulders, and Gimli could barely catch sight of Legolas himself in the chaos. “Legolas!” he howled, falling himself, and huge slabs of slate passed through his misty body; a terrible sight. “Legolas – Legolas!”

He barely heard the sharp musical twang of a bow over the landslide’s din, and over the piercing, freezing shriek of his own terror.

When the rubble settled, some sixty or eighty feet below where the ledge had been, Gimli pulled himself free of the clattering, shifting heap of sharp edges and blocks, and looked about the scene frantically.

There was no sign of his Elf that he could see amongst the detritus. No flash of pale hair, no flick of a green tunic. “Legolas!” he bellowed with all his might, knowing full well that it was hopeless – and so useless, so utterly and completely useless. “Legolas!”

No sound but the tinkle of bouncing pebbles as they landed.

“Legolas…” Gimli managed.

There was a slight scuff, hardly noticeable, and Gimli looked up through wet eyes.

Legolas was hanging by a rope from the cliff-side, his bow in one hand and face chalk-white with shock. The rope had been pushed into the rock using a bolt rather than an arrow – one of the star-wedge bolts that Thorin had insisted he take. His harness was stretched, and bruises were rising where the rocks had struck him. His breath rose and fell quickly, his strong, lithe chest heaving.

Gimli fell to his knees and covered his face, his back trembling. “Mahal, âkminrûk zu, âkminrûk zu; ayamuhud khathuzhuh! Lad, I thought you dead!”

Legolas took even longer to lower himself this time, and Gimli did not dare argue. It took until the sun had completely set before Legolas would trust the new ground, and he was still shaking as he set up his travel-roll and wrapped himself in his blankets.

“No augur,” he muttered to himself, and gazed out upon the new and strange valley far below. “No augur, and no way to fix myself to the cliffside if it should try and tip me off its back. I must trust in my bow. Alas that I have but seven of these bolts! And six now, for I cannot retrieve the ones I will leave behind.”

“You’re alive,” Gimli rasped, as close to Legolas as he could be without breaking the illusion. “I care not about the rest, for you live and breathe, and it can wait until the morning. Take reverie, ghivasha. You need it, after that! Damn, but it near stopped my heart when that cliff broke off.”

Then he paused, and added, “Again, I mean.”

“Perhaps Celebrimbor and Tauriel left something upon the rises below us,” Legolas sighed, his limbs uncurling as he drifted toward reverie. “Don’t bluster so, my Gimli; I can imagine your every fretful grumbling word! I will make it down, no matter how the Pelóri dispute my presence.”

Gimli’s breath caught. “That was more serious than a slip, Legolas,” he muttered.

He watched his Elf relax gracefully into languid, open-eyed dreams, his long shape outlined in moonlight. The column of his throat beat with the pulse of his blood, and the flex of that slim, strong wrist made Gimli want to press his nose to it, to inhale deeply and rub the palm against his bearded cheek. 

At long last, he let out a long, juddering breath, trying to squash the fear that still beat at him. “Legolas, my fierce elf, my darling one. I’m not of any use to you here, nor am I any use there either. I’m not sure where I am needed now. What am I, when I am not myself any more?”

“Gimli,” Legolas mumbled in his trance, and Gimli let his fingers hover over the scratched and bruised cheek, the upswept ear.

“I’ll stay,” he said at last. “Even if I cannot fight this beastie with you, I can at least be at your side. That is all I have ever wished for, in life and in death.”

…

“Come here,” Mizim said, and she gestured for him to sit at her feet before her chair.

Gimli staggered to her and collapsed on the floor. She stroked his brow and sang softly under her breath, until he felt able to unclench his hands again.

“Breathe, Gimli,” she said, soft and slow. “Just breathe. You’ve stood firm before the Morannon, before the Black Riders and the Balrog and the Partings Mists and more. Why do you quail now?”

Gimli closed his eyes, and tried to wipe the sight of the landslide from his memory. “Aye, I would leap into danger a thousand times or more, Amad, and it would never daunt me.”

His throat felt awful, but his mother’s hands were cool and gentle. He could hear the tick-tick of his own pulse in his ears, and the shallow drag of his breath. Inside him, the snarled and knotted rope turned over and upon itself into a hundred different tangles.

“But watching helplessly as he does so fills me with fear,” he admitted at last. 

…

“My grandmother, Hrera daughter of Frera,” Thorin introduced him, and Gimli braced himself for another odd, thankful encounter, such as the one with Frís.

The tall, coiffed and perfectly-poised Queen slowly leaned down to his face-level. Her words, when they came, were overly-enunciated and as unyielding as steel. “Gimli Gloinúl, I will say this but once. Brush. Your. Hair.”

Gimli blinked rather dumbly as she sailed off, her chin high and her heels rapping against the stone floor.

“Grandmother has opinions,” Thorin said, sounding a little dumbstruck himself.

“About hair?”

“About everything. But yes, particularly about hair.”

…

“And can you describe the customs there?” asked Ori eagerly, his pen poised over the paper. “Are they so very different to the ways of the Elves in Arda?”

Gimli scratched at his ear. “Uh, well, the Vanyar are much taller than the Sindar or Silvan Elves. Their homes are larger as a matter of recourse, and they do not live beneath the earth as Thranduil did. Nor do they build flets. They have cities, wide sprawling ones that wind in between trees and over rivers and streams. I don’t think there’s a straight line on the whole continent.”

Bifur looked mildly perturbed by this.

“The language is different also,” added Gimli. “They don’t speak Sindarin. I was all at angles to most of them, to be perfectly honest with you. T’was a relief when I met up with a Noldo or a Sinda, for as poor as my accent is I can at least speak the same tongue. I learned some Quenya by the end: such round open vowels, like trying to speak through a mouthful of water wi’out dribbling down your front.”

“Bilbo never mentioned that!” Ori said, his eyes wide and a trifle indignant.

Bifur frowned. “Why shouldn’t they speak Sindarin?”

“Because the Vanyar never left Aman, and thus never lived in Middle-Earth where the kingdoms of the Sindar grew powerful and influential,” Ori explained, and he scribbled something down upon his paper. 

“Bilbo apparently speaks Quenya with reasonable fluency,” Gimli replied with some self-deprecation. “He became a great favourite amongst the Elves of Alqualondë, I’m told.”

“And what was that like? Alqualondë?”

“Beautiful,” Gimli said, his eyes creasing. “Swans everywhere. Big aggressive buggers they were, but lovely to look at.”

Bifur choked, and then giggled.

“Legolas loved the heights of the great hills overlooking the sparkling sea,” Gimli went on, and had to halt himself as his impatience ripped and tore at his throat again. “Ach, lads. I’m just about done. I’ll be back to tell you more for your histories later, Ori: I need to wash out my throat! The memory of Quenya, you understand.”

…

“Right, with me,” Dwalin said, poking his head into Gimli’s workroom. Despite his age and his achievements, Gimli’s spine snapped straight like a Dwarf of one hundred late for roll-call.

“Yes, Dwalin!” he barked out at once, and then he scowled at himself.

Dwalin only gave him a satisfied grunt, and ducked away.

Gimli pushed himself back from his table, where the earring was beginning to take shape. Emerald, to match his green leaf, of course. The stud and clasp should be silver, he thought as he left. Yes, silver indeed.

He caught up with Dwalin in the corridor, and the grizzled Dwarf led him on without a word. “Where’s the fire?” Gimli asked, trying to keep up with Dwalin’s longer stride. “Where are we going?”

“Going to put you to rights,” Dwalin huffed. “This way, don’t slouch!”

“Have I ever?” Gimli grumbled, and he resigned himself to not knowing the answer until they reached their destination.

Dwalin took him through the Halls, around the great cauldron-forges and through the crafting salons and the little makeshift tables where Dwarves would barter the work of their hands.

When it became apparent that they were going to the duelling chambers, Gimli dug his heels in. “No,” he said, adamant.

“And why not?” Dwalin rounded upon him and poked a thick finger into his breastbone. “This is not like you, Gimli. One fight, and that’s that? I’m not standing for it, and Thorin shouldn’t either. We’re going to go whack at each other with axes, boy, and you can work some of that anxiety out. You’re going to explode if you carry on this way.”

“I am not in the mood,” Gimli said, his teeth gritting together.

“And when will the mood be upon you?” Dwalin threw up his hands. “I’m not doing this for my place on the board, you daft bugger. I’m doing it because I’m worried about you!”

“Then I’ll thank you to stop!”

Dwalin loomed over him, his face thunderous. “Not likely! The Gimli I trained would never have passed up the opportunity to sit me on my arse. I want to see that Gimli again.”

“Well, this Gimli has other things on his mind!”

“This Gimli is out of his damn mind!”

“Legolas is risking himself on the Pelóri as we speak, and you would have me play, and fight, and craft?” Gimli burst out, his voice ringing through the hallways. “I cannot do that! I will not!”

Dwalin looked sad all of a sudden, and his shoulders slumped. “Gimli-lad,” he said at last. “Your worry for Legolas is true-hearted and special, an’ I won’t touch it. But listen to me: you do not betray him nor his pains by enjoying yourself now and then. Do you understand?”

Gimli glowered at him from under his brows.

“I see that you do,” Dwalin said, and his lips were quirked. “We’ve seen you, you know. Scurrying to and fro from the pearl-and-mithril gate, making yourself miserable every time you might in the slightest bit admit to yourself that you had some fun with your old friends. With your family. You’re allowed to do the things that interest you. You’re allowed to take up your axe again and give me a belting with it if you don’t like what I have to say!”

His voice lowered. “Gimli, you’re allowed to be happy, even as you worry. You’re a complicated bastard. You can be both.”

Gimli dropped his face into his hands. “Ach, damn you,” he heard himself say, faint and unsteady. “I know. Of course I know! But I’m better with a task, Dwalin. I’m better when the danger is mine to face. I feel like a loose thread, blowing this way and that. And I have tried. My best efforts are all overcome by my disquiet, and I do not know how to move through it. I’m all tied into knots inside myself, and I cannot unravel it.”

“Come on, let’s go hit things really, really hard,” Dwalin said, and he laid an arm over Gimli’s shoulders.

Gimli took a huge breath, feeling his chest expand with it. “Sounds excellent.”

“There’s a lad.”

When they arrived at the duelling room, the crowd stilled for a brief moment, and then the noise picked up as they took up position around the walls. Thorin and Bilbo were there, as were Óin and Dwerís and Orla. Fíli was handily defeating Frár in the centre square, and Gimli stamped along in congratulations as Balin, who was serving as judge, called the match for the Prince.

“Very nicely done,” he said, as Fíli flopped onto a bench and mopped at his face. “And hard luck, Frár!”

“Next time, perhaps,” Frár said in his deep, calm way. “I’ll be watching for that crossing-gambit of his.”

“Right.” Dwalin clapped Gimli hard on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Dwalin--”

“Don’t you turn to fool’s gold on me, Gimli,” Dwalin warned. “Here, catch.”

He grabbed something from Thorin, and tossed it over. Gimli’s arm shot out and caught it from the air: a double-headed battle-axe, heavy and short-handled, its edges blunted. He looked up.

“You’ve been busy, but we have too,” said Thorin, looking rather satisfied. He tapped his boots against Dwalin’s, and then drew his sword from his back. “Mizùl, my star. You’re going to need it.”

“What, but I thought I was fighting…” Gimli turned wide eyes to Dwalin, who was taking his hooked axes from his belt and giving them a limbering swing or two. In the background, Nori was already scurrying amongst the benches and whispering furiously. “Wait. Both?”

“I know you can beat me,” Dwalin rumbled, and he smiled like a Warg on the prowl. “You could beat me by the time you were one hundred and twenty. Especially with that axe in your hands. Thorin, you made his first one too, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Thorin said, and his answering smile was grim, but his eyes were alight. “I’ve improved over the years. That one is better.”

“This is hardly fair,” Gimli protested. “You cannae be serious!”

“You have an axe in your hands, and a challenge before you,” Thorin said sternly. “Let these things remind you of what you can do. I saw your face, the day you beat Dáin. You were shocked by the old skills coming back to you. Let them. This is your mastery, Gimli. Your calling. You’re the best axeman in two centuries.”

“You’re allowed to enjoy yourself,” said Dwalin, somewhat softer. 

Gimli looked down at the axe in his hands. It was beautiful. Elvish tracery woven with his own stoneflower motif, surmounted by seven stars upon each of the double-blades. It felt comfortable in his grip.

No, it felt right.

“Very well, then,” he said at last. “Heads up, lads. I’m coming for your places on the board.”

“That’s more like it!” Dwalin roared, and with that, they were whirling into explosive motion.

…

“Ow.”

“Serves you right.” Bilbo held the cloth to Thorin’s nose. “You stepped into that punch!”

“I’m so sorry,” moaned Dwalin, holding his belly. “He ducked, and I…”

“Not your faul’,” Thorin said, though his voice was somewhat nasal and thick – no doubt due to the swelling. “Daerís Greyswords has done worse. You’ve been on the receiving end of that headbutt!”

“Well, I’m sorry then,” Gimli said, wringing his hands. “I didn’t think Dwalin’s punch would hit anything if I ducked…”

“Obviously,” said Thorin, dryly. “Bilbo my heart, I think it’s stobbing now.”

“Let him fuss, he’ll only do so anyway,” said Dwalin, groaning. “Gimli, didya have to kick me in the gut so damn hard? I’ll be wearing your bootprint for a week!”

“You were about to take my head off!”

“You trained him, you’ve only yourself to blame,” Thorin said to Dwalin.

“He’s picked up moves and methods from every folk in Middle-Earth since! And I didnae teach him to kick like a-”

“I think we can definitively say that he is quite ready to take on Tauriel,” said Bilbo. “Have you two idiots anything left to prove?”

“Aye, in fact.” Dwalin prodded Gimli between the eyes. “Feel better?”

Gimli took a moment to consider it. “I… I was watching Legolas, and he disappeared during a landslide,” he said at last, his words halting and awkward, clumsy upon his silver tongue. “He saved himself through his rope-arrow, but for an instant I thought that – well. It’s been preying on me ever since. I will find it hard to shake, I fear. But I feel lighter for the bout.”

“Lighter?” said Dwalin, eyes narrowed. “Did you enjoy it? Or are you eaten up by cares still?”

“I can be both,” Gimli replied, meeting his eyes without a flinch.

“Good,” said Thorin. “Then this is not a wasted effort. Oh, Bilbo  - by nose is starting again, can you…”

“Dwarves,” sighed Bilbo, offering his handkerchief. “To think I ever considered you impressive and regal. Here you are, and kindly keep it this time.”

“Thank you,” said Gimli, heartfelt and low. “I did need this.”

“I could do without this part, quite frankly, but I’m bleased you’re feeling better,” said Thorin. “That’s concerning news about Legolas, and I’ll not blame you for being troubled after that. If you’d like I can join you for your next trib to see him. Would you like that?”

“Aye, that’d be grand.” Gimli cracked his neck, feeling steadier than he had in the two whole weeks since walking from the sepulchre. “Thank you, Thorin. Sorry about the nose. Oh, and thank you for the axe! It is beautiful. Fits my hand like it were forged there.”

“You can thank me by beating Tauriel with it,” said Thorin, grinning beneath his bloodied nose. “She’s beaten me eight times, and I’ve only won twice.”

“No kicking me, next bout,” Dwalin said, rubbing his belly some more. “You’ve learned a thing or two from those Horse-Lords - or from their horses!”

…

“Well, at least I can say I knew you before you were famous,” said Lóni, draping his arm over the back of his chair. “Another?”

“Aye, that one went down too quickly.” Gimli rubbed at his eyes. “Are they really saying that I cut them down?”

“They say Dwalin must walk with a cane, and Thorin will wear a brass nose,” Lóni chuckled as he turned the spigot on the barrel, filling their tankards. “They’re mostly idiots, of course. Anyone who was watching knows it was just a training bout, and that you won because Thorin stepped into Dwalin’s punch.”

“Oh, is that the only reason?” Gimli said sardonically. “Well, if you’re so confident that it was a lucky win, perhaps you’ll join me in the square next time?”

“Not likely!” Lóni snorted loudly, and he dropped the full tankard in front of Gimli, beer sloshing over the rim. “Only way I’m fighting you is if they blindfold you!”

Gimli’s grin dimmed somewhat. “Legolas can fight blindfolded. Damndest thing I ever saw.”

Lóni patted his shoulder and took a draught of his beer. “I’d believe it. We followed you through Lothlórien and over Sarn Gebir and all over Rohan, you know. All taking our turn. Frár and I saw Oliphaunts. Absolute madness, it was.”

Gimli fiddled with the handle of his mug. “And were you with me sooner than Lothlórien?”

Lóni regarded him a moment, his brow furrowing. “Aye. I know what you’re asking, my friend. I was there in Khazad-dûm when you found us. We all saw you mourn us, and we all led you out, shouting our directions to Thorin to pass to you. In those days you did not hear him truly, and so it was a wonder indeed that you followed instruction.”

Then he nudged Gimli’s side with his elbow, his teeth bared in his old impudent grin. “I mean, first time you’ve ever followed instructions, eh?”

“Oh I don’t know about that,” Gimli said, scratching at his beard in all innocence. “I seem to remember you telling me not to tip you into the River Running that time when you’d stolen my clasps to impress Fr-”

“All right, good memory,” Lóni interrupted him hastily. “Also shut up, can you follow that one?”

Gimli laughed into his beer.

“You’re dreadful, why’d I miss you,” Lóni grumbled, and he drained half his cup. “I should tip you into a river, see how you like it.”

Taking his friend’s arm, Gimli said with all sincerity, “Lóni, I thank you for gettin’ me out o’ that disaster. It was no fit place for the living, and I was deeply grieved. I never did lose hope for you until that day.”

Lóni softened. “I know, Gims.”

“So what else do they say about your Company?” Gimli tipped back his drink. “These mostly-idiots? Anything interesting?”

“Oh, they think Thorin’s as cracked as a broken clock,” Lóni said, shaking his bristly head. “He used to talk to Bilbo, you know – when he was sleeping and alive and that– all before Bilbo got here. Don’t ask, there’s Mahal and Valar and all sorts involved in the tale, and something about a dreaming-path? I’m not clear on the details, and if you ask Thorin he doesn’t really answer: he just gets dewy-eyed and looks at Bilbo and that’s that. But yes, talked to the walls.”

“Unfortunate!” Gimli said, and he frowned to himself. That was not how people should speak of his mentor, his great guide. Not at all.

“Well, to be fair they also idolise him completely for actually helping with the Ring War and standing up to Sauron and leading the Company and retaking Erebor, so it’s a bit of a mixed bag,” Lóni added.

Gimli relaxed. That was better.

Lóni was still speaking, waving one hand expressively as he went on: “Anyway, they think Dáin’s the best thing since the invention of the adze: defended Erebor against the Darkness, grandfather of Durin, you know how it goes. The Elves they don’t know what to make of. At Khel they either goggle in awe, or avoid. Tauriel gets a lot of duels. She’s very good! I don’t envy you what’s to come your way!”

“I’m sure I will get an education.” Gimli smiled, and thought upon a duel held in a sunlit glade in Ithilien, axe against knives, that had ended in kisses and a mossy bed.

“Stop it,” Lóni gave him a light whack with the back of his hand. “Bad as Thorin.”

“I thank you for the compliment! But there are two Elves in these Halls. Do they not fight Khelebrimbur? Does he not duel?”

“Ach, there’s a tale there, a sad one.” Lóni looked very grim for a moment. “Khel remembers many ancient and terrible wars, the fall of golden cities and mighty Kings. He took part in most of them.”

Gimli was silent, watching Loni’s face. How terrible would those memories be to hold forever preserved in Elven clarity?

“He fought one duel,” Lóni downed the last of his drink, and set his tankard down with a thud. “It was less than twenty seconds before he won, and he was… distressed afterwards. By general assent, he’s the top of the board for all time in our duelling chamber. He will never fight for the position again.”

“Who’d he stand against?” asked Gimli.

“Orla Longaxe.”

Gimli blew out explosively. “Damn. To beat Orla in twenty seconds or less.”

“Right,” Lóni agreed. “But Narvi will murder us in increasingly inventive ways if we pressure him to do it again.”

“I must meet Narvi,” mused Gimli. “I saw her work upon the Doors of Khazad-dûm, along with the words of Celebrimbor. They were the first proof I had ever seen of partnership between Elves and Dwarves.”

 “Are you done with that one? Want another?” Lóni stood, and waggled his empty cup. Gimli shook his head.

“Much as I’d like to, I’m off. Got to stop in on Legolas tonight, then I’m for bed. Dwalin’s backswing is no joking matter. I might have had a lucky win today, but it still gave me a few bruises!”

“Glad you’re not hiding about it now,” Lóni said with approval. “The scurrying and sneaking was particularly odd on you. All right, go off and see your tall glass o’ blond. I’ll drink your share of the barrel.”

“You always did, you lush,” Gimli retorted, and bumped his forehead briefly against his old friend’s head. “Damn, is your head harder these days, or are you just growing dafter with age?”

“Get out, you dullard, before I start a few rumours of my own,” Lóni said, laughing and swiping for him as he danced out of reach. “I’ve yet to pay you back for your name atop the peak of Erebor!”

…

Thorin’s nose was still a little red when Gimli joined him at Gimlîn-zâram. He eyed it guiltily.

“Oh stop,” said Thorin, the corner of his mouth tugging up. “Dáin headbutted me within his first forty seconds of entering the Halls. This is nothing in comparison.”

“Fine, fine,” Gimli said, sighing. “If you say so.”

“I do say so. Now, let us depart. Legolas is waiting.”

As they took their seats, Thorin gave him a sideways glance. “You did well. In case I forgot to say it.”

“I thank you,” Gimli said, and he stared at the pool’s surface as it twinkled and glimmered. “I’m told it’s my mastery and I should claim it.”

Thorin’s soft grunt of approval was swallowed by the stars.

The wind was cold and strong as they blinked awake in Aman, and the night was drawing in. The strange new lands below them opened out, a huge green valley stretching far out to the west. Gimli shivered a little as he found his bearings, though the wind could not possibly harm him. He stood upon a precipice closer to the floor of the valley than to the peak. “A significant view,” he said eventually. “Somewhere in these lands are the Halls of Mahal. He has nearly traversed the Pelóri.”

“Alone,” Thorin said, folding his arms. The wind tugged at locks of his hair, and Gimli could feel it doing likewise to him. “That is an impressive feat.”

“It came close to ruin,” Gimli said, his lips tightly pressed. “Where is Legolas? Ach, why does he squirrel himself away where I cannot see him at once? Always sets my heart upon a spike, that.”

“Be grateful you can steer the pool at all,” Thorin said. “I have had some… interesting interludes due to its capricious nature.”

“We share a name. Perhaps it likes me better.”

“Perhaps it wishes to rid itself of you faster,” Thorin retorted, smiling broadly.

“Want an eye to match the nose, my King?” Gimli said, laughing in response. It felt better than it had in some time.

“Fine talk, my Lord of Aglarond!” Thorin cuffed him around the ear, warm and comfortable. “Come, let’s find him.”

It was the work of a few tense minutes to spot Legolas, wrapped in his grey cloak and with his hood drawn down. He was so closely swathed that he seemed nearly invisible against the stones, only the bright Elven eye-shine gave him away as the sun slipped over the horizon.

“Something’s wrong,” Gimli said at once, when they finally laid eyes upon him. “He’s hurt.”

“Hurt?” Thorin frowned. “Legolas, are you injured?”

Legolas blinked slowly. His pupils were tight and hard with pain. “Aye,” he said at last, his voice slowed and deepened from its usual quick light tenor. “My leg. I have gashed it wide upon the edges of the slate. Master Bofur warned me of such! But I have cleaned it and bound it as best I may. I can do more for it when I reach the valley.”

“Hold, Gimli,” Thorin ordered him, his voice firm. “Is the cut deep, Legolas? Have you cut through muscle or tendon?”

Legolas shook his head. “I am not Aragorn, nor am I Tauriel. I do not have learned knowledge of the workings of the flesh: I can but administer a battle-dressing, such as it is. It seems ragged and deep to me. I think I have washed it enough. I cannot spare more of my drinking water.”

“You’re nearly there,” said Gimli, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. “You’re almost there – Ghivasha, can you bear weight upon it?”

Waiting for Thorin to pass on his words had never felt so long.

“I believe so,” Legolas said, his head drooping. “I will not be able to carry the planks further. I am weary after two weeks of this, and I need true-sleep again. Another day should see me at the foothills. Pray Elbereth that there is a clean stream there.”

“We can scout,” Thorin said at once. “We did so before, during the Ring War. I will set my nephews to the task, for they have the keenest eyes and are the fastest besides. Tauriel and Khel may also know more, though I believe they have told us all they remember.”

Gimli shot him a grateful look.

“Gimli, do not fear,” said Legolas, lifting his head laboriously and giving the air a tremulous smile. “The hardest journey is nearly done with, and it has battered me but I am not defeated. Then I shall go west, west to the stumps of the Trees, and then north. To you.”

“Not if you’ve a dud leg, Legolas,” Gimli fretted. “How can you lower yourself down the cliff with it?”

“I will drive in the anchor bolts I have left to the underside of this precipice,” Legolas said. “There are three. I will tie my harness to them and lower myself to the foot of this cliff. It is the most challenging of them that I have yet to face. I have seen a shallow way curving down below, and I shall follow it and be easy with my wound. Too, there is a sign also; a great hole, left by Celebrimbor’s auger. I will make for it, and then I will be done with this place for all time. These mountains surely serve their purpose! No single Elf can make this crossing without help. I am glad I have yours, all of you.”

“I am not sure I like this plan,” Gimli said. “My heart misgives me. What if the precipice should crack and slip? All your bolts will be spent.”

“Have faith, Gimli,” said Legolas, and he reached out with a long hand as though caressing the far-distant stars to the west. “I have made it this far. I will not fall.”

“Easy to say, less easy to do!” snapped Gimli.

“We have faced impossible odds before, you and I,” Legolas murmured. “Estelio han. Estelio ammen.”

“Ge estel,” Gimli retorted, and his hands clenched, unclenched, clenched. “Ge al-estelio i aeglir.”

“Westron!” Thorin said, somewhat sharply. “Both of you!”

“I said I trust him, not these bedamned cursed mountain peaks,” Gimli said. His mouth felt dry and sandy.

His brow drawn, Thorin studied him for a long moment. Then he turned to Legolas. “Gimli has not been idle, you will be pleased to hear.”

“Oh?” Legolas’ eyes brightened. “Tell me. I would welcome better news, to distract and divert my mind from this leg. What have you been up to, meleth nin?”

Gimli was taken aback by Thorin’s change of subject. “Surely that’s not important.”

“Tell him,” said Thorin, and he smiled hard at Gimli, implacable and indomitable as ever he was, for all his softer manner in these days. “Tell him or I will.”

The memory slammed into him – the Paths of the Dead, Thorin’s ultimatum – and Gimli gave Thorin his blackest glower. “You absolute bastard, Oakenshield, must you put it that way?”

“Afraid I must, Silvertongue,” he said, inclining his head in a mocking bow. “Go on! I will act as raven.”

“Damn.” Gimli stumped over to where Legolas lay bundled, and flopped heavily beside him. With a final scowl at Thorin (who appeared quite pleased with himself), he cleared his throat. “I’ve made you a necklet, my heart. Emerald for your green leaves, set in silver. My Aunt Dís helped me with the setting, for it is still not a task I find easy. I’m working upon a matching earring, but you’re to let me know if it is too heavy for you. I remember the last I made you!”

“Elven ears do not carry as much as Dwarves’ ears, and for good reason,” Legolas agreed. “It sounds beautiful. I will be proud to wear more of your work.”

“It will not be sufficient to match your beauty, but then, what would?” Gimli sighed. “I’ve begun dancing with my grandmother also – Haban, you recall.”

“A Firebeard trader, an axe-dancer of note,” Legolas said, smiling. “I am so happy for you, Gimli, that you have met her at last. Is she like to your imaginings?”

“Better,” Gimli said, leaning back and stretching out his legs. Folding his hands upon his belly, he watched the sky turn from deepest blue to black. “Her accent is the thickest I’ve ever heard! She can spin and throw that axe so deftly it is as though I watch a fish leaping in a river. She asks me to call her Nan and treats me like a Dwarrowling child. I prefer that, I think, to all the whispers.”

“Whispers?”

“I am apparently a figure of some prominence in the Halls,” said Gimli sourly. “I wish it would stop. I am struggling to adjust as it is without all the staring and pointing.”

“Meleth, then you are not content?” Legolas sat up. “But your kin are with you, and-”

“My kin have been true as gold,” Gimli allowed. “I am as content as I can be, knowing that you are in danger and that I cannot be there with you.”

“In other words, he has been a wreck,” Thorin added after he passed this on. “Dwalin and I had to drag him from his workroom and force him into an unreasonable duel just to get him to relax again. He has barely picked up his axe, for all that he longs for it.”

“Thorin!” Gimli growled.

“Gimli!” he retorted. “The truth of it, now.”

“Ah,” said Legolas. “He objects to my knowing. Gimli, do not hide yourself away! Though we are apart, I am always your husband and I want to know your struggles.”

Gimli’s hands tore through his loose hair. “How in Mahal’s name can they compare?!”

“And because I toil upon a mountainside, this somehow erases all the difficulties you must suffer as you deal with your death?” said Legolas, his jaw rippling. “We have spoken about this before, Gimli.”

“I know, I know,” he groaned, and scrubbed roughly at his face with his palms. “I am sorry, diamond-heart.”

“Tell me, ridiculous Dwarf,” said Legolas, soft and yearning. “Ridiculous, proud, stubborn Dwarf – oh, if I could but hold you now!”

“All right.” Gimli pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes. “T’is true that Thorin and Dwalin took me to the duelling chamber – I had fought there before, was tricked into a duel upon the second day, but I had no wish to go back. It felt churlish and selfish to do so while you laboured amongst these terrible rocks.”

“Gimli, you love your axe,” Legolas said, frowning.

“Aye, that I do,” he said at last. “And this new form of mine remembers it well. But I was too caught in my fears, âzyungelê. I could not take joy in it unless ordered to do so.”

“And how did the duel proceed?”

“Poorly,” grunted Thorin, touching his nose.

“Thorin walked into a stray punch, and I kicked Dwalin,” Gimli said, wincing. “It was… not a satisfactory ending, shall we say?”

“Then you will have to try again,” Legolas told him, his tone confident. “Who do you fight next?”

“Tauriel, so the rumour has it.” Gimli screwed up his face. “I am told she is a fierce competitor.”

“Hm.” A faint smile touched Legolas’ face. “Watch for that spin of hers. And the second knife. She also likes kicking herself away from the walls.”

“No cheating,” Thorin said, holding up a finger.

“Too late, m’Lord,” Gimli said, and grinned at him, as hard and tenacious as Thorin’s earlier smile. “I heard that, no way to unhear it.”

“I could belt you around the ear,” Thorin muttered.

“You mean you’ll try.”

“What else have you done, other than fight, craft and fret?” Legolas said, and his head was beginning to nod. “Do not conceal things to spare me worry. I want to know what I journey towards!”

“I’ve spent time with my mother and my cousins,” Gimli said, and watched as Legolas blinked slowly and repeatedly. “I’ve met many that we only knew as voices upon our long journeys. My cousin Fíli trounced me utterly in a game of strategy. I will have to teach you how to play, for I’d be interested in seeing how you fare against him. I’ve found time for Lóni also, my brother-in-arms in Ered Luin. He is eager to meet you, and I entreat you never to believe a thing he says.”

“Only if you never believe a word Tauriel might give you,” Legolas said and his limbs loosened, though his eyes were tight. “Ahhh, this leg, it throbs like a small heart. It is time for the waking-sleep, Gimli.”

“You need true-sleep,” Gimli objected. “Nay, you need healing sleep!”

“But I cannot find it here, and so it must wait until tomorrow evening.” Legolas tugged his cloak and blankets closer around his body. “I will have rest when I reach the valley floor. For now, I sleep with a watchful eye.”

“Mahal protect you, lad,” Gimli said, low and earnest.

“He always does,” Legolas smiled sleepily. “After all, did he not send you to me?”

…

“Well, hello again.”

Custard wound around Gimli’s legs, meowing and chirruping loudly. She stretched herself up to paw at the leg of his workbench, and he gently pulled back the tiny screwdrivers and files lying upon the felt roll. “Ah, no, lovely lady. These are not toys for you.”

She blinked her eyes one after the other, and then leapt up onto his bench. Her fluffy tail flicked at his face as she walked to and fro, arching her back against him. “Mahal below, lass, you are a pushy one. All right, since you insist I work no more, I shall call this day done.”

Custard made a ‘prrrrllp!’ noise, and followed Gimli from the bench to the large and comfortable chaise he had crammed beneath one of the mirrors. She scratched at the fabric for a moment, before he put a hand over her paws to stop her. “Ah-ah, missy. Not a toy for you either. I can see I will have to find some things for you, lest you make do with mine! Now, let’s be easy for a bit. Come here, little lady.”

He sat and tapped his knee. She came after a cursory inspection of the leg of the chaise, leaping up and kneading at his leg with her strong little paws.

“Now, let’s not be puncturing me,” he chided her warmly. “Everyone keeping their claws to themselves, mind.”

She turned about upon his lap for a while, and then curled into a small, fluffy, rumbling ball. “You’re a love, aren’t you?” he murmured. “What a dear little lass.”

He couldn’t say how long he sat, stroking her back and listening to the deep slow song of the stone around him. He was beginning to feel drowsy by the time the voice spoke up. “You two look very cosy.”

He blinked and jolted, and Custard mrowled in dissatisfaction at the movement. “Eh? Sorry?”

It was Frerin, and he looked very amused. His arms were folded on Gimli’s work bench, and his chin was resting upon them as he grinned at the sight they made. “I was looking for her,” he said. “But I seem to be interrupting a very special moment.”

Gimli tickled beneath her ears. “She keeps seeking me out. Your father said that she’s a comfort to him and to you, and I would not deprive you of her company.”

“No such thing, it’s nearly her dinner time is all,” said Frerin, shrugging slightly. “She’s always poking around, so I usually come find her. She seems to like you.”

“I am a warm lap and a source of good scratches,” Gimli smiled. “Would that all our needs were so clear and easy to obtain!”

“If only,” said Frerin, and his small merry face was solemn, blue eyes shuttered.

Gimli looked down at the cat on his lap. “I am sorry,” he said. “I have monopolised your brother and now your cat. You must find my particular needs irksome.”

Frerin’s eyebrows shot up. “What? No! You think you’re doing poorly, do you?”

“Oh, it’s been a regular breeze, lad,” Gimli said with heavy sarcasm. “Aye, I think I’m floundering about, a vexation to all who know me. I must make a poor first impression.”

“I’ve watched you since you were forty,” Frerin said, bluntly.

Gimli startled again, and Custard stood to rearrange herself, her plumed tail flicking across his eyes as if to show her annoyance. “Me?”

“So I know you pretty well,” Frerin said, and the grin was back. “You think you’re restless and torn? It took Thorin decades to get used to it. He would roar and sulk and fume at the sheer powerlessness of it all, and he still stumbles sometimes. You should have seen him the day you made friends with Legolas! It changes so slowly around here, if at all. Typically you warrior-types never do well at first.”

“You’ve been here a long, long time, haven’t you?” Gimli said, looking at the young-seeming Dwarrow with new eyes. “You’ve seen a lot that you don’t say.”

Frerin winked at him, and pushed away from the bench. “I’m the fastest,” he said. “That means I see it first.”

“I see your meaning clear,” said Gimli. “Though I may be slower to reach it.”

“You’re not so slow as some,” Frerin said, his hands shoving deep into his pockets. “Amad made you a fiddle, yes? I play also. We should try a duet one of these days.”

“That’d be a pleasure.” Gimli said. “Thank you, Frerin.”

“Custard, come,” said Frerin, clicking his tongue. She yawned insouciantly at him, and tucked her head beneath Gimli’s arm. “Saucy thing. It’s dinner time now!”

“Cats are ever their own masters and decide their own needs,” Gimli said with a chuckle. “Come now, little lady. Up onto those dainty feet. Your friend is waiting!”

After some prodding, Custard eventually stood and stretched, rubbing her face along Gimli’s chin. Then she hopped down from the chaise and skittered over to Frerin, her tail waving like a banner.

“Took your time about it, didn’t you, your Majesty?” Frerin said humorously. “Let’s get you fed. You can bother Gimli another day.”

“She’s no bother. I like her here.” Gimli stood and stretched. His legs had gone numb from long inactivity. “She reminds me to pause.”

“Aye,” said Frerin. “That’s why she helps.”

“Come by anytime,” Gimli said, and meant it.

Frerin’s face looked quite young, but his smile was old. “I’d like that,” he said. “Cheers, Gimli.”

…

As good as his word, Thorin had marshalled his nephews to join them in the waters the very next morning. Gimli had not slept well, and he blinked crusty eyes at his cousins.

“Legolas needs to bathe that leg properly, and he cannot do that without clean water,” said Thorin.

“I’ll find it first,” said Kíli confidently. Fíli just rolled his eyes and pushed past him with a hint of the old saunter.

“Did Khel remember any place it might be?” asked Gimli, and he yawned. “Tcch, apologies – I could not quiet my mind last night.’

“Unsurprising,” Thorin said. “Khel remembers a stream, but not where it was, for they were footsore and weary after the ordeal. Let the boys do the searching. Stay with Legolas; you will know if he worsens, for you know him best.”

“I’ll not be able to drop from the sky like a spider on a line!” Gimli said. “But I shall endeavour. At least the stakes are not so high should I slip.”

Thorin looked a little startled. “I had… never considered that. I wonder what would happen.”

“Well, let’s not go experimenting too far,” he said dryly. Thorin hmm’d in response.

When the western slopes of the Pelóri opened out before them, Gimli was blinking in the chill morning air. The sunrise was behind the peaks, and so this leeward side of the mountain range was still quite dark, and the light was steely and thin.

Looking about, he could see the individual canopies of the trees below – closer now in the morning light than he had dared imagine! And there was Legolas, rappelling slowly down the side of the final escarpment. He was using his good leg to brace against the rock-face, and his injured leg dangled and swayed.

“It’s not good,” he said, and he could feel his lips tighten. “That leg pains him more than he would say, or he would use it.”

“What is it with you two and hiding things to spare each other pain?” Thorin said, exasperated. “Have said and have done, my star.”

Gimli ignored that. “He has such strength in him,” he murmured, watching Legolas carefully make the descent. “That must be agonising, yet you would not see it in his face. Only his slow speed gives him away. Alas, for this is not how I wish you to match my steps, my love!”

“He’s nearly down now.” Fíli said, and he jerked his head down at the foothills below. “Kee and I will go seek out water. I’ll call like a barn-owl should I find it.”

“No, I’ll hoot like a barn-owl when I find it!” Kíli said hotly.

Thorin rubbed his forehead. “Why bother? None will overhear you, save Gimli and myself…”

“Besides,” said Gimli. “It’s sunrise. What would barn-owls be doing at this time of day?”

Both his cousins looked stumped for a moment. Then Fíli shrugged and began to pick his way down the path. Kíli was still scowling as he followed after.

Thorin chuckled. “Well put, but Kíli will fume about it, fair warning.”

“Oh I remember,” Gimli said. “I would kick his shins in a temper, and in return he would pull my hair and hide my toys. He never did let go of a slight easily, not until we had thoroughly pummelled each other over it.”

“A true son of Durin’s line.” Thorin smiled at the thought of the two Dwarflings scuffling so long ago. “He pulled your hair?”

“A lot,” Gimli grumbled. “I lost my temper quite frequently as a lad, after all.”

“Just as a lad?”

Gimli tossed his head, though his eyes never left Legolas. “Oh, is Thorin Oakenshield criticising someone else’s temper now? This mine looks to be full of the same ore, my King!”

“Neatly said, Silvertongue, and very disrespectful,” Thorin laughed. “I will wear that label proudly, for it is true enough. Yet my anger has cooled over the centuries, you’ll find.”

“You didn’t flatten me after being punched in the nose, so I’ll believe it. There, he’s nearly to the floor of this ledge.” Gimli blew out a huge breath, the tight snarl in his chest unknotting. “He must retrieve his ropes now. May we go to him?”

“Aye. Surprised you waited this long.”

Legolas called his ropes to him, and they came slithering down to land in a coiled heap at his feet. Hanging it at his hip, he limped slightly as he made his way to where the ledge grew crumbled and the incline gentled. “Legolas,” Thorin tried, and this time he was heard at once.

“Ah, good morning King Thorin,” Legolas murmured, his face drawn with pain and weariness. “Is Gimli there with you?”

Thorin didn’t even bother to protest the title. “Aye, and as fretful as ever. But he is glad to see you, as am I. It is a relief to know that the worst of these cliffs is past, and your journey will hold no more dangers of the body.”

“So there are dangers of the mind ahead, I gather,” Legolas said, and he crawled down the embankment, awkwardly holding out his injured leg. “Is this concerning the lands of Lórien and the Lord Irmo, perhaps?”

“It’s not a subtle hint,” Gimli said with a snort, and he dodged Thorin’s playful swipe. “Aye, I’ll wager that’s what he’s referring to. But you’ve danger aplenty here, for that leg needs physic. You’ve no athelas in your pack, do you?”

“Where can you find athelas in Valinor, Gimli?” Legolas said, humour in his voice despite the ravages of pain in his face. “It is not native to this place. I have some of the tinctures of Elrond. That is all I was able to pack.”

“Told you to take more care when packing, didn’t I?” said Gimli triumphantly.

“Gimli is saying, ‘I told you so’” remarked Thorin, and Gimli stepped on his foot.

“Gimli is a terrible gloater,” Legolas shot back. “I saw the glint of sunlight on water through the trees when I was aloft, but alas, I cannot make it out now. I fear my leg worsens, and I must bathe and wrap it anew.”

“Then let’s get moving instead of standing around makin’ fun of each other,” Gimli said, and he slid down the embankment, planting his feet firmly when he reached the next level. “There’s a spot here for you to stand, Legolas,” he said absently. “You’ll find it easier to reach.”

Slowly they led Legolas down the jagged scree, finding the level places so that the Elf could rest his leg and gather his strength. It took nearly three hours, but at last the rocks gave way to small stubby trees, and then to sprouting grasses and sparse woodland.

“I think we’ve made the foothills,” murmured Thorin, standing up out of his crouched position. “I may not straighten out properly for a week, after that!”

Gimli groaned in agreement.

Legolas was pale and wan, but he limped forward. All his equipment was gone, but for one crampon and his bow, and his brow was beaded with sweat. “Water,” he rasped. “And swiftly! Do either of you have any ideas?”

“My nephews were scouting,” Thorin told him. “They will be back when they find the stream Tauriel spoke of.”

Legolas threw himself to the grass and lay still, his chest heaving. “He doesn’t look good,” Gimli said, and he bit his lip. “That wound may only be opened again, or it may be infected. Perhaps we should bring my Uncle?”

“Aye, if it should need it. First we should see what can be done for it, and if needed I will send the -”

“Uncle!” called Fíli, out of sight and sounding quite annoyed. “I’ve been hooting for the past ten minutes! Come on, we’ve found it!”

Kíli’s voice squawked in indignance. “I found it!”

“Ignore him, I found it!”

“Where is it, more to the point!” Gimli roared back, and both Kíli and Fíli hollered, ‘here!’

“Up, Legolas,” Thorin said gently. “They’ve found water.”

“That was quick of them!” Legolas mumbled. “Good. I hope it is not far.”

“They found it some time ago, evidently. On your feet, Master Elf. There you are,” Thorin coaxed, as Legolas hauled himself upright and braced his weight against a nearby boulder. “Their voices come from the North-west, so that is where we shall strike.”

“Watch your step, love, you are not your usual nimble self at the moment,” said Gimli, wringing his hands. “These tree roots and rocks may seek to trip you. I don’t like the idea of you jarring that leg further.”

“After that climb, I am grateful that a wound is all the Pelóri asks in payment,” Legolas said, panting as he stumbled on. “Oh, where is that stream! My leg feels hot to the touch, and I feel the need for cold fresh water upon my skin.” 

“Soon, sanâzyung,” Gimli soothed him as best he could. “Not far, I’m sure. Step with a will, Legolas, you can do this! Why, I saw you slide down the trunk of an Oliphaunt once; this piddling little wood is nothing to that!”

“I kept my promise well, did I not, Gimli?” Legolas beamed at the open air. His chalky complexion now had two bright spots of colour over the cheeks. “I never did kill another Oliphaunt.”

“And all of Oliphaunt-kind are grateful no doubt,” Gimli said. “A little further! Next foot now!”

“Undayûy! Where!” called Thorin, his hands cupped around his mouth, and the answering calls were far closer this time.

Staggering and reeling, Legolas made his uneven way through the spindly trees and eventually sunk down beside a shallow rush of clear water that burbled over a bed of pebbles and reeds. Frogs winked and puffed their throats at him from the banks. Without a pause, Legolas rolled to his belly and drank from the stream directly, huge gulping mouthfuls, before ducking his whole head beneath the water.

“Think he was thirsty,” said Kíli, rather stunned at the show of desperation.

“Legolas, we should tend to your leg,” said Gimli quietly. “Legolas, my love. Your leg.”

With a whole-hearted groan, Legolas pulled away from the stream edge and sat back upon the bank, hair dripping. He began to undo his harness and unsling his rope and bow with clumsy fingers, and when his fingers reached for his laces both Fíli and Kíli whipped around to look determinedly at the trees.

“Sorry, Gims!” Fíli hissed, but Gimli waved that away. He only had eyes for his husband, and only room enough in his head to worry about that cursed wound. Propriety be damned, anyway.

“Didn’t you two prance about in Elrond’s fountain without a stitch over stone?” Thorin said, amused at their embarrassment.

“That was different!” said Kíli in a very strangled voice.

When Legolas struggled out of his britches, it was clear that the wound had reopened and that the flesh around it was turning angry. The bandage he had wrapped about his thigh was soaked in blood, and had even begun to dry in places. Legolas had to wade into the stream and carefully soak the bandage thoroughly before he could peel it away without causing more damage.

“We’re going to need Óin,” Thorin said, dropping a heavy hand on Kíli’s shoulder.

With a loud sigh of relief Kíli nodded, and Gimli watched with some fascination as the starlight lined his form and then swallowed him from sight. Fíli made a noise of distress, somewhere to his left.

“My apologies to Dwarven sensibilities, but I will bathe now,” Legolas said with undisguised longing as he gazed upon the clear water. He pulled his tunic over his head, and stripped the tattered remains of the gloves from his hands. There were cuts all over the long fingers and a deep one by the meat of the left thumb. At last he was wholly unclad, and he waded cautiously into the little stream to hip-height, finally to wash the grime of two weeks from his body.

Gimli sat by the water’s edge and watched, his throat tight and his chest too small to contain such a vast and piercing ache.

There was rock-dust and rivulets of sweat painted upon Legolas’ throat, and as Legolas cleaned it away the water trickled in silvery patterns against the luminous Elven skin. Gimli wanted desperately to chase that pattern, to draw it with his fingers and tongue. He could see the beat of Legolas’ brave heart in the pulse there, and the line of his collarbone flared out gracefully, the spread wings of a bird of prey.

“You cannot eat him with your eyes, Gimli,” Thorin grumbled.

“Says you,” Gimli retorted, and kept on looking.

Legolas then dived beneath the water, his hair clouding about him in a mist of fine gold filament, before he stood and walked awkwardly back towards the bank. Taking up his cloak, he quickly dried himself with it and hung it upon a branch, before unrolling his pack and pulling on another tunic. He wound a breechclout about himself but did not take up a new pair of hose. Instead he allowed his wound to dry in the warm afternoon sunlight, and lay back against the mossy rocks, his brows drawn with pain and toil.

“Better,” he said at last. “But not yet best, I deem. I do not think the leg is infected, but it has taken a battering and I have done it no favours in my last descent, despite the pains I took with it. I will use Elrond’s balm upon it and hope that your uncle might have some unforeseen remedy.”

“He’s very good,” Thorin said. “What he might say, I cannot guess at.”

“He’ll boss and scold at you,” Fíli said. “He usually does.”

“Aye, true enough.” Gimli looked about the little bank. “Is this where you stay tonight, Legolas? Will you find true-sleep here?”

“I have no wish to go further this day, though the light is good,” said Legolas. “Yes, sleep soon. But first I wait for your kinsman.”

“Thank you, love,” murmured Gimli.  

When Kíli returned with Óin, he had also brought Tauriel with him. Her breath caught at the sight of Legolas’ wound, but she knelt by his side and turned her face to Óin. “What do you know of these injuries?” she asked. “I could heal it, were I in the waking world under the sun. I have the words that can knit this.”

“Might need ‘em lass, for I can see no plant here I recognise,” Óin replied glumly, scratching his cheek and peering about the little wooded glade. “Has he cleaned it out?”

“Aye, with water,” Gimli said. “No medicines as yet.”

“Water’s probably best anyway, though there’s no way to boil it,” Óin sighed. “Shame there’s no clear spirits, that’s best for the lesser dirts that you can’t wash clean. But tell him not to use bloody wine! Waste of wine, that.”

“He has none, why would he bring wine over a mountain-range?” Fíli scoffed.

“Never know what Mirkwood Elves might find important, especially when it comes to wine,” Óin muttered. “Right, he’s allowed it to dry in the air, that’s good. And though the edges are ragged it hasn’t hit anything vital. He needs stitches, frankly, but in the absence of those a good wrap will keep it closed as can be. It’s a damn long cut. Very nasty.”

 “Stitches?” Gimli scooted closer to Legolas to watch the pale face wince, the white-gold eyelashes flutter in discomfort.

Thorin gave them all a frustrated look. “You are all impossible – Legolas, I am sorry for my incoherence in passing along Óin’s words! They switch and change and chatter, faster than I can repeat. Here it is again, more clearly this time. Óin says: He knows none of the plants hereabouts, and so will not have knowledge of their healing value. To dry it in the air was a good choice. The wound will need stitching, if you have the necessary tools. If not, you will have to wrap it well and diligently. You have not struck any critical part, but the edges are ragged. Water is suitable for cleaning it."

Legolas had been nodding along as he listened to Thorin’s words. “I have thread and needle, and I have spoken already of Elrond’s tincture,” he said. “I will use both. I have not the energy to attend it now, I fear. I will see to it tomorrow.”

“Then we should leave you to rest,” Tauriel said. “I wish I were able to attend this for you, mellon nín. My heart sings that I should be reunited with my friend again! A strange fate, when you so fiercely argued with me that the concerns of Dwarves were none of ours.”

If Thorin’s voice grew a little sour as he relayed this, Gimli couldn’t really blame him.

“Do not bring up my former foolishness,” Legolas said, in his most lordly tone of voice. “That was before I knew Gimli.”

Tauriel laughed, musical and tinkling. “Do I step beyond my place, my Prince?”

Legolas smiled. “Never, my friend.”

“Elves,” Óin grunted. “Right, if that’s all, Thorin, I’m off. I was in the middle of a very nice meal. Hrera and Bilbo bossed everyone out of the kitchen, and if you’re lucky there’ll be some left. I doubt it though. Hard luck, lads!”

Fíli looked utterly woebegone as Óin vanished in a haze of starlight, and he turned to Gimli with a serious face. “Cuz,” he said, his jaw tight, “I hope you know what you owe us.”

Gimli smiled brightly at them, feeling somewhat sheepish. “Ah, I owe you another match of ‘uzghu ma ziraku, don’t I?”

“And then some.”

Thorin cleared his throat.

“And I probably owe you another fight. Damn it.” Gimli rubbed his bruised arm. “All right, Kee, you probably want my left ear or the like.”

“I’ll settle for an archery contest,” Kíli said, and his answering smile was wolfish.

Gimli stifled a sigh.

…

Though the double-duel had been a fiasco, it seemed that it had slightly unwound the thing that was so tightly twisted inside Gimli. He no longer felt as though he were going to vibrate out of his skin. His worries were still heavy, still horrible to bear - yet he did not stagger beneath them any longer.

Nor did he feel strange to himself, and when he passed his reflection now it no longer gave him pause. That was indeed himself he saw looking back at him, regardless of the extra details. Brown eyes, Broadbeam nose, Durin brow, wide hands, tattoos and mourning marks. All as they had been since his sixties to his eldest days, and none of these had changed in the slightest.

The rest was just… colour and hair, and Gimli had ever been prone to ignoring his hair.

After seeing Legolas asleep, Kíli thrashed Gimli at archery, and Tauriel laughed until tears rose in her eyes. “Nobody likes a poor winner,” Gimli snapped as Kíli danced madly about the room.

“I won! I beat him! Tauriel, did you see!” Kíli shouted, leaping for her and grabbing her in celebration.

“I can only hope I fare as well against him!” she said, smiling. Kíli laid a smacking, impulsive kiss upon her lips, his hands gripping her shoulders.

“You’ll do it, my starlight. Tonight! Gimli, what do you say?”

“Not sure I need to say anything, you seem to have it all in order,” Gimli said, shaking his head and snorting. “I thought it was Aunt Dis against Orla tonight? Or at least that is what Nori has been saying.”

“Nori will turn on a nail if we offer up you versus Tauriel instead, and Mum will be thrilled,” Kíli said gleefully, rubbing his hands together. “I’m off to lay a wager. Do you want to put down a coin?”

“On myself? Sounds a bit conceited, laddie.”

“No, on Tauriel, for when you inevitably lose,” Kíli grinned, and he danced out of the way before Gimli could hit him with his bowstaff.

“You let him pressure you into that,” Tauriel said, leaning back against the wall and leveling him with an assessing eye. “Do you truly wish to contest against me tonight? I saw your reluctance the other day.”

Gimli glanced at her, and then dropped his eyes to busy himself in the task of unstringing the borrowed bow, shelving it carefully on the rack. “I was reluctant, you are not wrong. Yet my teacher and my guide both knew me better than I knew myself, for my cares were eating holes in the fabric of me and I did not know it. I felt better for it after, and more myself – though I truly regret the pains it cost them!”

“They were most persistent,” she mused. “I did not understand why. Now I see it plain.”

“We tend to be pretty dogged, as a rule,” Gimli said, and smiled. “Legolas did not care for that at first.”  

“I imagine not!” she said. “He has always preferred to be the most tenacious person in the room!”

“Tonight then, Lady?”

“Tonight, my Lord,” she said, with a neat little bow, and he harrumphed at the title.

“Fine, I will try to mend the habit!”

When she had left the room, Gimli stood in the archery range for a small while, thinking upon the conversation. Then he spun on his heel and strode for the workshops. “All right,” he told a startled Thorin as he threw open his door. “Teach me to blacksmith.”

Thorin stood slowly. “Really?”

Gimli scowled. “I said so, didn’t I? Please, show me how to do this, Thorin. I’ve wanted to know a better way ever since Master Garin shooed me out of his smithy as a hopeless case. Gimrís mocked me for days.”

“Not hopeless,” Thorin said. “Overtrained, perhaps.”

“Will you teach me?”

“I offered before, and the offer stands,” said Thorin, leaning his hip against his bench. “What brought on the change of heart?”

“Oh, a few small things, nothing of nose,” Gimli said dismissively. Then he flinched. “I mean! Of note! Nothing of note!”

Thorin then proved that he was still the possessor of the mightiest glower known to Dwarfkind, and Gimli hurriedly made himself scarce.

…

Glóin was full of excitement to hear that Gimli had another duel planned for the evening. “Better have a decent dinner, better’nt you?” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Perhaps double it, my jewel. Got to keep his strength up!”

“Glóin,” said Mizim, her eyebrows raising. “I don’t think that’s a concern.”

“You’ve seen Tauriel fight! She’s a whirlwind on legs!”

“A normal dinner,” Mizim said firmly. “Come on, you two. Set the table, Gimli. Glóin dear, can you get the glasses?”

Gimli by now had become used to the surreal feeling, and he went to the sideboard to get the forks and knives without a word.

“Now, ye cannae take your eyes off her,” Glóin said, acting out a fight with his fork as they ate around the small family table in their rooms. “She’s a sly one! She’ll spin one way but attack from the other – and wham, she’s got you, right in the tender bits! She’ll leap about too, so keep that axe ready… are you goin’ to use two? Or just the great-axe?”

“Careful where you poke that fork, da!” Gimli said, grinning. “Don’t do her work for her! And I’d planned for just the one, but if you’ve a smaller I wouldn’t say no to it. She uses two long-knives, does she not?”

“Aye, though she’s been known to swap ‘em out for a sword at times,” Glóin said, and he stuffed a bite into his mouth and chewed with vigour.

“Then I’ll wait to see her choice, and I’ll choose accordingly,” said Gimli. “Great-axe is better against a sword, but I’d prefer two blades apiece if she chooses knives.”

“Any news on Legolas, Gimli-love?” Mizim said, as Glóin frowned over his plate in contemplation.

“He rests now, and will stay that way until the dawn,” Gimli said, and he wiped off his mouth. “The mountain was no fit place for a deep sleep, and so he has maintained himself on reverie alone. The wound is a concern. He says he can stitch it, but he needs the strength and will to take on that task, and weary as he was he could not face the added pain.”

“Poor duck,” Mizim tutted. “I’ll make him something hearty when he arrives, he’ll be worn down to wire. How’s the earring coming on?”

“Ahh,” Gimli tugged his own heavy ear-cuff, embarrassed. “Haven’t done any more on it. I got interrupted by a cat, and then… well. Thorin and Dwalin are going to teach me to blacksmith. That is, if Thorin’s still talking to me.”

Glóin beamed with pride. “Right in the old Royal beak, it was!”

“Da!” Gimli groaned. “Leave it!”

Following dinner, Glóin dug out a small hand-axe and Gimli shouldered his lovely new great-axe, and then all three made their way to the duelling chamber. Mizim fiddled at Gimli’s hair a little. “Should tie it back,” she muttered. “No time now!”

“Get off, Amad,” he said, pulling away. “It’s fine!”

“Now, Gimli, she spent all those years not being able to fuss over you. Let your mother do as she will,” Glóin told him, smirking. “Besides which, it’s not fine. Legolas will see to it when he gets here, I sorely hope.”

“Your Elf will have conniptions when he sees the state it’s in!” agreed Mizim.

“My Elf will be pleasantly surprised that it’s red, I expect, and there the matter can rest,” Gimli muttered.

“Don’t grumble at your mother, love,” Mizim said, peaceably. “You’ve a fight upcoming, and you’d best pray to Mahal it’s not with me.”

The others filed in and took the benches and stands around the centre square. Nori gave Gimli a meaningful look, and surreptitiously signed in iglishmêk: don’t balls it up.

Gimli sent him back a sign that was translatable in any tongue.

Then Tauriel was entering and Kíli strutted in behind her, quite nearly as cocky as Fíli at his most swaggering. He flopped down on a bench to grin at Gimli, and he mimed an arrow shot. Gimli rolled his eyes, and flipped his great-axe in his hand. Kíli’s grin dropped, and he crossed his arms and pouted slightly.

“Two knives,” Glóin whispered. Gimli nodded.

“Battle of the redheads!” said Dáin expansively. “And you’ve another for the judge, for I’m at your service this evening! Arm up, you pair, an’ let’s be having you.”

Glóin handed over the hand-axe and squeezed Gimli’s shoulder. “Oof! Well, p’raps the extra dinner weren’t needed after all!”

“It’s just a match,” Gimli said, bemused at all the hubbub. “Win or lose, what does it matter?”

“Your father prefers the first, dear,” said Mizim. “Mizûl!”

As Gimli took to the centre of the square, he nodded to Lóni, Dís, Haban, Frerin, and Dwalin. Then he sent Thorin a very apologetic look. Thorin’s response was a slight flaring of his nostrils, before he nodded once, heavily, and jerked his chin towards Dáin. Next to him, Bilbo gave him an encouraging little clap.

Gimli smiled, and turned to face their judge. His shoulders bunched in readiness.

“No funny business, mind. Weapons, fists or feet is fine, but keep it a clean duel or I’ll gie ye a thick ear,” Dáin said briskly. “I’ll be watching ye closely, mind! Stay in the boundaries and first to concede is the loser. Right, that’s enough o’ my blether. Begin!”

Unlike a Dwarf, Elves did not stay low to the ground when fighting. Gimli did not bother dropping into a crouch, but immediately raised his great-axe over his head and braced his legs. And just in time, for Tauriel had made a great leap and was spinning down at him from above, her knives flashing. Her blow landed against his blade, and he pushed her back with a huge heave that left her off balance. Gimli followed up immediately with a sideways swing of the hand-axe.

Tauriel ducked under it and whirled, her hair spinning out in a graceful arc behind her as she fell nearly to a squat, one leg extended. Her leading arm flicked, and Gimli recognised the action. Legolas had done so often, and he knew the motion well: the knife was now reversed in her hand, and she would plunge it backwards at him. He began to twirl the great-axe in response, barring the path of her blade. To the other knife he took up his hand-axe and brought it down heavily across her arm. She muffled a cry, but did not drop it.

The roar at this was deafening, and Gimli shook his hair from his eyes and watched as the Elf stood and retreated a few paces. She flipped her knives point-forward again. “You know that one,” she said.

Gimli inclined his head. “Seen it before, and you know where.”

She laughed, her eyes bright and full of the fires of challenge. “Let us see if you know this one also!”

With a flurry of movement, she was diving forward to slide beneath the slivery blur of his axe, her knives striking as fast as cobras as she sped past. But Gimli had guessed which way she intended to move, and had stepped to one side to bring the great-axe around.

Still in a tight, shimmering circle, he brought the axe around as she made her slide, knocking the knives aside from their target: his belly. Then he turned on his heel and slammed the hand-axe down. The first knife fell to the floor with a clatter, and Gimli kicked it away.

“You have indeed fought with Elves before, Master Dwarf,” she said, panting hard.

“Often, and gladly,” Gimli said with a fierce grin. “We worked out a few moves.”

“Just a few?”

And then she was slipping from reach, lithe as a stoat, her remaining knife held fast in her hands. Gimli fell into a waiting pose, his weight shifting easily between his feet as he watched her stalk him.

She timed it well, waiting until his weight was unevenly distributed before she made a new leap that turned into a spinning dervish of confusion in the air, and Gimli had to lean back and squint to see which hand now held the knife.

Before he knew it, his hand-axe was kicked from his grip and fell to the floor with a crash, and Tauriel was pushing the advantage. She used her height to crowd him back, though he fended off any body blows with quick swings of the great-axe.

“Clever, lass!” he puffed. “I wasn’t expecting a kick, but a knife-blow!”

“You gave me the idea,” she said, her smile tight and wicked. “Your last duel was most illuminating.”

“Well, perhaps I’ve a few more tricks to show you,” he said, laughing. “Seen this one?”

And he stepped back out of her attack, and with a quick, showy snap of his wrist he threw his axe in the air. End over end it went spinning high, and despite herself Tauriel’s eyes flicked to follow it, just for an instant.

That split-second of diversion was all that Gimli needed. He slammed his elbow into her side, and turned to follow it with a massive punch to the belly. She folded, gasping, and as she did so Gimli caught his axe and with a final flick held it over her throat.

“Concede?” he said, his chest heaving and his hair everywhere, and damn him he felt alive again. That was nearly as good as fighting Legolas.

Nearly.

She flopped back onto the floor, and though she still clutched her stomach she was smiling. “The duel is yours, my Lord,” she said, with an extra little emphasis on the last word.

The whole room was on their feet, and Gimli shouldered his axe and turned to Dáin. The King was mopping his brow. “That was bloody beautiful,” he wheezed. “Both of you are completely barking mad, o’course! You threw your axe, you maniac – why throw your weapon away?!”

“I’ve weapons enough without it,” Gimli told him with a shrug. “Legolas taught me that. He’s better at hand-to-hand than I am.”

Tauriel rubbed her stomach, wincing as she stood. “I can attest to his skill,” she said, and a rueful look passed over her face. “However, I do not think that Legolas has a punch like that!”

“But what if you don’t catch it?” Dáin exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air in bafflement. “Then you’re disarmed!”

Gimli chuckled, and waved to Haban. “I’ve been practicing with my Nan.”

She waved back vigorously. “He’s not bad for a beginner! But put a little less spin on it next time, you damn near gave yourself a shave!”

“THAT’S my lad!” Glóin roared as Gimli made his way back over to his parents, and Gimli flushed at his exuberance. He’d nearly forgotten what his father could be like when he was overjoyed. “That’s my son, that is! MY SON! The star of Aglarond!” He wrapped Gimli in a massive hug, and Gimli blinked as his world turned to red hair and beard.

“Told you he likes the first one,” Mizim said, her voice lilting with merriment. “And he had money on you with Nori too, and he hates it when an investment turns sour.”

“Never a possibility, jewel o’ my life, I knew Gimli had it all under control,” Gloin said expansively.

“If you want to keep ‘im,” drawled Nori’s voice, “you might try lettin’ ‘im take a breaf one o’ these days.”

Gimli was rocked back out into the light, and the first face he saw was Bilbo’s. The Hobbit was obviously stifling his giggles at Glóin’s display, biting down on his finger to stop them escaping.

“Can I put my axe down now, or what?” he demanded. “And is there another duel tonight, or are Tauriel and I the only competitors?”

“First things first, Master Gimli,” said Dori primly. And he took the chip with Gimli’s name chiselled into it, and moved it into the fifth slot.

Glóin clapped his back, and gave him a misty, crinkle-eyed smile. “Oh, lad.”

“It’s just a training bout?” Gimli repeated, bemused. “What in Mahal’s name is so important about it all?”

Thorin’s voice answered him from behind, and it was almost like old times: hearing that voice but never seeing his face. “With endless years to spare, we must find importance and meaning in the smallest and most commonplace things. Competition is good for us, within reason, and gives us purpose and common goals,” he said, low and serious. “Aye, so therefore it is just a training bout. But at the heart of it we train for Dagor Dagorath, Gimli.”

Gimli’s head whipped around, and he stared at Thorin a moment. “Truly?”

Tauriel sheathed her knives in one smooth movement. “Truly,” she said, and her voice was thoughtful and distant. “Time insurmountable stands between our present and that terrible day. But we shall be prepared.” Then her lip quirked, and she rubbed at the spot where he had elbowed her. “You, in particular, seem exceedingly prepared.”

“It was Dáin’s idea, actually,” said Thorin, and all assembled in their corner looked up to where their cousin sat. Dáin had somehow procured yet another pig – from where remained a bewildering mystery – and was feeding it little bits of carrot and turnip, cooing at it in a babyish voice. “He’s good at that sort of thing.”

“Though he’s even better at hiding that mind of his,” remarked Dís as she approached. “Well done, Gimli.”

“Thank you, Aunt Dís,” he said, and ducked his head so that she might kiss his brow.

“You seem better,” she said, studying him. “And no, I’m not talking about your skill. Something in you has turned a corner.”

Mizim nodded enthusiasically. “I know, Dís dear! I see it too! So much better. Such a relief, I can’t begin to tell you.”

Gimli decided he had had quite enough of his family discussing him and his moods while he stood right there in front of them. He rolled his shoulders and unlimbered his axe. “I’m for bed,” he said. “Legolas will wake with the sun, and I would be with him.”

“And you have a lesson to attend in the afternoon,” Thorin told him, and there was a glint in his eye that Gimli did not quite trust. He felt that perhaps revenge for the bloodied nose lay in his immediate future.

“Would you please come with me to Legolas in the morning?” he asked, trying to sound as meek as possible. He had a feeling he was unsuccessful: he had never been the meek sort. “I’d be grateful.”

“Aye, I swore to it and so I keep it,” Thorin said, and his face softened as he spoke. He bumped Gimli’s shoulder with his own. “Stop looking so timid! Smithing won’t do you any harm, not if you’re prudent and careful with your safety!”

“And I’ve forbidden him from any silly acts of vengeance these days, so your nose is quite safe,” Bilbo added, slipping his arm into Thorin’s and puffing out his chest. “Come along, dearheart. I’ve had sufficient excitement for one day, I do believe.”

Gimli rubbed his forehead. Yes, most definitely time for bed.

As he lay curled up alone, too small and too singular in his Elven-sized cot, he ached with a crushing loneliness. But too, he could feel the hope stirring in him once more.

“Turning a corner, aye. You see much, Aunt Dís,” he mumbled to the wall, and rolled over. “Mustn’t forget to tell Legolas that I remembered about the second knife.”

And he fell headlong into sleep between one thought and the next.

…

The stitching of Legolas’ leg was a terrible affair, and best left behind them, thought Gimli with grim determination. Legolas had been pale and shaking as he pulled the thread through his own flesh, daubing the ointment of Elrond onto the open places with trembling fingers between each pass of the needle. Gimli had been rigid with distress for his Elf, but kept his composure somewhat under his control, if only barely. At least he was able to give encouraging words for Thorin to pass on as Legolas finished the grisly task.

Then Legolas was washing his old clothes and filling his waterskins, and before the sun was two hours old in the sky it was time to move on. With only a slight hitch in his step, Legolas began to make his way over the sprawling foothills that stretched for miles towards the west, out through the forested gorges towards a great plain that lay in the distance.

“The path as described says to make for the plain,” Legolas murmured. “There the air is sweet and the beasts are tame, for they know no evil. Then once over the plains the land opens into a wide valley cupped around with ancient rolling hills: the realm of the Dream-Lord. A week’s journey from thence is the Halls of Mahal. So near, Gimli!”

“At least two weeks to the domain of Irmo, perhaps three with a wound such as that,” Gimli said with a sigh. “Don’t push yourself faster than your body can manage! I miss you desperately ghivasha, but not so much that I would see you hurt yourself further.”

“I did not do so for sport,” Legolas said lightly. “I will be wise.”

“That’ll be a first then,” Gimli said, and Thorin coughed in surprise rather than repeat it.

“He said, ‘that will be the first time’, didn’t he?” said Legolas, pulling a face. “That is exactly what he would say.”

“Aye,” said Thorin. “How he earned his appellation still remains a mystery to some.”

“I can be very charming when I wish,” said Gimli, stung.

“There is a reason your father was sent as diplomat and yourself as warrior to Rivendell, Gimli,” Thorin said, and he chuckled at the look on Gimli’s face. “Now, I’ve seen you in full poetic fettle, Silvertongue, so I’ve no illusions. But neither do you waste your fine words!”

“And now he seeks to defend his title,” Legolas shook his head fondly. “How I wish I could hear the other half of this conversation! How familiar this is too: all those years, through so many dangers, but it was Gimli with your voice in his ear.”

“Does it disturb you?” asked Thorin, and Gimli was surprised to see an uneasy look cross his face. “I would not step into such a place, I assure you, if not for my Gift-”

“Ie! No, no, you do not overstep! I am grateful!” Legolas cried. “I am so thankful for your company, and glad of your voice, King Thorin. I would not be without it. The kindness of heart that prompted you to pass along the words of Gimli, of Tauriel, even the healer Óin..! This is a marvel and a wonder to me, and I shall long remember it. I know you offered out of love of Gimli. But for my sake, I am glad, and full of gratitude. I no longer need to imagine why Gimli loves you so in return.”

Gimli felt his ears heat.

Thorin seemed equally abashed by such praise, and he cleared his throat. “It was not solely out of love of Gimli that the offer was made and kept, lad. One foot in front of the other now.”

Legolas smiled to himself, and did as he was bidden.

Down through the foothills he went, and after a time he began to sing to himself to while away the miles. The trees grew thicker as they descended towards the plain, and behind them the Pelóri loomed tall and menacing, as though angry at his escape. The smell of the loam rose with the sun, clean and rich, and small creatures scurried amongst the branches.

At noon Legolas stopped and put a hand to his leg. “I should rest it, and re-wrap it,” he said, and he heaved a great breath. “I have no wish to halt, not when I have a good speed for the first time in weeks! Ah, but I must be wise, must I not? So. To stop, and eat, and rest, and walk awhile after until nightfall.”

“A good choice,” Thorin said with approval. “Then we will leave you to your meal. Gimli has a lesson to prepare.”

“A lesson? To teach, or learn?”

“Learn,” Gimli said. “I’m to try the art of blacksmithing again, love. Though I hope I may have more luck this time around.”

“You achieved goldsmithing well enough,” Thorin said. “And without a demonstrator.”

“I had a pressing motivation!” said Gimli with a snort. Then he relented, and said more softly, “and a clever teacher.”

“I can at least promise to be more patient with you than Master Garin,” said Thorin.

“You will teach him? He is an apt pupil, if argumentative,” said Legolas, his eyes alight with mischief.

“Why doesn’t that shock me?” Thorin murmured, and he laughed aloud at the look on Gimli’s face.  

…

BLAM!

Dwalin looked down at the sadly-bent bit of steel, and sighed. “Oh boy.”

Thorin scrubbed a hand through his hair, and he was definitely repressing a smile. The bastard. “That brings me back! Well, we must begin from the beginning, I suppose. Try again, my star.”

Gimli hefted the hammer in his hands, his uncertainty no doubt plain to see. “Right. A less powerful swing again?”

“Even less than that,” agreed Dwalin. “It disnae have a head to chop off.”

 “You said to hammer it out flat…” he began, and Dwalin held up a hand.

“Aye, not to smash it to smithereens! You cannae flatten it in one blow. You will need many repeated hits, all at the same weight and power.”

“Don’t think of it as a swing, Gimli,” Thorin said, and he took the hammer from him and demonstrated with a few heavy, measured taps. The steel responded slowly, cooling from a cherry-red glow to dull black. “It’s more like a stamp of the foot than a warrior’s strike. Weighted. Use the hammer’s own mass, rather than the strength of your arm.”

“A stamp, as in a circle-dance!” Gimli said in realisation. “Why did nobody ever say so!”

“I suspect you weren’t listening,” Dwalin said. “Try again!”

Gimli opened his mouth to object, but Thorin waggled the hammer at him. He squared his shoulders and took it.

“Repeated blows, the stamps of a circle-dance,” he muttered to himself, and raised his arm again.

“You don’t need to lift it up that high, either,” Thorin said. “It’s heavy enough without the fall to assist it. Wait – you should heat the steel again, it has cooled a little too much.”

“I don’t feel it the same way you can,” Gimli sighed, and he took up the steel in the tongs and plunged it back into the coals.

“Nobody does, at first,” Dwalin said. “Did you know what to do with a pen the first time you held one? It is training and experience, Gimli, no more than that.”

“Should be hot enough now, take it out,” Thorin instructed, and Gimli did as he was told, wrapping the tongs as he did so. Even the fire-touch would not save his hands from steel this scalding.

As he laid it upon the anvil and lifted the hammer once more, it did not escape his attention that both Thorin and Dwalin had ducked beneath the table.

…

Legolas made excellent time through the foothills and the forest, experienced woodsman that he was, even with his injury slowing his pace. Gimli followed closely, and was often joined by one of his family.

Evidently Ori’s scheduling abilities had been put to use. Gimli decided that he didn’t really want to know. He had more than enough on his plate already.

As they walked, Gimli told him about his smithing lessons, about Custard the Cat and his new fiddle, about the duelling rooms and the massive banquet chambers, about Bilbo’s mushroom plots and the gigantic caverns he had found, sunken lakes filled with shimmering waters that threw light into the air like mist.

“And what will you make in your lessons, meleth?” Legolas asked, using a liana to haul himself over a fallen tree.

“Ah,” Gimli said, and smiled to himself. “That’s a surprise.”

“Secrets now, mir nín?”

“Very much so! I am a very secretive fellow!”

Thorin snorted loudly as he passed this along, and Gimli pulled a face at him.

“You have ever worn your heart in your eyes, Gimli,” Legolas said fondly. “Not only that, but you have never been able to keep a secret in your life, even the ones you should!”

“Thank you!” Thorin said, and turned back to Gimli in triumph. “You see? He agrees!”

“I’m sorry, is my uncle with us today? Or Balin perhaps?” Gimli said, lifting a hand to his ear in an exaggerated parody. “And perhaps I will have better fortune with secret-keeping in death, eh? For you cannot see my eyes now, Legolas!”

“More is the pity,” was Legolas’ response. “The plains! Look, the tree-line is ahead, the vines whisper of it!”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Gimli, peering through the brush. “Do they have anything to say about these plains?”

Legolas had been following the stream-bed through the forested foothills, but as the trees opened out into the grasslands the water died away to a trickle. Filling his skins one last time, Legolas struck out over the plains with an eager step.

“I hope I do not miss my angle,” he said. “These are vast and open spaces. Even the moors of Rohan are not so featureless!”

“Due west,” said Gimli. “That at least is easy enough to follow!”

The days began to fill out into a routine. The mornings for Legolas, lunch with friends or family, afternoons for lessons in blacksmithing or axe-dancing or fiddle practice (and once, pie-making with Bilbo), the duelling chamber after dinner, and lastly a final evening visit to Legolas.

“Are you so committed to your secrecy that you will not tell me more of your lessons?” Legolas said, lying back upon his bedroll and gazing up at the sky.

“I can tell you that I don’t flatten the metal anymore,” Gimli said, with no little hint of pride.

“Then someone has tamed that warrior’s swing at last!” Legolas laughed. “I thought only the tiny hammers and files of goldsmithing could do such a thing!”

“Don’t mention filing,” Gimli grumbled. “T’is a perfectly nice night, no need to spoil it by speaking of unpleasant things!”

In this way the week passed, and by the time the plains began to buckle and fold into a deep crevasse, Legolas had lost his limp.

“Is Elvish healing so swift, then?” wondered Thorin, and beside him Frerin shook his golden head.

“Elrond, I’ll bet.”

“Either way, I am glad it no longer pains him so much. The wound is dry and begins to knit. That’s the part that matters to me,” said Gimli, watching as Legolas carefully picked his way over a jagged bank.

“He must not strain it,” Thorin said, his eyes narrowed. “He may push himself too far too quickly, now that it is mending.”

“You’ve met Legolas,” Gimli said, folding his arms and giving his Elf an arch look. “That he will push himself too far too quickly is a near-certainty.”

“Sounds like nobody I know at all,” Frerin muttered under his breath.

The crevasse led to a deep wooded valley where the trees reached tall and unfriendly, shouldering past each other into the sky. “We near the valley of Irmo,” murmured Thorin. “Be prepared for strangeness.”

“Stranger than my dead husband and his equally dead King leading me across the forbidden lands of Aman to demand entrance to Aulë’s Halls?” Legolas said. “I cannot think of more than that!”

“Stranger still,” Thorin said, his face grim.

“We’re used to a bit o’ strangeness,” Gimli said equably. “At least there will be no boats.”

“You got used to it in the end,” objected Legolas.

“Aye, but not happily. That’s my point!”

He began to play his fiddle along with Frerin and Fíli. Frerin was easily the best player of the three, Fíli was not quite so nimble but had excellent pitch, and Gimli settled into the third position with some relief. Sometimes Thrór would sit and listen, and occasionally he would bring out his little tin pipe and join in. At first Gimli had been hesitant and uncertain before this great, imposing King; a reclaimer of old and a builder of greatness, a figure of much speculation and controversy in Gimli’s day. Yet Thrór was droll and quiet and even rather diffident with them. At first a tin whistle seemed an incongruous instrument for such a Dwarrow to play, but when Gimli heard the jaunty, defiant little songs he could draw from it, he wondered no more.

The valley was ancient, and the very air had a peculiar sense of enchantment upon it. Even the rocks sang old, slow songs that Gimli struggled to hear properly, and Legolas told them that the trees spoke in mysterious ways and mistrusted his presence.

“I do not trust this place,” Thorin muttered into Gimli’s ear. His eyes darted this way and that.

“Nor I,” Gimli said low, and he wished he could put his hand upon the haft of his axe. He felt the need of it very strongly, at that moment.

Legolas pressed through the giant trees, never hesitating nor slacking his pace. Hardy and tireless as he was, even he began to grow lean and worn as he had not since their battle days.

Gimli felt his worry prick at him, and tried vainly to push it away.

As Legolas passed through a dell of flowers, suddenly Thorin cried out and fell to his knees, his hand to his head. Gimli swore and rushed to him. “What is this?” he demanded. “I thought we were safe!”

“Kill him!” Thorin grated, and his wide-staring eyes were glassy and frightened – and ferocious. “Rid the world of him! He should be destroyed!”

“What!?” Gimli took hold of his guide’s shoulders and turned him to see his face. “What do you see! Tell me!”

“Azog,” Thorin snarled, and his face was a rictus of rage. “My sword – bring me my sword!”

Then Legolas howled, a long piercing cry, and his bow was in his hands as swiftly as thought. An arrow was to the string and his face was carven-still. “Step no closer!” he snarled. “You will stay there, beast, and you will not have him!”

“What is goin’ on!” Gimli cried out in confusion. “What do you see?”

“You will be dead the second your blade draws blood,” Legolas said, his voice silky and deadly. “Let. Him. Go.”

“He sees one of the warped creatures of Curunír, its hand wrapped around thy neck,” came a whispering voice that nevertheless held a great heaviness to it. “Yet thy eyes see nothing, Dwarf? Dull eyes, thou must have.”

Gimli stared about him, looking for the owner of the voice. Yet nobody was there.

“A dead Dwarf! Two! And a living Elf once more. A strange party, even stranger than the last,” said the voice again, and it hissed and scratched in his ears. Thorin struggled against his vision, his teeth bared in a growl – or a scream. Legolas loosed arrow after arrow into the woods fruitlessly. “But not mine to manage. I do not have dealings with the dead. That is my brother’s dominion. You belong to Aulë, dead Dwarf. Go you and return to him.”

“Lord Irmo,” Gimli croaked, and he grasped at Thorin’s tunic and hauled himself tight to his side. “I am but one dead Dwarf, aye, you are right. But these my companions are dear to me, and I would have you release them from their nightmares. Please, show mercy!”

“And who are you to ask such things of me?” whispered the voice. “Who are you to step into my lands and beg favours?”

“No-one and nothing,” said Gimli, cold dread slipping down his spine and his hands slippery with sweat. “I am here for one I love, and with one I love, and for them I will risk much. My name is Gimli, son of Glóin, and I am at your service.”

“At my service?”

Gimli blinked. And where there had been nothing but flowers, there was now a tall, slender figure with white hair like a cloud captured and brought to earth. It had eyes as deep as the wells of Khazad-dûm, black and bottomless, and it exuded a sense of unearthly power.

Gimli fell to his knees at once, and pressed his forehead against the grass.

“None have pledged themselves to my service before, Gimli son of Glóin,” said Irmo, a spindly hand stroking his cheek. “And art thou of consequence, small dead Dwarf? Is thy service of use to me?”

Gimli glanced at Thorin and Legolas, and saw that they had been frozen as though pressed between the leaves of a book. “Are they all right?”

“Tenacious!” Irmo pressed a long, spiderlike finger into his forehead, and Gimli squeezed his eyes shut, trembling in fear and awe. “I have done as requested, and their dreams are ended. Yet I am not able to set such a test before thee, Gimli son of Glóin. Thy eyes glance off these visions and feverish fancies of the mind. I ask again, art thou of consequence? Is thy service of use to me?”

“That I cannot answer, Lord Irmo,” Gimli said, and he bent his head. “I am of the Nine Walkers. I travelled with the Ringbearer and the Elfstone. I saw the fall of the Morannon. I was Lord of Aglarond. I am husband to that Elf. I am a son, an uncle, a friend. I dare not presume whether any of this holds meaning to you.”

“Prettily said, Dwarf. Yet thou wouldst dare walk through my lands without my permission. Thou wouldst dare guide this Elf over the piercing cliffs where none may tread.”

Gimli steeled himself. “Aye, that I would dare. And I would also dare to say, Lord, that you know why I have presumed such things. For you have seen this before.”

Irmo’s abyssal eyes blinked.

Thorin collapsed onto the grass, his chest heaving and his head whipping this way and that as he sought his enemy. His face was alight with fury. “It’s a dream, just a dream!” Gimli cried, and he ran to his friend. “It’s all right. He’s not here. You killed him, you killed him long ago.”

Thorin’s voice rasped and shook as he spoke. “It was so…”

“Gimli?” said Legolas faintly, and he was clutching his bow, eyes wide and wild. “Gimli, are you…”

“He’s here,” managed Thorin as Gimli helped him up. “He’s fine, Legolas.”

“Ah,” said Irmo, studying Thorin. “This is the one to whom Aulë gave the gift of dreaming-speech. For thy sake he broke my laws and trespassed into my domain, Dwarf. What reply can you make to me?”

Thorin swayed a little, leaning heavily on Gimli as he drew himself up before the Dream-Lord. “I do not know my Maker’s mind,” he said hoarsely. “But I have been grateful for my Gift. I regret that it has cost you pains, but I would not relinquish it - not even for the Crown of Durin itself.”

“I could take it back from thee,” said Irmo. Thorin’s back stiffened under Gimli’s hand, and his throat bobbed quickly. “But no. I will not undo what has been done. Aulë has sent his apology, and I have accepted. But be mindful, Speaker in Waking Dreams, of how you walk along my paths.”

Thorin wetted his lips, the only sign of his great fear, and he bowed unsteadily. “I thank you, My Lord.”

“Now this one,” and Irmo turned to Gimli once more and fixed him with his terrifying, empty eyes. “Why does thy mind throw off my illusions, I wonder? It is no extraordinary mind. I can see its workings. It is as many Dwarves’ minds are: stubborn and steadfast, prideful and quick to anger, long in endurance and deep in devotion. Ah, but this one is newly fearful! No, this one is newly dead.”

Gimli tried to stop the frantic patter of his heartbeat from rattling his whole frame, locking his legs and the muscles in his arms. “But three weeks have passed since I bade my waking life farewell,” he said, and he was distantly proud that his voice only shook a little.

“Willt thou lead thy husband through the forbidden lands to the Halls of thy forefathers?” sighed Irmo. “I should bar the way, lest you bring a flood. But the test is passed, and I am curious. Thou, Gimli son of Glóin, are a puzzle. If thy service is mine, then tell me: why do thy eyes see clear where others are shrouded?”

Gimli’s throat seized, and he stared helplessly at the great Valar.

Legolas’ gasp was quite loud in the peaceful silence of the glade. Thorin’s fingers dug into his side in shock.

“If you can see my mind, mighty one, then perhaps you may see the answer,” quavered Gimli.

 Those dark holes of nothingness bored into him for a moment that seemed to stretch into years. Gimli trembled beneath them, and even on the Paths of the Dead he had never felt so small and insignificant. “Ah, of course,” Irmo murmured at last. “He made thee that way. Wrote the truth of thee into thy forging, inscribed it into thy bones. A champion of the Khazâd to see the path clear into the New Age. Very clever, Aulë.”

He stepped back then, his grey robes floating about his form like mist. “So. Two of Aulë’s children, with Gifts to set them apart from the rest. A Gift of Speech and a Gift of Sight. And what of the Elf?”

“I have no such gifts,” said Legolas in defiance, as Irmo turned his chilling eyes upon him. “I am a hunter, and I do not give up the chase.”

“Hmmm.” Irmo waved a hand at where the Dwarves clustered together. “Dost thou know what awaits thee? Darkness, and waiting in slow, shadowed peace. There shall be no hunting there. No starlight nor trees. It is not a place for the Firstborn.”

Abruptly, Legolas laughed. “I have heard these arguments before, and they do not daunt me,” he said, with more than a touch of scornfulness in his light voice. “Gimli is there, and King Thorin, and my dear sister Tauriel, and all the wonders of the earth. I am not afraid!”

“Thy Dwarf has been deeply afraid for thee,” murmured Irmo. “His mind rings with the echoes of it.”

“Gimli is a worrier,” Legolas said, and he lifted his chin. “Where he worries, I will be stalwart. Where I falter, he will hold fast as stone. Whether beneath the sky or beneath the earth, we belong together. My arrows do not miss, and his axe always finds its mark.”

“So certain art thou, son of Kings, that you relinquish the bliss that is thy birthright?”

Legolas was unmoving, a tall pale statue of hammered white-gold light, and Gimli was so in love with him he could not breathe. “What bliss is there without him? No, Lord Irmo. Where he goes, there will I follow.”

Irmo smiled at Legolas. “Spoken true, and very like a lover! Very well. Come here, Elf.”

Legolas took four or five quick, graceful steps to Irmo’s feet, and he knelt.

Irmo’s hand shot out, and he pressed that long spindly finger against Legolas’ head. He cried out in alarm, and Gimli nearly burst out of his skin. Thorin had to grab his wrist and haul him back. “Watch!” he said, low and urgent. “Khel told me of this!”

Legolas’ eyelids flickered, and when Irmo took his hand away, he fell sprawling onto the grass and wildflowers. “I saw them,” he gulped. “The Trees, the Trees! And then, just as Tauriel said…”

“You saw the path!” exclaimed Thorin. Gimli deflated in relief, and when he could tear his eyes away from Legolas, Irmo was gone.

“He said -” Legolas broke off to rub at his face with nerveless, trembling hands. “He said we were well deserving of each other. That mine was the gift of persistence, for what is a hunter without it?”

“Oh my love, amrâlimê, sanâzyung – Legolas, my Legolas!” breathed Gimli, nearly boneless as all his fear and awe left him at once. “And to think, he doesn’t even know just how bloody-minded you can be!”

Thorin sank to the ground, his head cradled in his hands. “I am not repeating that,” he muttered. “And I need a drink.”

“One week, Gimli,” said Legolas, and he rose to his feet in a swift motion, turning his face to the Northwest. “Just one week. Then I will be home.”

…

“Bevel the edges now,” Dwalin said, pointing at the longer side. “You’ll want them curved, I’m guessing. So take your time with it, all right?”

Through his protective eye-shields, Gimli glared at the steel which he had carefully folded over and over. “Bevel the edges. And I do that how?”

“With a hammer,” Dwalin said, his mouth twitching. “Aye, I knew you’d give me that look. Get on with it, lad, and stop letting it cool.”

“You are improving,” said Thorin, giving him an encouraging little pat on the shoulder. “You’ve got it folded really well. They’ll be tough as boots once they’re quenched in oil.”

“In oil?” Gimli glanced between Dwalin and Thorin. “Really? What does that do?”

“The water-quenching adds the strength, and the oil locks it there,” Dwalin said. “No, don’t look at me! Look at your work! Damn, Gimli, you’ve eyes everywhere except on the red-hot bit o’ metal in your hands? Do you want blistered fingers?”

“I’m improving,” Gimli said with a lofty little sniff, and he bent to it once more.

“Just one edge, though,” Thorin said after a moment of watching Gimli carefully tap away. “You want only one bevel, yes?”

Gimli stopped, frowned, and then rotated the steel upon the anvil. “Right again. Ah well, a few mistakes add character, yes?”

“Doubt they’ll be lacking in that regard,” Dwalin murmured. Thorin shushed him, but the same laughter lurked in both their eyes.

“What have you chosen for the handles?” asked Thorin, as Gimli smoothed out the first edges and then began to heat the second piece of folded carbon-steel. “His old set were white, as I recall.”

“Aye, and I will not try to emulate them, for they belonged to his father,” Gimli said, and the sweat was beginning to run down his temple and into his beard, itself braided close and tucked carefully away behind a leather apron. “I have not yet decided. Something will present itself, no doubt.”

“You’ve time enough,” agreed Dwalin.

“One week,” Gimli said softly. “Just one week. It feels like years and minutes all at once.”

“Play to your strengths, but don’t be afraid to try something different,” Thorin said with a shrug. “I was poor at decorative work until I began to craft in the Hobbitish style.”

Dwalin muttered something under his breath. Thorin shot him a glare.

“That sparks an idea! Shut your gob, Dwalin, that was good advice!” Gimli chided him, and the second pointed bevel slowly took shape under his hammer.

He was beginning to enjoy this, despite his ineptitude. It felt good to watch the metal respond to his efforts. Perhaps he might make an adequate smith after all.

“Oil quenching now,” Dwalin said. “If you’re satisfied with it, o’ course.”

Gimli took up both the pieces of steel and dropped them into the barrel of oil Dwalin indicated. They sizzled as they sank to the bottom, and Gimli peered in after them.

“How long do they stay in there?”

“They’ll cool quickly. That’s not hot oil, lad,” said Thorin. “You’ve the fire-touch, you could probably fish them out bare-handed.”

“And get oily hands? I’ll pass, thank ye kindly,” Gimli snorted, pushing the eyeshield up onto his forehead. “Ugh, this is sweaty work, as bad as a day of training!”

“If that’s so, perhaps I didn’t work you as hard as I ought,” Dwalin said with an ominous smile. “Ready for a rematch, my student?”

“Oh no!” Gimli wagged a finger at him. “No, Dwalin, I’m done for today! Not content to batter and boss me about in here, you wish to do so in the square? You’re a cruel Dwarrow, you know that?”

Dwalin scratched at his beard absently. “It’s been said.”

When Dwalin had gone, Thorin watched Gimli tidy up the workspace, clearing away the tools and sweeping the forge-plate free of soot. “Irmo,” he said at last.

Gimli stilled. “Aye. He could see it.”

“I should not be surprised,” Thorin mused, his tone heavy. “Mahal has spoken of this before to me. Our names are written when he gives us breath. Yet why should yours provide such protection against the spells of Irmo? Our dark-names are not a prophecy. They are an act of love and creation.”

“My mother once called it a promise,” Gimli remembered, wiping off his hands with a rag. He kept his face turned down, watching the toes of his boots. “Mahal’s promise to us, that we would always know who and what we are.”

“My father told me the same.” Thorin shook his head. “Strange. I could see Azog as clear as I see you now. All my anger came flooding back to me, fresh and raw, as though the centuries between had never occurred. As though I did not cut him down with my own sword. It was real, and it was overpowering. I could not resist it. Why then were your eyes unclouded?

Gimli thought on it. “I never did work out why I could hear you so clearly, when nobody else could,” he said slowly, as though testing each word as to whether it could hold his thoughts. “I didn’t think much of it, beyond my gratitude. There was too much happening, at first, and by the time the danger had passed it had become normal to me. And then, when I started to hear Frerin, and Kíli, and Uncle Oín and Balin and all the rest…”

He broke off and put down his rag. “I think our Maker might have had a larger plan from the beginning, and that you and I were but a part of it,” he said at last. “Did he build this ability into me, as Irmo said? For it is none of my doing. I am a Dwarf no better than any other. I have no great strength that you lack, my King.”

He looked up. Thorin was regarding him with hooded eyes, but his mouth was soft and fond. “Yes you do, you fool,” he said. “You do. You made me smile again, when nothing else could.”

A huge wash of affection rose up within him, and Gimli reached out and caught Thorin around the arms, dragging him close and wrapping him in a hug. “Then we are both fools. Where would I be – who would I be - if I had not known you?”

“You smell like a foundry,” Thorin murmured, though his embrace was fierce. “Go wash, son.”

…

Legolas lingered for a time at the ruins of the trees. Each stump was easily the diameter of the Lonely Mountain, and their withered remains were shot through with veins of white and gold. “Laurelin and Telperion,” Legolas said reverently, and he reached out to stroke the ossified and craggy surface, the living wood turned to stone. “Long ago, the light of the world was caught in their branches.”

To Gimli, the huge boles were worthy of awe. But they also filled him with an unspeakable sadness. For here was the grave of the ancient world before it knew pain and sorrow.

The valley had spilled out into a rolling landscape, carved out by slow and sleepy rivers over the eons. No change had come to this land, not since it was first brought forth from song. The ground all about the trees was blackened and sick, and it brought Legolas grief. “The poison of the great spiders,” was all he would say.

Gimli shook his head warningly when Thorin sent him a questioning look.

From the trees, Legolas struck out to the North. There were fields about them, filled with flowers that stood as high as one of the tall Men of Gondor, their faces tipping up to the sun. The air was filled with the hum of busy insects.

And through it all Legolas strode, never faltering, his face turned to his quarry as unerringly as an arrow himself. His cheeks were lean and travel-worn and his shoes were growing thin. Nevertheless, onwards he pressed over the rolling dales and around ancient sunken karsts.

Past the fields lay massive hedges, wild and thorny and brambling. It cost Legolas some scratches, but he made it through. “At least you might have found some blackberries for the pains they gave you!” Gimli said, giving the hedge a critical look.

“Don’t blame the brambles, Gimli! It is not their fault, and the time is not ripe for blackberries!” Legolas laughed. “Summer is long gone! It is near mid-autumn now, if not past.”

“But you love blackberries,” Gimli said, folding his arms and scowling at them. “And it is warm enough still for midsummer! The least they could do is spare you one or two. They took their payment out of your skin!”

“I do love blackberries,” Legolas agreed, pulling himself past the last thorny tangle. It grasped at his clothes, but let him go after some inspired wriggling. “Yet I do not resent their tithe. Oh look! These must be the gardens I saw in Irmo’s vision, the ones Tauriel spoke of! But these do not look like any garden I have ever known.”

No cultivated lawns or tame little cottage-beds lay here. There were no neat and disciplined herb-patches or vegetable plots, such as a Hobbit might tend. This garden ran feral and flourishing, sprawling and twisting amongst itself in wild abundance. It was a raging profusion of nature, a ferocious roar in the form of green, growing life. No plough would dare open this ground. No trained and docile farmlands could stand amidst this merciless riot of colour.

“Yavanna’s gardens,” whispered Thorin, and Gimli’s heart skipped a beat in its rhythm. This was the realm of the wild spouse of their Maker. This was the heart and crux of her, the Danukinh, the Green Lady.

No wonder she had been the progenitor of the Ents.

“Tauriel and Khelebrimbur did not encounter her,” said Thorin. “Perhaps we will also pass unnoticed.”

“I would be honoured to pay my respects to Kementári,” Legolas said, looking upon the riotous celebration before him in undisguised delight. “Do you hear, Gimli? They sing such fierce, joyous songs!”

“For all that you have tried to teach me, meleth nín, I cannot hear it,” said Gimli. “I leave such songs to you.”

“You cannot fail to hear this one, Gimli,” cried Legolas, his face alight with wonder. “Happy am I that I have seen such things!”

“We must keep on due north,” said Thorin. “The Halls stand at the northernmost edge of these Gardens.”

“Like a lodestone I shall be,” Legolas promised, and he began to pick his way through the rampage of plants with the utmost care.

“Three days,” Gimli said, and looked to the sky. The sun now beat feebly with the last warmth of the year, and there was a crisp edge to the air. “Only three days at most. But mind that leg!”

With a renewed will Legolas pushed on through the clinging vines and unruly jungles, through uncontrolled thickets of grasses grown huge and tall as trees themselves, and over swamps full of mammoth sprawling roots that surged from the water’s edges, their bowing domes like the roofs of living caves. He slept when he was able to find a space that was not overgrown, unwilling to crush any of the Green Lady’s work.

At last the anarchic hedonism and excess of the gardens began to thin and blur, and on the third day Legolas shouldered his pack and looked up over the treetops at the gentle incline of a hill in the near distance. There were burrs caught in his hair, and his clothes were soiled and torn. The brambles and spikes had drawn scratches on his arms to add to the deep cuts left by the Pelóri.

“There it is,” said Legolas, soft and eager. “There you are.”

“We’ve yet to make it to the door, and we can only hope that Khelebrimbor’s horn still lies without the walls,” said Thorin - with characteristic pessimism Gimli rather thought. “We can be there by nightfall if we hurry.”

But Legolas had stilled, and was staring into the branches above. “Do not move,” he murmured. “Do. Not. Move.”

“What can see us here?” Gimli said, bewildered, and he craned his neck to see what had so entranced his elf.

Green eyes, acidic and elemental, bored into him from the darkness of the canopy.

He dropped to his knees at once, pressing his head against the ground. “What-” said Thorin, completely baffled, but Gimli grabbed him by the tunic and hauled him down beside him.

“Shh,” breathed Gimli, as soundless as he could possibly speak whilst still being heard by another. “The Danukinh.”

Thorin immediately bowed his head, his eyes clamped shut.

“A green leaf lost in my forests,” said the Danukinh. Her voice was a profusion of sharp tendrils, all caressing the ear with a sweet sting. If Mahal’s voice was the sound of thunder buried deep beneath the earth, then this voice was the patient, sibilant sound of roots winding about and breaking through rock. Gimli shrank back. “A green leaf blowing adrift. What do you do here, green leaf? Are you here for wisdom? Have you come for power?”

“No, Lady Kementári,” said Legolas, and he bowed in regal fashion and then stood tall and proud and keen-eyed before her. “I do not linger here. I am but travelling through your gardens, for I have business with the Halls of Mahal.”

“Mahal. That is what the Dwarves name him,” The vines tangled together, and then a woman stood in their embrace, great and tall of stature, the vines shifting snakelike over her body as she moved. “And is your business with my husband, or with a Dwarf?”

“My business is chiefly with the doors,” said Legolas, holding himself still, though his face shone with reverence and amazement as he looked on her. “I wish to enter.”

“Do you.” She floated closer, and trailing roots gripped the forest floor from her hem and train. “You are young, green leaf. Hardly sprouted, and yet you already wish to fall?”

“No!” Legolas said. “Please, Lady, let me pass. I have taken no fruit nor broken a bough in your domain. Truly I hold you in the most reverence, for I am a Prince of Greenwood and a friend to Fangorn. Your creation stands high in my heart, and I have dedicated myself to it! Only one holds a greater place, and it is for that one that I travel here.”

“To the Halls of the Dwarven dead,” she said, her voice smooth and sinuous as the delicate curl of a fern unfolding. “In the dawn of the world I sought to protect my creation from them, those wood-hungry creatures with their axes and fires. My Ents dwindle, and soon the trees will be without a shepherd to guide and guard them. The Elves, I thought, would at least care for the forests in their stead.”

“I do,” Legolas said. His head bowed to her. His hitched breathing was the only outward sign of his great awe and fear. “I spent decades restoring the woodlands of the Ithilien, poisoned by Sauron’s malice. I hope this pleases you.”

She pinned him with that unnerving acidic gaze. “Hmm. Yet a wood-elf of the Greenwood, a friend of Fangorn and the restorer of the highlands will abandon his care to be with Dwarves?”

“He will, if he is married to one of them,” Legolas said, straightening. He met her eyes. “You love the one who gave them life. Would you be parted from him?”

She was silent a moment, the vines undulating slowly about her. Then she looked full upon the two watchers, and the deep green of those eyes burned like the heart of summer. “Which of these is it? The dark one, or the red?”

Gimli’s blood froze in his veins, and he could hear Thorin’s swift intake of breath.

“The red,” said Legolas, and yearning flickered for an instant over his face. “The one with hair like a fire. The taller one with dark hair is his kinsman.”

“I have never approved of my husband’s children,” she whispered, and she walked unblinking towards Gimli to stand over him. He trembled and ducked his head to the ground again. “All their works must be fed with the corpses of my own. Is this one any different?”

“Fangorn himself gave him leave to walk within his woods!” Legolas said, his voice rising in fear.

“The Eldest has a soft heart, though his roots are strong,” said Yavanna. “Rise, Dwarf. I will not harm him, green leaf. Stop your quivering.”

Gimli scrambled to his feet, and genuflected in the most formal manner he knew. “Great Danukinh,” he forced the words to come out. “Forgive me my presence here. I follow my husband.”

“And he in turn follows you,” she said, and her sigh was the wind through the branches of a wintery wood. “No doubt. No doubt. Oh, I shall be having words with Aulë over this matter. Does he know of your approach?”

 “Aye, he knows,” Gimli said, and he flinched as her eyes turned back to him. “I spoke to him when Legolas set out over the Pelóri. Other Elves have made the perilous journey, and we walk in their steps.”

“Then my words will not come as a surprise to him. Perhaps he expects them even now,” said Yavanna. Her hand reached out, the skin whorled like bark and the fingers as narrow as twigs, and she tipped up Gimli’s chin. “I do not see what is so remarkable about him.”

Gimli tried to ignore the small creeping vines that wound about locks of his beard, even as his skin crawled and cried out for release.

Legolas smiled. “Neither did I, at first.”

The hand released Gimli, and he fell to panting and trembling. Wordlessly Thorin steadied him with a hand to his back.

“You are within fifteen miles of my husband’s house,” said Yavanna, evidently having made up her mind. “I will speak to you again, green leaf. I wish to know more of you; an Elf of my realm who gives himself to the stone. Will you permit this?”

“I would be overjoyed!” Legolas cried. “Lady, you do me too much honour!”

“Then go.” The vines began to uncoil, and the form they held dissolved into the air. “Tell Aulë to expect my coming, Dwarf. Thy father has much to answer.”

Then she was gone. Around them, the gardens rustled.

Gimli knuckled his eyes, his shoulders juddering and his breath beginning to stutter in and out in a more natural rhythm. “Steady,” Thorin said. “Are you all right?”

“I’ve had enough of meeting Valar and Valier,” he mumbled. “They’re bloody terrifying.”

“Try Manwë for terrifying,” Thorin said dryly. “And Bilbo yelled at him.”

“Bilbo must secretly be a maniac,” Gimli grunted, and he scrubbed his hands over his face, pressing hard. His skin was covered in a cold sweat. “Great Durin’s beard, she’s going to come visit us!”

“Better you than me,” Thorin said beneath his breath.

“Fifteen miles,” Legolas said, and he hoisted his pack over his shoulder. “I must find the horn.”

“Don’t run!” Gimli said firmly. “That leg’s still not fully healed!”

The knoll rose up ahead, and the canopy began to break apart as it neared. Legolas began to walk swifter, and then swifter still, until he was running through the last of the trees to stand before the great house set into the hillside.

It was grey and squared, and there was no door nor wall. The front surface was smoothed, and seven giant pillars were set into the space where a door should stand, all carved into great and fantastical shapes that slid away from the eye. All around it the gardens seethed and frothed, but around the stone house there grew only grass and flowers, little more than knee-height on a Hobbit. Legolas smoothed the walls with his palms, pressing slightly. “You are inside,” he murmured. “This house goes deep into the earth, and deeper still. Within are all the Dwarves that lived, and you are with them.”

Thorin touched Gimli’s elbow. “I’ll get Khel. He’ll remember where he opened the Doors.”

“I will search for the horn,” Gimli agreed, and he watched as Thorin was gathered up in a blaze of white fire.

Legolas walked the perimeter of the house, his hand trailing along the stone as he went. It was truly gargantuan, and seemed to be carved all out of the one same rock. No masonry nor mortar held this place together. All was one seamless and uninterrupted piece of stone. “No horn,” Legolas murmured as they reached the place where the house disappeared into the hill. “I did not see it. I will walk the boundary again. Perhaps the garden has swallowed it.”

Gimli followed behind silently, full of such anticipation it felt as though his whole body buzzed with it.

Legolas turned about again, and he began to retrace his steps. His eyes scanned the ground, flicking this way and that. “Not here,” he said, and frustration began to lace his tone. “Nor here either!”

“The pillars,” said a voice that Gimli did not know. “It will be at the pillars, if it is anywhere.”

He looked over to see Thorin standing with two new figures: a tall Elf, taller than even Galadriel, with long dark hair and mournful grey eyes. A dark-skinned Dwarrow stood beside him, her braided hair pulled back into a tail. It was the Elf that had spoken.

“Khelebrimbur,” said Gimli, and then found himself lost for words.

“Just Khel,” said the new Dwarrow. “You’re Gimli: I remember watching you when all the excitement was going on. Haban keeps wittering on about your axe-dancing lessons.”

“You’re Narvi,” he said in realisation.

“Obviously. Keep up,” she said with a huff, and then she raised an eyebrow at Thorin. “So? Tell him. You’re the only one he can hear.”

“She’s a bit abrupt. It’s just her way,” said Khel with a slight shrug, turning a tiny smile down to the brusque Dwarrowdam at his side. “Good to meet you at last.”

Narvi scowled. “I am not abrupt! Everyone else is too slow!”

“We saw your work,” said Gimli, trying not to seem too overeager and obsequious. “The doors of Khazad-dûm.”

“They lasted pretty well, considering,” said Narvi with a thoughtful sniff. “I’d have made a trickier riddle, but Khel insisted.”

“It wasn’t meant to keep out the dull-minded, Narvi!” he retorted with some heat. “It was meant for everybody!”

“It should have kept out the dull-minded,” Narvi muttered. “Thorin? Have you told him yet?”

“I thought I had best wait until you’d gotten the first argument out of your system,” he said, crossing his arms and shaking his head. “Legolas? Legolas!”

“Here!” he called from ahead, his words snapping in exasperation. “I cannot find it! Do you have better news for me?”

“I have Khel and Narvi. They say it lies at the pillars.”

“It did lie at the pillars, some one hundred and forty years ago,” said Khel, pulling a face. “That’s where I blew it, and that is where the mithril gates answered my call. Gates that would not refuse me, designed by Narvi.”

“I have searched there twice!” Legolas burst out.

“Shh, try again lad,” said Gimli. “And if it does not show itself, why – why then, I will return to the pool of Sansûkhul and dig my way up to you! I’ve Bofur and Bifur on hand, and they’d be more than happy to help!”

“I have a feeling that Aulë would object,” murmured Khel.

“And Yavanna definitely would,” added Thorin.

Legolas combed the grass around the front face of the house four more times, his movements growing more and more frantic as the sun began to sink. Finally he sat before the seven pillars and dropped his head into his hands. “It is gone,” he grated. “I cannot find it.”

“What was in made of?” demanded Gimli. “What did it look like?”

“It is yew, bound in gold,” said Khel, and he folded his long body into a crouch, brushing his fingers through the grasses. “The gold I gathered from my jewellery and Tauriel’s, and the yew I found lying amidst the fallen branches in the gardens. It may have rotted through over the decades. The loops of gold will still be sound.”

“All right, we look for the glint of gold,” Thorin sighed.

“I keep telling you to finish your work properly,” Narvi tsked at Khel, folding her arms.

“What could I use to seal it?” he threw back at her.

It was Khel that saw the dull gleam hiding amidst the taller grasses, and when Legolas dug about the soft loam he discovered several beaten gold hoops of different sizes. Of the yew horn, there was no sign. It had been eaten away by time and the inevitable hands of nature.

Legolas sank to his knees, his hands gripping them tightly enough to cut his fingers.

Gimli stared at the pitted and stained things in dismay for a long while, before he slumped down next to Legolas. “Then he cannot get in,” he said, and hated the doleful sound of his own voice.

Thorin’s brows drew together. “No, I will not accept that,” he gritted. “Khel, Narvi, I thank you for your efforts. Come with me, Gimli. Legolas, hear me! When next we speak it will be face-to-face.”

Legolas did not look up. Gimli watched him for as long as possible, before the stars of Gimlîn-zâram closed over his eyes and drowned the sight entirely.

Once back in the pool-chamber, Thorin shook his head roughly to clear it, before he grabbed Gimli’s wrist. “Go to Mahal,” he snapped, low and determined. “Go!”

Gimli blinked at him for only a half-second, and then he was running through the halls as fast as he could, outpacing Thorin and barrelling around corners, crashing into walls as he went. His boots rang against stone, and Legolas – Legolas was outside!

“Let him in!” he cried as he burst through the doors into Mahal’s great smithy. “Please, please – he is at the pillars, he has come over the mountains and the plains, through the gardens- Let him in! Please let him in!”

Mahal rose from his work-table. “He is here?”

Gimli gulped, trying to control himself, and failing utterly. “Legolas, he is at the pillars of the house! The Entrance to the Halls! Please, my Maker, please give my husband’s arms back to me, give him back to…!”

“Gimli,” said Mahal, and he strode around the table to lean his great body over the shaking Dwarf. “Gimli…”

“I will do anything, anything!” Gimli near-sobbed, and he reached for the edge of Mahal’s smithing-apron. “I can live here for all the ages of the earth until the rending of the stars if only he is beside me! I can find contentment, I will be settled and peaceful, I swear it! I swear it! If only you give me my light upon the horizon - I need my light, my Legolas, I cannot face the years ahead without him! I will do you any service, I will give you this true-sight, this strange perception – take it! Take it back, take it away! Just give him…”

“Gimli,” said Mahal softly, but the thunder rumbled warningly below his feet.

Gimli fell to the floor upon his hands and knees, and choked back his tears.

“So you realised, did you?” Mahal shook his great head. “It only took you two hundred and eighty years.”

“You made me clear of sight,” Gimli grated. “Not swift of thought.”

“My mighty, impatient child,” murmured Mahal, and his tone was warm and full of love. “Aye, you see truly. Turn around. Look again.”

Gimli dragged himself back to his feet, and swiped his forearm across his face as he turned.

The forge-fire in Mahal’s grate swirled with the light of galaxies, as always. It glowed with the fantastical billowing shapes of interstellar clouds and the amorphous spinning discs of thousands upon thousands of stars. The fires of creation itself.

Suddenly, with a jolt so fierce that it was shocking, Gimli realised that the forge-grate was made of seven spokes.

Seven spokes. Seven pillars.

Seven clans.

Seven stars.

“The door,” he said, breathless and suddenly full of huge, formless, uncontrollable hope.

“You never needed a horn,” rumbled Mahal, and he pushed Gimli towards the fire gently, but inexorably. “None of you did. You but needed to ask for the way in. The door leads to me, and always has. Go on, my child. Call him.”

“He can’t hear me,” Gimli objected, but Mahal shook his head once more, and his gnarled and burn-scarred finger pointed through the fire, the flames spurting and crashing together like nebulae.

“Call him.”

“Legolas!” Gimli shouted. “Legolas, can you hear me? It’s Gimli!”

There was no sound but the roar of distant comets and the songs of the stars.

“You know how,” Mahal said quietly. “You see truly, for that is your purpose. Use that truth. Call him in.”

Call him in.

Gimli steeled his nerve, dashed some more of his tears away, and cried at the top of his lungs, ”Legolas! I am Sansûkhâl and I call you!”

With shocking suddenness, the fire flared up, sheets of red and purple and pink and gold all hissing and sizzling, filling the grate to overflowing. And a long, tattered form was spilling through the fire, collapsing in a heap upon the stone floor of Mahal’s smithy.

“Legolas!” Gimli gasped, and he threw himself at the figure, his hands grasping frantically at the fine-boned fingers, the elegant head, the strong shoulders. “Legolas, it’s me, it’s me, you’re here, you’re safe!”

“Gimli,” Legolas mumbled. “The door…”

“It’s another bloody riddle,” Gimli sobbed, and his hands stroked over the silky blond hair feverishly, desperately. “The seven pillars, the seven clans. It’s the fires of creation, d’you see? And none can hide from them, they made me, they know me only by my deepest name!”

Legolas blinked dazedly, his face stunned and lax. “The door turned to fire, Gimli,” he said, his words blurred and indistinct. “It spoke with your voice. I leapt, but it did not burn me.”

“Oh, my love, my light,” Gimli wept, and he cradled Legolas tightly, wrapping his arms around his familiar form. He was warm and living in his arms, smelling of the earth and the autumn sunshine. “You made it here, you made it. Mahal my Maker, thank you – thank you – thank you…!”

“My leg,” Legolas said, sucking in a breath and hissing slightly. “Don’t jar it!”

“Ach, sorry – are you all right? Should I bring Uncle Óin?” Gimli pulled back to study Legolas’ beautiful, beloved face with worried eyes. “It’s knitting well, you said!”

Legolas blinked some more at him, lying in his arms. Then his hand rose and he tugged a lock of Gimli’s bright red hair, curling it about his finger. “The fires of creation indeed,” he murmured.

Gimli flushed. “It’s been a nice change, must say. Though it’s taken some getting used to.”

Legolas beamed at him. “Though the winter was glorious, I have missed your autumn colours. I will have to inspect you thoroughly for any further changes.”

“Perhaps not on my smithy floor?” Mahal said mildly.

Legolas’ eyes grew huge, and he scrambled out of Gimli’s arms and staggered to his feet. “Gimli, you let me say such things in front of your Maker?!”

“I didnae know you were going to say all that, I was just so relieved you were here!” he protested.

“Calm yourselves, both of you!” Mahal laughed, and the air shook and sang with its echoes. “Leaf of the Greenwood, be welcome here in my Halls. Our star has been agitated in your absence! You have been injured in your long journey; I can heal that wound, if you would have me do so.”

Legolas glanced at Gimli, and then he bowed with heart-stopping grace, his hand pressed over his heart. “I would be most grateful.”

“Then come here, my new son.”

Legolas took a few steps towards the great smith, and the massive work-roughened hands alighted momentarily on top of his fair head. A silent pressure filled the room, thunder without sound. Then Legolas was gasping, his mouth open in shock and his breath snagging in his throat.

“There,” said Mahal, and he let the Elf lean into his palm as he steadied himself. “Your leg is mended. What need you now, Legolas Thranduilion? For I have other adopted children, and they have made requests of me, things to keep them safe and content.”

Legolas peered up at the indistinct and glorious face. “I am with Gimli, and there I find comfort.”

“Nothing?”

“I need no more than that,” said Legolas simply.

Gimli threaded his fingers through those beautiful, slender, bow-hardened ones, and his thumb lifted to trace the edge of the ring he had made so long ago. “Give him a name,” he said impulsively, remembering a conversation four long, anxious weeks ago. “Mahal my great Maker, who knows me and loves me enough to name me! That is the promise we are told as Dwarrowlings. Give him a dark-name such as you gave Bilbo Baggins. They told me you had done so.”

Legolas looked startled. “Bilbo Baggins has a deep-name?”

“Shh, not so loud, but yes,” Gimli said. “Would you? Will you do this for him?”

Mahal regarded Gimli levelly. “If he wills it, I can.”

“Yes, I have often wished I could-” Legolas began, and then he stopped and swallowed. “I have been Thranduilion, and Prince of the Greenwood, and Lord of Ithilien, and one of Nine Walkers. Give me a name, such as Gimli has. Such a title I would treasure more than all the rest.”

“Only one other has asked such a thing of me,” said Mahal gently, and Gimli felt his whole heart lurch several inches to lodge in his throat. “But when I think upon it, you both have your boldness in common. If you are sure? For once it is written, it cannot be undone. Not even for the immortal life of an Elf.”

“Please,” said Legolas, proud and slender and falcon-eyed.

Mahal leaned forward until the great shaggy head was nearly pressed brow-to-brow with the Elf. Then Mahal sat back and smiled. “Your name shouts louder than any I have ever heard, louder than any not made by my hands! Where Bilbo hid his away, dark and secret, your name calls to the skies!”

Gimli squeezed Legolas’ hand, and received an answering squeeze, tight and swift.

“Tasâlalkhud,” said Mahal at last. “Your name, Legolas Greenleaf. May it lead you to the true places inside yourself.”

Gimli felt his knees buckle, and he pressed his free hand over his mouth, though he could feel himself nodding in agreement. “What is it?” Legolas said in some alarm, turning to him. “Gimli, you shake so! What could it mean, if you should tremble when you hear it?”

“It’s perfect,” Gimli said hoarsely. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“It is?” said Legolas, and he sounded unconvinced. “But you gasp and shudder!”

“Aye, because now I know what is written in your bones, my love, written for all time!” He pressed his cheek into Legolas’ hand. “Hunter of light,” he whispered, soft and reverent.

Legolas’ face went slack in wonder. “It… it is?”

Gimli laughed, and the black twisted tension lifted from him at last. As the last of his disquiet dissipated and all the knots dissolved into nothingness, he dragged Legolas down into a long, heartfelt kiss. His fingers slid through that cornsilk hair, and cradled the fine-boned jaw, smooth and clean-lined like elegant porcelain.

Then Gimli leaned his forehead against Legolas’, and breathed, “hunter of light. You are, you have always been…”

Legolas kissed him again, to stop his mouth. For a sweet, suspended moment, there was nothing but the taste of his lips.

When Gimli returned to the present, he blinked up at Mahal, and felt himself redden. “Um. Sorry.”

“Quite.” Mahal’s smile was fond and fatherly. “Your arrow has found his mark. Go build anew, Silvertongue.”

“Oh! Kementári said she would speak to you,” said Legolas, remembering. “She wishes to visit me. She did not care for Gimli, nor King Thorin.”

“Ach,” Mahal said under his breath, a gust of hot desert sands. “No, she would not understand them. She has never cared for my children. Did she say when?”

Legolas grimaced. “No. I am sorry.”

Mahal sighed again, and waved a mammoth hand. “Go you, and greet your family. Thorin has been guarding the door for nearly an hour now, and would sorely like to know whether his efforts have been in vain.”

“He has?” Gimli gripped Legolas’ hand. “Come on, we need to see him! You need to see him!”

“But, I-” Legolas looked back at Mahal as Gimli dragged him from the smithy. “Thank you.”

Mahal inclined his head. “You are welcome.”

“Come on, Legolas!” Gimli laughed – and it was his old laugh, the booming carefree one of his youth - “I have so much to tell you!”

Outside the smithy door, the corridor was silent and empty but for one lone, dark figure. “Good to see you,” was all Thorin said, his lip quirked in one corner.

Legolas clasped their arms together. Then his emotion seemed to overcome him, and he pulled Thorin in for a firm, fierce embrace. “And you,” he said, his face shining in gratitude. “At long last. Thank you for all you have done for us.”

Despite himself, Thorin returned it. Then he pushed himself away, clearing his throat roughly to cover his discomposure. “Dwalin and Nori want to know when he’s going to join in at the duelling chambers, Gimli,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I may have money on this, so choose wisely.”

“You bet on Legolas?” Gimli said, mock-offended. “I didn’t see you putting down money on me!”

“Ah, but you took payment enough out of me anyway, didn’t you? Besides, I’ve seen Legolas fight.” Thorin slung an arm over Gimli’s shoulders. “You’d better finish those knives soon, else he’ll be fighting with your axe! Step along, you pair. Let me be guide, I’ll lead the way.”

Making their way through the now-familiar and homelike halls felt new again with Legolas’ hand in his own. Gimli did not even hear the whispers that followed their backs. Doors opened and heads popped out to stare, but he only had eyes for the Elf at his side.

Thorin brought them to the banquet-hall, where most of the Company of Watchers were at their customary tables. Some half-stood in amazement, but others sighed in relief. Óin audibly groaned.

“Terrific, now I get t’ watch the calf-eyed looks for eternity. Mahal save us all.”

“Here is my husband, Legolas,” Gimli said, his whole soul in his voice, and he could not tear his gaze away, not for anything.

“Here at last!” said Hrera, sniffing imperiously. “Good. He was putting everybody off their meals with his moping.”

“Grandmother!” Thorin hissed, and she patted his hand with a benevolent little smile.

“Sit down, dear, time for dinner.”

Then a tall shape was flying at them, and Legolas was caught up in Tauriel’s sudden and tight embrace. “Mellon nín,” she breathed. “When Khel told us about the horn, I feared for you!”

“Gimli found the way,” said Legolas, and he smiled at her with wet eyes, holding her out to see her at arm’s length. “Oh Tauriel. You look happy. So happy.”

“I am,” she replied. “And so shall you be.”

“C’mere, Elf! No, down here – there we go, not a word for your old Adad?” Glóin bellowed, rising to his feet. “Still too bloody skinny; Mizim, we’ve work to do! How’s he meant to compete in the training rooms when he’s down to sinew and bone? Durin’s beard, he’s nothing but eyes and legs. This journey’s worse than the first one!”

“Hush now, we’ll take care of it,” Mizim said, and she bussed Legolas on the cheek. “Hello again dear. We’ve been so proud to hear all about your doings. Sit! Sit now! Old bear, you haven’t taken seconds on that duck, have you? It has the orange sauce I made, the one Legolas liked the last time he came to Erebor.”

Legolas stared about at all the Dwarves with dawning amazement, all of them greeting him with joy and familiarity and perfect ease. “It’s wonderful,” he said softly. “Look, there is Dáin, and there is Balin for whom you grieved so! And your brother Bofur - Master Bofur, I thank you for your help in reading the stone of the Pelóri! There is your cousin Dwalin, who was so kind when we came at last to the North… and there is Bombur, and there Master Dori! And oh - the Princess Dís, Gimli! Your aunt!”

“Almost everyone.” Gimli turned to him, and tenderly kissed his palm. “And eventually we will have our missing few.”

“Aye, they all make it in the end,” said Bofur, lifting his cup in salute. “Cheers! Someone get this lad a drink! I’ll bet he’s dry as a bone!”

Kíli slammed a couple of tankards in front of Gimli and Legolas with a thunk, even as Lóni and Fíli pushed them down into their chairs. Mizim laid a plate in front of Legolas, and then tapped Gimli’s ear. “Make him eat the lot, and then it’s bed for him. And sleep!” she said firmly. “He needs rest!”

“Mum!” Gimli moaned, and hid his face. Legolas laughed, though his cheeks were bright.

“Dear Mizim, how I have missed you!”

“You’re a good boy,” she said, rather mistily. “We missed you too. Now eat!”

“So we’re not so bad after all, eh?” Kíli elbowed him with breathtaking insouciance. “What do you say to a little healthy competition? Tauriel said you’re as good as her, but your bow is stronger. Bet I’m more accurate!”

“Bet you’re not,” Gimli said at once.

“Would you like to rephrase that with a number, me dears?” Nori butted in with a sly little smirk. “I would be most pleased to keep the score for you.”

“Aye, and the winnings!” Gimli threw a napkin at him.

“Four on Legolas,” murmured Tauriel, and Kíli gasped in wounded outrage.

The dinner proceeded with dizzying confusion, everyone trying to speak to Legolas and Gimli all at once. Balin, Ori, Glóin, Narvi and Thrór wanted to know everything about the forge-fire, and Gimli tried to explain it as best he could. Thráin, Orla, Lóni, Frís and Dís wanted to know about the journey itself, and how Legolas had done and seen such perilous things all on his own.

Throughout all the hubbub, Thorin ate quietly, and watched them with the secret glow of satisfaction in his eyes.

Then Gimli was dragging his weary Elf to his feet, and looping one long arm over his shoulders. “Come on, wearybones,” he said. “Night, you lot! You can bend his ear again in the morning!”

“No we can’t, you’ll cut us into shreds!” Dáin guffawed.

As they passed, Gimli reached out and squeezed Thorin’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said, deep and heartfelt.

Thorin’s answering smile was warm. At his side, Bilbo dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “I told you before. We know exactly – exactly how it feels. Well, go on with you then. And sleep, your mother says!”

“Ach,” Gimli muttered, and he began to tug Legolas along once more. “Get out o’ my beard now, all of you: that’s none of your business!”

“You’ve a lesson tomorrow, my star,” Thorin called after him. “I’ll know if you’re overweary!”

“Come on, âzyungelê,” Gimli said, ignoring that with as much dignity as he could muster. “Let’s go home. The bed will not be so cold and bleak with you there beside me.”

“Home,” said Legolas, and he looked again over the merry, unruly assembly of Dwarves, all chattering and eating and laughing and singing together, a riot of noise and colour. His eyes were soft and glad.

His fingers stroked through the fall of Gimli’s bright hair. “Home. Yes, it is.”

FIN