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Love to the Morning
by afrai

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There were dwarves who took pride in the fashioning of jewellery, delicate craft such as the Elves delighted in, but who produced work of a different timbre, as different as the vaulted halls of Khazad-dum were from the fluted pillars of Rivendell.

Gimli was not one of these. His chief delight and his living lay in stone -- stone lasted, stone you could trust, when metal rusted and the gleam of gems grew dim. Yet when he began the work of setting the Lady Galadriel's hair in a form that might almost do it justice, he lavished more loving anxiety on the project than on any other he had ever embarked upon in his life.

He knew not what it would be until the work took its own shape under his hands, but when he saw the clean sweep of wing and the curve of the small head, he saw that his heart had been keeping a secret from him, and he felt that it was right. The pearl-white gull and the glimmer of golden hair -- he had given his love to the Morning, and he knew it was passing away.

When it was finished he knew that he had done the best work that would ever come of his hands, but he showed it to none, keeping it close to him always. If he ever looked upon the light of the Lady again, she could ask, and she would see it. There was only one other who would ever see it in life. Gimli would take it with him when they put him in the stone.

It was long: long years that passed, with the cold weight always on his breast, before Legolas asked; long years as Gimli waited and worked in the great stillness of the Earth, with only that cold weight to trouble him with the memory of the Sea. His dreams were haunted by the shape of the gull, its wings curved in a perilous flight into the unknown, though he rarely let himself look at it.

Sometimes, some few, precious times, he did, and felt again the sting of salt breeze in his eyes like tears, and heard the high cry, as of grief, of the white bird it represented. And he was gripped by a great fear and desolation, for to the Dwarves the Sea is but a bleak waste of water, barren and alien, and they do not know the Sea longing that strikes Elves and Men. But Gimli had seen a little more than most Dwarves, and his fear was not of the Sea. There are worse things than what is alien.

He saw Legolas again, finally, before the end. He was not much changed from formerly, except that the distance behind his eyes was greater -- that distance from all the old loves and hatreds of Middle-earth that Gimli had felt long ago, and so withdrawn by degrees, for his pride would not allow him to linger where he was not desired to stay.

Gimli himself was grown old, and a light alien and old kindled in his dark eyes, and Legolas looked on him with wonder.

Gimli showed him the gull, though a strange heaviness dragged at his heart at having to do so. He had grown so accustomed to cherishing the gull as his most beloved secret, guarding it from the careless hands of others, that he could not let even Legolas touch it without flinching. The sunlight glittering off the pure whiteness of the gull and the glimmering length of Legolas's hair as he bent his head to look at it both struck Gimli with the same sense of unutterable poignancy, and he drew back instinctively, as if to shield himself from grief. Legolas took no notice, but gently took his hand and traced the gull in it with a finger.

"Is this for me?" he asked, his voice low.

You, and all I have loved that has gone from me, Gimli wanted to say, but he said only,

"Yes."

He found he could not fold Legolas's fingers over it as he had intended. He had not the strength. He had meant -- but he could not give Legolas everything he loved and bid it goodbye, as if it did not matter, as if none of it had ever mattered. He had poured his heart's life into the purity of the gull on the wing; it held all that was alien and that he loved, and Legolas would take it and sail away, and leave him -- leave him with nothing.

But he forced himself to the effort; he silently placed the gull into the hand holding his. The loss was almost a relief after the anticipation of it.

Then Legolas turned his hand, and the gull hung sparkling in the air before it dropped onto Gimli's palm. Gimli recoiled, but he had only a moment for overwhelming hurt before Legolas said,

"Come with me over the Sea. The Lady would rather see it in your hand."

The gull glowed in his hand, with a light on it that made it seem recklessly, joyously alive; Legolas's face had the same light when he looked into it.

"Yes," said Gimli again.

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