kooriicolada:

there’s a lot of fic where dwarves talk about adorning their lovers in jewels and precious metals but…how about more fic that’s the other way around

what about legolas talking to gimli of weaving a circlet for him out of silver birch and red maple leaves

about twining sprigs of unripe berries into his beard like wild-grown natural beads

so after reblogging this earlier, the image wouldn’t leave me HAVE A FICLET

“No idea which way I’m pointed,” Gimli mumbled, stumping along after Legolas and nearly tripping over a tree root. Fangorn did not feel welcoming to him. Neither did it feel hostile – perhaps Treebeard had had a word with the trees hereabouts – but it certainly wasn’t the most Dwarf-friendly place he’d ever been. 

Furthermore, Gimli had absolutely no way of knowing which way he was going. The canopy was old and thick, the branches gnarled and twisted in strange ways that seemed to bend what little thin daylight came trickling down to him, tricking the eye. He could not have pointed to the sun if his life depended upon it, and he might have been walking in circles for hours, for all he knew. 

Well, if it weren’t for the Elf flitting some distance ahead, that is. 

Legolas apparently knew exactly where he was going. Gimli now began to understand how he had felt in the glittering caves of Helm’s Deep, disoriented and strange and out-of-place, entirely dependent upon Gimli for a sure path. He led the way with exuberant joy, snatches of bright song now and then spilling from his lips. Gimli had once twitted the Elf about his incessant singing, but now he eagerly pricked his ears for more. 

Legolas was also apparently half-squirrel. 

Every few hundred yards he would leap into the branches of some ancient tree, crooning and placing his hands upon its bark with complete reverence. Which was exactly what he was doing now.

Gimli propped himself underneath the tree, and resigned himself to a short spell of waiting. His fingers twitched for his pipe – but no. The disapproval he could feel all around always intensified at the first spark of flame, and so he had learned to wait without a smoke, while Legolas told the thing whatever it was he was telling it. 

“What one’s that?” he said, and he scratched idly at his neck as Legolas murmured and whispered to his latest choice, a tree with white ghostly bark, split into two trunks at the soil and reaching straight and tall for the sky beyond.

“She’s young,” said Legolas, and he swung around in one smooth motion to hang upside down by his knees upon a branch. His hair fell in a sheet under his head, and his eyes sparkled with delight. Had Gimli been thus, under the White Mountains? “She’s so young, compared to the others, a child between these ancient trunks. Barely one hundred and forty summers has she seen, and she is full of chat and gossip…”

“Aye, you’ve been up there for a while now,” Gimli grinned, and he tugged at the end of Legolas’ hair. “But that’s not my question. What is -she?”

“She likes she,” Legolas said, nodding. “And she is a silver birch, such as those that grow upon the ridges of Dale and in the northern reaches of Greenwood. I wonder how she came here?”

“Perhaps a nosy Elf wandered through one hundred and forty years past, eh?”

“Or perhaps a Dwarf,” Legolas countered, and he sat himself upright again upon his branch. “Or were your people not scattered throughout the kingdoms at that time?”

True. “In that case, perhaps we are of an age,” Gimli said, and he bowed to the tree. “Greetings, leafy lassie. You’re welcome to share my birth-day, if you wish. Here’s to many more, for both of us.”

Legolas’ eyes softened. “Quite.” Then he cocked his head, and smiled. “She likes you.”

“She what?” Gimli blinked, shocked. He’d thought these overgrown vegetables only listened to Elvish as spoken by Elves, rather than the coarse Westron joke of an Ereborean Dwarf.

“She can hear you, meleth,” Legolas said, and his smile broadened. 

“With what? She doesn’t have any ears!” Gimli said, exasperated.

“Nay, trees do not need them.” And with that cryptic statement, Legolas was off and clambering higher into the birch’s thin straight boughs.

Gimli watched him go, his face still screwed up in disbelief. Then he glanced at the white trunk, and gingerly reached out with one massive hand. The bark was smooth, hard. Warm, under these windless leaves. “Um. You’re not a bad sort yourself, lassie.”

The tense, watchful atmosphere lessened, ever so slightly.

“Ach,” Gimli said to himself, and shook his head. “I’m going as daft as Legolas.”

“I can hear you too!” came Legolas’ voice, floating back down through the branches. 

Gimli chuckled. “Good, you were meant to!”

“Quarrelsome Dwarf!”

“Ridiculous Elf!”

“Do you know, she doesn’t know what a Dwarf is?” Legolas’ legs came into view, and he dropped down onto the leaf-litter. “She thought you a particularly short Elf.”

“Cheek!” Gimli snorted, and patted the bark again. “That’s all right, lassie, you didn’t know any better. But this proves that she was not ever planted by a wandering Dwarf – not that one would stray into Fangorn for any reason.”

“You did and have,” Legolas laughed. He was doing something busy with his hands behind Gimli’s head.

“Ah, well, I’m going daft, remember?” Gimli smiled at Legolas, and gave the tree one last final, fond pat. “Nice to meet you too, lassie. Make a note of it, now! Do remember that Dwarves are not Elves, an’ I’d take it as a kindness.”

“That they are not,” Legolas agreed. There was a note of mischief to his tone.

And he dropped whatever it was he had been working on upon Gimli’s head. It made him start in surprise, and his hand rose to feel about his crown. The crisping rustle of leaves greeted his touch. Bringing it down before his eyes, he saw a circlet of woven white wood, the twigs as thin as Legolas’ smallest finger. Small young green-grey leaves clustered upon it. 

“What’s this?” he said.

“A gift,” Legolas said, and kissed him, swift as a darting swallow from its nest. 

Then he was off, leaping into the forest once more and singing gaily.

“A gift?” Gimli glanced back at the birch, which swayed gently in a breeze he could not feel. “Oh.”

Within seconds Legolas was out of sight, mad dancing fey thing that he was. Gimli could hear his song, soaring out of the trees, beckoning him on. He carefully placed the wreath back upon his head, and gave the birch another little bow, trying not to feel silly (and failing). 

“Thank you, lassie,” he murmured. 

And then he shook his head and wrapped himself in as much sensible dwarvishness as he possibly could. “Legolas! Wait!”

They camped by a river-side that night, and Gimli lit no fire. Instead, Legolas curled inside Gimli’s blanket, and lay his own cloak over them both. The creak of wood surrounded them, and the small soft noises of night-animals.

“Why did you make the circlet, love?” Gimli said, and turned slightly in the circle of Legolas’ arms. “A gift, you said.”

Legolas had been gazing up into the highest branches above, as though he could feel the stars beyond so many leaves. He blinked, and then his arms tightened around Gimli, fingers burying themselves in his beard. “I asked her, your ‘Lassie’, if she would allow me some of her new growth for it,” he said. 

“Why?” Gimli asked, bluntly. He’d discovered that Elves never gave straight answers to straight questions, and so he would have to ask at least twice before he had the answer he sought. 

“Because, she was a silver birch.” Legolas said, and his voice slowed in puzzlement. Then he said, “oh, you would not know!”

“Legolas,” Gimli said, with all the patience he possessed. It was not a vast quantity. 

“It is a custom of ours,” Legolas said, and his fingers carded through the soft warm waves of Gimli’s beard. Legolas could never seem to get enough of touching Gimli’s beard, of sinking his hands into the thick luxuriousness of it, of combing it and braiding it and even washing it. Gimli enjoyed it at most times, but not when he had a burning curiosity. “Different trees and fruits may symbolise different things, and we adorn ourselves and our loved ones thus to send a message…”

“Ohhh, so it is like our tattoos?” Gimli exclaimed in realisation. “Well, you could have just said.”

“I did!”

“Eventually.”

“Stop arguing, elen nin,” Legolas said, fond and soft, and he kissed behind Gimli’s ear. “It is not precisely like your tattoos and marks and metal.”

“Oh?”

“Well, ours may be changed with the seasons.”

“I can take out my piercings, got a set with sapphires in ‘em back in my drawers at home.”

Legolas pinched his side. “Not what I meant.” Then he paused. “I should like to see them on you.”

Bet you would, Gimli thought with no small amount of smug satisfaction. “Tell me how these symbols can change, then.”

Legolas blew out a breath, but accepted the gentle reminder to stay on track. “You have seen my father’s woodland crown?”

“Aye, often wondered if he’s not picking leaves out of his hair at every bath.” Then Gimli’s eyebrows shot up, and he rolled over to look at Legolas. “Oh!”

“You see it now?” Legolas was beaming at him, and with his hair unbound and his skin gleaming in the darkness he seemed more a creature of the forest than the half-squirrel of the daylight hours. “Here-”

And he placed the crown back upon Gimli’s head, and arranged it until it sat to his liking, tucking it under loops of his hair to hold it in place. Then he propped himself upon his elbow to gaze down upon Gimli with naked tenderness. 

“I should thread the newest berries into your beard,” he murmured, and took hold of Gimli’s furred cheeks and kissed him. “Hard and unripe, they would make the glossiest beads of all, shinier than pearls – and in such colours as pearls never came! Beads from the earth itself, made by no hand and set into that river of red, they should look wondrous indeed. Brightest green, blushing to rose, to show all that you are generous as well as kind. Silver Birch, for truth and new beginnings, for renewal and the cleansing of the past.”

His voice darkened. “And maple leaves, woven through your hair, my love.”

Gimli’s lips were a little dry, as they always were when Legolas began his loving talk. “Maple?” he said, and Mahal below did his voice truly just crack, or was it a tree moving in the shadows?

“Wisdom,” Legolas said, soft as the air moving under the timeless eaves of the ancient forest. He bent and kissed Gimli’s brow. “Strength, incomparable and unparalleled,” he whispered, and laid another lingering kiss upon his shoulder, over the thick black lines of ink there. “And balance.”

Gimli swallowed, and tilted his chin, lifting his mouth for the final kiss.

~fin~