As a counterpoint to this post, I got to thinking about Gimli coming back home married.
Because think of the scandal!
But not because of Legolas -- because he's an elf, or Thranduil's son -- or at least not only because of it. But because -- if we assume that the two only met for the first time in Rivendell -- they have barely known each other for a year.
'And that is hardly even enough to start a courtship,' Glóin would say. 'If my mother's ashes come back to haunt you, you only have yourself to blame.'
(Because Gimli's grandmother was a burned dwarf, and he never knew her.)
Gimli's mother would say nothing for the longest time, because she would remember her own chafing against the formality of it all, and she would watch the elf -- and really, she shouldn't have been so surprised about that; if Gimli had wanted to make any regular sort of marriage, he would have done it decades ago -- and see how he appears statue-still and one wrong breath away from bolting, all at the same time. How his hand rests on Gimli's shoulder, the way Gimli's own lifts to cover the white-fingered grip.
There is a story there, she would think. Something more than the patchwork marriage contract -- and Elessar he has heard of, and it is a very respectable thing to get a king sign on your marriage, but who is this Meriadoc Brandybuck character then? -- and dwarven family law has many leeways and exceptions for times of war and other extremities. Gimli's is not the swiftest marriage she has known of, not by far.
(Some of the swiftest had also been the shortest, and if Gimli has already been spared that much grief, she can only be grateful.)
But stories can wait to come out on their own time. Today, her son is newly-returned and newly-wed.
'Haunted or no,' she would say, with a sidelong glance at her own husband, 'welcome to the family.'
The elf startles into bright laughter, and as she sees the same joy reflected on Gimli's face, she can only hope that whatever strange bond the two have crafted between them will be strong enough to carry them on the road they've chosen.
Because she doubts it will always be an easy one.
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