The next story I am Definitely Not Writing: a fic where Legolas and Gimli make it all the way to the Undying Lands before they realize that in addition to loving each other more than anything else in all of Arda, they are also in love with one another (this is less a realization on their part and more an assumption that just about everyone else in Aman makes on sight, and eventually they hear about it and go oh...dang...maybe...? and Legolas's mom facepalms forever) and hey what if they got married, then...?
Only the thing is, while an elvish marriage is very simple and requires literally nothing but the folks involved deciding to do it (and no, Thranduil is not allowed to demand that Gimli fetch some priceless jewel from the Fëanorian section of Tirion in order to prove himself worthy of Legolas's hand, although he tried very very hard to convince everyone that it was a great idea) a dwarven marriage is an elaborate ceremony, requiring the participation of both a dwarven officiant and several members of one's kin to perform the various elements of the ceremony.
...all of which are in short supply in this land of elves and valar.
Except. well. there aren't any other dwarves in Aman...but what there is, is the guy who made the dwarves. And he is VERY fond of Gimli. So when he learns that Gimli is kind of moping about the fact that he can't marry Legolas in dwarven-fashion, Aulë ENTHUSIASTICALLY volunteers to be the officiant and to set everything up and arrange just the BEST DWARVEN WEDDING EVER...
Because, you know. he's never actually been to one?
Gimli is stricken with horrified shock to realize just how much his own Maker has missed out on interactions with his beloved dwarves over the years, and immediately agrees to this plan (even though he knows it won't be a real dwarven wedding without his family there; but he'll swim back to Middle-earth before he says one word about that anywhere that Mahal can hear! he is going to do everything in his power to make this the best wedding ever for the sake of his Maker, dammit!).
So he gets to work crafting all the necessary accoutrements (with enthusiastic help from Celebrimbor and all his other elf-smith friends that Gimli has acquired since coming to these shores which is, let's be honest, quite a few) and carefully teaching Legolas all the necessary Khuzdul phrases and ceremonial steps that they can do to mimic as much of a proper wedding as they can without anyone else to help...
And when the big day comes, Aulë is vibrating so hard he's on the verge of setting off seventeen different earthquakes across the island, and not even Yavanna can get him to relax. Gimli and Legolas arrive to the appointed place, and find that they aren't alone: Aulë has invited Celebrimbor, too, seeing as he's the only elf in Aman who has actually participated in a dwarven wedding before with makes him the local expert as well as the closest thing to "kin" that Gimli is going to find on these shores...except.
Well, Mandos might be in charge of elvish souls, but dwarves? They belong to their Maker. And if Mahal decides he wants to...well, who is going to stop him from waking some of them up early, before the breaking of the world? Especially if he doesn't ask permission first. So when Gimli and Legolas hesitantly walk into this foreboding stone chamber, eerily close to the Halls of Mandos, wondering wtf is going on and have they offended the valar somehow and are they in trouble and if so how bad is it...?
Well, turns out Gimli will have kin at his wedding after all.
Mahal can't bring any of them back to life, not without the intervention and permission of Eru and probably Mandos too; but as long as they're in his halls, he can wake anybody he wants. So soon there is a great crowd of bewildered but enthusiastic dwarves gathered around Gimli, as he tries to explain what the heck is going on to a whole passel of relatives and friends, some of whom died even before the Lonely Mountain was reclaimed and don't even know how the Battle of Five Armies ended, let alone the whole thing with the Ring and the Fellowship...
And Legolas and Celebrimbor are standing near the entrance watching fondly, Legolas weeping around a great big smile and Celebrimbor torn between joy for Gimli and his own ever-bitter sorrows and then...
"Khelebrrimbor?" calls a deep dwarven voice, in a thick Khuzdul accent, and Celebrimbor stiffens like he's just been shot.
Suddenly there's a ruckus as a very burly dwarf is shouldering through the crowd, and Celebrimbor stumbles forward and throws himself at Narvi with a wail, and it's at least ten minutes before anyone can get a coherent word out of either of them (although it takes considerably less time to catch the gist of Narvi's lecture about how dare you and lucky he's already dead, or I'd have a gift for him he wouldn't forget in a hurry and what were you thinking???).
Legolas gives Aulë a very pointed raise of his eyebrows, and Aulë shrugs around an unabashed grin. "Who in all the ages of the world is more of an expert on marriages between elves and dwarves than the two of them? I am a craftsman, Greenleaf; of course I would want to make use of their skills and experience in this endeavor. Nothing more to it than that."
Legolas hums noncommittally, but his eyes are dancing.
Mahal ignores him and steps forward to start the wedding. It takes even him three tries before he can shout loud enough to be heard over the tumult and get everyone's attention, but eventually he gets them all to quiet down enough for the ceremony to begin. Not everyone in attendance is entirely thrilled by the prospect of Gimli marrying an elf (that elf) but no one is so cross that they walk back into their dreams of stone to avoid it, which Gimli chalks up as a victory.
(Legolas's terrible Khuzdul pronunciation doesn't help, but the very enthusiastic way he praises Gimli when the ceremony reaches that point makes up for a lot. By the time he finally runs out of words, a few of the more recalcitrant attendees have changed their tune about him. The fact that he's so good at weaving the required braids doesn't hurt, either.)
There aren't nearly enough refreshments for a crowd that size afterwards, of course, since Gimli and Legolas weren't expecting anyone but themselves and Aulë to be there; but that doesn't much matter, because 90% of those in attendance don't have the sort of corporealness that would allow them to eat the dwarven delicacies that Gimli spent all morning fussing over anyway. (That doesn't stop some of his more elderly relatives from scolding him for not following their recipes better.) They're solid enough that you can hug them or kiss them, in the case of a certain former smithlord of Eregion or get half-knocked off your feet by their congratulatory backslaps, but they aren't alive. They're still the dreaming dead...it's just that for the moment, they're dreaming in a bit more wakefulness than usual.
In the end it's not what one would call an orthodox dwarven wedding, no; but it's a lot closer than Gimli thought he would get, and since he's hardly an orthodox dwarf, the small tweaks and oddities of their strange situation don't bother him in the slightest.
As for Aulë, he's never been happier.
And if it takes a long, long time for Celebrimbor to finally leave (and if he tries to devise a way to prop the door open on his way out)...well, Aulë is enjoying himself far too much to do anything but pretend not to notice. Even when Námo clears his throat at him very pointedly.
7, 35, and D for the ask game, please! I'd love to learn about a Mirkwood elf or two you'd like to share!
Oooh thank you so much for asking, it was so hard to choose who to talk about! I decided to pick some of my oldest, from the first round of Mirkwood World Building I did way back in the early 2000s and have since salvaged and revised to put into my current version of the forest:
Angmeril & Merilgais
They're sisters, both Silvan Elves of Greenwood who fought in the Last Alliance, sole survivors of their family (mom and brother both died in Oropher's Charge; dad had disappeared years earlier, and they never learned if he made it to the Sea or was taken/killed by Mogoth). The elder (Angmeril) ends up marrying Thranduil after the war and is mom to Rílaerloth and Legolas.
Questions take from this list.
[picrew source]
7. What triggers nostalgia for them, most often? Do they enjoy that feeling?
For Angmeril (who in most of the stories I write has to eventually cross the Sea after being near-fatally injured fighting orcs in the early years of the Shadow) it's days when the light in Valinor hits the leaves of Taur-nu-Glaw just right to remind her of the dappled leaves of the Greenwood; or when the wind shifts so that she can no longer smell the sea, but only the loam and greenery of the forest, and it makes her think of the home she lost and the family she had to leave behind there.
For Merilgais, I think she actually experiences nostalgia the most after the War of the Ring, when the Shadow is lifted and Mirkwood starts to grow green and bright (relatively) again. I think that while she's glad, of course she is, that the Shadow has lifted, she is a little sad, too, because this isn't a real rebirth for her woods: it's a temporary reprieve before the Fading. I think she spent so long immersed in the darkness of Mirkwood, fighting the Shadow, that she misses it a little now: misses the way the woods used to be, dark and dangerous though it was; because it was also her forest. She was used to it, she knew it, she loved it even when it was at its darkest.
And now when a storm rolls in, and the clouds are thick, and the light that streams down into their trees is at its faintest—when she's in the deepest, darkest parts of the woods, where the traces of the Shadow linger most; when she's in a glade or grove or cavern where the darkness has not yet been wholly banished; then she remembers what her woods felt like at their worst, and when she felt at her most alive fighting back against the Shadow, laughing in the dark.
35. How do they treat the things their friends come to them excited about? Are they supportive?
Generally supportive, yes, both of them—for the most part.
Angmeril can be a little leery of things that are unfamiliar or especially dangerous, due mostly to her having been in enough positions of responsibility (a commander of Greenwood's warriors; an older sister; a parent) that she learned to take into consideration things like "will this ridiculous idea get you killed, you dummy?" — and because she's generally more aware of the concept of consequences than Merilgais is, and is thus a little less keen to just yeet herself at every passing fancy that catches her eye.
Somebody has to be the responsible party, after all, and we all know that's never going to be Merilgais.
Angmeril's sense of duty is very strong, and as with Thranduil, the good of The Forest always comes first (that's how they ended up together in the first place lol). That said, she's still only responsible by comparison to the rest of the Greenwood, so that's a pretty low bar. (This is the "charge 'em and they scatter" forest, after all.)
So if it's something that isn't absolutely 100% without a doubt going to get you and everyone with you killed, don't be an idiot! then yes, they will both be supportive of even very madcap and ridiculous ideas, and very quick to go along for the ride also. (Merilgais will go along for the ride even if it will probably get you all killed.)
And they're both extremely supportive of silly nonsense, and protective of childish joy and whimsy (in both children and adults). Neither of them are the sort of people who worry about "looking like a fool," but even if they did, it wouldn't stop them from engaging in any sort of game or play that makes an elfling happy, or cheers somebody up after a bad day.
It doesn't take either of them long to get on board with the utterly absurd concept of having a dwarf in the family, either, once they see how happy he makes Legolas.
D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?
Yep, they have changed really not at all from their first inception, actually. Short, spindly little things with oak-brown hair and faces, and grey eyes in which hints of deep forest green can sometimes be seen; one stoic with her humor showing mostly in small smirks and the sharp glitter of her eyes, and the other laughing wildly with leaves in her hair and her sharp teeth flashing in the dark.
Neither one of them goes in much for fancy jewels or fine clothes (although they both learn to appreciate the former a little more once Gimli joins the family, because they're not heartless and thus couldn't possibly refuse presents made for them with such care!) and Merilgais is forever a bit of a feral wild-child, running barefoot through her trees, her thick braids as disheveled as it's really possible for an elf to look; and Angmeril only really looks as responsible and dignified as she does because she's standing next to Merilgais.
(She doesn't wear shoes much either; she just looks less like a feral creature and more like an eldritch forest spirit.)
Angmeril does let her hair grow-out after she sails to Valinor, which necessitates some fancier hairstyles to keep it up out of her way (she learned to like it short after she chopped it off that first time, so when it's long she wears it mostly in buns and updos) but only because she's waiting for Thranduil to join her before she chops it all off again.
She wants him to be there to see the horrified faces of all the Noldor and Vanyar when she does.
—Thank you for asking @fishing4stars it was so much fun to talk about my favorite forest cryptid sisters!
This doesn’t feel nearly complete enough to be worth posting a whole entry on AO3 for, but I don’t know what else to do with it so...have another fic-snippet, tumblr folks.
This one is set in the Undying Lands shortly after Legolas and Gimli break down the doors of heaven with the power of their love arrive and is inspired by this weird idea I had once about elves and food. And also, unintentionally but unsurprisingly, by Tamora Pierce’s Realms of the Gods.
❧ Ever The Taste of Ashes In Our Mouths ☙
Legolas took a bite of the apple and was so startled he spit it back out.
"What—that—!?"
"Ah!" Angmeril looked torn between amusement and apology. "I had forgotten. Yes," she said, "things taste…different, here in Aman."
Legolas held the apple out before him and stared at it, as though it might be about to transform into some strange and treacherous shape. Gimli looked quickly back and forth between his stricken face and the fruit.
"What is it?" he asked. "What's wrong?"
Legolas shook his head, apparently beyond words.
Gimli looked down at the plate of food in his hands and slowly, carefully, eased it back onto the long table.
"Do not be afraid!" Angmeril told him. "You can eat it. Just—perhaps eat less than you think you want, to start with? The taste can be…" Her smooth, beardless face did something complicated as though she were struggling against some terrible weight to find her words. "Overpowering," she said at last.
"Overpowering," Legolas repeated numbly. "Yes."
Gimli looked at the apple in his hand. The archer's fingers were gripped as tight upon the round red fruit as they had ever been upon his bow.
Galadriel drifted over. Gimli noticed her at once, of course; even here in the Blessed Realms, her presence was like a sunrise. He turned towards her like a flower moving to face the morning's light.
"The Queen of Greenwood speaks the truth, Lockbearer," she told him. Gimli did not see the grimace pass across Angmeril's face at Galadriel's use of her long-defunct title, but he knew it was there; it was always there, when anyone referred to Legolas's mother by anything but her own unadorned name. "Nothing here will harm you, but until you are used to the bounty of Aman it would be prudent for you to exercise moderation."
"I know not why I am surprised, my lady," Gimli said, bowing over a warm smile, "to find that the food here is different than it is in Middle-earth, when even the light itself shines so much more brightly than it ever did at home."
"Different, yes," Galadriel said. "This is almost—almost!—what fruit tasted like before the Fall of the Two Trees," she told them, and her smile held a sadness so ancient as to be almost unfathomable. "All food since then," she explained in answer to Gimli's startled look, "has tasted a little of ashes and loss to elven tongues. Even now, I can taste the trace of ashes in the fruit of Aman—but less, so much less, than that which is grown in the ravaged soil of Middle-earth. Ah, but you," Galadriel continued, cupping a gentle hand around Legolas's cheek, "you have never tasted food from before the Fall, have you child? So you would not know."
She drifted away, leaving Legolas staring after her with wide eyes.
"Well," Gimli said, "I'm going to find out."
He took the apple from Legolas's unprotesting hands and bit off a hearty chunk. He almost choked on the sudden explosion of taste upon his tongue. "This—but this—!" he cried, rather incoherently before managing to swallow. It was an apple, yes, but an apple such as he had never dreamed of before; or an apple, perhaps, that was the very essence of every dream of apples distilled to its strongest, purest essence. He had never tasted the like, and did not know if he would dare ever to again for fear of how it sent him reeling.
The sound of Hobbitish laughter helped to ground him again, and he turned to find old Bilbo walking up, his smile bright and his small eyes gleaming with mischief. "Ah, the first taste! You'll never quite forget that shock, lads," he told them. He looked up at Angmeril. "What did they start with?"
"Apples."
Bilbo's grin broadened. "Apples! That's a very good one. Apples, yes I like that. A splendid choice. Poor Sam, the first thing he put in his mouth when he got here was some of Frodo's potatoes. I thought he was never going to stop crying, thinking that Frodo had so outpaced him in the cooking department!" The old Hobbit chuckled. "It was quite a nasty trick to pull on him, although utterly unintentional of course. He can still barely eat potatoes without grumbling about it."
Gimli laughed and clapped Bilbo on the back. "Well, given that one bite of an apple was enough to nearly knock me off my feet, I'm not sure I'm quite up to Samwise's potatoes yet—but tell him that as soon as I can get myself settled, I'll be more than happy to taste his efforts and delight in them. It has been far too long since I've eaten Hobbit cooking!"
"I can see that just by looking at you, Master Gimli," Bilbo retorted. "But we'll soon get you sorted-out, never you fear. You and your longshanks there!"
Still chuckling, the Hobbit ushered the dwarf away to one of the other tables, no doubt eager to watch him sputter over some other overpowering delicacy of the Undying Lands.
Legolas turned to his mother. "I—I never realized—!"
"That the world you lived in was full of ashes?" Angmeril said gently. "Yes, my little leaf. Ashes and regrets—but joy, too. Was there not joy, too? Bright as Aman is, it has never held the sort of joy that Middle-earth did for me, ashes or no ashes." She clutched his shoulder, her worried eyes fixed on his face. "And you were happy there, weren't you? We tried so hard to see that you were happy."
"Of course I was happy, naneth," Legolas said, sounding almost indignant at the question even as he wrapped his arms around her. "How could anyone fail to be happy under our trees?"
Angmeril thought of all the stories she had heard of the Greenwood since she had been forced from Middle-earth's shores, all the grim whispers and dark tales brought over the Sea after her about Shadow creeping through the trees and driving her people ever farther from the rotten heart of Dol Guldur, the dark citadel that laired like a great and terrible spider in their woods; she thought of the steady trickle of wounded elves sailing to join her here, with their stories of constant battles against fell creatures and fouler things that her people had been forced to fight without her; the battles that her son had grown-up knowing as the only way of life there was. She thought of her Thranduil, desperately trying to hold the Shadow at bay and keep their people safe in the heart of that darkness; thought of her family left behind, beyond the reach of her love or her protection, ever fighting against the dark that had driven her from them. And she thought of her people telling her also of Legolas laughing in those dark trees, unafraid.
She smiled. "I truly do not know."
{ read more legolas and gimli fic on AO3 here }
p.s. please feel free to reblog if you liked the fic. I know a lot of folks are new to tumblr right now, but trust me: that’s not just an acceptable thing to do on this site, but a lovely one. Whenever you see a post you like, consider reblogging it to share it with more people.
Here’s another “too short to do anything real with” snippet that popped into my head, so I’m once again sharing it with tumblr (maybe I should start a story that’s just Short Snippets In Aman and post it on AO3 that way? hmmm).
❧ When Thranduil Sailed At Last ☙
When some four thousand years of the Fourth Age of the world had passed, and Elves had faded out of the memories of Men and into their legends and stories instead; when the Dwarves who remained had buried themselves so deeply within their mountain halls that only the echoes of their singing sometimes emerged to haunt the waking world; when the forest of Eryn Lasgalen, once called Mirkwood, once called Greenwood the Great, was finally empty of all elvensong save in memory and bewitchment, and those elves who had refused the Call of the Sea and the Grace of the Valar for all time were but faded and fey whispers of what once they had been, flitting through the shadows of their trees with bewitching laughter—then, and only then, did Thranduil, the last King of the Elves, at long last cross the Sea.
He was but a shadow of himself then, for his people were all gone or faded into the greenwood, and his trees barely whispered to him now; but every league he traveled along the Straight Road restored him somewhat in face and form, as the fair light of Valinor stretched gentle fingers towards his proud and weary face.
Thranduil was not wholly pleased by this restoration, for he had spent his life standing against the Shadow of the Valar's broken promises and errant deeds without their aid—or at least, without any aid of theirs that he had taken willingly—and it would be another ten thousand years at least before he would be healed of the pains of his past enough to forgive them for all the blood they had brought to his Middle-earth. He was not wholly pleased, but he did not turn back; he had changed that much, at least, in those four thousand years of Elven Fading, and he could put aside his stubborn pride for his family's sake, if not his own. It was them he sailed to find again, and not the Valar nor their Grace. He had no wish of either, but for the sake of his kin, he would endure their blessed light.
He was the last Elf to leave the forest that had once been Greenwood the Great.
When he set foot upon the White Shores, he was greeted by one of the first.
"Mae govannen, meltha-nín."
Thranduil stood in the foam of the waves and stared at the elf-woman in front of him. She was short and slim as a sapling, with cheeks the soft brown of an oak and hair only a shade lighter. Her grey eyes were bright as sun-kissed iron and her smile was as small as a half-grown flowerbud. She was dressed in flowing robes of green in many colors, as though she walked clad in all the shades of a summertime forest. Her hair hung loose and unbound, so long that it kissed the sands under her bare brown feet. Fine silver clasped her wrists, un-bejeweled but clearly of skillful Dwarven make.
"Angmeril?" Thranduil gasped.
She laughed and spread her arms and he ran up the sands into them, crying out with joy and ancient grief as he caught her up and swung her three times through the air. Those who had known the elvenking in later days would have gaped to see him cavorting so carefree upon the shores, an untroubled laugh upon his lips and a smile altogether unconstrained across his face.
"I almost did not recognize you," he murmured, when he set her down at last.
"It has been that long?" Angmeril said archly.
"Your hair is so long," Thranduil breathed, lifting a soft brown lock with bewildered awe.
Angmeril's smile cracked wider, twisting crooked upon her face; it was the sort of smile that was kept often hidden and could only be teased-out by a rare and secret jest.
"Well," she said, "you did take a very long time to join us."
Thranduil frowned. "I am sorry—"
"I am not," she cut him off harshly. "I am not. I tried to swim back seven times, my love. Ulmo got very tired of me."
Thranduil laughed.
"Had you come even a minute before you truly wanted to leave; if I suspected even now that you had come for me rather than yourself," Angmeril cautioned him fiercely, "I would gut you even now upon these shores and you would have to wade your way back to us through the Halls of Mandos."
Thranduil beamed at her brightly enough to for a moment outshine the sun. He bent to press his lips upon her brow. "Oh my love," he breathed, "I have missed you so."
"Well, you are stuck here until the ending of the world now, like the rest of us," she retorted, "so we shall have plenty of time to make-up for our lost years now."
"True," said Thranduil, and they set off arm-in-arm across the grass. Thranduil kept sneaking glances at the elf-woman at his side, as though he could not believe the truth of his own eyes. She caught him looking and raised her eyebrows in a wry, silent question. "Ah, my iron-flower," he explained, "I still cannot help but marvel at your hair!"
"As I said," Angmeril replied coyly, "you took a long time to join us. I did not want to cut it again without you here."
"Ah," said Thranduil, and a crooked smile to match his wife's teased its way across his face.
"You enjoyed witnessing the reactions so much the last time, after all," Angmeril teased. "And that was a grim army in the midst of a terrible siege. How much more shocked and outraged will all these fine Lords and Ladies be, here in fair and peaceful Aman where they say no ills or hurts can ever find us?"
Thranduil's laugh rang out loud and long across the dunes. "Oh," he said again, "I have missed you so."
They smiled together, the onetime Queen and King of Mirkwood, and walked forward together into forever, whether the rest of the dwellers of Aman were ready for them there or no.
{ read more of my lotr fic on AO3 here }
p.s. please feel free to reblog if you liked the fic. I know a lot of folks are new to tumblr right now, but trust me: that’s not just an acceptable thing to do on this site, but a lovely one. Whenever you see a post you like, consider reblogging it to share it with more people.
Quick little designs for a few of the elves of Mirkwood from my fics.
Height not exactly to scale, because it was a very small doodle, but generally accurate. Rílaerloth should be buffer tbh, but I was running out of room on the paper I was doodling on when I got to her so she accidentally got a little skinny because I was trying too hard to squeeze her in, sorry. Also there isn’t any embroidery or patterning on anything not because they dress bland in Mirkwood but because again: very small doodle. We’re talking each elf up there was drawn smaller than one of my fingers, so. Not a lot of space there to fit in smaller details.
Third Age designs for everyone except for Gilthawen and Oropher, who didn’t live to see the end of the Second; they’re in their Last Alliance gear.
Hi! You know I love your Mirkwood OCs. Can you say a little more about Eregmegil? Backstory? Any secrets? Why does he appear to have become a Gimli fan, after the life you've hinted at?
Oh OH! Eregmegil, yes, I would love to talk about him. I'm entirely normal about the elves of Mirkwood shhh. So, I'm guessing that this is largely in reference to the bit here where he carries Gimli through the trees so that he can get back quickly and find out whether or not Legolas is going to be okay after the orc-kidnapping, because there's no indication given in that story of why exactly it is Eregmegil should go out of his way like that for Gimli, yes?
So, yes: Eregmegil has very strong feelings about people being forcibly separated from somebody they care about, because his whole family was murdered in Doriath in the Second Kinslaying, and he has spent the rest of his life in Green/Mirkwood watching the folks around him lose people they love first in the Last Alliance and then in the long, slow defeat against the creeping Shadow of Dol Guldur. Including Angmeril, Thranduil's wife, who was one of the first elves they lost after the Last Alliance and whose departure was extremely traumatic for the whole forest for a host of reasons.
And it was Thranduil who carried little Eregmegil out of Doriath, having been the only one to hear him crying under his sister's corpse amidst the chaos, and having taken the time and risked his own life and that of his father to pull Eregmegil out and carry him out with them. Little Eregmegil latched-on real hard to Thranduil after that and has basically decided to devote his whole life to Keeping Thranduil Safe now.
But also he has a LOT of feeling about Protective Older Siblings, especially sisters, because his own died trying to protect him from the Fëanorians. So that's why he decides to pry himself away from Thranduil to go look after Rílaerloth for a little, because that's about the only impetus that could make him leave Thranduil when he's not 100% sure that Thranduil is going to be okay.
Hopefully all of those background details will get to come out in Coming Home Under The Trees, which is where I'm doing the bulk of my Mirkwood OC Building, but if you want an advance read of the Gimli-and-Eregmegil-bonding chapter that's going to eventually be included in that story...read on.
*also Eregmegil 100% has one of those oversized anime swords but he's so big no one can quite prove it.
NOTE that this is all rough first draft writing at this point.
Gimli stepped back, his palms raised in surrender. He shook his head at the hands that stretched back towards him. "Nay!" he gasped, his chest heaving in exertion. "Peace, you fiends! I must rest 'ere I fall off my feet."
The elves laughed and returned to their dancing, Legolas pausing just long enough to catch Gimli's eye and raise his brows in a silent question. Gimli nodded—he was fine, perfectly fine! He just needed a moment to breathe, for Mahal's sake!—and Legolas grinned and let himself be pulled back into the merry tumult under the trees.
Gimli brushed sweat-damp curls out of his face and looked around the clearing for a suitable seat. He did not want to go too far from the fire: the night pressed-in dark around the vibrant circle of elvish revelry and while Eryn Lasgalen was a more peaceful place than it had once been, his father's stories about Mirkwood lingered in his mind. Gimli was not keen to go wandering these woods with neither path nor elf to guide him back out of the shadows, not even now that those shadows at last were lightening to match the new name of their lands.
He spotted a likely log lying comfortably within the fire's glow, and Gimli made his way across the grass towards his pending seat with only two interruptions of elves trying to pull him back into the dance. He demurred politely and they shrugged and flitted off to their merriment without him.
The dwarf had to admit that Legolas had not been boasting when he had told Gimli that no one in all of Middle-earth hosted a revel quite as enthusiastically as the elves of Mirkwood. He had scoffed at first, expecting celebrations more in line with the gentle merrymaking he had experienced in Lórien, or the cozy nights of song in Rivendell. What he had found instead was carousing more akin to that which he'd experienced briefly in Rohan, yet somehow more raucous and unflagging. Mirkwood's elves cavorted as though they were going to war with sleep and sorrow both, and each twirl of their dance was a salvo in the battle against solemnity.
Gimli had kept up well, at first; dwarves are experienced revel-makers and they take their celebrations as seriously as they do their crafts or mining. But there comes a point in the night where dwarven celebrations turn from rowdy to melancholic, and in Mirkwood no such slower periods were allowed to dilute the tireless tumult of their festivities. The wine kept flowing, the songs kept rising, and the dancers kept spiraling around the fire as swift as arrows in the wind.
The problem, Gimli had finally determined, was that elves did not know how to appreciate sleep. It was because they did not partake of it properly, he thought, wandering as they did through half-waking dreams rather than sinking fully into slumber like reasonable folk. They did not know how to truly rest, so they simply kept going about their revels long past when all sensible peoples would have taken to their beds—aye, and then woke again without taking nearly enough time for slumber in between!
He was only a few feet away from the log where he intended to rest his feet when he realized that one end of it was already occupied; so still was the elf sitting upon it that, in the shadows at the edge of the clearing his green and brown garb blended almost completely with the foliage around him. Gimli was not sure if his presence would be welcomed or not—anyone sitting solitary at a bacchanal like this was doubtless seeking solitude rather than interruption by a near-stranger—but it would have been impolite to immediately turn aside, so he resolved himself to make a few minutes of polite conversation at least before taking himself off to some other seat and leaving the other to his chosen seclusion.
"Mae govanen," Gimli said with a respectful bow. "Forgive the intrusion," he continued when the elf—Gimli thought he recognized him as one of the guards he had met on his first arrival to the forest, although his head was muzzy enough that he knew it would take him several seconds to place the proper name—gave him a nod in response. He was still dressed in the light molded-leaf jerkin that served Eryn Lasgalen's warriors for armor and sported elegant bracers on his arms, but his sleeves beneath the armor were short enough to expose pale arms that were muscled almost thickly enough to belong to a Man although not, of course, to a Dwarf. His dark hair and white face were striking in the firelight—few of the elves of Eryn Lasgalen were quite so pale, and fewer of them sported such sharp contrast in their coloring—but it was the breadth of his shoulders and the stoutness of his arms that Gimli noticed the most. He was still uncomfortably slim to dwarven eyes, but less so than any other elf that Gimli had met. Had someone chopped his limbs down to a more reasonable length, he could almost have passed for a normal, if unhealthily skinny, person—at least if someone had loaned him a beard!
Realizing he was staring impolitely in his attempt to put a name to the face in front of him, Gimli offered a friendly smile and continued teasingly, "I do not wish to bring merriment with me to where it is unwanted, but if you will allot me a few moments in which to rest my tired feet from the revels you have chosen to eschew, I promise to keep my merry-making to a minimum in the interim and thus refrain from interrupting your repose."
He meant it as a jest, likely to segue into a bit of banter about dwarven endurance or perhaps commiseration about the other's likewise weary toes, but perhaps the elf could not see the grin on Gimli's face beneath his beard for he responded to his words as though they had been spoken in grim seriousness: "It is true, Lord Gimli, I am not much for merriment, but you are welcome to take your rest for as long as you like regardless of however much mirth you might feel or express; your presence brings no distress."
Gimli was taken aback but he hid it well; with another short bow he settled himself upon the lower curve of the fallen branch and stretched his legs out in front of him with a contented sigh.
"My thanks, Master Elf," he said, and finally the name came back to him: Eregmegil, the tallest of the elves of Eryn Lasgalen that Gimli had yet met, although that was not evident while he was seated thus. "You are a most generous host." Gimli glanced sidelong at the elf, but if Eregmegil's pale face evinced any particular feeling it was not distinct enough for Gimli to discern it in the dim shadows at the fire's edge.
As for Gimli, he smiled vaguely as a familiar laugh rose from Legolas's lips above above the nearby tumult, but he made no effort to spot the whirl of his golden hair twirling amid the rest of the cavorting elves. It was enough to know that his friend was happy; enough to sit here in peace and be happy himself.
The dwarf had abandoned his light jest at Eregmegil's words, being much more intrigued by this stoic elf than by his planned banter. "I hope you will not think it over-rude of a curious stranger if I ask why you have come to this revel, then, if you have no care for such things?" He flapped a hand in the general direction of the fire and the frolicking figures circling it. "Surely you would enjoy your evening more elsewhere, if you take no pleasure in such nonsensical cavorting?"
"My king is here, so I am here," Eregmegil said flatly.
Gimli was startled enough that he knew it showed on his face; only the fact that Eregmegil was not looking at him, but rather at the swirl of dancers at the fire, spared him the embarrassment of being seen to give such an impolite reaction. He could not help himself; it was a genuinely startling statement. The elves of Eryn Lasgallen were probably the least conscious of their king's rank as any people in all of Middle-earth, at least any that Gimli had yet met.
Dwarves were not given to standing on unnecessary ceremony themselves, but even at their most casual they were always conscious of their king's status as the king. These elves, by contrast, seemed to treat Thranduil more like a communal father-figure than as a ruler. Legolas and his sister did not even seem to qualify as royalty in the eyes of their people (no wonder, then, that Legolas had been more prone to introduce himself by his land than his lineage!) and while Rílaerloth was at least beneficiary of the respect afforded her as a commander of their warriors, Legolas—despite all of his heroic deeds—seemed to be viewed still as little more than a hapless child by many of his fellows, as though he were the whole forest's little brother rather than Rílaerloth's alone.
This behavior was strange to Gimli, and even after many days spent in company with Eryn Lasgalen's people he was still not used to their casual disregard for rank or ceremony—or so he had thought, until he was confronted by an example of someone acting more according to his expectations. Gimli was intrigued. Thranduil's people regularly showed affection for him, yes, but this was the first time he had seen any of them express the sort of dutiful devotion that beloved kings oft engendered in other lands.
He studied Eregmegil where he sat on the log beside him, but the pale elf's profile was as smooth and emotionless as if he had been carved from white granite.
"Think you that Thranduil requires a guard, then?" Gimli asked. "I thought the threats had been driven from your trees." He could not quite resist the urge to squint into the darkness past Eregemegil's shoulders—broad for an elf, Gimli noted, but still scrawny as a sapling by dwarven standards—although he was certain that the flickers of ominous motion he saw between the black silhouettes of the trees were only the result of his eyes and the flickering firelight playing tricks on him.
He was almost certain, anyway.
"Many of them have been," Eregmegil acknowledged. "The largest are all destroyed, and the rest have been hounded far from our halls, at any rate." His voice was no more coarse than any elf's but there was something to the tone of his words that made them seem more brusque than what Gimli was accustomed to hearing from his friend's people; a flatness that stood in stark contrast to the musical lilt that Gimli had begun to think was an innate part of elvish tongues.
"And yet you stay to guard him?" Gimli observed curiously. "That is admirable devotion."
For a long time Eregmegil stared at him in silence, so that Gimli began to think that he had offended the tall elf. He cast his mind about for a suitable apology, but before he could make one, Eregmegil broke their gaze to look back into the fire instead and said:
"He carried me out of Doriath."
"Doriath?" Gimli repeated, the half-formed phrasing of his repentance dashed instantly from his mind. He knew the name of Doraith, and recognition made his heart sink. "Ahh…"
"It was the Fëanoreans who brought tragedy to Doriath, in my case," Eregmegil said. The glance he slotted sideways at Gimli seemed to shine with a glimmer of momentary amusement at odds with his otherwise impassive mien before he faced forward again, stoic as ever.
Gimli nodded and tried to resist the urge to breathe a telltale sigh of relief.
"I was a child when they came, too small to fight," Eregmegil continued. His bland voice carried a bitter undercurrent. "My sister grabbed me and ran, but they pursued. She tried to fight, but she was no warrior. They dashed her knife from her hand and stabbed her with it. We fell, she curling low to protect me still. They stabbed her again with their long swords—stabbed us both as we lay there, but her body shielded mine and I was cut only along the arm." He gestured to the offending limb and Gimli was startled to see what seemed to be a long, thin scar along the pallid flesh. "She was cut deeper. I lay there, pinned beneath her like a caged bird, and watched as her fae left her eyes. I felt her grow cold in my mind and against my skin as we lingered there in the dark. She died, and I lay there trapped by her dead weight and my own sorrow."
Gimli's breath caught in his chest and strangled whatever insufficient words of sympathy he might have offered. Eregmegil did not seem to notice; he spoke matter-of-factly, although his eyes flashed with dark shadows in the firelight.
"It was Thranduil who pulled me from the ruin of her body," the tall elf continued calmly. "He heard my tears, somehow, even over the clash of battle that echoed through Menegroth's halls. Bleeding, his surviving father dangling half-dead at his side, his hands filled with the bloody swords of his living and dead father both, the Fëanoreans close on his heels, Thranduil still stopped and pulled me from my sister's arms. He set me on his shoulders and carried me, carried both Lord Oropher and myself, out from the ruin of Doriath; somehow still fighting to defend us all despite his burdens and his wounds and his own losses; carried me away from the darkness of our dying home and back into the light of the world beyond."
Gimli did not know if it was some trick of the firelight reflecting off of Eregmegil's grim grey eyes, or a result of the many droughts of heady elvish wine he had quaffed this night, but for a moment he could almost see it: the great halls of lost Menegroth, once a glorious testament to the marvels that could be crafted when elf and dwarf worked hand-in-hand, now incarnadined with blood and darkened with betrayal; its proud torches sputtering or gone out altogether, cut-down by enemy hands; too many fair elvish bodies strewn about the fastness of the Thousand Caves, cut down cruelly by blades of elvish make wielded by elvish hands; and one small child, sobbing into his sister's silent sleeve. Then from the shadows staggered Thranduil, his golden locks stained ruddy with blood, bare blades gleaming in both hands, one arm wrapped tight around his father's waist with Oropher's arm dangling limp across his shoulders, both elves bleeding heavily from many wounds; the elder nearly insensate and the younger wild-eyed and desperate, yet still in enough possession of his senses and his compassion to stop to help a fearful child…
(If the younger Thranduil in Gimli's imagination looked more like his son than like himself, well, what of it?)
He blinked, and the vision vanished, and there was once more only dark trees looming before his eyes. He cleared his throat, and managed to murmur something that expressed his sorrow for Eregmegil's losses without revealing the depths of his horror at such suffering at the hands of those who should have been kith or even kin rather than bloody-handed enemies; dwarves had fought amongst themselves in ages past too, of course, but somehow the level tone of Eregmegil's recitation made Gimli's skin crawl more than any tales of those regrettable conflicts had ever done.
(Maybe it was just that he kept picturing Legolas stumbling down those bloodstained halls rather than his father.)
Eregmegil accepted Gimli's admittedly less-than-eloquent sympathies with an impassive nod. Wishing to draw both his and the elf's thoughts to lighter places, Gimli cleared his throat again and asked, "So, ah, what was next? I confess I do not know the history of this forest as well as I should, but I believe that Thranduil and his father settled somewhere nearby before venturing forth to Greenwood, is that not so?"
"Yes," Eregmegil said. "We fled to Lindon. I was reunited with my surviving relations there. They made a home among the Green-elves and the other refugees who settled in Ossiriand." He was looking at the fire again rather than the dwarf, or perhaps at the dancers; his blank expression was as unreadable as his voice. "But Thranduil and Oropher were not content to live there among so many Noldor, not after the fall of Menegroth. Not after the Kinslaying. And nor was I. They soon left to go east, to find the Silvan elves who still lived there—here," he amended, tilting one palm up to gesture at the forest around them.
There should have been more bitterness in Eregmegil's voice, Gimli thought; bitterness or scorn or something. This cool, too-calm recital made him shiver despite the warmth of the fire.
"Oropher hoped to find somewhere to live in better ways, more elvish ways; the ways in which our people lived before the Valar meddled and the Enemy made war upon us," the elf continued in his passionless way. "My relatives would not leave the new home they sought to craft in Ossiriand, but I already knew then that my place would henceforth be ever at Thranduil's side. I joined with the handful of other Sindar who chose to leave Lindon and seek-out the elves who had never joined the pilgrimage of the Valar; who had never been coaxed to abandon their native lands or customs."
"Were you not still a child?" Gimli asked, surprised. He was no expert on elvish history, of course, but he had been curious enough about Legolas's homeland to question his friend about its founding, and he had thought that he had a better sense of the timeline than this. Had not Oropher left Ossiriand within only a few years? Perhaps Eregmegil had simply been older than Gimli had pictured him in the story of Doriath's destruction; he might have been only a little shy of his majority, like Gimli himself had been when his father had joined Thorin's expedition to Mirkwood all those years ago: Old enough to feel that he was being left behind, but still seen as a child in his people's eyes.
Eregmegil nodded, however. "A child, yes, but not a fool," he said in a dry voice. "I did not ask for permission, and so my relations could not deny me. I left with my lord and came to Greenwood." He looked around at the tall, dark trees that rose into the black night sky far overhead, beyond the heavy leaves, and his grey eyes were as flat as the dullest stone that Gimli had ever carved. He did not smile at the trees. Had Gimli seen any elf in this forest fail to smile at their trees, even the most shadowed and twisted of them? And these trees were bright and merry in comparison to many of their fellows, as though they too shared in the delight of the elves for their firelit revelry.
"And have you been here ever since?" the dwarf asked carefully. "Or are you newly-returned, now that the Shadow has lifted?"
"I left these woods only once, to follow my lord to war in Mordor," Eregmegil replied. "It would take more than Shadow in the trees to tear me from his side. Wherever Thranduil goes I will follow him, even unto the breaking of the world and yet beyond."
Gimli could not help but shiver at the weight of those words. There may have been no oath sworn—or then again there may have been, in days long ago before Gimli's father's father was born to hear it—but there was a surety to Eregmegil's voice that was as unshakable as any vow. He meant what he spoke with every fiber of his elvish fae, and he would damn himself to the Void before he forsook that intent.
"And yes," Eregmegil continued, and once again there seemed to be the faintest flicker of amusement across his grim lips, gone so fast that Gimli could not be sure he had not imagined it, "also to these merry revels that you seem to find so trying."
"I do not find them trying in the least," Gimli protested. "I quite enjoy them, in fact—I am simply tired!" He shifted on the log and scowled petulant. "Well and after all, I am much shorter than the other dancers," the dwarf added, feeling unaccountably as though he needed to justify himself. "I must work twice as hard as them to keep-up with the pace of their cavorting. No wonder I tire before the rest!" he blustered, despite knowing very well that the heart of the problem was not the speed of the dance nor the unseemly length of elvish legs, but rather the fact that elves simply had no proper appreciation for the merits of slumber, strange creatures that they were. Gimli was a stout and hearty dwarf, and justly proud of his strength and endurance; he was simply mortal, that was all, and as such he needed to sometimes refresh himself in ways that these flibbertigibbet elves would never comprehend.
"I stand corrected," Eregmegil murmured, and Gimli was certain this time that he detected a flicker of genuine amusement ghosting briefly across the elf's thin lips.
He harrumphed a grudging acknowledgement of Eregmegil's words and propped his chin in his hands, the better to watch the dancing. His eyes slowly drifted out of focus and he sank into something that was halfway to a doze, content to let his thoughts float as aimlessly and amiably as the blurry figures of the cavorting elves in front of him. As tiring as elvish dancing could be for a mortal participant, there was something restful about watching them too.
"Do not mistake me, Master Dwarf," Eregmegil said after a while, shaking Gimli from his reverie. "I do not dislike the revels of my people." Eregmegil nodded at the fire, and the whirling shapes of the other elves cavorting wildly around it, their lithe forms coming slowly back into focus as Gimli blinked. "I simply prefer to enjoy them from the edges here, where I can find pleasure in their delight without feeling compelled to manifest any of my own."
Eregmegil's gaze slanted back to Gimli, and now the dwarf could see a hollow darkness behind the mirror-like grey eyes that fixed so coolly upon his own. Had it been there all along, unnoticed, or had speaking of the past brought the vacuous shadows to the forefront? Gimli could not say, but no more could he unsee them now. "Whatever joy I once found in dance or in song went out of this world when my sister's spirit fled to the Halls of Mandos," Eregmegil continued flatly. "But it pleases me to see my people's joy, and in this bitter world that is comfort enough for me."
In the months since Legolas first heard the gulls at Pelargir, Gimli had developed a habit of skirting all mention of the Sea. It was thus not difficult for him to restrain the urge to ask why Eregmegil had not sought the healing of the Undying Lands that so many of his people sailed away to find when their spirits fell to the burden of such unendurable grief. He did not need to ask; he already knew the answer. Eregmegil surely knew as well as any elf—and far better than any dwarf, even one named elvellon—that the wounds of his soul could be staunched in fair and distant Valinor. But leaving would mean leaving his king's side, which would be the most grievous wound of all. And so he stayed, and carried the shadow of his losses with him, and endured.
Not for the first time, Gimli thought that the unmeasured lives of the elves was far from the enviable gift that so many mortals seemed to think them. If they had lived solely in joy, then their years unending might be something to covet—but the more time Gimli spent with elves, the more tragedy and sorrow he saw surrounding them. He had never brooded on the inevitability of Mahal's Peace the way so many Men repeatedly shied-away from their own inevitable end, had never feared the inevitability of his own ending; but sitting here at the edge of the firelight with Eregmegil, Gimli thought that rather than simply inevitable, there might be a certain comfort in the knowledge that one day an end would come to him. There would never be a day when he sat, two Ages of the world removed from the deaths of his kin, separated from the joy of his people by the weight of his own grief.
A flash of gold in the firelight caught Gimli's eye and he smiled instinctively at the sight of Legolas whirling like a wild thing in his friends' arms. The dwarf's tired feet ached just from looking at the roister of the dance, but like Eregmegil he was pleased enough simply to watch the unflagging joy of those who spun.
Legolas had described Mirkwood revels as though they were weapons against the darkness that hung over their forests, and Gimli had thought he had understood what his friend meant before, but he realized that it was only now, sitting beside grim and grieving Eregmegil, that he truly grasped the meaning of this defiant cheer.
The elves of Mirkwood—or Greenwood, or Eryn Lasgalen, or whatever else one chose to call this forest; the shadows that had defined it for so long hung over it still, even as they finally began to lessen, whatever name it bore—they were not less cognizant of elvish sorrows than their grander kin; in some ways perhaps they knew those sorrows better, for there was nothing to insulate the simple elves of Mirkwood from their weight, nothing but their own deliberate scorn for the sadness that strove to claim them.
The world wished for them to sigh in sadness? Then they would sing, sing until their voices gave out and dance until their shoes were worn clean through and the very trees around them reverberated with the echoes of their weaponized joy.
No I’m not having too much fun designing Greenwood/Mirkwood’s elves for my stories why do you ask.
1. Oropher - first king of Greenwood. would punch god. no chill.
2. Thranduil - second king of Greenwood. prince of sass.
3. Legolas - oh sweet summer child.
4. Rílaerloth - too much big sister energy in one container.
5. Angmeril - punched gil-galad once. not sorry.
6. Merilgais - SHE HAS A KNIFE
7. Tiraran - keeper of Greenwood’s one brain-cell. very gay.
8. Tarlas - married to the braincell keeper. shares custody sometimes.
9. Eregmegil - tall. broad. very chill. might actually be a tree.
10. Gilthawen - did not ask for any of this. and yet here we are.
