#kheled-zaram

[hhimring]

Toads of Kheled-zaram

Early on in Balin's attempt to reclaim Moria, nothing has yet gone wrong. Ori, left to himself for a bit, reflects.

(100 words; Teens)

Ori crouched on the sward beside Mirrormere. Small pink cyclamens grew around his boots. Balin and the rest were investigating and had left him as a look-out. He had been as enthusiastic as anyone about their plans, wanting to lay eyes on the ancestral halls that the songs told of! Now he was fighting down misgivings.

Three toads hopped into the lake, ignoring him. Plop. Plop. Plop. He did not remember any songs mentioning toads... Had they already lived here in olden times? It was fanciful but he wondered whether the toads of Mirrormere had their own legends featuring dwarves.

Here on SWG.

Here on AO3.

[porphyriosao3]

Day 5 - Stars

"What am I supposed to see?"  Legolas peered curiously into the dark water, wondering idly what made the lake so dark.  It wasn't peat, not this far up, nor were there trees to drop leaves into it.

"Well, I don't know if you'll see anything," Gimli admitted.  "But this is where Durin looked into the waters and saw the crown of stars.  It's said that he..."  Legolas peered closer, seeing something shimmering in the water.  Suddenly, as if snapping into focus, he saw their two silhouettes - Gimli standing sturdy and straight as always, his own bent form peering into the water.  Stars ringed Gimli's head like a coronet shining in the deep. With a sudden flash of starlight, scenes poured pell-mell through his mind; walls, unfamiliar rooms, Gimli as an ancient dwarf with a circlet and yet young and hale, flashes of faces known and unknown, and suddenly, looming up like a mountain, a dwarf larger than any dwarf ought to be staring right at him and... laughing?  With an almost physical snapping sensation, he fell backwards onto his behind.  "Wha' the hell are ye doin'?" Gimli demanded, whirling to help him up.  His accent always got stronger when he was upset, the elf knew.

"I saw..." he began, then stopped.  "I don't know what I saw."

"Did ye no see stars?" Gimli demanded.  "I saw them clear as day, Durin's crown, but I dinnae expect ye to go flingin' backwards like tha'!"  Effortlessly levering the elf upright with one tree-thick arm, he peered at him closely.  "What did ye see?  If it's not some great Elvish secret, o' course," he grinned impishly.  The teasing, familiar and welcome, brought Legolas firmly back to reality.

"It was... I saw a great deal," he said slowly, looking briefly aside and blushing slightly as Gimli dusted off the elf's dusty backside for him.  Some familiarities were still as yet unfamiliar... though unfamiliar did not mean unwelcome.  "I saw you as an old dwarf, very old," he said, trying to pick through the rush of half-seen images.  "And yet you were young, maybe younger than now, at the same time?"  A snort of disbelief was his reward for this statement.  Typical, Legolas supposed; he might have responded the same.  "Places... so very many places, rooms and palaces and halls, some dwarven and some elven, none I'd seen before.  In the end I saw... I saw..." His mind shied away from the titanic laughing form, blazing with power.  "I think I may have seen Aulë?" There had been a very real sense that Aulë had seen him in return, but his mind shied away from that thought and what it implied.

"You... you saw Mahal?!" Gimli demanded, aghast.  "From lookin' in Kheled-Zaram?!"

"I... maybe?  He was... laughing," Legolas said.  The more he thought about it, the more certain he was.  "But mostly it was you in all those places... with me."  He was no Galadriel, to know the mysteries of Lorien or Irmo.  He wasn't entirely comfortable having a vision of, well, anything really. Gimli interrupted his musing with a touch.

"Aye?" Gimli said softly, reaching out one massive hand to draw him closer.  "I suppose He would be laughin', to see such a giant tree of an elf a-peerin' at Him through His own lake." Gimli grinned, then his smile turned softer. "Well... good to know we'll na' be apart."

"No," Legolas responded, setting aside his concerns and tracing the new braid in his hair with a smile of his own. Long fingers toyed with the bead at the end, drawing Gimli's eyes.  "My heart feels we never will."  No matter where the future took them - and if the stars of Durin were true guides, they would wander far indeed - they were together.  At the end of the day, that was the part that mattered.

[shallowvenus]

BRO these are gorgeous???? wtf

[tolkienillustrations]

Mirrormere by titaniaumn

[tolkienillustrations]

At Durin’s Stone by Jef Murray

[l-otr]

Kheled-zâram, also known as Mirrormere, was a small lake in Azanulbizar, a vale east of Moria.  The name Kheled-zâram in Khuzdul,  the language of the Dwarves, means "Glass-lake". In Westron it was called Mirrormere, probably because the waters of the lake were always smooth and the stars could always be seen reflected in its surface no matter the time of day. Only Durin, however, could see his own reflection.

The lake lay less than a mile east and a little below the East-gate of Moria. It was long and oval, shaped like a great spear-head thrust deep into the northern glen of the vale. Its waters were dark; a deep blue like a clear evening sky, and there was a smooth sward of grass around its rim. In The Fellowship of the Ring, it is described as follows: "Its waters were dark: a deep blue like clear evening sky seen from a lamp-lit room. Its face was still and unruffled. About it lay a smooth sward, shelving down on all sides to its bare unbroken rim."