Absolutely, and what an appropriate choice to send when I'm trying to distract myself from what I'm supposed to be doing lol (thank you). Anyway, prompt taken from this; anyone can feel free to send other numbers in at any time.
Legolas was fidgeting. Gimli glanced over sideways, a concerned frown furrowing underneath his beard. It was not the motion itself that had caught his attention: Legolas was by nature a creature of near-constant motion, a trait that seemed to be shared by all Wood-elves. They were like the trees they loved so much, ever swaying in some breeze that only they could feel; ever rustling like the whisper of thin green leaves overhead.
This was not that sort of motion; this was fidgeting. This was nerves.
Gimli could tell the difference at a glance, after so many years (he was not actually sure how many years anymore; time was a strange thing in the Undying Lands) of their companionship. Legolas's usual motion was soft and winding, like a gentle summer breeze. These fidgets, as he twisted his long bark-brown fingers together, were short and sharp and miserable.
He was nervous. It showed in the tension of his smooth and beardless face, in the darting glances of his bright grey eyes, and most of all in the twiddling of those spindly fingers.
Gimli reached over and covered Legolas's hands with one of his own, broad palm stilling the much longer, thinner digits with ease. Legolas looked over and gave him a grateful smile, but the skittering tension did not leave his eyes.
"You are distressed," Gimli said. He kept his voice low, although he knew that the other elves near them would hear well enough; elvish senses were too keen to be so easily avoided. But Gimli knew too that the others were all preoccupied with their own thoughts, and would not pry without cause. "Why?"
"I have never met him before," Legolas replied in a murmur. He curled one of his hands up around Gimli's, lacing their fingers together. "What if he...what if he is disappointed by me?"
"How could anyone be disappointed in you?"
That instinctive response merited Gimli another brief flash of a grateful smile, but this one was gone even faster than the first. "Oropher was a great Elf Lord," Legolas replied softly. "A leader even before he was crowned a king. He is spoken of with respect even by the Noldor—or some of them, at least; and that is no small thing, for us of the Woodland Realm."
"True enough," said Gimli, his words slow as grinding stone, "but I do not see why any of that should give you cause to fret, my dear."
Legolas swallowed. "I am so small, Gimli, compared to that. What if he is disappointed to meet a grandson who is so much less?"
"Ridiculous," Gimli snapped. "Legolas, you are being as foolish as a Took—no, moreso; for Tooks at least can recognize their own worth. You are a treasure among elves, my dear, and I do not say that only because you are my treasure."
Legolas could not restrain a watery laugh at that, and Gimli smiled to see it.
The smile passed quickly, though, and the frown returned, deeper now than before. "Do you fear that he will be disappointed to find that you have chosen a dwarf?"
"What?" Legolas gaped at him. "Of course not!"
"No?" Gimli raised an eyebrow. "He was an elf of Doriath, was he not?"
The tips of Legolas's ears colored. "That—yes," he admitted. "But what of it? Doriath was a long time ago, and the dwarves that fought there were not your kin. And they certainly were not you." He shook his head, his golden braids bouncing in irritation. "Besides, name an elf in all of Aman who has not fallen in love with you."
Gimli bit his lip to restrain his smirk. "I can name several," he said.
"That you have met?" Legolas retorted, and Gimli could not stop the short bark of a guffaw that slipped past his beard.
"Indeed, yes!" he chuckled. "Many look upon me with grudging tolerance at best, and you know it."
"None whose opinions are worth counting," Legolas said loftily.
Gimli smiled at him. "Fair enough," he allowed. "Your grandfather's opinion, however, is one that we would both value, I think."
"Nellglind adores you. And he died much closer to the events of which you allude than Oropher."
Gimli granted the truth of that statement with a nod, and decided that now was not the time to point out that Oropher's husband had not exactly been enamored of Gimli immediately upon meeting him. Instead he said, "Well, if you are not concerned that he will be displeased to see me by your side, then I cannot imagine what could possibly be the source of this fretting."
"I am not sure that it has a source," Legolas muttered. He drew his knees up before him where he sat on the slope of the low, grassy hill outside the Halls of Mandos where the elves of Greenwood had gathered to wait for the return of their first king. "Only that this is the first time that I will have been here to see one of my family Return from Death, and I find myself plagued by an anxiety over it that I cannot name."
Gimli nodded his understanding of that, too. "Well," he said, "as I understand it, you will not have long to wait, my love. Soon he will be back among the living, and you will meet, and he will adore you I am sure—even as I do."
He silently considered the merits of making himself scare for Oropher's actual arrival, however; of giving the legendary Elvenking a few minutes to meet his grandson on Legolas's own merits before confronting him with the reality of Legolas's dwarven husband. It seemed not just the prudent course of action, but the polite one, too. After all, while Gimli was indeed part of Oropher's family now, Oropher did not know that yet. Let him meet the grandson he did not yet know he had first, and then his dwarven grandson-in-law.
Things would no doubt go much smoother for all of them, then.
But they had a few minutes yet before the Doors of the Halls of Mandos opened, and his elf was still nervous.
So Gimli raised his other hand and caught Legolas's narrow chin and drew his beardless face down to him for a long, slow kiss. Legolas fairly melted into Gimli's arms, all the tension of his long limbs running out of him like iron set too long over a hot forge.
"Thank you," he murmured.
"Anytime, my love," Gimli replied, and pressed a second, softer kiss against Legolas's now smiling lips.
Of course, that was the moment that Oropher took to actually walk out of the Halls.
Is the Galadriel and Doriath wip current or Galadriel reminiscing?
It is set in the final years of Doriath, and focuses on both Galadriel's role as Melian's student and her future fate as well as on Celeborn and Thranduil's youthful friendship, and it ends just after the Second Kinslaying.
It's very wip-y, in the sense of being mostly "here's a quick transcription of ideas" rather than actual writing, and I'm honestly not sure when I'll get back to it...but here's the beginning at least. It's the most detailed part, although even still it's mostly just sketched-out scene-notes with some bits of actual rough-draft prose at the end.
Melian and Galadriel in the former's garden in Doriath in a courtyard outside the palace that spills out into the wild forest; Melian is teaching Galadriel how to feel the world within her, both of them barefoot on the grass, feeling the flow of the song rise up through the soles of their feet. A peaceful, soft, quiet moment…
Thranduil and Celeborn walk along one of the castle walls, Thranduil skipping on the actual wall and Celeborn scoffing at him from the walkway; they pass two guards, who laugh; no one is taking the guard duty particularly seriously, because they all know Menegroth is safe from harm.
Thranduil says that his father doesn't think it's good that they allow Galadriel and Finrod to come here; Celeborn is shocked (and deeply crushing on Galadriel), why!? Thranduil shrugs and says that Oropher doesn't think that it's good to have Noldor here when a Silmaril is; his other father, he adds while Celeborn is drawing an outraged breath to argue, pointed out that neither Galadriel nor Finrod are Fëanor's sons and should not be judged by their deeds. Oropher admitted that was true, but points out that they are still his kin—and perhaps for their own sake, should be kept far from such possible temptation. Other dad was amused by this; does Oropher really think that just the sight of some pretty jewel will overcome them? At that point, Thranduil says, wrinkling his nose, they started saying mushy stuff about being overcome by your beauty, and that's when he left. Celeborn laughs and calls him a child. Thranduil scowls.
Meanwhile, inside the hall, Thingol and the dwarves clash over the necklace; we open at the end of the argument, when tempers have already flared. Thingol towers over one of the dwarves, trying to intimidate him; another dwarf steps behind him and swings a hammer, cutting him down at the knees; he falls with a cry of surprise and the dwarf raises the hammer over him again…
Melian gasps and falls, Galadriel half-catching her and sinking to the ground with her mentor in her arms. "Teacher!" she cries (look up Sindarin), startled and afraid; what could fell a Maia? Melian smiles sadly, her eyes far away. "Fear not for me, Galadriel. This is the day I have long foreseen come at last, and the darkness that follows will be for you to face, and not for me. I depart these lands now, and leave Middle-earth for a time in the keeping of the elves alone."
In the halls, one dwarf stares in shock and horror at another; what have you done? The second lowers his bloody hammer and says that Thingol would have kept their treasure for his own. Should they have let him? Are the elves to forever be their betters, because they were made first? We are the forgotten children, unwanted by the song; it is up to us to seize our place in Arda, to make our own place in the song. Will you be forever second-best to the elves?
No, the first agrees; he takes the necklace. No, we will not let our work be stolen or our souls unvalued. Not by the elves, and not even by the Valar themselves. We are dwarves, and we know our worth as well as we know the worth of our treasures; we will not let our value be dismissed. But come! We must away before the other elves learn what we have done, or it will not be our treasures but our lives that pay the wages of this working! They flee.
"Depart!" Galadriel cried, her voice ringing raw and hollow through the garden. "But why? Wherefore should you leave this place?"
"I follow my beloved Thingol's spirit, my dear student. I know that I shall find him again someday on the other side of the Halls of Mandos; for he has left this land, and my daughter is long lost beyond the Gift of Men; and now comes the time where I depart for the Blessed Realms, and return to my own teacher and my kind and kin."
Galadriel gasped, her mind reeling beneath the weight of Melian's words. It was too much; too much all at once. She seized on the simplest, cruelest part: "Thingol is dead?"
"His life's blood even now spills across Menegroth's stone," Melian murmured. She rose, and drew Galadriel up with her. The queen seemed taller now, somehow, but more insubstantial too; she stood like a pillar of cloud before the breeze and smiled down gently at the bewildered elf-maid standing lost and lonely before her. "I say again, do not be afraid, my brightest and dearest student. I will not say that we shall meet again, for far and away will come the chance that may one day lift the Ban that bars you from those blessed shores; and thin even as the blade of a silver knife that chance is. You may well fail it; you may not even live to face the test. " She clasped one of Galadriel's hands between both of her own and stroked the bare fingers gently. "But if you do come across fire and destruction to the moment of your measure, and you can overcome both power and pride, then I foresee that the Ban upon your head will be lifted and the Seas will open to bear you home again."
"I do not think that Aman will ever let me call it home again," Galadriel whispered.
Melian cupped her face between her hands. "Ask your heart again in later Ages where your home lies, and despair not before then," she said, and bent low to kiss Galadriel on her brow. "Now farewell, my dear. Farewell, and let not your heart be hardened. On the other side of every nightfall there is a dawn, and the light in you will never go out so long as you will it still to shine. That much, I promise you."
"Melian—" Galadriel began to say, but the queen was no longer there; only a shimmer of light where she had stood, a gleam of mist that might once have been a smile and a faint echo of a distant song; but she was gone, and Galadriel stood now alone.
Around the borders of Doriath, the girdle of power that had long defended the great green lands flickered and began to fade, following the flight of its maker. The earth beneath Galadriel's bare feet shivered at the loss of power, but Galadriel did not feel it; she had heart then only for her tears.
can I break the rules? I know Oropher isnt an oc but since he's got almost no page time imho that means the way you write him makes him your oc so (if youre not made im breaking the rules lolo) can you do 18 22 30 or 43 for Orpher pls?
Anon, you may absolutely break the rules thank you. Especially for Oropher; I have a feeling that Oropher would always come down on the side of breaking rules, tbh. (Questions taken from here.)
18. What embarrasses them?
Nothing. Literally nothing. If Oropher ever had a sense of shame once upon a time, it didn't make it out of Doriath alive.
22. How does jealousy manifest itself in them (they become possessive, they become aloof, etc)?
Okay, so picture how a gorilla goes around beating on their chest... No, wait. Picture how a Stereotypical American (or Australian) Dudeboy goes "hold my beer!" and then throws himself into Doing Something Really Dumb For Attention. Now replace that image with Oropher, First King of the Greenwood, elf with famously bad impulse control, handing his wine to Galion and probably taking off his shirt. He is going to get your attention, and you are going to think he looks cool if it kills him, dammit! And if it does, he'll just do whatever it was again but twice as hard when he gets back out of Mandos!
Do you think he looks cool yet? Because if not, he will do something even bigger and stupider until you do!
30. Who do they most regret meeting?
Curufin. Without contest. Because I decided it's fun if it was Curufin, specifically, who killed Nellglind during the Kinslaying in Doriath, and then Oropher who killed Curufin. (This makes things extra fun for everybody when Gimli and Celebrimbor become BFFs in Aman!)
43. If someone asked them to explain their sexuality, how would they do so?
He would start talking about Nellglind, gushing about him and describing him in great and intimate detail. Oropher would have a fantastic time doing this, thanks so much for the excuse hapless person who now regrets asking! Everyone except for Gandalf would be horrifically embarrassed and uncomfortable. Nellglind's ears would be so red. Legolas will threaten to walk into the Sea. Oropher won't care. They will have to gag him to stop him.
And then everyone very quickly regrets the fact that Gimli taught him Iglishmêk...
I love writing. I love when things just happen as you’re typing and you’re like “hey that’s a great idea, self, thanks for writing that, we’re going to run with that on purpose now, so glad you did that off-the-cuff as you typed without actually requiring conscious input from the brain. The brain likes it very much. Self-headcanon accepted.”
Anyway Oropher is trans and gay now. His husband died in Doriath during the Second Kinslaying. And you wonder why he wasn’t keen on listening to a Noldorian High-King...
Could you talk a bit about the Death of Nellglind?
ask me about my (many, many) wips here.
Oh, very happily, yes! So Nellglind is what I've named Oropher's husband (since Tolkien gave us precisely zero canon about Mirkwood siiiiiigh) and in my backstory for Legolas's family, Nellglind dies in Doriath during the Second Kinslaying (slain by Curufin in specific, in fact, whom Oropher than killed in response; this has been done in order to provide Maximum Awkwardness For Everyone when Gimli and Celebrimbor eventually become besties in Aman).
Oropher is still an elleth in this story, although she has already turned her focus to the sword (my backstory for Oropher is that he's trans, and he was initially one of Melian's maidens, like Galadriel, and was very bitter when Melian abandoned them after Thingol's death, and none too pleased either with the fact that Galadriel, who was the most-learned and strongest of them all, did not even try to hold the Girdle herself) and is extremely proficient; but she has never killed an elf before, and so even though she has her Fëanorian opponent outmatched she hesitates over the death-blow; and in that moment of hesitation Nellglind, who is a singer and not a warrior, is slain.
And that's when Oropher learns to never hesitate, ever again. (Which lesson will not come back to haunt anyone later of course, shhh.) She cuts her way through the carnage and gets there in time for Nellglind to die in her arms, and then she goes off shrieking bloody vengeance after Curufin, killing him and almost dying in the process, and leaving it to Thranduil to drag her from the ruins and refuse to let her die.
This wip is the story I hope to eventually write about the events of said Kinslaying from Oropher's perspective, ending with he and Thranduil standing looking out upon their new home of the Greenwood, and both deciding to leave their old names behind them with the dead (metaphor about the renewal of spring after winter frosts, blah blah blah). Right now I've got the initial fight-scene written, but then just notes for the rest of it, so it has a ways to go yet.
Also while @babybat98 has been very kindly helping me devise some possible pre-Greenwood names for Oropher (and Thranduil will need one too, of course) I haven't settled on one yet, so that'll have to happen for sure before this story can go too much further lol.
But it's a fun one! Thanks for asking about it, anon.
Thank you for asking! I haven't written anything on that one in quite a while, and it was good to get it going again because it really is a fun one. I'm not sure if we're supposed to post what we write for this or not, so in case we are here it is:
"Imagine my surprise," Nellglind drawled, "when I returned to life only to be confronted with an entire forest of Wood-elves I had never met before who wished to adopt me, while the Noldor and the Vanyar kept trying to convince all of us that I ought to be calling myself their king."
"But that is not true at all," Angmeril laughed. "You returned to life almost two thousand years before I was forced to Sail here, and there was no Greenwood in Aman before that. You seemed to be quite happy living among the other Sindar of Doriath before you came to our woods."
"If you wish to be strictly accurate about the order of events, then yes," Nellglind allowed, "that is how it went. But you must admit that it was a shocking thing to learn that my own husband had become a king of a people I had never met, regardless of how long I had to digest the story before there were any of you here on these shores so that I might see the results myself."
"Well, I am glad that you came to see them, regardless of when it happened," Oropher said. "And that you have learned to love them, too."
"Of course," Nellglind scoffed. "How could I not come meet my own daughter-in-law the moment I heard she was on these shores? And of course I fell in love with her immediately, for how could one do otherwise with such a charming elleth?"
"That is also untrue," Angmeril said, laughing harder than before. "You found me to be absolutely irksome when first we met, and we both know it. There is no call to pretend otherwise now."
"True," Nellglind shrugged, "but I found Oropher irksome, too. Being irked is how I fall in love."
Oropher laughed very loudly, and pulled Nellglind in close to kiss his ear, and said, "That is true indeed, fortunately for me!"
Gimli had not been able to keep from snickering at that. Legolas shooting him a scowl that said he knew exactly why Gimli was laughing had not helped, and he had to press his mouth into his beard to try and stifle his amusement.
"You can be irksome too, you know," Legolas muttered.
"True," Gimli said, still chortling. "But this is one contest in which I fear you shall always best me, my dear Legolas!"
Legolas muttered something very vulgar in Sindarin in response, and Angmeril laughed so hard that her mother frowned in concern and told her to be careful she did not fall from the log on which she sat and roll into the fire.
That, of course, had only made them all laugh harder.
Then Oropher had asked his husband, "Have people really been pressing you to declare yourself king of the Greenwood?"
Nellglind responded with a grimace that was almost as eloquent as Legolas's cursing and said, "Yes. It is the most nonsensical, irritating—"
"They do the same to me," Angmeril said, scowling.
"At least you have actually been to the forest whose echo they now want us to rule," Nellglind griped. "I have never even seen the original Greenwood!"
"These Noldor do love their crowns," Oropher snorted. "Perhaps if they had ever learned to love their kith and kin as highly, they would not have been so quick to spill elvish blood in the pursuit of jewels and power."
"We are not going to get into all of that," Nellglind declared firmly. "You have only just returned from the Halls of Mandos, and this is a night for joy. Not for dwelling on our losses and our sorrows."
"My sorrows are all abated now that you are at my side once more," Oropher declared, his sharp eyes softening with warm affection. Then he frowned and glanced at Gilthawen and asked, "Is not your husband here as well?"
"No," Gilthawen said, her voice very quiet.
"He was not here when I disembarked," Angmeril told them all. "Whatever happened to my father after he left the Greenwood, he did not make it to Aman."
Oropher reached over and took Gilthawen's hand. "I am sorry," he said.
Gilthawen mustered a smile. "I am sorry, too. But we parted long ago, and by his choosing. I will not waste my days mourning him now."
"Quite right!" Oropher declared, and stood to pour them all more wine.
