Image description: The first image is a drawing of Gimli from the side. He sits at a table in the archives/library in Minas Tirith and is holding a piece of parchment in his [poorly drawn] hand. There is a sheaf of notes to his left, and a venn diagram similar to the one in Image Two is sketched on it. The second image is a picture of notes from a statistics lecture on multiple regression. There is a three-way venn diagram in the upper right hand corner and others notes scrawled about.
I don’t usually draw because it is absolutely not at ALL one of my skills and talents--have you SEEN the beautiful things people create in this fandom?!--but I started doodling after a headcanon came to me during the last hour of my Stats class today, and it carried me away. So here is a picture of Gimli laboring in the library in Minas Tirith, poring through old lore about the elves and their ailments, in an attempt to lift the spirit of his friend in the only way he knows how. Also, please indulge me by reading a new headcanon I have about dwarves. Eventually I’ll be writing up this little concept into a one-shot spinoff of my WIP series At Sea in the Middle of Ithilien.
You can find the At Sea series here (Part I) and here (Part II, the WIP). Most of my other writing about the sea-longing can be found at this link. Please dear God, do not hesitate to talk to me on Tumblr, Ao3, or FF about the sea-longing. There is little in this Middle-earth I love more than exploring this concept.
Long and short of it, these stories take place around Fourth Age 30. Legolas and his elves--including his partner--are living in Ithilien while Gimli is in Aglarond. Legolas has been increasingly struggling with the Sea-longing, and the methods he and his friends have employed for years to curb it are running thin. Eventually, a tragedy of sort strikes, and it forces them all to take a new approach. Because Gimli has always been Legolas’ anchor in the midst of the Sea-longing, they begin the long labor of piecing Legolas back together.
Basically, I decided that dwarves have an excellent understanding of mathematics and statistical analysis--beyond the understanding of even the Noldor in the Third Age--due to the limitations of their mortal lives. They are makers, creators, craftsmen, and builders, and they do not have forever to wait around to watch what happens, to piece together the patterns of things, and yet there is a drive and a fire to create. And, thus, for dwarves, math and formulas and statistics become a key and increasingly complex part of not just the designing of things but also the predicting of them. The dwarves collect data on a number of things, so they can answer questions like-- In what circumstances is a flood most likely to collapse a tunnel? What factors increase the likelihood of death during famine? Which jewels are most lucrative when brought in which seasons to which markets of Men? Dwarves are a sturdy people, but this self-created knowledge is part of what makes them so.
So, after the War, Gimli brings these skills of his people to Minas Tirith and then, afterward, to the Glittering Caves--the planning and safety of these places, their structures and their beauty is rivaled only by the reliability of his work.
Thirty years pass and we are just past the time of At Sea. Gimli and Legolas travel together while he puts himself back together, and they follow Aragorn’s careful instructions on all those things that he thinks and he hopes--as a healer--are most likely to keep Legolas’ feet on the ground. But elves are not meant to resist the Sea, and they do not have much to go on but supposition and prayer.
But then Gimli begins to think. For, oftentimes, aren’t decisions made without all the data? Certainly there are not elves a-plenty to ask about the Sea here in the Fourth Age, he ponders, and there are none living save Legolas who are actively denying it, but surely there is information hidden about somewhere? There are archives in Minas Tirith, he muses, and libraries kept still by the Sons of Elrond in Imladris, after all... And if he can collect as much data as he possibly can from accounts of the past, might they not have a better idea of what things to expect, what things to avoid, and what things they might try to sooth his friend’s soul? For even if no elf in the history of the world resisted so long as his, there are probably hints hidden in all these millenia of writing that may open the door to improvement...
And, so, when they return from their wandering, Gimli sets to it, for he is stalwart and stubborn and a solver of problems.
He pores over texts and writes to Rivendell to ask they do the same; he recruits Faramir and Elboron to the project; he consults Arwen and writes to Mirkwood for whatever oral lore they may have stored away there in Wood-elven minds, and he works and works and works. He catalogues every possible example of Sea-longing and its effects and outcomes and the traits of the elves that have suffered it. He analyzes specific cases closely and uses them to guide the coding until he has buckets of predictors and traits and variables that might map onto outcomes and behaviors and feelings that he can just barely grasp, dwarven as he is, but that he hopes--if intervened on--might alter the course of things for his friend.
So, eventually, Gimli has set to work with his formulas and his statistics, and he labors and calculates and checks and rechecks until he thinks he has some answers--he takes what he has found to Aragorn and Arwen, and eventually to Legolas and to his people. Then--after much time and much patience; some tears and much frustration; moments of failure and triumph and vulnerability and forgiveness--the stability of a new normal emerges, and it becomes a little bit more enjoyable and much more manageable for Legolas to move through a world in the Fourth Age of Men that is no longer built to accommodate elves. It is not perfect but it is enough.
And that is the way that Gimli became the first dwarf in Middle-earth to labor so for the cause of an elf as to be named elvellon twice over. And it is also the story of how a dwarf became the first person in the history of their world to approach the healing of hearts in so logical a way that--nestled within the complimentary knowledge of those things beyond numbers--a new era of treatment was born.
And all of this because a Dwarf could not bear to be parted from his Elf.
