A fourth age Legolas/Gimli vignette

Written initially for HA writers' workshop but I didn’t read the rules well enough. The 1^st is Gimli’s POV first person. The second Legolas’ POV third person. It was fun, I hope you all enjoy it as well. Beta'd by the wonderful Theresa Green. She is a legend.

Rose

Home

I sit on the creaking dock, engaged in the most banal of activities, that of sharpening a blade. These sweeping actions, repeated daily over the span of my years, and then applied topically, could have ground the great iron-tower of the Dark Lord to ruin, making redundant the heroics of our younger days.

I snort at the fanciful turn of my thoughts. True to the taunt of my father, the elf has ruined me for polite company.

I look up then, away from the tools nested against the silver of my beard, and seek a glimpse of my nemesis. There he is, near the bow, running some elvish rope through a complication of rigging. His hair is a gold beacon in the warm afternoon. Two gulls have posted themselves, hanging motionless on the steady onshore breeze above his bright head, and then one cries its haunt into the waning day.

Without warning, and entire, I am thrown into a memory. A piece of our past from when my beard was russet, and my blade an axe, sorcery born from the smell of mineral oil, the mourning of the gulls and the tilt of that unchanging head

A dozen decades earlier.

I sit on a creaking dock, this time at Pelargir, running a whetstone over the edge of my blade, lately mended from its marring on the iron collar of an orc. The lowering sun creeps below a pall of cloud that has filled the sky, the sudden light warming the rough planks to a beauty rarely granted to fish scale and tar.  In front of me a black ship tugs fitfully at its tether, testing the hawser wrapped round the bollard next to the one I have claimed. The elf is on board, an adventure I declined, but I look up from my sharpening at his startled call. He is perched on the crosstree of the mast, and gulls sweep round his head like a swirl of leaves, crying into the teeth of the wind.

“The gulls Gimli!” He swings swiftly down the ratlines to the deck, and then runs to the bow to follow their dipping, flowing flight. The sun lights his hair to fire, and he stands, transfixed, for all of the time it takes me to stow my axe and my tools and make my unsteady way to his side.

“Legolas?” I lay a rough hand on his slender arm. He tilts that unearthly sun-filled face to mine, and his eyes have changed.

“Gimli,” his voice barely makes the distance between us. “ The sea.”

One hundred and twenty years later

Now he stands in front of me, frowning at my preoccupation. Graceful, he scoops the oil-vial and its stopper off the planks, fitting one into the other with absent-minded care.

“Tomorrow, Gimli. Say those are not second thoughts, my friend. Would you have me tarry?” The sea surged again under his deceptively unlined brow.

Would I sentence him to even a day more of the torment he had borne with a patient heart throughout the long reign of King Elessar?

“The wanderings of an old fool, Legolas. Tomorrow we sail, lad. As we agreed.” Again I place my hand on his slender arm and the elf places one long-fingered hand over mine.

We both look along the straight path painted by the sinking sun onto the sea. A gull lofts silently, silhouetted against the brightness in the west. Leading us home.

 Home 2

Legolas threaded the last sheet through the last block, and then coiled the tail neatly, arranging the rope alongside the others at the foot of the mast; they looked like so many springs, poised for action on the morrow. The ship stirred as a gentle wave passed under her hull, like a cat stretching.

Legolas felt content, as he had not felt content for decades. All was ready, and his friend Gimli was still hale, still with him, still game for the adventure before them, despite the number of years he carried. Legolas glanced at the silver-haired dwarf, typically busy, sharpening a hand-adze on the less chancy standing of the wharf. The rhythmic stropping sounded as enduring as their friendship. Legolas tilted his head, aware of wings above him, and then the gulls cried, scolding the wind or each other, and Legolas was jolted into memory.

The memory took him to the docks of Pelargir, more than a lifetime of men into the past, and placed him in the crosstree of a Corsair’s mast. He felt young, exploring this new curiosity; ships were no part of the woodland realm. Gimli had turned an eye, full of suspicion, onto the rocking deck, and then decided to stay on the wharf. Legolas could see him sharpening his great axe again, occupying his time, waiting for him to be finished with his investigations.

The sun, muffled all day under a bruise-colored cloud, slipped free of its grasp and lit the world. A fair of gulls greeted the brightness and whirled around the elf’s head, crying of the vast, seething, otherness at the end of the river.

“Home,” they cried. “Home, home, follow.”

The elf felt his heart stutter. He may have cried out his astonishment. With no further thought he dropped through the ratlines to the deck, summoned to the south. The bow rail brought him up short and his heart stretched after the flock, a new yearning boring a hole through his certainties.

After a time he was called back to himself by the feel of a heavy hand on his arm. Brown eyes filled with concern looked up at him from a nest of hair that shone red in the sun, like polished wood.

“Legolas?” said Gimli.

“Gimli,” Legolas remembered saying, his voice strangled by foreign emotion. “The sea.”

The memory left him, and, a dozen decades later, Legolas shook himself out of the past and looked to his friend.

Gimli’s hands had stilled, the sun shone his hair to mithril, but his creased eyes were closed.

Something like panic stirred under Legolas’ breast - surely the Valar would not be so cruel? Swiftly Legolas made his way to the dock and to his friend’s side.

Gimli blinked up at him in surprise as his shadow blocked the sun. Legolas stooped to pick up an oil bottle from the wharf, the action covering the surge of relief that brought tears to his eyes. He fitted the ground glass stopper into the neck of the bottle and feigned casualness.

“Second thoughts, my friend. Would you have me tarry?”

The fear of a positive answer must have shown on Legolas’ face because the dwarf shot him one of his sharp looks, and then clambered to his feet, all the while disclaiming any such desire.

As in the past, the dwarf anchored the elf with a touch. Grateful, Legolas placed a hand over his. Tomorrow they would sail, and follow the path painted by the sinking sun, home.

Rose Sared