Gimli. What a coarse name, and how Legolas moaned it night after night in his dreams! Thranduil's son had no idea how he had slipped over the line into the realm of dwarves. Men, surely, he had known before, and of course his own people, the Firstborn. But Durin's folk, those dirty, gruff Ereborians who love rock and metal and all things shining and jeweled -- these indeed were a curiosity to a silvan being like himself. He knew stories, of course, and he had heard at length the wrongs they had dealt the Elves during the First Age. But somehow those tales had never seemed to mention that while dwarves were hirsute, stump-like, and tended not to bathe, they were also -- strangely, somehow -- endearing.

Worthy of the love of an Elf, no less.

For that was what it had become, whether either party liked it or no. Legolas could hardly shoot straight when he knew Gimli was watching; he was constantly wondering what lay beneath that armor, what would be revealed when the hair was pushed away. And ai! what songs I would sing for you, Gimli; what braids I could weave upon your head! He absent-mindedly ran a hand through his own locks, imagining how a dwarf's beard would feel between his fingers.

A snuffling sort of grunt from below drew his attention back to Lorien. He chanced a further glance into the glen. Gimli had shifted, and was now firmly wedged between the two roots where he was snoozing. Legolas smiled fondly, though at the same time his heart panged, wishing there was room enough to squeeze in beside him. He wondered now whether or not he should even trouble the dwarf -- he looked so peaceful, and such rest had not visited the Company since their dreadful escape from Moria.

But then, he reasoned, 'twas Gimli's own folk that suffered most back in the Mines; he shall have much pain that will need soothing. And so with that conviction behind him, he stepped lightly into the clearing and into full view.

The ears of a fox were apparently not among a dwarf's qualities when asleep, for Gimli did not stir. Perhaps I tread too lightly, the elf realized. He took a breath and spoke the dwarf's name.

"Gimli."

"Rrrumph!" Gimli started, and jerked upright. Or rather, he tried to: the mallorn roots held him dear for a moment before with a growl he popped out and hopped to his feet. Ah, so too would I loathe to let you go, Gloin's son!

Gimli's wayward eyebrows shot up. "What do you want?" he rumbled suspiciously.

Legolas took a brave step forward. "I wish to tell you something. A proposal, if you will."

"A proposal?" He laughed, a rough, deep-throated chortle. "Will it be worth my while, rousing myself from a nap?"

The elf gave a slight, sharp intake of breath. Oh, how I will make it worth your while... "I would fain ask your opinion on a matter of great gravity."

Artlessly, Gimli plopped down onto the tree roots and picked up his axe. He dropped its head into the loam and leaned against the handle, watching Legolas with a skeptical eye. "Well, go on then, let's have it out, if it's so important."

The moment was not quite going as he'd rehearsed in his head. By this point the dwarf should have at least taken his hand, maybe surrendered some of his mannerisms to a breathless expectation as to what Legolas was going to say. But he brushed that aside with a flick of his hair, and he took another deep breath and launched into the most nerve-wracking talk of his life.

"I realize we come from very different cultures." Gimli snorted, and muttered something. Legolas chose to ignore it. "I know our people hold little emnity for each other. Indeed, that outburst at the Council of Elrond was most distressing, but I have come to regard that as the product of uncorrected prejudices. For elves and dwarves have, much they can give each other.

"On my part, Gimli, I have come to admire you, when mere weeks ago I thought I could not. Hitherto I had never seen the attraction that lies in a brawny stature, or a mastery with the axe. Your kind have never been thought beautiful by my race, but they fail to notice the strength of your bearing, the eloquence of your eyes (which speaks much more aptly than your mouths, sometimes). They name dwarves too short, too hairy, too rude; but nay, they are wrong, Gimli: they have never truly seen dwarves before, methinks.

"I am nobility among the Fair Folk, Gimli: far is my standing from lowly and mean. I have kept company with some of the most illustrious figures in Middle-earth. Yet I should be pleased and proud to tread new paths, Gimli -- to walk with you and have you as my lover. I..." He looked at the dwarf's face, faltered, and trailed off. He caught a gleam of crooked white teeth through the beard, which must have meant his jaw had dropped. Often those Legolas courted were left speechless: why then did he feel so uncomfortable now?

For a few tortuous moments, a deathly quiet hung between them. Legolas's gaze was locked on the thick lower lip moving soundlessly up and down. Finally, the dwarf trampled the silence and sputtered. "Well I never." He fixed the elf with a beady expression -- reproach? amusement? "In all my born days I have never heard such a-- such a--!"

Gimli rose to his feet and held his head high, somehow seeming to level his eyes with Legolas's. He shifted the axe handle and rested both raw, powerful hands atop the butt. "You assume, Master Elf, that simply because I am a dwarf, I lack pride of my own. I am Gimli son of Gloin! My father was of the band of exiles who took back the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug! My uncle Balin reclaimed the Mines of Moria, and ruled over our most magnificent realm in Middle-earth before it was destroyed! Dwarves forge the finest metal in the world; it is our craftsmen who know mithril best! Our smiths supply all the kings of this shore with jeweled goblets and magnificent brooches. We work hard for our respect, and we maintain it ourselves, despite foul talk from elsewhere. So you imply I have little nobility of my own. But these hands earn their own honor, in both the bellows and the battlefield.

"And secondly, you have the gall to assume that I would simply spring for you, just because you give me the privilege, and because your historians and poets laud you as the loveliest folk in the land." He paused for a smirk. "Now, I am a progressive fellow, but I find it difficult to examine you without finding severe abnormalities."

Astonished and a bit affronted, Legolas interrupted. "You certainly had no qualms admiring the Lady Galadriel."

"She is another matter, Master Elf," he replied stubbornly. "She is entirely different from you." He halted for a moment, and ran his eyes up Legolas's body, which was enveloped briefly in an all-consuming shiver. "For one thing, consider your ungainly height!"

"Ungainly--?!"

"Aye! 'Tis a small wonder the elves have little love for the earth and its riches -- they have barely touched the ground since they were wee! And seeing as how you are ageless and immortal," he continued (a note in his voice which could only be jealousy), "you surely cannot much recall that distant time." With that practice round behind him, Gimli shrugged his shoulders and launched into a full-blown tirade.

"Were I a mother, I would fret over your build, stretched atop that gangly frame. Where is his girth? I would ask; what weight is in his bones? It is as if someone took you in your youth and stretched you out thin like dough. I feel like one wrong move and I'd knock you into pieces!

"And just what is all the fuss about your 'fine complexions'? Stubborn paleness, if you ask me! Before I had spent time with you on this quest, I would have thought elves took eight baths a day to keep themselves so. And what for? You neither muddy your hands with work nor brown under the sun. What would there be to wash away?" He shook his bushy head. "I cannot imagine how you pass the hours, hidden away in your trees." He paused. "Perhaps I do not want to know."

Legolas was flabberghasted: not even Haldir had ever lambasted his exterior so. And the dwarf had more. "And shall I also point out that you are very nearly as bald as a newborn babe? Those whispy strands atop your head that you're so proud of would have been laughed at on a year-old lass! I understand you would wish to compensate for that with other adornments, but the braids in your hair would not pass muster for us. Now here--" Gimli tugged proudly on his sprawling bristle of beard. "A dwarf knows how to make use of his finest features!" His eyebrows shot up so that they hid like caterpillars beneath the brim of his helmet. "I could not bear to touch you in that fashion, Master Elf: I should feel I was violating a child stricken with giantism, among other ills!"

Legolas was stunned: standing before the dwarf, he suddenly felt all wrong: scrawny, gawky, pasty. If his face betrayed the horror he felt, Gimli paid it no heed. "Though," he chuckled, as he sat back down on the mallorn root, "it was a gallant offer. And you do have fine taste."

The elf made not another sound, save for a staggered, choking exhalation of bottled breath. His head bent, he turned and left the glen. He fled the dwarf, seeking a more populated corned of Caras Galadhon, where perhaps one of the men would provide a sympathetic shoulder -- at his own height.