International Relations-- Chapter 1/3, 1200 words

[nsmorig]

 Gimli / Legolas, written for roselightfairy.dreamwidth.org/ 's prompt on Ao3, asking for post-war big-shot lords getting together. Here! a tropey fluff fic, with gratuitious descriptions of gemstones.

In which its actually the Sylvan Elves who have weird ideas about gift-giving, not the Dwarves.

The day had been spent in a haze of blue-paper and rulers and arguing with surveyors and praising architects, and his head had filled to the brim with crystals and facets and irrigation systems. It was in this blurred, work-tired state that Gimli had seen a stone of labradorite and been reminded at once of Legolas. He picked it up without a thought and put it in his pocket.

It had stayed there all through the long evening and into the morning, as Gimli quite forgotten to go bed. He found it again the following evening, as he found his way back to his bedroom.

An oval the size of his palm, the stone was worn smooth and flat by time like sea-glass. Dark veins grew like narrow tree-trunks through the green crystal, and it was bordered by what looked almost like petrified wood. It was very strange, to find such a thing in Aglarond, where the gems were different. It looked almost like the Forest of Fangorn-- the stone shone with a marvellous iridescent sheen, and it looked to be the pale sun in the afternoon filtering through the leaves.

He realised, all of a sudden, that there was some sort of hollow ache behind his sternum. It felt like the loneliness that had taken him, sometimes, when he had first left his family, but his siblings slept down the hall and his father and mother had made the long journey from Erebor to see the rebuilding and he was not alone here.

He thought on this as the firelight dimmed, and watched as the stone seemed to shift and change, like the sun going down over the forest. It struck him then, swift as an arrow, how he was missing Legolas.

He had expected some of it-- he had left friends before, though none so close or dear, and had expected that same emptiness of evening and the way that he had turned and expected to see him through the day. That, he had forseen, but he had not anticipated the bone-deep ache that held him now and would not leave.

Perhaps, he thought in the privacy of his bed, perhaps his . . . Partiality . . . Was not as shallow as he had thought. A little crush, he had long thought it, a childish infatuation over a deep and honest friendship, but it had not faded. When he thought on their separation, there it was, the pain in his chest, the worry and the heartache, and then when he thought of Legolas himself there was the warmth that he had become accustomed to on their journey together. He brought a hand to his face, and it was hot with blood.

"I see," he said into the darkness, and smiled.

He is separated from him now, but he will not be forever, and any love, returned or not, is a thing to be treasured. He pushed the longing aside, and let himself sink into the sweetness of it, tender and fragile and beautiful.

Though it is surely some time past midnight, the Halls cold and dark, he pulled himself to his desk, and began to draft a design before the siren-call of sleep drew him back to his dreams.

//

In the morning, he looked over the designs again, smiling to himself as he made his way down the stairs. It was visible even then, scaffoldings reaching towards the ceiling and dust on every surface, the first shadows of the architecture in the Great Hall. He thought on the memory of the wide heart of Khazad-Dum and how beautiful it had been, even in the dark with the orcs climbing the pillars and the fire streaming through the air.

Aglarond would be more beautiful. Aglarond would be safe, even if he had to spend the rest of his days keeping it so.

Like a spectre, his sister materialised out of a dark corridor, and in respect for the years it had taken her to learn to walk silently he obligingly pretended that he hadn't noticed her approach.

They sniped back and forth for several minutes, speaking of ordinary things and how Camlin was terrorising her apprentices and how Gimli's shirt was rumpled and his hair in disarray, and in the process he was carefully informed of many useful things that that could not be said out loud. This, he has learned, is a great deal of the work involved in running the settlement.

"Camlin, you have been speaking with new settlers," he said at last, when his thoughts turned back to his plans, "Are there any sculptors of plagiocase crystals?"

"Aye, nadad, you."

He laughed a little, quietly. "Whoever told you that jade was plagiocase, or a crystal, ought to apologise."

"Do not mock me, sir," she said, with amused vitriol, "You know as little about prayer as I do about gemstones. What are you looking for?"

"A relief or cameo shaper of stones with high schillerism and moderate Mohr's Indexes. One with a good knowledge of adularescence."

"You invent words to torment me."

"Perhaps," he said with a smile, though he had not. "Feldspars?"

"That, at least, is a word of certain provenance that I know you have not glued together from syllables for your own benefit. I will ask."

His duties then called him away, and once again he was asked to settle disputes and not insult anyone's pride too greivously in the process, which was a challenge enough to keep him well entertained. Through the day, though, in the rare moments when his thoughts were his own, he found himself thinking of sand-papers and fine dremels, and how he would file such narrow cuts as he intended smooth, and of whether he could inlay gold . . .

//

My dear friend,

I write to you from the new anteroom, which we finished constructing this morning; it is still deep in stone-dust, but at last there is a desk, and a window. You have quite ruined me for the caverns, for after all our time on the surface I now find that if I do not see the sun I begin to quite lose track of the time, which is a disadvantage indeed here.

I have included several drawings of the work that has been done, and a copy of the original blueprints for the gardens. We have looked into your suggestions-- the irrigation particularly we are developing very well-- and to my eternal amusement some of the craftspeople refused to believe that they were of your design. You will have to keep a watch on where you put them, because I will inevitably lose my copy of the blueprints, which will cause some trouble.

My siblings have arrived, and though I would rather that you never meet, for you would surely band together in dispelling the illusion that I am a dignified Dwarf, they are both most eager to meet you. In fact, in perhaps a month the first phase of construction should be all but done, and we would be able to tear myself away from my duties here to visit you in Ithilien as we had planned . . .

.