Adventures in Arda and Aman by Lferion

They had been fish once, some of them. Others of them had been lizards or rock-slithers or wriggle-worms, once in the long ago, in the warm seas lit by the Lamps. And there were still fish and lizards and all the rest, but they, taken into Utumno, into the cruel crucible places of the One Who Marred, were no longer any of those things, yet all of them at once in a way. In the upheavals of the Lamp-fall, the Darkening of Tree-light, the rising of the Moon and Sun, the anguish of Angband, and the breaking of Beleriand they survived, thrived, defied the Marrer and lived, discovered they could skip from water, to mud, to land and live. They wanted no ruler nor to rule anything but their individual selves. They wanted no poking or prodding or recombining of their parts, their essences. They were good at escape, and better at hiding: up trees and down holes, places very thin of air, or air thick with water. And always, they were happy to lead others in escape, to free spaces, to new and better life. Many were the bright, speaking peoples led to better places by following determined mudskippers.

Lindir watched as the Dwarves moved to the music they were making. The music sat oddly in his ear, the rhythm a regular irregularity, an irregular regularity, with a melody of unexpected flights and digressions. The Dwarves who had come up from south of Khand were eagerly showing off for the Dwarves from Moria and Ered Luin, who all seemed very appreciative. Lindir had a least understood the mining-song, the strength of a roof-arch, the beauty of a well-constructed tunnel. It wasn't until he saw the twinkle in Elladan's eye that Lindir realized he was moving to the music himself.

The moon sailed above a pillar of light, white-gold against the the vast darkness over the edge of the cliff above the sea, sea that became sky without transition, no horizon. The stumps of broken trees loomed against the murmuring water, the now-gentle wind. Could Tilion see them, storm-tossed, beached above the rocks that had wrecked their ship, the relentless waves that had shattered every timber. No wreckage now was visible, only they, shivering on the clifftop with their small salvage. No lives lost to sea or storm or rock, only any means to sail back along the moon-path-pillar home.