Meanwhile by Lferion

Courting, an Example

Legolas and Gimli arrive in Valinor. Their friends have Plans. A triple drabble.

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Prompts - L:B2 Marriage Plot, A:I5 Mosaic, P:I1 Acrostic, F:G3 Legomance

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Gimli Gloinul and Legolas Thranduilion had not married in Middle Earth, being busy with many other things, and not particularly wanting to wade into the diplomatic and cross-cultural tangle that would have ensued even mentioning the idea, much less seriously pursuing it. And they were, in the main, happy with what they had.

Which was not to say that there was not an intricate and lovingly made mosaic in Gimli's private rooms in Aglarond, combining motifs significant to them both in many variations, or that Legolas did not have sheaves of poems, and notes for poems, and glimmers of ideas for poems, some of which he had even let Gimli see over the years. The one that had made Gimli laugh and blush and proceed to prove again the truth and insight of Legolas' words was an acrostic, straightforward on the surface, as layered and intricate as Gimli's mosaic.

Even the ship that Legolas built was a dialog: Dwarven engineering combined with Elven principles and aesthetics of ship-building, accommodation for Dwarven, Silvan, Sindarin, even Mannish and Hobbitish ideas and elements. It was as if the ship itself was a mosaic and a poem both. Friendship, intimacy, commitment, but not quite a marriage as Elves understood it. At legolas's insistance, Gimli took the plans for the mosaic, and at Gimli's, many of the poems -- most especially the acrostic -- were stowed in the same waterproof chest.

Upon arrival in Aman, however, the pair of them discovered that the bestowal on Gimli of the same kind of exception that Tuor and Bilbo and one or two others enjoyed was only the beginning of the long-planned scheme, indeed the veritable plot! developed by friends who had Sailed before them, to have them well and truly married under tree and over stone, joyous in Aman.

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