starlight and earth (2)

I was thinking about this today, about tauriel’s stiffness and seriousness when kili mentions having something down his trousers, her jittery confusion when kili teases about his “cursed talisman”—and how desperately he says “or not!” when she’s already walking away, how quickly he talks, just to get her back

(awkward darling children, she doesn’t remember how to laugh and he doesn’t know how not to be overlooked they’re so bad at this but then they’re talking about light and memory and moons, and that seems promising, like something that could flower under the warmth of your palm)

I was thinking about how broad kili’s fingers are compared to hers, when he takes the stone back from her, and how cool her hands feel against his fevered skin, and how she and fili keep vigil beside kili’s sickbed, and fili tells all the right stories—the ones only a big brother can tell, like when kili was forty and utterly convinced he was the next great nabla player, so the whole royal line of durin had to go around with cotton stuffed in their ears.

and sometimes kili wakes up and smiles at the both of them—a crooked, contented smile, his eyes half-lidded with sleep, and tauriel is warm, warm, warm.

(when they stand beside one another on the battlefield, and tauriel leans down and murmurs after this—after this we see the stars. promise me. I know you can be reckless.

and kili turns slightly, just enough for his lips to brush her jaw. I promise, he says, though his voice breaks against her skin. I promise. I promise. I promise.)

(it isn’t enough, in the end.)

.

tauriel on the banks of the anduin, bidding goodbye to legolas (this is as far as he would come, too afraid to further defy his father)

tauriel stopping for rest in rivendell, and being welcomed by arwen undomiel herself, feeling very young and clumsy and wild around her noldor cousins. but there are men of the west there, and a child called estel whom admires the sheen of her hair and follows her like a pale shadow for days. she only draws him out with stories of spiders and dwarves and dragons, and he repays her by calling her naurfinel, the flame-hair, and making her feel less like a child herself.

(there is starlight on the bruinen when the lady arwen comes to her, and asks about the stone she carries. starlight is memory, the lady says, and tauriel feels an ache so deep her bones could shatter of it)

tauriel on the east-west road, staying again in bree--she likes the children of Men best, she discovers; something about their wild innocence, the untaught strength of them. (the elves of mirkwood have been at war too often, too long, for any children to have been born since legolas greenleaf came of age. watching bree's children play in the street, tauriel mourns.)

tauriel first stepping in eriador, and thinking on the stories of the war of wrath, and how she walks in the lady galadriel's footsteps.

tauriel coming to the dwarven stronghold in the blue mountains and pleading with the guard--dis the lady dis sister to the king under the mountain and mother of its princes I must speak with her I have sworn a promise.

tauriel told to wait, told that she may not enter without leave of the lady dis, and going to sit on a rocky outcropping--sitting there still as the stars come out above her, stars from the other side of the world, and she wonders if kili might have told her their dwarfish names, if it is not elwing's wings and the anvil of feanor that he looked upon, if his had been an entirely different sky.

what do you call that cluster of stars, near the northstar? she asks, when a dwarf comes to sit beside her on the stone.

those are the seven fathers, the lady dis says. (she is of such a likeness to thorin oakenshield that she can be no other--but there is something soft about her mouth that reminds tauriel more of kili than his uncle.) why, what is your name for them, elf?

and tauriel holds the promise-stone, thinks of the starlight of other worlds and who walks in it now. says, we call them--we call them the tears of nienna.

she uncurls her hand, and offers out a stone.

.

au where the whole company is under the misguided impression that prince kili needs help courting ambassador tauriel (the boy might be a prince of the line of durin, but he's hardly a catch--too skinny, doesn't even have a full beard, can barely smith chainmail) so they all pitch in and help in their own fumbling ways

some work (tauriel does appreciate the ceremonial axe that bifur smiths for them, with the traditional runes for binding on the handle) but most of them really really don't (one in particular resulted in tauriel finding three naked dwarves in her bed and none of them the naked dwarf she likes finding there) and kili has to apologize a lot with kisses and star gazing

(...does thorin give her The Talk I bet thorin gives her the If You Even Think About Hurting My Nephew Remember I Defeated A Dragon Once talk I bet he screws it up so badly she wanders out of the throne room totally confused and he just sits back in his throne and thinks by aule I am such a good uncle)

(legolas is vaguely horrified by the proceedings)

(legolas is mostly horrified by how charmed tauriel is by the proceedings and tells her so often)

(...legolas might be jealous that tauriel is collecting this ragtag family, of people who might not be elves but love her and support her nonetheless, legolas is so jealous he can't breathe and doesn't stop being jealous until he joins the fellowship)

(tauriel and dis get on famously, by the way)

(do tauriel and kili build something like a hobbit hole halfway between mirkwood and erebor I bet they do I bet they have a lover's nest half in the ground and half out of it and on clear nights they sleep outside under the stars)