starlight and earth

I think a lot about that scene at the lakeside, when kili says you make me feel alive and amralime, and tauriel gasps, tauriel scrabbles for space, for distance, for some semblance of objectivity, because—someone must, someone must be sensible, she must be sensible—love does not warp the world around it it is an accident of the heart in a world of knives, and she would not see him bloodied to ribbons in her name; she is water, she shapes herself to the stones she flows around, elven-kings and woodland princes and her own exile, only—

only he gives her shape, a promise-stone meant for his mother, he sees her, as she is, calm and clear-eyed and true, and teases her irreverently despite her seriousness, he pins her down, makes her stay, makes her real, and when he says I am not afraid it is because he is not, because she does not give an inch and so he will not either, will not apologize.

(he is so young, and he does not truly see any of the obstacles in their path, does not even really know how to see them but he looks up at her with starlight reflected in his eyes and sincerity enough to shatter a heart when he smiles, says come with me, Tauriel gives it weight, thinks about kissing him, about lowering her mouth to his and—

she does not kiss him until he is cold on a mountainside, until he cannot kiss her back and she cries unlovely, wracking tears because nothing has hurt as this does—they have known one another less than a week and still she was real to him, she was something true and piercing and he loved her, and she might have loved him, they might have built a home halfway between starlight and the earth, they might have been something, but he is cold in the snow, beyond her reaching, and not even legolas will comfort her)

(kili dies with her name on his lips, this elf-maiden he had not meant to love except her hair shone like carnelian and there was starlight in her eyes and she had stayed, she had made him alive again, she had—she had made him feel as no dwarf maid ever had, as thought there was a purpose to reclaiming erebor, more than the dream of his uncle and his mother, more than stories and songs and starlight, but—the thought of having a place near her, a home

she is cold as stone but she warms at his hand like stone too, and he refuses to see the obstacles in his way, cannot hear what his kinsmen would say if any of the line of durin dared to cross the boundaries of race and bring an elf-woman into their line. She has hair like carnelian and is water, is a weapon, she is all kili has ever wanted.

he dies for her, in the end, and goes before mahal without shame, certain of his choice, without fear. She is his people too, he claims her, in the sight of any—let others worry over law, and custom, he knows his own heart, and what it wants.)

he falls, unflinching, and she hopes, unstinting, and I will never not love the accident of them, their collision course with each other. It is not necessarily true love, but it is sincere wanting and desire, and that is enough

it is enough