The bloody Elf was singing again. Gimli woke, not unpleasantly. They'd sung a lot in the last few days—or weeks, time passed slowly in Lórien, if not at all—and after bitter arguments and blame laid at both their feet, and centuries of misunderstandings between their two peoples, it had been in music, the joy of music, the solace of song they had found one another at last.
"What do you sing now, Master Elf?"
"Forgive me," The Elf fell silent at once. "I did not wish to wake you."
"I am awake, whether wakened or simply woke I will not have you bear the blame. Come—what do you sing?" The tune was endless, and although the Elf's tongue was always liquid, even his sharp ears couldn't make out the words. "I do not understand a word of it."
The Elf only smiled. "It is the Lay Without Words, Master Dwarf. The Endless Lullaby. The Long Song. The Life-Circle. It is little wonder you do understand no word of it—though I wonder that you not know it when you hear it."
"What Elvish nonsense is that? What good is a song without words?" Gimli argued, not out of animosity, but rather because after months of bickering in Rivendell and on the Road, it was how they'd become most comfortable. An Elf and a Dwarf—this Elf and Dwarf!—comfortable? Friends even? Mahal forgive him! But Mahal and *Yesthar were espoused, the Smith and Maker with the Birther and Renewer. Could his Maker truly condemn this fast friendship, being so wed?
"In truth, I know not, Master Dwarf. It Is, and Is a Song. I have never questioned this before."
"You Elves, you're all alike. You believe to know so much yet ask so little."
"I have lived to see the kingdoms of Men and Dwarves rise and fall," the Elf told him. "I have seen stars birthed and die in the heavens above, an acorn grow from sapling to ruinous age then return to the dirt from which it has sprung. I marked the passing of Khazad-dûm, I saw the birth of Erebor and I watched as its time ran out only to be forged anew from the ashes of dragon-fire. What, then, Master Dwarf, would you have me ask?"
Bloody Elves and their unnatural long lives—how sad they must seem. "Aye, lad," he said. "It's a start."
*Yesthar (Neo-Khuzdul): Supreme Wife. Head-canon name for Yavanna.