"…Stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do, that dares love attempt."
xxx
Her presence, the lines of her angular face colored fair with rosy cheeks, sent a tangle of pleasant shivers through his limbs, an unfamiliar experience that made him question his own sanity. Had the maiden with the sometimes coy, sometimes fierce expressions cast some form of elven magick upon his mind? Did creatures such as her possess such powers? Perhaps. His typical reaction would have been rage and rebellion that accompanied the thousands of generations of dwarf blood pumping through his veins, traits of the line of Durin, strong even if the family line itself had weakened over the years in these dark times.
Kili felt no anarchy. A quick flash of a smile from the red-haired beauty with the pointy ears at the end of the table. More lazy warmth in his heart. The recklessness in his nature surfaced when he grinned back at Tauriel of Mirkwood in front of all his kin, his gaze lingering in her direction even after she had turned away; enamored of her grace as if she were the Nauglamir itself.
Even by the dim fires of the Erebor dinner hall, her hair glinted in the shadows like a copper vein in stone.
Fili bumped his brother's elbow. "Could you be any more obvious?"
Kili hid his smile of embarrassment behind a mug of dark drink. He let the rich potent taste of amber mead wash away his enchantment, if only for a moment.
xxx
"This cannot be, my Prince."
She sat perched atop a stone, underneath the near black leaves of Mirkwood, or Greenwood the Great as she sometimes called the forest, an old name that bore little resemblance to the unending mesh of trees, pale sickly beech and oak trees with trunks mammoth in size and probably older than Kili's grandfather. Clusters of ivy swarmed around rocks and raced up trunks in a million different patterns. Kili crushed a patch of fluorescent lichen under his boot.
Diluted sunlight from the overhead trees cast muted golden specks on Tauriel's face and torso, her simple dark green and brown leather clothes mimicking the palette of the forest. From Kili's peripheral vision, if he looked at her from the sides of his eyes, she was not there, just another forest shadow. With her soundless footfalls she could easily vanish and abandon him to the angry forest. No place for a dwarf. The thought raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
"I know it seems unnatural to the others," he said, giving her a small smile, though her words stung him. He watched her pop wild berries into her mouth one at a time. The juices stained the center of her lips maroon, shiny and wet like blood. Part of him wanted to taste the mysterious crushed berry from the soft skin of her mouth, even if it were poison, aconitum to a dwarf, maybe.
She sometimes dipped her arrow tips in a milky colored sap collected from a stinky plant on the forest floor. One shot from a toxic arrow and her goblin enemies dropped to their backs in convulsions as if caught in fits of madness. Kili had loved her even more in that moment. The deadly swiftness of her wrath had kindled desire in his loins.
Patches of dirt covered her pale skin. She was no polished princess in chambers of jewels and silk pillows. She dwelt in the land of green shadow, her perfume the sweet forest musk, the ancient mossy rocks her throne. "Handsome heir of Durin, our lives are too different," she murmured, the sweetness of her tone contrasting with the skinned rabbits hung on her belt. Yet for all the world she sounded like any other forlorn maiden. "The gap between our lives is wider and deeper than the ancient seas to Valinor."
Kili hid his confusion. He didn't know her elvish legends. "I am no sea man," he said, staring up into her eyes from his position on the damp earth. "But I will cross any sea for you, my lady."
His heart hammered in his chest. He sounded naïve and young, even to his own ears. But was she not youthful also, in the terms of her people? He meant every word. Every damn word.
The warmth of her smile reached her eyes. She glanced down at her hands in a quick moment of bashfulness, and then met his searching gaze. Ye gods, her beauty stunned him. Her high cheekbones, the feline shape of her eyes, even her slight upturned nose contributed to the artwork that was Tauriel, child of a different god than Aule whose name he did not know. "And I you, Kili..." she bit her bottom lip. "I would retrieve you from the fires of Mordor itself. But this situation...well, it could end up very messy."
Her words shook him to his very core. A sense of euphoria flooded his brain and he resisted the violent urge to kiss her, to sample the wild taste of Mirkwood from her mouth. The sickly sweet scent of the forest was overwhelming, digging in his pores.
He rubbed a hand against the grain of stubble on his face.
A gossamer spiderweb thread dangled over his head with beads of moisture like tiny crystals strung on a line. The creator was absent, tiny and hidden under a leaf somewhere.
"I prefer the title Captain," she said with a smile and one lifted red brow. "If that's possible for you, I'm not a 'lady' in the former sense, and you are a prince."
He beamed up at her, his heart still bloated with happiness. Even if they hadn't thought out the details, even though his kin and her people hated it, even if she didn't truly love him as a male loves a female yet(as a dwarf man loves his dwarrowdam? Or an elf man and an elf maid? Man and woman?) he felt pleased with her confession. He hadn't been mocked or turned away.
Kili himself was still swamped with confusion, he had never bothered with love and marriage before in all his life. It would be an ordeal to take counsel with his brother on the subject. Struck by love with an elf maiden! His mother would have hysterics. Kili was too young yet, expected to marry well for his noble line if he married at all. He could take lovers as he wanted, but of course not with an enemy race whose bad blood traced back thousands of years.
"May I kiss the Captain's hand?" he grinned.
Tauriel looked taken aback. Kili's heart sank. He wished he could suck those words back into his mouth. "Forgive me, I-"
She let out a rather girlish laugh, a twinkling sound like wind chimes in a subtle breeze. Sliding down the stone onto a lower crevice, she seated herself on a patch of moss, her face at eye level with him, close enough for flyaway strands of her hair to tickle his arms. She laid their catch of game down by her side by the twine lead and held out her hand. A flash of a naked wrist in the gloomy light.
Of course Kili noticed her long sinuous fingers, her pale pointed nails and the calloused pads underneath. Blue veins like tiny trees under the top layer of skin.
He felt her eyes on him as he grasped her hand in his own. Her flesh reminded him of a magnolia flower caught in his grip, his hands rough and bulky compared to her lissome elegance. Their combined colors, her fair complexion from the shade of the forest, his tanned skin from the field of battle, teased his senses. He closed his eyes.
At first he mistook the softness of her hand for a real petal, with its rivers of delicate indentions, her skin redolent of wet earth and honeysuckle. He loved the slight give of her flesh against his lips. Somewhere in the tree tops a wren sang three notes over and over. Kili realized he should withdraw, if he pushed her too far this forest goddess would discard him and his silly infatuations.
He let her hand go. His arms dropped to his sides, useless. "Thank you, my lady Captain. Mukhuh Mahal udnîn zu ra sanzigil umkhûh zu."
Maybe he only cared for her as an artist cares for a masterpiece. Dwarves appreciated finely crafted beauty, and Tauriel had been someone's personal creation, and their best one, as far as he could tell.
He gazed into her face, and the summer light of her eyes vanished, replaced by a mask of indifference. Kili understood her sudden change of demeanor. She was withdrawing from him, from these dangerous feelings.
Kili's mouth went dry, and he swallowed a painful lump in his throat. "I understand," he whispered. "But know this. You..."
He felt so small and so stupid thanks to these poetic fits. Her green eyes punctured holes in his heart, like tiny wounds from a rain of arrows.
"Forgive me, you are my first love."
Before his brain registered her sudden movement, she captured his face in those same soft hands and his eyes snapped shut. He smelled wild sweet grass and trampled leaves. Tauriel crushed her mouth against his, a single hard kiss that left his brain spinning, a sense of lightheadedness akin to his first venture into the forest nearly a year ago. He thrust his hands deep into the silk tangle of her hair and held the back of her head, thumbs brushing against the peaked tips of her ears. He thought he heard a chorus of a thousand wrens over their heads.
The kiss lit the simmers of desire in his blood. He licked the remnants of berry juice from her lips, the bitter taste coated on her tongue. She pulled him closer into an embrace, wedging herself between him and the rigid mound of rock behind her, her breasts a cushion against his equally hard chest. Her kisses tore all restraint away from him and he yearned to ravish everything on her immortal body, from her lips down to her toes, he cared not. Every inch of her freckled skin was sacred.
Mad as it sounded, she could make love to him in this cursed wood and then strike him down with her arrows, and he would die a happy dwarf all the same.
Nobody would spy on them this deep in the forest.
Kili had not realized the sign of his enthusiasm for the idea had pressed against her thigh. Still holding his face, she broke the lip contact and planted soft kisses all over his jaw. "We are rushing ourselves," she said between breaths, "cool yourself down, my hot-headed prince."
The birdsong quieted, and the forest watched their tryst with nature's same solid indifference.
Breathing hard, he pressed his head against her neck, smiling like a man struck dumb, and drunk off the elixir of her kisses. He felt as if someone had flung him skywards into the stars. Maybe Tauriel had enchanted him! He cared not. He loved the sound of the rapid pulse in her neck.
Tauriel sighed; but he felt her happiness on the air and he inhaled it into his lungs. "Eru have mercy on us."
Hello (any) dear readers! It's been ages since I've posted on here. I mostly just read and lurk. This is my first try at Hobbit/Lord of the Rings fanfiction, and it has been years since I've written anything, so please be gentle, of course I appreciate constructive criticism though. I tried my best at accuracy for Tolkien's mythos, but forgive me if anything is off point. I have read lotr, the Hobbit(durr), and the Silmarillion, so hopefully it's not horrible. I may write more chapters to this. Eh. I may need emotional support when the third movie comes out, so please keep writing those Kiliel fics!
With love, thanks for reading!
xoxo, DarkMignonette.
Translation
(Khuzdul)
'Mukhuh Mahal udnîn zu ra sanzigil umkhûh zu: May Mahal keep you and mithril find you.'