A/N: This popped into my head as I was reading Unfinished Tales and would not let me be. So I wrote it. Thanks to Meir Brin for her CC, even if I didn't exactly take her advice.

Disclaimer: Don't own nothing.

Before the Sun

"There is nothing, Lady Galadriel. Nothing, unless it might be – unless it is permitted to ask, nay, to name a single strand of your hair, which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine."   

            A dwarf asks for my hair. A dwarf. For a split second, nay, merely a moment, I freeze in shock.

            My hair, which had shone silver-gold for time uncounted before the rising of the moon and sun.

            My hair, which the Calaquendi, the Eldar of the light of Aman, said shone with the light of the Two Trees, Laurelin the Golden and Telperion the Fair.

            My hair, which even some among the Valar thought fair beyond measure.

            My hair, of which I would not surrender even one strand to Fëanor the craftsman, though he begged for it thrice, as eloquently as he knew how.

            My hair, for want of one strand of which were the Silmarils wrought.

            My hair.

            And yet, it is all that he asks. To him, it is a strand of hair. Wondrous fair, yet only the beautiful hair of a beautiful woman; I can see that much, at least, of his thoughts.

            You do not know what it is that you ask, Master Dwarf, I think.

            Yet I smile as I cut three strands, and hand them to the Gimli, son of Glóin.

            My hair will be forever preserved and treasured by Gimli's house in the halls under Erebor. That, too, can I see. Yet what would have become of these same strands ages ago, in the hands of Fëanor? I remember:

            "Artanis, please, one hair is all I ask."

            "Fëanáro, again you beg. And again I must say: no!"

            "But its light –"

            "And for what do you need 'just one hair'?"

            "Keep it, treasure it, and –"

            "Make something in mock of it. Can you not make such a thing — a fair light, perhaps — without my hair to guide you? There has been little love lost between us, kinsman. Now leave, before it becomes less."

            Why do I give to this Dwarf what I would not give to one of my own kin? Because there is more I can trust in Gimli than in a thousand Fëanoreans.