"So, cousin, you've finally gone on your quest," Kíli remarked as he offered his tobacco pouch to Gimli. Dinner was over, and the two of them still sat finishing a few ales at one of the tables Tauriel had arranged for this outdoor feast to celebrate Gimli's homecoming and the end of the war. "Tell me, did it fulfill your expectations?" Kíli could remember how deeply disappointed Gimli had been to be excluded from the quest for Erebor, especially as Kíli—the youngest—was only fifteen years older than he.

Gimli laughed. "I don't suppose such journeys ever do!" He filled and lit his pipe. then took a few meditative puffs before going on. "Fer one thing, I expected to find dangers but never such beauties! Now I can say I have seen the fairest caverns in Middle-earth, and the fairest woman." His eyes went somewhat misty. "No living creature can compare to Lady Galadriel's loveliness."

Kíli smiled as he drew at his pipe. "She is very beautiful; I will readily grant it. But that she is the most beautiful woman— I cannot leave that claim unchallenged." He punctuated these last words by stabbing the air with his pipe stem.

"Cousin, yer biased, as well ye should be when ye've a wife," Gimli returned, complacent and untroubled.

"I am not biased," Kíli said, the spark in his eye matching his playfully earnest tone. "The queen is stunning, but Tauriel is more captivating still."

Gimli nodded solemnly to humor his kinsman. "And how do ye reckon that?"

"Well, take their hair." Kíli puffed at his pipe, then exhaled slowly so that smoke curled and wreathed in the torchlight. "Gold is all very nice—king of the metals, the color of the sun—but any lass can be admired for golden hair."

His cousin narrowed his eyes, unimpressed. "The Lady Galadriel is not any lass. And her hair is not any common gold." Reverently, he added, "Almost it has its own light."

"Oh, of course I never meant she was any lass," Kíli waved away that preposterous thought along with another cloud of smoke. "But still, gold: it's, well, conventional." He shrugged, claiming no responsibility for what was simply fact. "Now, copper, on the other hand, is unusual, unexpected. Arresting. Tauriel's hair is like blood, like wine, and fire. The Lady's hair may glow, but Tauriel's burns."

He looked across the feast area to where, as if to prove his claim, Tauriel leaned near a torch in order to light the lantern she carried. The dancing flames woke answering fires in her hair; her golden earrings gleamed, and the sapphires of her royal circlet twinkled like distant stars. Then she stepped in front of the light, and the soft fringe of her hair was illuminated in a halo, so that she seemed for a moment to be crowned with flame.

Gimli, who had followed Kíli's eye, said, "I will concede a difference in beauty, though not a superiority." He paused, as Tauriel glanced across and met her husband's look, her expression fond. Then she moved off again.

"And Tauriel's eyes," Kíli continued. "They have a fire, too: like flames caught in emerald, or sunlight behind leaves in the spring. Tell me truly, have you ever seen anything more beautiful?"

Gimli shook his head, amused. "And what of the clear blue of the flawless sapphire, perfectly cut? Or the evening sky before the first star? Such are the Lady's eyes. Can ye really say that the emerald or the sunlit leaf surpasses these? Argue thus, and ye prove yerself a poor judge of beauty, before both dwarves and elves." Gimli allowed himself a slight smile; surely he had his cousin here. Kíli could not deny these beauties without calling into question his entire judgment.

But Kíli grinned, untroubled. "Oh, I'm hardly such an insensitive clot! But consider—" His own dark eyes gleamed with enthusiasm. "The evening sky is there to be seen by all who look up to it. But have you ever been passing through a wood when a shaft of light falls so that a single leaf is caught between your eye and the sun? And you think, 'If I had not stood just so, I should have missed it.' You know that such beauty is singular, rare. Just seeing it is a blessing: Ivann herself must have put that leaf there just for you, for who else will ever see it like this, full of light and glory? That is how I feel when Tauriel's emerald eyes meet mine. Not all the flawless evenings of a thousand summers could move me more."

"Now yer talkin' like an elf."

"Am I?" Clearly, Kíli took this as a compliment. "Well, I suppose I don't have to tell you how pointless it is to argue with me, then."

Gimli spluttered in his beer. "Maker, no! An elf can be as stubborn as a dwarf, but he doesn't run out o' words half so soon, and in the end, yer tempted ta agree just to shut him up."

"Well, then." Kíli favored his kinsman with a smug smile, before taking a draught from his mug.

Gimli shook his head lightly in amusement. Kíli—as anyone from Thorin's original Company could attest—had been hopeless since he'd first set eyes on the Silvan maid, and seventy-odd years of marriage to her had not cured him in the slightest.

Once Kíli had settled comfortably against the table's edge and puffed again at his pipe, Gimli cleared his throat. "Ye've left out one consideration," he said.

Kíli cocked a brow.

"Ye cannot dispute that the Lady has the clearer complexion," Gimli explained. "Now, I mean nothin' against yer Tauriel's freckles. They're charming as the speckles on a robin's egg. But the Lady's complexion is truly celestial, clear and luminous as moonlight."

The prince threw back his head and laughed heartily. "No, I'm sure my lady has yours there, too," Kíli said when he could. "Celestial, you say? What could be more celestial than a hundred tiny stars dusting Tauriel's skin?"

Gimli laughed then, too. "I don't suppose I can argue with that! But you must admit freckles would not become the Lady."

"Oh no, certainly not," Kíli agreed. "And that proves what a treasure my Tauriel is. Her freckles enhance her beauty, not detract from it." The gleam in his eyes indicated precisely how delighted he was with this turn to the debate.

"Aye, so she is," Gimli admitted. "I never meant ta say otherwise about yer Silvan princess."

Kíli answered with a nod that proved him satisfied with this confession, and Gimli knew his cousin had not really expected to sway Gimli's eye any more than his heart.

A moment later, Tauriel herself appeared behind Kíli, stepping out of the growing shadows with the stealthy grace of a forest creature. She slipped her arms around Kíli's neck and leaned close, whispering something at his ear. He smiled and turned his head aside to steal a kiss.

Gimli said, "Well, cuz, ye've managed ta convinced me of one thing, at least: an elven sorceress has you under her spell, all right, and there's no point in tryin' to break it."

Tauriel giggled, her bright eyes meeting Gimli's. "No point, indeed! I don't mean to set him free, for where else shall I ever find such another sweet-tongued champion?"

"I'm sure he's not to be matched," Gimli assured her, his grin mirroring Kíli's. "So ye'd best keep him close."

Tauriel clasped Kíli's shoulders more tightly. "Oh, I intend to."

Author's note:

Ivann is the Sindarin name for Yavanna. Of course, Kíli knows about this Vala from Tauriel.

This little fic belongs in the same series as my longer stories, So Comes Snow After Fire and Spring After Winter and Sun on the Leaves. You can see all the fics in that series listed, in order, on my profile page.