Stupid fool elf...
Trees and trees on trees and trees. What the elf sees in them is beyond Gimli's sight. He who trips merry in branches high above the ground, he who shrinks back from the proud halls of Gimli's ancestors, claiming them to be dark and fell. Gimli thinks, what does he know of true beauty, anyway? He cannot see how wonderful the half-sparkle of a gem sleeping in a wall of rock, cannot imagine how it will glow and shine when it is cut and the facets of it throw lamp-light back to light up all the shadows under the ground...
"Legolas!"
Stupid fool elf... Gimli swats at a branch, growling in his throat. Why does he hide from friends in need? Can he not hear the murmurs on the winds, are those sharp ears of his dulled by too much summer sunlight?
"Legolas! Cease your games! The King commands you to his side!"
Shadows, too, in the trees, filled with a sense of being watched. Worse than the shadows cast by torchlight in the mines; in the mines you knew, at least, which way to run. Here the shadows surround you, underneath every bush, in the nook and cranny of every large tree, in the spaces between wood and leaf, and there is hardly a path to follow; Mirkwood was made for no one to walk through, save the elves who loved it so. Green and yellow and brown, pale in the light and heavy in the dark. Gimli thinks, crossly, that the wood is made of the same faded colour and texture as Legolas himself; it will be impossible to find him if he does not wish to be found. But he must. It is a matter of great importance.
"Legolas! You swore your bow to stand by your King!"
Gimli does not specify which King this is. Legolas should know that he does not mean the father-king that sailed away over the sea; there is only one King of importance now, the friend-King whose health, it seems, grows frailer every day. The echoes die away into the trees; the entire wood seems to glow and flicker with disapproval, sneering at the first dwarf they have seen for such a very long time. Gimli sees in the sky patterns of cloudflow and birdflight. Perhaps the trees will carry the message, if only to be rid of him the quicker. He sits down on a large root and prepares to wait.
At first sign of sunset I will leave, he thought. I have no desire to be stranded in a place like this - at once so empty and yet so full of malevolent eyes - not when it is dark.
He lifts his head one last time.
"Legolas! Will you not answer the last request of a dying friend?"
And within moments, during which the trees seem to rustle their leaves with a grace and menace that tighten Gimli's hand around the handle of his axe, there comes a ripple that coasts through the length of the forest and breaks upon the dwarf, who is already tense and nervous, stretching his hope, he thinks, too thin. He cannot see any actual change in the patchwork of colour that becomes the woods, but he can feel something shifting, a point upon which change pivots, needle-thin, needle-sharp. Change. A mote of dust floats downward, shining in a shaft of daylight. A piece in the mosaic of leaves and trees and sunlight moves, disappears, comes back into sight, takes shape under the confusing, dappled shadow.
"Gimli. Old friend."
"Old! Old, you call me! You have not been so very long away from my company, and yet you call me old friend!"
"You seem in fine health," Legolas said.
"Am I one to waste away and pine in your absence? You give yourself too great importance, elf."
"You speak of a dying friend, dwarf."
And the great sadness struck Gimli again, something that he did not know could afflict a dwarf so. He remembered feeling great grief upon the death of his own kinsmen, the mourning-wails coming natural and loose from the very bottom of his heart, but he had not known that any other could also affect him so. No more words left. The shadows rushing up from beneath the leaves, ready to swamp all the kingdom.
"King Elessar," Legolas said. In his voice there was the great sadness as well. "Ai, ai... Does he suffer much?"
"He calls for you when he can speak, amongst others. He has been a good friend."
So good a friend that Legolas had stayed in Middle-Earth, watching the grey ships sail out over the seas with a strange quietness to him; so good a friend that Legolas would give up the company of family and kinsmen to stay with him. Gimli watched the elf, and there again in the pale and delicate face was the quietness that had come over Legolas when he had watched the grey ships leave the harbours, going away over the sea. Many times he had turned his face to watch the light on the waves, many times he had seemed stricken by a terrible stillness, as though the body were rooted and the soul were flying, gull-winged, over the waters. Going home. There was the new home. And here was the old home, the one that still pulled at the heart; here were the trees and the light, that he had left Gondor to revisit time after time. Gimli thought of jewels underground, the dark tunnels, familiar faces bearded and smiling, and he understood.
"I do not think there is anything left after he is gone," Legolas said. "Not for I."
"Nor I," Gimli said. "But time does not favour him, and perhaps we should start on our way, first."
It seemed that the shadows rose out of the forest, altogether, gathered thick in the clusters of leaf and twig; that the soul of the forest itself rushed to follow Legolas as he stepped out of the last thick huddle of bush and thorn and tree, and ahead of him saw the thin path, stones and grass and dirt, wide-reaching moor and mountains. Already Mirkwood seemed less than it had been a moment ago, with the elf still walking within it; poised to leave it forever, he saw that it would not stand forever, that although the trees might stand, the magic of the woods were gone. Because there is no more chance that an elf might be hiding inside it, he thought; no more chance of elf-magic, of hidden cities, of arrows pointed at the necks of nervous trespassers. It was becoming an ordinary forest, and the name of Mirkwood would soon pass away into the streams of history.
"To all things there comes an end," Gimli said. "Even death ends friendships."
"Memories will endure."