"Your friendship has grown indeed," the old man puffed away at his pipe, observing, "from that rocky stage." He chucked at his own pun, and Gimli joined in. The man swished his ray cloak closer around his body so that nothing could be seen but a pair of muddy black boots that had seen much wear. Legolas eyed these warily; they reminded him of Aragorn's boots at the time of the Council of Elrond, but he still did not say anything.

The long years of his life had taught him not to open his mouth until he was sure of all aspects of his position, and at the moment, he still could not figure out half of these aspects.

"Doubtless, you faced more obstacles along your path of friendship," the old man smiled. Gimli seemed to have come to trust him completely now, as the poor dwarf could not resist a good listener to his stories. He seemed to have cheered up from his morose mood after Legolas had told the story of the start of their friendship, and when Gimli was happy, he had a tendency to let his mouth run off.

Legolas thought back to the four hobbits that he had gotten to know so well, and how this trait was so similar to them. Frodo and Sam had already passed on to the Undying Lands, and he hoped to see them again. He had so much to share, and Gimli, doubtless would joy to see these two.

Pippin and Merry had been buried alongside King Elessar, and thinking of his friend again, the elf looked across the waters at the rising sun.

"Obstacles?" Gimli snorted, startling the elf from his thoughts. "The word 'obstacles' is a dreadful understatement, man, for we have faced much more!"

"Say on," the man prodded, moving his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other.

"Well, the worst was possibly when I longed to see my home at the Lonely Mountain again, and Legolas decided to come with me," Gimli began. "It started as a fiasco…"

Elf For Dinner

Gimli stood in his formal attire of a dark brown, velvet tunic and light brown leggings, in front of the dwarven council. The heavy velvet robe draped around his shoulders hung down to his informal traveling boots and the dwarf felt as if he was going to sink through the ground, his clothes were so heavy. Seeing that he had forgotten to change his shoes, Gimli bit his lip and edged his robes forward so that the front of his scratched boots could not be seen.

However, this did not make him feel any better, as his father, Bombur, Dwalin, Dori, Nori, Bifur, Bofur, and King Dain were all looking at him with venom in their hard brown eyes. Like always, when he was nervous, Gimli felt himself starting to grin like a mad-dwarf, and tried to drag down the corners of his mouth.

The hall under the mountain was lit by bright torches and a roaring fireplace. The council sat at a long wooden table, each dwarf with his hands folded in front of him and looking very stern indeed.

Finally, Glóin could hold it together no longer. "AN ELF!" he cried. "Of all the races, of all the friends you could have made, you brought an elf to the Lonely Mountain to disturb our halls?"

Gimli's attempt to stop his manic grin failed, and he stood there, teeth showing from ear to ear, his eyes pleading guiltily.

"What in the earth are you grinning about, Gimli?" Bombur scolded, his six chins wobbling dangerously under him. Indeed, the old dwarf was so fat that the chair underneath him was sagging with his weight and seemed as if it would break any second from now.

"No-nothing, sir," Gimli said, but however hard he tried, he could not stop his grin. "I… I just thought that perhaps you all would learn to like him. He's—"

Dori, however, did not seem to hear the younger dwarf's words and burst out, "You're father's right! You brought an elf to the Lonely Mountain! And not just any elf! He's—"

"—the son of King Thranduil of Mirkwood!" Nori finished for his brother. "Thranduil! That damn elf kept your father and the rest of us in prison, feeding us bread and water and fruits for only Durin the Deathless knows how long!"

Gimli glanced helplessly down the long table, but none of the dwarves seemed to show any compassion or sympathy for his plight. Finally, he turned to Glóin, his father. "Please, Father," he begged, against his natural stubborn dwarf nature. "You would like him. If you would just speak with, him or listen to him… He's quite courteous, Father! Please understand!" Then, suddenly, he had a wonderful idea. "Perhaps if he'd be at dinner, Father!"

Glóin, who had gotten quite deaf over the years, did not hear his son correctly. He thought he had said, "Perhaps if he'd be dinner, Father!" Gimli stared in surprise, as his father stroked his long, white beard and seemed to consider this option. He had never expected his father to accept Legolas that easily.

"Hmm… now there's a thought," Glóin said to the horror of all the dwarves at the long table, and to Gimli's delight. But his hopes were soon shot when he let out the next line. "But how shall we serve him? Roasted? Fried? Stewed? Perhaps with a dabble of salt? I have heard that elf meat is especially tender, eh lads?"

At this, the entire long table burst into a raucous laughter as the dwarves slapped their thighs and tears formed in their eyes.

"Well, he's so slender, he'd never make a main course!" Bombur added. "Better serve him with the potatoes with a side of chicken!"

Gimli gaped in horror and wondered if his robes were really heavy enough to make him disappear into the ground.

"No, no!" Bifur roared. "Give him a taste of his own medicine and serve him with an apple in his mouth and put bread on the sides!"

"Radishes between his toes!" Bofur added.

All the dwarves of the council were holding their stomachs and rolling with laughter, but Gimli felt tears come into his own eyes for another reason.

"We'll have to cut off his head, of course," King Dain mused. "We would be doing him a great courtesy, you know. He wouldn't want to get that pretty yellow elf hair of his dirty, now would he?"

A mortified Gimli ran from the room, tears running down his cheeks, heavy dress robes and all.

After all the commotion, the dwarf council had finally agreed to let the elf come to dinner on the one condition that he was dressed appropriately and that he sit up front with the high ranking dwarves, such as the king.

As he got ready for the looming prospect of having an elf to meet his family, Gimli looked into a mirror to examine his robes. He had changed his traveling boots to normal, soft-soled slippers that were acceptable in high society. A tall figure came into his room, looking slightly confused and interested, and the dwarf turned, facing his friend, Legolas. One look, and he wanted to fall over and laugh.

Everything built in the Lonely Mountain these days were scaled down to dwarf size as men of Erebor rarely visited, and the elf had to duck to get through passages. In most rooms, he could not stand up. Now, in a huge dwarf robe, he looked ridiculous and small, the heavy velvet draping him from the shoulders to his feet.

Seeing Gimli's contorted expression, the elf sighed. "Is this really necessary?"

The dwarf sobered, imagining the look on his father's face if Legolas came to dinner dressed in his Mirkwood attire, leggings and short tunic, with his bow. "I just want you to make a good impression with my family," he told the elf for what seemed to be the thirtieth time. "Really, you know, they haven't forgiven you for locking them up in the dungeons in Mirkwood."

The elf raised an eyebrow. "Oh, so they think I locked them up?"

The dwarf thought he had seriously offended his friend and sighed. "Alright, lad, let's not bring up old grudges for friendship's sake."

But Legolas was not done. "You think at the time that I wanted a bunch of dwarves living under me, making a racket in the dungeons?" His expression suddenly turned merry and he smiled at the dwarf. "Please, Gimli, I was heavily in the mind of turning them to the spiders."

Gimli's eyes grew wide. "You mention those spiders, and I swear that Bombur will kill you! He had the hardest time with those things and hearing them speak of them, I'm not in half a mind to visit Mirkwood!"

Legolas laughed. "Ah, yes. I remember Bombur. My father wished to keep him as a pet. You know, show off the splendor of Mirkwood and the friendship between the dwarves and the elves."

"Legolas!"

"Alright, alright. I won't say a word at dinner."

"Unless you're spoken to"

"Unless I'm spoken to," the elf repeated, rolling his eyes.

"And no short, fat, or beard jokes!"

"Only if they don't make any pointy-ear jokes."

"LEGOLAS!"

The two made it to the supper hall without too much trouble, and Legolas was glad that he could stand straight again, for the supper hall was built in the time of Smaug. The dwarf led the elf down the mazes of tables and with reverence, made him stand behind his chair next to him, until all the elders had sat down first.

"Is all this formality necessary?" Legolas asked in a whisper, who had seen enough of reverence like this in his life, as he was the Mirkwood prince. However, he had never thought that dwarves were the same way.

"Extremely necessary!" Gimli hissed back, and said no more.

They sat, with the tunnel lit by the torches on the walls, the fires bouncing off the black rock all around them. Suddenly, Gimli gasped. He had forgotten that elves had extremely neat table manners and would never eat a meal with less than three utensils. However, dwarves generally at with their hands or perhaps a personal dagger, but nothing else.

As the meat of the night was set before them, he saw Legolas look questioningly down at his plate and around it, trying to find what he was supposed to eat with. The dwarf gasped again as his father and the entire council dug into their meat with ferocity and watched with horror as the elf gave them a look of disgust.

"It's dwarf custom, alright?" he hissed at the elf, who was turning green and looked as if the last thing he wanted to do right now was eat. "At least look like you're eating. It's an insult to the host if you don't touch your meat!"

However, before Legolas could lift a finger, Glóin, who was sitting on the other side of the elf, poured him a goblet full of ale, knowing, with malice, that elves preferred wine. "So, how is your father?" he asked conversationally. Again, before Legolas could do anything, the dwarf asked, "What pets has he got in his dungeons now? Some Halflings? A man, perhaps?"

Having been raised in court, the prince knew the conduct and the malevolent comments some nobles could make, and only gave the dwarf a smile. He had been preparing for this, after all. "Why, no, Master Dwarf. He's keeping a spider now, so it can finish off any prisoners before they escape in barrels."

Gimli choked into his cup and kicked the elf harshly under the table.

Legolas gave him an innocent look that said, "Well, I had to."

"Radishes, Master Elf?" Bofur, who was sitting across from Gimli asked, offering a plate of vegetables. The younger dwarf gulped, remembering Bofur's comments about serving an elf with radishes between his toes.

"Or perhaps some bread and apples?" Bifur piped up next to him. "After all, that was all you served us when we were guests in your land."

"I believe your memory is quite addled, my dear Dwarf," Legolas said with an amused gleam in his eye that Gimli recognized as a challenge. "You were not guests, but prisoners, and seeing your state, my father generously offered you food, for you would have starved to death if he had not taken you in."

No! No! No! Gimli had been afraid that something like this would have happened. Why had his father mentioned Thranduil and the dungeons? The younger dwarf buried his face in his food and tried not to look his father in the eye.

"Ah, yes, feels quite ridiculous, does he, about that incident?" Bombur asked, two seats down from Bofur. "Being tricked by a mere Halfling?"

The elf turned his gaze upon the fat dwarf, who was nearly drowning his chair with his blubber. "Master Bombur!" he greeted him with delight. "I do remember you! Though with a better attitude and a smaller waist! Though now, I must say, the spiders would be in rapture to see you again, after eighty years of a hiatus."

Hearing the mention of the spiders, the dwarf trembled, his chins wobbling to and fro, and he gripped the edge of the table with his pudgy fingers for support.

"Is your hearing impaired, Master Elf?" Dwalin asked, sitting on the other side of Bofur. "We asked if your father felt ridiculous being outsmarted by a hobbit!"

"Of course his hearing's impaired!" Dori laughed. "It starts with those pointy ears of his!"

Gimli was going back to his nervous habit of tugging at his beard. He gave a small cry of pain, as he was so anxious, he had nearly tugged his beard off.

"I don't see why you're harrowing my hearing," Legolas shot back. "After all, your ears are much to low to the ground to hear much."

The younger dwarf gave a cry of despair and leaped up from his place. The short jokes were the lowest his friend could have went, and he was sure that his father would now really serve his friend for dinner. The anger boiling inside of him for his friend and his family became so high that he felt himself redden. "If you don't like each other, you could just keep quiet!" he bellowed, not knowing where he was getting his courage. "You could at least have tried to get along. Think about how I feel in all of this!"

With this, he left the table in a huff, storming off to his room.

The others looked after the dwarf in silence.

"Alright, fork over the mithril," Legolas broke the silence and turned the Glóin. "He didn't even stand that for five minutes."

Glóin stroked his beard and pulled out his lower lip, but handed over a full pouch of mithril coins. "I thought that my son had more endurance than that."

"Well yes, I thought your son did as well, but you must admit, the mithril was worth the look on his face," Dwalin laughed and winked at the elf across the table. "But really, Master Legolas, your short joke and the spider one was a little over the top."

"Let's have the elf for dinner again tomorrow," Dori suggested, and everyone assented with cheers.

TBC...