Chapter Three: A Reunion
Tauriel remembered the great work halls of Erebor, yet the workshops of Aulë were vaster and more beautiful still. The ceilings stretched higher than any cavern in the Lonely Mountain, higher than any tree in Eryn Lasgalen. Every pillar, wall, and ceiling was carved in patterns by turns intricate and sweeping; and yet the effect was not crowded or busy. All seemed merely the testament to a craftsman's careful hand, guided by a wisdom that saw all parts of a work and suited them for each other without sacrificing each part's individual beauty.
"It's wonderful," Tauriel breathed to Gimli beside her, temporarily taken out of her fears for herself and Kíli by the sheer splendor of this place.
"Aye," the dwarf returned, his voice equally hushed. "The sight is still staggerin' to me."
Glancing down from the distant ceiling, Tauriel saw a smith—the Great Smith himself; there could be no doubt—now standing before them. He was taller than an elf and more muscular than any but a dwarf. His dark hair and full beard were bound in gold.
Tauriel dropped to one knee, her head bowed.
"Your grace," she whispered, not sure yet how to address one of the Valar in his own land.
Beside her, Gimli muttered something in Khuzdul.
"Welcome, Daughter of the Forest." Hands big, warm, and strong—not unlike her Kíli's hands—took her own and drew her to her feet.
Tauriel looked up to see Aulë smiled down at her, and she wondered how she ever could have been afraid of him. His broad face was kindly and his dark eyes bright. While he looked nothing like Kíli, still Tauriel recognized the same lively energy in his glance.
"M-Mahal," Tauriel stammered. "It was you. You gave Kíli back to me all those years ago."
"I did." Pleasure rang in his deep voice, either at his recollection of that old request or at the fact that she remembered it now.
"Thank you," she said, wishing she had more than those two words to express all that that long-ago answered prayer meant to her. "I have never received a greater gift."
The Vala smiled, his teeth flashing against his dark beard. "You love this one of my sons as no elf has ever loved a dwarf," he returned, and Tauriel had the slightly unsettling impression that it was he who now thanked her.
"I do."
"And he is equally devoted to you, as his refusal to enter his fathers' halls proves," Aulë went on, and Tauriel could not tell if he was pleased or frustrated now.
"My lord, I am sorry, but I cannot—" She stopped herself, fearing to be disrespectful by arguing with a Vala. Yet it was true; she could neither order Kíli from her, not keep herself from him.
To her surprise, Aulë ducked his head in deference to her. "It was not you, but I who made him as he is."
"Mmm?" At a loss for words, Tauriel made a soft questioning sound.
"I gave the Khazad strong wills and steadfast hearts so that they might resist the domination of the enemy. Little did I imagine one of my children might refuse to obey my own command regarding his fate." His smile was wry now, and Tauriel wondered if there truly was nothing he or any of the other Valar could do to oppose Kíli in this matter.
"I could not foresee his obstinance," Aulë went on. "No dwarf has ever wed outside his kind, not to one of the Firstborn. None has ever bound himself to one who could not join him in death."
Tauriel gasped inadvertently at this admission that Kíli's current condition was her fault.
"Nay, daughter, I do not blame you." Aulë smiled gently and lifted Tauriel's chin so that she met his gaze. "The fault is my own, and I must redress it."
Tears ran down Tauriel's cheeks. So she and Kíli would be parted at last?
"Don't cry, child; you have my favor. I am quite moved by the love you and Kíli share." He smiled, and Tauriel felt her last misgivings melt. "I have gained him a release from Mandos' halls."
"Oh—" She wavered on her feet, but Gimli instantly caught her arm and steadied her.
"There is but one thing remaining," Aulë told her. "Before he may be permitted to leave Mandos' realm, Kíli's spirit needs its proper house. Yet his body cannot now be recovered."
Tauriel checked her elation. Did Mahal not intend to provide Kíli with a new body? Was her beloved still to be trapped, a spirit, outside the halls of the dead?
And then beside her Gimli said readily, "I can make him one, from stone. Will that serve?"
Mahal smiled broadly, his eyes sparkling with mirth.
"Yes, that will serve very well."
Upon their return home, Tauriel immediately followed Gimli to his workshop, where she selected a block of marble of a warm golden hue. As Gimli marked it with chalk, preliminary to the first rough stages of carving, he looked up at Tauriel with a humorous glint in his eye.
"I could make him taller, if ye like," he said.
"Oh, no!" she protested, laughing and yet deadly serious. "Kíli's head must come to here"—she indicated her heart—"and not an inch higher."
Gimli chuckled and took down the measurement.
Over the upcoming weeks, Tauriel continued to supervise the carving of a Kíli's new body from stone.
"You must give more curve to his shoulder," she would say.
"There is too much fullness to his lip."
"His waist must fit into my arm just so."
Gimli readily followed her guidance, far more pleased than troubled to have such an exacting critic of his work. Of course he remembered the look of his kinsman, but he would not pretend to the knowledge possessed by Kíli's own wife.
"I do think this is the finest of any of your work," Legolas remarked one afternoon. "I truly do expect him to draw breath and walk from the studio."
Gimli grinned, obviously flattered. "That's the idea."
"Something is still not right," Tauriel said from where she stood at the far end of the shop, gazing at the stone Kíli through narrowed eyes. "Ah!" She caught up a pencil and stepped to the sculpture. Gently cupping his face as if he were flesh, not stone, she carefully sketched a faint line over Kíli's right cheekbone.
"He must have a scar, just there," she said, turning to Gimli.
"Ye know this is a land of healing," he said amiably as he gathered his tools. "It wouldn't be wrong fer him not to have it."
"I know. But I would miss it."
A few minutes later when Gimli had finished engraving the mark Tauriel had specified, he stood back with her to regard his work.
"I do think he looks right," the dwarf admitted. "Though you're the one I wish to please."
Tauriel was silent for a few more moments. Yes, this was Kíli as she remembered him: almond eyes framed by loose bangs; lips about to curve up into a smile; soft waves of hair that fell over broad, muscular shoulders; an angular torso, in some places shaggy and still rough as stone; sturdy arms honed by bow and sword; robust thighs and calves seemingly poised to launch him into some eager action. He was a dwarf handsome and in his prime.
"Yes, he is ready," she pronounced softly.
Kíli's spirit regarded Tauriel quizzically as Gimli and Legolas unloaded the bundled sculpture from its cart. She had told Kíli weeks ago that she and Gimli labored over a project for him, but he had indicated he did not wish to be told what it was. Anticipation, it seemed, was one of the few pleasures left to him in his ghostly state.
Tauriel knew he believed her when she said the gift would make him happy indeed, though it was equally clear that he struggled to imagine anything that truly could be enjoyable to him now, beyond his beloved wife's own presence.
Having set the statue upright, Gimli and the elf prince stepped back to allow Tauriel the presentation.
She gripped the cloth covering it in one hand and gazed to Kíli's ghostly form. He stared at the cloaked shape, a look of doubt slowly replacing the curiosity in his glance.
"Oh, Kíli, it is surely much better than you think," Tauriel teased him lovingly and then tugged the cover off the sculpture.
His eyes widened as he saw the stone dwarf.
"It's for you; a second body of stone, since your first was lost," she explained.
He looked back to her, and Tauriel knew from his clouded expression that he thought she grasped at a fool's hope, to believe he might inhabit this stone as he once had a body of flesh.
"Kíli," she said earnestly, and she felt his attention narrow to her and her alone. "This was not our own scheme. Mahal has offered us this chance. He has gained your release from Mandos. But you had no body, so Gimli has made you one."
For a moment, Kíli's expression was completely unreadable, and then he simply flickered out, like a snuffed candle flame.
"Kíli?" Tauriel called. There was no response, and Kíli's spirit-shape did not reappear.
"What's goin' on?" she heard Gimli demand of Legolas behind her. "Ye fergit I can't see anythin'!"
"Hush!"
Tauriel turned to the stone Kíli, who stood as motionless and perfect as he had in Gimli's shop the previous day, then laid her hands on his shoulders and closed her eyes. For several long minutes, nothing changed: the stone beneath her hands remained cool and hard. And then, so slowly that at first she thought she imagined it, the sculpture warmed beneath her hands, grew soft and yielding.
Next Kíli's arms were about her, crushing her against him with a grip so firm and hard that he might have been stone yet. Tauriel laughed and opened her eyes to see Kíli's own eyes—eyes not ghostly grey or stoney tan, but warm brown with life.
"Tauriel! Oh, Tauriel," he cried.
Burying her face against his neck, she breathed him in with a laugh that was nearly, also, a sob: he smelled of pipe tobacco and the forge and cool stone. She wound herself around him, so eager to know the feel of him in her arms once more. He was all warm skin and rough beard, wonderful just as she had remembered. He found her lips and kissed her, gently at first, and then with increasing ardor, until she had to pull herself away from him before he led them both too far.
"Kíli!" she gasped. "You forget; we're not alone."
"Right." He grinned, his lips ruddy from her kiss. "I've been very desperate to do anything more than look at you all this time."
"So have I."
"Amrâlimê, you're all I've thought of since I left Middle-earth," he breathed.
"Why did you not enter the halls?" she asked after a moment.
He chuckled. "Have you ever tried to make a dwarf do something he didn't want? It seems he can be even more stubborn when he's dead."
Tauriel nodded. "Mahal said it was his fault, for making you as you are." She stroked a finger down Kíli's cheek. "I suppose an elf or a man might have entered the halls and accepted the separation, painful as it was. But you—you are a dwarf. You were made to resist coercion and to remain true. And so you stayed."
Kíli said, "I came here, because the place was pulling me, but even so, I could not make myself go in." He paused to smooth the hair back from her face. "It's odd, being dead. Things become very simple and very clear. Even stronger than the pull of my fate, I felt the pull of you. Taur, if I'd gone into those halls, we'd have been lost to each other till the world's ending, and I couldn't, my love, I truly could not chose that, any more than you could wish yourself not to be."
Tauriel ran a fingertip over the faint scar across his cheek, and he smiled.
"I knew you'd come," he said.
"Oh?"
"You still had the runestone, and I trusted its promise."
Tauriel laughed for joy. "I felt myself drawn here, to these blessed lands. And you were why."
Kíli opened his mouth to reply, but before he spoke, his stomach gave a very loud growl. "Mahal's beard!" He laughed. "I don't think I've eaten in a hundred years or so."
"More like five hundred," Gimli put in then.
"Cousin!" Kíli pulled away from Tauriel and threw himself on his kinsman in an enthusiastic hug. "I'm glad I shan't be the only dwarf in Valinor. And Legolas!"
Kíli seemed about to launch himself at the elven prince, but Legolas thrust out an arm to forestall an embrace from a naked dwarf, and Kíli contented himself with nearly crushing the elf's hand in his own.
"Sorry," he added as Legolas gave a mild, yet not displeased, grimace. "It's been a while since I had a body. It seems I've forgotten my own strength. By the way, cousin," he went on, turning to Gimli again, "thank you."
"Yer welcome," Gimli returned with a laugh, and then threw a folded set of clothing at Kíli's head. "Now fer Durin's sake, put some trousers on. I've seen enough of yer naked arse these few weeks to last me the rest o' my life."
Author's note:
The scar on Kili's face is from So Comes Snow After Fire.
All right, now that I've finished this little fic, it's time for me to get back to working on the next chapter for So Comes Snow!