#it's implicit

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Also, this wasn’t done intentionally, but the story kind of straddles the first two days of @tolkiengenweek, family and friendship, so - shall we call it a fill? It does involve a romance between Legolas and Gimli, but to my mind the friendship and the family are the deeper themes of this one.

...

Glóin was waiting in the sitting room when Legolas left Gimli’s rooms at last, half-sunk in a comfortable chair with one hand tapping anxiously at the haft of his walking stick. He looked strangely shrunken like this, diminished without the powerful presence of his certainty – but that crumpled look lasted only seconds, for his head snapped up as soon as Legolas entered the room.

“How is he?” he asked urgently. “Does he” –

“He is” – And what was the honest answer to this question? “Not angry,” Legolas said at last. “But he will not come down again tonight, I think.” He would not have himself, could he not imagine so vividly Glóin’s concern at Gimli’s distress, the way his worries would climb with every second Gimli did not return. “He bade me make our excuses and our good-nights.”

“But he is – why?” Glóin gave his walking stick such a hefty jolt that it teetered and nearly slid to the floor. “What in my words distressed him so? Does he not want to reconcile with his friends?”

Legolas had not meant to stay here for so long, but he could not resist: he crossed the room to rescue Glóin’s walking stick, nestling it more comfortably into the notch carved into the chair – the one that had appeared there, unremarked, between this visit and the last, as the stick had become Glóin’s constant companion rather than occasional irritation. His fingers nearly brushed the wrinkled hand resting in an arthritic clench on the armrest, and his heart swelled with something he could not name.

“It is not so simple,” he said, as gently and as cautiously as he could. Gimli’s thoughts were his own to reveal, but he could not leave Glóin in such distress over a casual comment. “You do not know how deep was the hurt at their parting. I think it is too soon to say, for now.” He did not mention how Gimli had fretted in the weeks leading up to their departure, concern for his aging parents warring with his reluctance even to encounter his old friends in passing. Did not mention the way Gimli had crumpled when he finally told Legolas what had broken between them, the way the hurt still flashed in his eyes at any reminder. Glóin had not seen it, perhaps, at his casual suggestion that Gimli visit his friends and “hammer out those dents at last,” a bare few months after that fragile trust had shattered.

Gimli was – he did not like to say delicate, for fear of wounding Gimli anew with even the thought, but who could not be? And now he would not even look his father in the face again this evening, for fear of what he might say or feel.

1) Frodo and Sam WAKE UP and then have to go to a massive celebration and get praised and surrounded by people only hours later.

2) How do they get praised?  WITH GREAT PRAISE.  That line is repeated so often that I eventually started just making gesturing motions at Z until she said the line for me.

3) There’s a line about how they had “the best harpers, who harped better than everyone else” or something like that, and, uh, Tolkien?  Just why?

4) Ioreth, at Aragorn’s coronation: “He is not so soft of speech.”  HAHA she’s still stung.

5) Faramir and Eowyn.  It started out so well, and so sweet, and an actually very comforting romance . . . and then somehow it turned so awful, when Faramir with a patronizing speech mansplains Eowyn’s feelings to her and then declares his love, and she decides that she doesn’t want to fight anymore and now the Love of a Good Man has Healed Her Woes.  We’ve decided to ignore that part and just accept the sweet parts.

6) “...and when they returned Legolas was silent, and would say only that Gimli alone could find fit words to speak of them...” I’ve already said everything that needs to be said.

7) Z has a deep attachment to Bill the pony - her car is named Bill - and we were so glad to see him returned safe.

8) THE SCOURING OF THE SHIRE.  I love, absolutely LOVE, how confident and powerful our four hobbits have become, and how much they stand out returning home. Pippin’s line, “We shall break a good many things yet, and not expect you to answer,” and everything about the hobbits flouting the rules!  And MERRY with the Horn of Rohan, commanding his troops! Goosebumps many times during that chapter.

9) If Rosie Cotton and Arwen are added together to make one, the count of Women Who Do Things stands at 4.

10) THE ENDING.  Z wept actual tears in the driver’s seat, and I wasn’t far behind.