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Gimli recognized the book. When Gandalf lifted it, he wanted to cry out again, scream and rage and throw his axe against the wall. But that wouldn’t do anything for Ori’s memory and so he just listened as Gandalf read, the words sending shivers down his spine.
They are coming.
Gimli was certainly no stranger to the thought of dying in battle. He was a dwarf, of the line of Durin no matter how removed, and he’d sent two bright shining princes off on a quest and only seen them both as tombs ever again. But the thought of Ori—of all the dwarves he knew—trapped in this dark place, back to the tomb of his friend and lord, facing down certain death with a quill in his hand, the ink scrawling off the page…
When Gimli leapt upon the tomb, snarling that there was still one dwarf in Moria to draw breath, all he could think of was the way Ori would smile, not like he once had when they were young, but later, when he was bundled down with an armful of scrolls and looking at something he’d never seen before. Or the way he would try and teach the young dwarves how to read and write their runes.
Gimli’s grief for his cousin Balin was deeper than any ocean could hope to be, and the thought of Oin, who had been there when he was born lying dead made his blood boil.
But he’d grown up with Ori, had grown up with Fili and Kili and had watched the three of them leave and only one was standing when he finally reached Erebor with his mother.
And now none of them stood in Middle-Earth anymore and when he swung his axe at the goblins he could no longer tell who he was trying to avenge the most.
In the battle, the Book of Mazarbul was struck by the cave troll, the pages scattering all across the room and Gimli cried out, the sound a low roar of pain in the din of battle. The pages were mashed into the floor, covered with the blood of goblins and the cave troll and as the battle stopped and they were left alone in the room, Gimli fell to his knees, gathering up as many pages as he could find and stuffing them inside the vest of his armor, the last pages written in Ori’s hand still clinging to the cover on Balin’s broken tomb.
But he could hardly find them all, or retrieve them all and they had not the time even if he thought he could have gathered every page safely.
So they ran, with the pages he could recover stashed in his armor, and they lost Gandalf deep in the mines.
But when it came time to leave Lothlorien, he hesitated from where he had laid out every page he saved, including those final pages in Ori’s hand. Their quest was dangerous—the very world was dangerous, but he did not want to take these pages with him into Mordor. So instead, when he asked the fair lady Galadriel for three strands of her hair, he also held out the sheaf of papers. “If,” he said, hesitantly, “If you might watch these for me. I would not risk them on the journey.”
Looking at the pages, Galadriel nodded, a tiny, sorrowful smile at the corner of her mouth. “I will keep them for you,” she said, taking them carefully from his hands.
So he went on the quest, and faced many perils he could not have imagined in all his years, and at the end of it he met Galadriel again, and she held out a box to him. “It is of Noldor make,” she said, as he accepted it, eyes wide at the work and the metals, the craftsmanship making his breath stop. “From the first age. From when the dwarves and Noldor were perhaps better friends than they have been in much time. I thought it would perhaps be fitting,” she continued, as he opened the lid to find those few sheaves of paper he’d saved.
“Thank you,” he managed, and cried for what he’d lost, and for what she’d given him, and she leaned over to kiss his forehead as the tears ran into his beard.
He took the box with him when he returned to Erebor, glad indeed to see the face of his father and kin, and with many tales of his own adventure to tell. Finally, when the feasting was over, and when he’d slept, he took the reliquary and stepped into deep into the mountain, the vaults were few went.
“I wish I could tell you my stories,” he said, looking over the stone tombs where Fili and Kili lay, with their mother’s-brother. “I wish I could have heard the tales of your quest as well,” he said, having heard them from his father, and some quietly from Ori, but he had dreamed for years of how Fili and Kili might have told the tale themselves, grins and laughs and asides.
“And I wish I could have brought you Ori,” he added, looking at Fili’s tomb, having seen more than he might have been given credit for. Fili and Ori had been young, and some of their elders hadn’t paid any attention to them, but Gimli and Kili had. “But,” he said, laying the exquisitely crafted box on Fili’s effigy. “I brought you what I could of his,” he said, fingers of one hand tracing the box, the other the stone of the tomb.
“And I pray to Mahal,” he said. “That where ever you are, you’re together. As you should always have been. The three of you,” he added, as he stepped back.
“For some day I may join you. But it shall not be this day. When I come,” he stopped, and swallowed before he could continue. “Then we shall tell our stories to each other.”