A/N: Okay guys! I'm all officially graduated and certified, so now I actually have more time to write! Whoo-hoo! So, here's the first (and I'll admit, I'm a bit rusty. Sorry.), and for all ya'll who are still hanging on to the last shreds of hope that I'll work on my SGA fic… well, I'm hoping to post something soonish. Please don't virtually kill me, 'kay? Anyways, here's some fluff (maybe?) for you Ringers; an explanation of the Kili/Tauriel dynamic that I can swallow. =)

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For the Love of Beauty

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"You cannot be her. She is far away. She… she is far, far away from me. She walks in starlight in another world. It was just a dream." ~Kili, Desolation of Smaug

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All dwarves love beauty. It had been ingrained in them since the start of their days when Aulë had desired someone with which to share his knowledge and his love of creating. And then, in his forge, Aulë crafted his race and taught them after his fashion. The gold dwarves crafted, the gems they mined, and the metalwork they wrought originated out of passion and love created in them by Aulë. All dwarves value their work and take care in their mastery, unrivaled for centuries in their craft in their forges. Even elves coveted their works and commissioned them for pieces of spectacular workmanship. Their love of crafting was in their origination, and their work was an art. And to do art, there must be passion, and that passion is borne out of love. Beauty… dwarves craved it and created it. Was it not the brilliance of the Arkenstone that drove Thrór to madness, and later, his grandson, Thorin Oakenshield? The desire ran in the very blood of dwarves, especially in the line of Durin.

Why would Kili, son of Dís, nephew of Thorin, grandson of Thráin II, and great-grandson of Thrór be any different? Durin's blood flowed heavily through his veins. And would not Gimli, son of Glóin, his cousin, fall under the beautiful spell of Lady Galadriel in Lothlórien, naught seventy-eight years hence?

It was her beauty that caught his attention. It radiated off her with every movement, in the way she fought off the spiders, and even when he heard the ardent vehemence in her voice when she addressed him. Her fluid movements, the way she almost danced as she defended her homeland and destroyed the black monsters struck him as things of beauty, and by association, value. She twirled lethally, and her hands and feet moved with a grace that could only be possessed by the First Born. Her voice, though loathing in its tone, rang clear and sharp like the blades she deftly wielded when in her hands, and it cut through his fear and desperation apart from anything else he had ever heard. And when he had teased her in the prison caves… well, his dwarven ears were rewarded with that voice yet again. Her fair skin was the color of starlight that echoed in the many gems that had oft run through his fingers in the Blue Mountains, yet she stood before him, tall, eternally youthful, pure despite the blood on her deadly hands. Hands that would save his life yet two more times…

Elf though she may be, it did not stand to reason that he could not appreciate her. The Dwarves and the Elves might have an extremely tenuous relationship, throughout the ages, but the value of beauty should be unbiased, especially when it came as pure as the she-elf standing tall and proud in front of him. Besides, though he was young, and a dwarf, Kili had the same creator as Tauriel, an Elf. Eru Ilúvatar had adopted the Naugrim as his children, just as the First Born, and He of all appreciated beauty. Kili was simply following in the manner of his first creator and his adopted father: he appreciated her beauty.

It did not take long for his appreciation to transform to something of more profound degree. Kili would not have named it as love, yet, but it ran into a deeper vein, and he had to delve within himself as a miner works at a river within the rock. He was young, and homesick, and he could tell she was… well, different, and he was reckless. She did not carry herself with the self-righteous importance and jaded loathing of the ancient ones like Thranduil. Kili remembered the descriptions his uncle would give of the Elves in the stories by the fire at night: haughty, cold, arrogantly proud, distrustful, and heartless. However, she did not fit such a harsh model. It confused him a little bit, and he did not like being conflicted. So, he caught her interest as he played with his talisman and kept speaking to her, telling her tales of his home in the Blue Mountains, of the starlight she yearned to see, of the blood-moon that reminded him of her fire-hair. All the while, he attempted to reconcile the picture his uncle had painted for him as a dwarfling, to what stood before him. And Kili was in wonder for the briefest of moments, as she spoke about her memories of starlight, realizing that this particular she-elf appeared to be different from the rest.

While she continued to speak during their conversation in the prison caves, he realized it. She yearned for something, and while Kili did not quite understand what that something was, he could see that under her beauty were wit, innocence, gentleness, and a brilliance that seemed out of place in her cave-realm and their first, fierce encounter. Then Kili understood: it was the darkness permeating around her home that made her fierce, but that did not mean that it dwelt within her character. There was a genuine goodness that lived within her, and for a second, Kili thought that perhaps, just maybe, that was how the First Born were supposed to have been before the tainting of the world. And he wondered that if there had been no Necromancer in the south of Mirkwood pouring all the darkness into these woods, or dragons in Erebor, that she would have been a sweet voice singing in the trees, dancing to the melody of the Forest River, and smiling with the stars in the sky as witnesses to her beauty, and jealous that they could not outshine her in the night.

Is that the way things should have been?

They were different races, but they still bled red. Their people died in the service of protecting Middle-Earth, and often had their races saved each other on the battlefield against the darkness. After all, Tauriel had saved his life, and later, he had tried to save hers in his poison induced delirium. Did that not demonstrate that they mutually valued each other? And shouldn't the Children of Eru care for and about each other? There very well might be awakenings of something deeper within himself, something akin to love, but he could not be certain… he only knew she glowed with starlight, and her beauty captured him like Luthien had captured Beren: unaware, and completely enraptured. It seemed strange for a Dwarf to not think harshly of an Elf, and yet, he did. It was the very first step to overcoming the chasm of betrayal and hatred between the two races. And Kili was not a typical Dwarf of the line of Durin. He was reckless. And she was beautiful. And he'd jump with both feet without closing his eyes into this vision…

Somewhere in Kili's pain clouded mind, he questioned if she could value him as he had come to value her, which led to his fever-induced rambling as he reached out to the mirage,

"Do you think she could have loved me?"

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Review? Maybe? =)