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“--a wizard?”
Gandalf blinks, then slowly inhales through his pipe as he turns his head enough to see Kili. Kili is standing beside Gandalf, his hands hanging loosely by his sides, and there is mud on his trousers and pony hair on his coat. He has finished grooming the ponies, then, and has come back to the camp for his supper.
“Hmm?” Gandalf asks, and he takes his pipe from his mouth, looks at the stem critically.
“I was wondering,” Kili says, in the long-suffering tones of someone who hates to repeat himself--and it strange, how young Kili sometimes seems, “how one goes about becoming a wizard. You, I mean, and the others.”
“How,” Gandalf repeats back to Kili, and then he tucks the lip of his pipe back into his mouth, between his gum and his cheek. “I have always been a wizard, Master Kili,” he says around the stem of the pipe, “and I can no more describe how, than I could give you wings.”
Kili’s face brightens at that and Gandalf sighs, says, “No, Kili, I cannot give you wings, that was the point.”
“I--right.” Kili’s face falls, as children’s are wont to do, and Gandalf bites a little harder at the stem of his pipe. “But,” Kili says after a moment, as easily overcoming his hurt as a child, “others can become wizards?”
“No, Kili, they cannot.” Gandalf says it as gently as he can; this is an old conversation, one that he is very practiced at. The young always ask him, and the adventurous; the folk who feel the world has more to offer than they can see before them. “There are only five wizards, and the number will not change.”
“I didn’t mean,” Kili says, “that I would want to--” and this stumbling is familiar to Gandalf, too; Kili’s denial is obvious to Gandalf and, judging by the way Kili is turning red, obvious to Kili, too.
“Few can learn magic,” Gandalf interrupts, pulling his pipe from his mouth so he has something to look at, other than Kili’s shamed face. “Magic is fading even amongst the elves. With Men, it is nearly all gone. And dwarves--” Gandalf frowns at his pipe, turns it in his hands. “Dwarves seldom practice magic. It is not, I believe, in their blood.” He looks at Kili’s face, still red, and corrects himself, “Your blood.”
“Because--”
“No,” Gandalf speaks over him, because Kili will only say something foolish, “not for any imagined shortcoming. The elves were born under the stars, in half-light. They have lived with the Valar, and learned their ways. They are--” he struggles with the words, of what to say to Thorin’s nephew that will be understood, and not taken as another reason to hate the elves. “They are a peripheral race,” he settles on, and though the words strike him wrong, Kili’s face is looking thoughtful, which is more than Gandalf expected from one of Thorin’s kin.
“They live between worlds,” Gandalf says, “and their magic is the crossing of their natures. Shadows,” he says, “and light.”
“Smoke and mirrors,” Kili says back, and Gandalf snorts and bites at his pipe.
“No, Kili,” he says, “shadows and light. The strange shadows the sun throws at dusk, and the brilliance of a fast sunrise. Real, but fleeting, and fading more quickly every year.”
Elves, though, are not interesting to any dwarf, not in this age. Kili is obviously tired of Gandalf’s talk, and is shifting the weight on his feet, asking, “And dwarves?”
“And dwarves,” Gandalf says, and he smiles around the stem of his pipe. “As sturdy and resilient as the stone from which you were made. Aule made you to be loved. He wanted nothing from you, he wanted only to teach you and to love you.”
Kili’s face is turning red again, but he is smiling, and Gandalf is struck, as he always is, by how needy dwarves are; proud, yes, prouder than any others, and able to survive most anything, but so needy and hungry for love. It might be a flaw--perhaps it is their grace.
“Perhaps,” Gandalf says, and he is perhaps lying; he is not sure anymore, after all these centuries of watching children grow and die, “dwarves do not have magic because they have a different purpose. Elves tend to the earth, to all of the creations of Illuvatar. They are as much the helpers of the Valar, as they are the children of Illuvatar. The dwarves are different. Their purpose, from their beginning, was to be loved.”
Kili hesitates, as though he is unsure, and when Gandalf lifts his eyebrows, Kili asks, “We’re loved?”
“Yes,” Gandalf says softly, “yours is a race most loved.”