((Please note that this is in no way supposed to be taken for lore or IC, this is a legend that Nimlith told at Wilderness Appreciation Day. Legends may have a grain of truth in them but are usually not factually correct!
This is also based on a legend from my native country, but the facts and story have been changed quite a bit, only the outcome is the same...))
This is an old story that was told to the Nandor of Mirkwood a long time ago, when Dwarves and Elves were friends and often traded in wares and in stories. And both Dwarves and Elves could look at Caradhras, the Redhorn, and its red glow at dusk and dawn.
It is indeed this glow seen only in the times between day and night that gives the Redhorn its name; yet it had not always been so, the legend goes.
For long ago, a beautiful rose garden grew on the slopes of mountain, and the red glow of its blossoms was seen all day and night, even in far Eregion. They grew there in the honour of the king under the mountain, the same of whom many songs are sung, and all kings that followed in his line.
Yet nothing lasts forever, not even roses.
A king of the Dwarves, which one is lost in time, once walked among the Noldor of Eregion, and there he saw many things of beauty, even more so than those his own folk wrought, down under the mountain.
And perhaps evil was already at work there then, for this beauty should be his doom in the end. For from Eregion the Dwarven king brought home a gift. Who wrought the gift the story does not tell, but it was a work of exceptional beauty, or so it is said, made by a jewelmaker in Eregion.
The king gave it to his wife, and she wore the jewel of beauty, on that day, in the rose garden.
And another saw it, and a strange desire grew in his heart to own this jewel. Mad with desire, he wished to wrest the jewel from her.
She fled, and tried to hide in the rose garden, begging the magic of the jewel to make her invisible from her assailant. So she hid, and for a while the other could not find her, hidden among the roses.
But the roses quivered where she walked, giving her away. Visible or not the attacker saw where she was, and he smote her down on the spot and stole the jewel.
What became of him is another story, and shall be told another time; and it is a dire story as well, for no good came of his evil deed, to him or to any he touched, and the jewel has long been lost in time and to all masters of lore.
But this is the story of the rose garden; and the king went up, and learned of what had passed; and in his grief he cursed the rose garden:
"Treacherous roses, not worthy of the beauty you possess! For your treason I curse you. Neither Dwarf nor Elf nor any other people shall see the roses any more, neither by day nor by night!"
And because the word of a king still held much power in these days, so it was, and the rose garden vanished, never to be seen again by day or night by any living soul. But in his anger, the king had forgotten to curse the times between day and night, dusk and dawn.
And so it is that between day and night, the red of the roses can still be seen, on Caradhras, on Redhorn.
That is the story as I heard it, a long time ago. Whether the Dwarves tell it different now, I know not.
