Where Stories Reside

"The King had stayed behind in the Willow's shade, staring out into the trees' midst... where she'd stood only a moment ago, afore she'd vanished before his very eyes.  His eyes darted back and forth as he remained there, unable to breathe due to the strange and novel weight he felt in his chest. He knew not how long he'd stood there, questioning what his eyes had perceived... hoping for something he could not voice.  It was the bright song of a Nightingale that startled him out of his trance. His teary eyes lifted into the tree's crown, where the winged creature, strangely still, stared at him through the foliage. As if it, too, had seen what had transpired.  Gil-galad then caught a beam of sunlight find the branch it sat on, before it, too, departed. His eyes followed the flapping of its wings as it took off, soaring higher and further away, until it passed the tree-tops. Only then did his gaze fall. And when it did, it found a solitary maple leaf lying among the bluebells, of a hue as pure and deep as blood. He fixated it for a moment, feeling the tips of his fingers itch with a strange curiosity, before he lowered himself to the ground, where he picked it up by its stem.  ... he believed to have seen one just like it among many, within her grasp.  He turned it over, holding onto it as if he could still feel the warmth of her hands on it. Then, in a swift but careful movement, he tucked it away in a fold of his garment... before he rose up again. A-last, he turned to look over his shoulder at the small clearing amidst the trees. The sun had returned over the Kingdom of the Elves.

By its light, it had dawned a strange morning."

Amartëa Melmë - The Last Tale of Gil-galad, Chapter 4

"Arwafëa / Eledhwyn" (Star-Maiden)

He stood in the shadows of an undercroft."

Amartëa Melmë - The Last Tale of Gil-galad, Chapter 8

7.3K words.

Arwafëa walked the forlorn lands of Cardolan, a far-stretching plain moulded by a sea of hummocks, towards a sunless and bleak heaven bearing twisted, East-born clouds. They advanced from where every thing which once breathed with life was now razed and crushed to ashen dust. The bitterness of blood and turmoil tainted the forthcoming breeze which lifted the gentle cloth of her snow-white garment.

Soon they would claim the entire sky ere the Dark Lord's evil would follow to conquer all that remained of Middle Earth.

"Mothers and Fathers of this plane," uttered she, brave-hearted in the face of the impending darkness her eyes foresaw,

"Peace is waning... the ending has begun." she felt the wind chill her skin.

"Sharpen every lance and sword; seal every armour and harden every shield that will rise to withstand the old evil which has awoken." her eyes rose to the dying brightness vanishing behind the grey clouds.

"And keep safe the one I love, who holds within him not only the light of his people... but the light of Old."

"Dirnaith!"

Exclaimed the commander from under his shining helmet,

   "A ortho i chlaid lín an i Aran!" The King watched every soldier to his left and right take position as they approached the arched corridor. Then, every sword and every lance rose to meet shadow and light.

   "Híron!" answered they in unison, and their sound reverberated against the old stones of the great hall. He bowed his head to them as he traversed the path, robed in a tunic blue as the dark of night, adorned by gold and silver embroidery at his shoulders and the cuffs of his sleeves. The days of mourning had passed like the deep sun set in the West; In its stead had arrived the hour of War.

The doors of the Map Room opened at the approaching end of the corridor. The King's eyes met his father's, who, among the other lords gathered around the grand table,  awaited him. The old elf fixed his eyes upon his son. Days had come after this one had sailed to the old isle; Nights had gone... and he had not moved to tell him a word about it. The same worry and confusion which had found his heart and conscience that sleepless night on the balcony had now only grown watching his child grow more silent and distant than he knew him to be. But in the face of it, wise and patient as the old shipwright was, he trusted time to break the strange silence between them.

He felt the wind in his back as the doors shut behind him, then watched all faces before him grow still.

  "Your Majesty." said all in unison. Gil-galad bowed his head to them and met all eyes... but his father's.

   "What is the situation?"

At his inquiry, a commander, of the highest rank stepped forth to the mapped table in the middle of the room.

 "Your Majesty," he began, "of the three troops sent out under your command... only two returned. The unfortunate fleet met their end..."

   "Where?" he asked. The commander hesitated, his finger hovering over the map as though he feared recalling where his soldiers had perished. In the way the same's eyes then darkened, it truly seemed so.

   "...East of the Gwathir, in the lands of Men." He finally answered, his finger finding the site on the old map. The King met the commander's eye.

"What we found there," he continued, falling silent anew as a horrendous memory claimed his mind, "was only desolation and death. Ashes where life once reigned. The terrain once covered by trees old and young, forced to jagged remnants of trunks, coming forth from the earth like the charcoal claws of an ancient creature. Carcasses scattered about the razed land in hundreds. Their exposed bones—washed white from the rain. And the shells of my men, atop a hill... formed into a ghastly pile of torn limbs and ligaments. The earth they laid upon, cursed with the stench of blood." The room itself turned as silent as death as he recounted the happenings.

   "I took my soldiers, all that remained, as far and fast as the horses could carry them."

   "…There were no survivors?" Gil-galad asked. The commander shook his head before he turned away his eyes. "None."

   "What of the survivors of Eregion?" one of the Lords asked, "What of Imladris?"

"It seems the refuge has not been found," another soldier answered, "Some remain safe there, some have been taken into the protection of the dwarves of Khazad-dum. Of what we saw last, their gates are now shut. The enemy, too, swarms their lands."

"As we journeyed", the commander's finger began to drift away from Gwathir, "A rotten scent tainted the air that lingered beneath our noses, carried by the currents from both our sides." He circled the northeastern lands of Cardolan and the northwest of Minhiriath.

Gil-galad's eyes grew serious.

   "Sauron and those who do his bidding are approaching the lands of Arthedain. Soon, they will be at the gates of the Haven."

The King then, at last, locked eyes with the Shipwright. As he did, he knew without a doubt that the same thought, the same worry, was upon this one's heart: His Herald. The elder then, after a moment of unease, spoke:

   "The refuge must be fortified; Commander Elrond must be warned."

   "Send for him." Gil-galad ordered, trying to conceal the worry in his eyes, "Have him return to receive further orders... and ready a troop of soldiers to accompany him upon his following departure."

   "What of the letters to Númenor?" he inquired, his voice now quieter than before.

   "They remain unanswered, your Majesty."

   "Why?" said he.

   "Tensions trouble the island." informed one of the elven lords with a grim countenance.

    "... Whispers of persecution of the Faithful have risen in the wind."

   "Persecution?" The King's brows furrowed.

   "What were we expecting of men? It is for a reason we have forsaken their kind." said another, "Attestation the more of their betrayal against the kin who gifted them their land!". 

   "Not all of them stand against us." Cìrdan intercepted, his rare word heavier than all others.

"The days of Tar-Minastir are no longer. Of his kind, Tar-Palantir was the last." the same answered him. "The good among them are no more; the light of wisdom is dimming upon them. You, as eldest among us, must recognize better than us all when tides turn for the worst. And I say— the tides of Númenor are turned."

The King observed the tense exchange, confounded by the sudden, surfaced ill sentiment against the men of the island, men who he never doubted to've been anything but allies in the face of the Old Evil. The shipwright, too, stared at the Lord, turning words over in his mind, then deciding at last that he would not try to open closed ears.

   "The memory of their forefathers coming to our aid may be recent to us, but to them, they are now no more than the last pages of an old, dusted book." another said after a long beat of silence. 

   "We cannot chance counting on them; They will not help us." said the same with his eyes upon the King.

   "We stand alone."  Gil-galad retreated into silence upon the council's final thought. His eyes, uneasier than they'd been before, wandered over the map, tracing the route of the enemy's armies towards the Tower Hills which stood and ended right at the Haven's doorstep. He knew the evil would rejoice in ravaging all that lay in its path, that this ravenousness would lie in Elfkind's favour:

It would grant them time to prepare their defences for what all knew was now unavoidable.

He drew a breath and felt the heart within his chest no longer beating as gently as it had before. Worry, for not only his kind but all peoples now hastened it.

   "We must prepare for the fleeing, elves and of men," raised the commander, "to arrive at the Grey Haven's gates soon, your Highness." Cìrdan fixed his eyes upon his son that very moment and watched him close his eyes and suddenly cease to breathe—briefly enough for no other than him to take notice. They therefore remained on him even after he had opened them again to meet waiting eyes.

"... Lord Cìrdan," he began, meeting the shipwright's gaze with eyes which in them held something the tone of his voice concealed. As his eyes spoke the elder's answered, relating in their vivid blue an amalgamation of confliction, hurt and concern. 

    "The Haven is as we speak being prepared for them," he answered ere the King could finish, uttering the last two words with strange detachment. "your Majesty."

Gil-galad stiffened at his manner of having answered him, first to turn his eyes away as he felt a strange, even painful sensation run through him and reach to his bones. Yet, he nodded despite its affect, as he knew he had to. Without another word, he stepped away as the doors opened behind him. Cìrdan watched him go, having seen his ring-bearing hand retreat from the table before the rest of him.

Returned to the great hall, the King asked to find his study unaccompanied by his guards and left them behind without further word, taking the corner behind which his steps suddenly hastened. A tremor seized his hand as it unclenched and a strange pressure came alive against his temples. None of what they had answered him he had heard, for his ears had been veiled by loudening whispers that had commenced the moment the subject of Númenor had been raised in the map room. In vain had he attempted to listen away or silence them. So loud had they become that their calling him began to draw at his very spirit. The eyes of his father, which had further weighed upon him since his journey and return from the old isle, only aggravated his condition: He chose to withdraw from the room ere the same would take notice. Upon all he withheld from him, all he could not tell him, all he would not understand, he did not need this, too, to add on.

Servants passed bowing to him their heads, but as he stared and perceived their moving lips, his ears registered no sound. In a maze, his hand reached out to feel for the door's handle. When the cold metal met his fingers, his hand closed around it and forced it down. Gentle sunlight and new air struck him as the door tumbled open wide. Breathless, he hurried into the light, exhaling at last as he came to rest against the pillar that parted the balcony from his study. Shutting his eyes, he straightened his back against its stone. His breath struggled in his chest, and pain whirled behind his closed lids as his tremulous hands lifted from his sides, heavy and laborious as though they struggled against the weight of invisible stones; the fingers of his bare hand fighting to reach the ring bound around his other. But as it tried, the deafening force against his hearing grew, forcing at last even the gentle song of the nightingale out. The thumping of his heart accelerated as he struggled against the invisible force unrelentingly bearing down on him. Despairing, he clung to the remnant of sunlight bleeding past his eyes, telling himself that it would pass like a daydream despite feeling it pull him further and further from this realm.

For last, and with all the strength of spirit and body he could conjure, he reached for Vilya.  The very second his fingers wound themselves around the ring of power, the noise died away and the weight lifted from his being. All vertigo and pain dissipated so very suddenly as though neither had ever burdened him. Yet his eyes still remained shut, his breath caged in his chest; He himself - unmoving against the pillar's stone ... until he noticed that glimmer of sunlight, too, gone as though the sun itself had vanished. And when he felt the air, too, turn cold against his skin, he forced his eyes open to see.

Gil-galad stared as he perceived a wall of old, dark stone erect where before had breathed the far-stretching woodland of his kingdom under a clear sky. All that had stood around him had gone. Taken, too, had been the light that had a moment before livened his study. His dark, gaped eyes climbed the old bricks into the heights to a slender opening where the stones broke surface with the ground. Light, cold as though born of a sorrowful, sunless heaven fell through, casting faint streaks past his shoulder.  He stood in the shadows of an undercroft.  Silence, unbroken silence had reigned until the moment his feet had shifted atop the ground and the dust upon the stone had crunched beneath his feet. Then finally he breathed, exhaling a shuddered breath, watching its warmth dissipate into nothingness before its sound travelled through the air in an unnatural echo. As his sight wandered through the scape, he saw that out of one pillar had become many which altogether upheld a ceiling of deep, dark stone. Listening as his breath rebounded, drifting over and past him like a ghost, a sudden, deep chill infested his spine when he, by his own keen ear, did not hear it resound in his back. At this, his hands, which before had not shaken, closed into tight fists. Tautened, his jaw hardened and his throat closed, stifling the trembling breath within it. Then his low stare into the dim air before him froze.

Something waited there in the darkness behind him.

Something he had to turn to see. Slowly, he let the light guide his gaze past his shoulder, feeling strands of his deep hair fall back as his chin forced them over his shoulder. One by one, old things, once belonging to old Kings, came into sight. Against the wall rested a mighty shield forged of silver; Centred in its blue field , molded to the form of a great star, lied the light of Varda Elentari; A story of its strength was told, a tale which outlived the hands that had borne it. Now in the darkness of a catacomb, the light of the stars had dimmed in the shield of Fingolfin.

Beside it leaned a longbow carved of dark ironwood and strung of silk; its grip, wound in the fine deep blue leather of the Edain, was marked by the hands which had once wielded it; Those hands he knew, for they had been first to hold him... and last to let him go. The runt had been the weapon of Fingon the Valiant; the King who in the memory of his people would remain forever young.

At last there lied a folded cloth which bore in its midst the shape of a white swan: The mark of Ulmo, patron and protector; Anointer of Turgon, Keeper and King over the city of Gar Thurion; In its unfolding doom the same would fall a raised sword until a bitter end by fog and flame, forever buried and unfound under the white stones of the hidden city.

And by his death, only one of the old line would remain. Gil-galad fought biting tears in eyes stricken by terror and grief. Staring, he stood completely silent and still; unable to find space enough inside of him to breathe; his lungs were twisted by dread. His heart, frightened as though transported back into the chest of the boy who'd witnessed the crown part from the head it had rested upon... ...to fall into blood.  He hadn't needed seeing it to know it; Fear it. The blood that coursed through his veins carried the harrowing memory of all fates which had manifested from it. How would it let him forget? He, the son of a son was alike a tomb; Inside of him all lay buried in the shadows of his heart and mind. Ages ago now the Valar said to have lifted the curse off the Noldor — Seemed, because to him a malediction once uttered could never depart but merely turn its nature. For if the Valar had not cursed them it was the marred world itself which had conspired against the Kings who dared rise to struggle against its destined ebbs and flows of light and darkness. A sore heart and anguished spirit forced his dark, dolorous eyes from their apparition. Their image had called forth a torment he had tried to bury so deeply: beholding them was as though he'd seen their corpses in their remnants' stead.

   ... As though he'd appeared here to look upon his fated, waiting place beside them.  Sickness and debility gripped him at the harrowing thought, and as he felt both rob him of his strength and composure, his now glistening eyes began to dart about and around himself. Already had there not been enough air to breathe, but as the darkness about him felt to deepen, his throat felt as though it had completely shut itself. Ereinion turned, not knowing how often he'd shifted atop the ground, seeing only tall stone and shadow wherever he looked; finding no way out of what he knew to be a most terrible daydream, wherever he turned. He wanted out; He'd seen enough—he'd understood he thought. And yet, the entrapping vision did not give way. The tears in his eyes only stung more as swelled the lump in his throat. When last he looked and saw no egress, instinct urged him to feel for the ring; recalling then, hoping that he needed only part it from his hand to escape the terror. So his hands lifted to level themselves to his trembling, frenzied eyes. But then a soundless gasp shrunk his chest when again, nothing was what he found; The ring had vanished from his finger, seemingly into thin air. As he stared at his bare hands and the feeling of gloom claimed his skin in goosebumps, a tear stole from his eye and trailed down his tight and pale cheek. Sinking into delirium he seemed, when a mysterious sound rebounded unexpectedly. Frightened, he turned, looking back at the remnants with searching eyes. He held his breath and stood still, listening until its very last echo dissolved. Very suddenly then, by a slight angling of his head, he noticed that the pillar in his line of sight had all along concealed another. A broken one, still anchored in its base had stood forepart of all other relics, alike a table. Upon its asperate surface... lied something which seemed, by the mere colours it bore, familiar. For a moment the dread that had rooted him to the ground dissipated, and in that short instant he freed himself of its malign and, exhaling at last, unfroze to approach it. The light which bled through the aperture in the wall cast his black shadow against the stony ground as he advanced in tense, measured steps. As the tall post bled out of focus, the object came into full sight.

It was a seal. A dark blue stone no bigger than the palm of his hand, onto which was etched in gold the winged sun of Finwë; In red, an inward-spiral upon a grey, centred circle. Gil-galad fixed his eyes upon it, allowing his gaze to linger on the object ere reaching for it. It was cold at the touch; its surface smooth against his fingers. As it settled into his palm, a strange sensation travelled through his hand. Never had he discovered the true meaning of this heirloom; its symbols, foremost its center remained a mysterium unwilling to be named. Tightly clasped he the stone still as something told him that it could be what would guide him out of this nightmarish scape. So fixed upon it was his attention that he hadn't noticed that the beam of light through opening in the wall had faded and abandoned him in complete shadow. Nearer drew he the stone to his face, so close that he remarked an almost invisible crack through its midst. For the space of a breath he slowed, ignoring an unwelcome shudder and releasing a breath it held back. Then his thumb moved to slowly drift over the fine fissure, and as it journeyed from north of the stone to its south, an odd feeling found it; For when he lifted his finger from it, red paint slicked its tip. He stared first, confounded, before his eyes returned to the seal. There, a deeper crack stared back at him. At the sight his heart stopped, and ere he could comprehend how it had happened, forth from it rose blood like from a mortal wound, seeping forth in a quantity impossible to've been held in such a small object; Out it poured into his hand, bleeding into the creases of his palm like seawater seeped into dry riverbeds; Wide the King's eyes grew in horror as the thick, warm liquid escaped by the tethers of his hand, marking the back of his hand in vivid, crimson streaks . His fingers unfurled in a haste, abandoning their hold on it. Slowed in time he witnessed it fall out of his grasp and turn over in its descent. The ground beneath him turned into opaque, unformed blackness as did all around him. Somewhere it mattered not, for tears blurred his sight and silence loudened in his ears as he watched. The sound of his strained breath was what he'd heard last before the seal's loud, unnatural shattering. As it met the ground it sprang apart, and in the undoing, its shards transformed from blue gemstone to white porcelain. In supernatural speed the darkness returned to the light of the sun. Apart spread the alabaster fragments of the cup which all along had been in his grasp. The warm tea once in it, too, leaked across the smooth, dark wood. So gripped was the King by this trance that the sudden return to light had not blinded him. A tear instead stole from his eye as his quivering lips remained parted—yet produced no sound. He glanced next at his hand and found it devoid of blood... yet mysteriously reunited with the ring.

At last the dam which had withheld the distresses of all passed days broke and a stifled whimper freed itself from his chest. Restrained, hastened breaths followed. With unsteady eyes, he looked about his study, his high shelves of books and scrolls, finding amongst them no-one to console him; Hearing no steps approach in the corridor to investigate what had caused the sound; Needing the echo of steps to come alive while together fearing them, because it meant another's eyes would find him in a condition he could not explain. Still and despite he listened for it.

Nothing came.

He was alone.

In weighing silence, he knelt down and hurried to gather the jagged shards off the ground.

Elrond felt the summer-winds in his cloak as he walked, hand upon hilt, up the fawn-stoned path to the Halls. A tiding had reached him demanding his return a mere a day after he'd reached Imladris; A command of supposed direct instruction by the Majesty himself. The Herald had not questioned the missive; though he, writing in hand and before his eyes, had pondered as to the reason of his being recalled in such a haste when he'd assumed to've been sent away to remain gone —and devoted to the task at hand.  Questioned as to the reason by Arondir, he'd mounted his horse a locked, displeased countenance.  His grey eyes fled the oncoming glances of guards and veiled maiden servants as he crossed them, keeping his eyes low and adrift; avoiding unjustly putting their irritation upon an undeserving stranger as his-ever working mind finding no sound reasoning to his King's contradicting commands. Displeasure had seemingly deafened him, for he'd left passed Cìrdan unacknowledged as though he hadn't heard him call for him thrice. Only as the same put himself in his path from the side of the rad did the Herald startle and halt his steps.

   "Master Cìrdan," muttered he with a gentle tilt of his head, before he fled this one's eyes, too. The shipwright's silver brows momentarily creased at his strange greeting, and he looked him over by his pale blue eyes before he returned a livelier greeting.

   "Have you just arrived?" he asked.

   "Yes," Elrond answered quietly, "I have."

   "Has the Mirkwood elf accompanied you?"

   "No." he looked at him, "He stayed behind to keep watch until my return." Cìrdan nodded, tightening his hold around the short beams of wood under his arm. His free hand then found Elrond's shoulder. "I hope the journey back has not inconvenienced you; it is for good reason." A sudden anxiety had appeared in the elder's eyes as he'd spoken.

   "I fear my being inconvenienced is neither of priority nor weight in the matter."

   "What do you mean by that?" asked Cìrdan. Elrond looked at him, though rather briefly, "Has not the King demanded my return?"

"Why, yes." answered Cìrdan, incapable of ignoring the undertone of irritation in the Herald's voice as he, as a consequence, chose to withhold that he, too, had demanded his return. A silence overcame him then, and for a brief moment he softly stared at the elf before him ere he spoke again.

   "...Do you doubt the decisions of your King, Elrond?" the elder asked with a sub-tone of bewilderment.

   "Should I not?" Elrond answered more firmly than he'd expected.

   "I was only given orders to place myself in the refuge and expand it; and now, not two days gone, I am to return? Deprived as to the reason?" Pain and confusion flashed in the Herald's grey glare.

   "Though I am aware of the unimportance of my opinion, the unsteadiness of his orders, of his recent deportment—have been inchoate." Cìrdan failed to answer him then, in part from the unexpected irritation which had so suddenly surged in his voice... and the words which has formed his last reproach. Elrond, dejected, turned his eyes away and pressed his lips into a thin line. Cìrdan, in silence, stared, observing him for a moment before he asked him

   "What of his deportment?".

He watched the elf's body react to his question; shift as though it did not want to answer. Elrond, gaze still aside, felt his jaw tighten. Killing thoughts ere they made the error of reaching his tongue, he struggled to tame the dejection in his heart. The elder, unaware of the fact that he'd held his breath, waiting in hope and despair at hinting words that would help him understand the strangeness he, too, had remarked in his son. At point he approached the Herald by a gentle step; This indeed pushed Elrond out of his silence.

   "One cannot help but observe his sudden, strange ways. He is not acting like himself."

   "But Elrond," Cìrdan retorted, though be it with his usual gentle way, "many among us are not behaving as their selves." His old eyes deepened with an air of sadness. "We have all—together—endured indescribable loss by the hands of Sauron a mere moon ago."

Elrond, pained at the mention of Eregion, its casualties and the relentless vigour of his own grief, felt his heart begin to throb in agitation and therefore answered not to the subject, but, recalling the absence of sorrow in Gil-galad he'd witnessed after Celebrimbor's burial, said this:

   "I doubt this kind of loss would affect the King in any noticeable manner—that if something is affecting his iron carriage, it must be of a strength great enough to bend his Majesty's character."    "Elrond!" reproached the Master, "Rethink your words! Whatever you have seen or heard of him to make you say these things—know that you misunderstand: He, too, has a heart." stressed he.

   "We have lost an entire city-"

   "-To rings!" Elrond retorted, stunning his elder into silence. "Magical, unnatural things in whose creation we had no right to meddle in." Chagrined, his eyes turned away.

   "I would not find myself enlightened if the source of his strangeness was born from the object that circles his finger." said he, "But then you should know better than I presently could... Master Cìrdan." Something he had not wanted to set free nor could now reclaim had escaped his innermost sphere by the tone of his voice and the weight within his words; too late did he, overrun by his emotions, realize this. When the silence filled the air between him and Cìrdan, his agonized eyes softened with remorse—as recoiled his before agitated flesh. Only briefly did this one's eyes manage to look into the elder's before they retreated in sudden, pained regret. The wind breathed out loud, and as it exhaled, induced a tumble of leaves.  The Herald retreated a step, low-eyed and tight-lipped, and at last bowed wordlessly before he left the shipwright behind upon the road.

Gil-galad stared past the clear window glass, casting his absent gaze onto people and things which roamed before the great halls' ramparts. Through the window crack, distant voices and sounds bled into his study and reached his ear, though he, in truth, did not hear them. His hands rested on the table beneath the aperture, close together—yet, untouching. The ring lay still around his finger. He dared not touch it, even less acknowledge its presence. He stood there as he knew he had to, seemingly unaffected—strangely on guard against himself; present and yet detached from all that surrounded him. A confusing thing close to fear numbed his flesh and spirit. It occupied the quiet inside him; though it remained invisible and nameless, he felt its weight and dimension. Alike a solid shadow latched onto him, it leached off him, filled his chest, robbed him of the want for air. Breathless, he stared into a turning sky whose clouds gathered to cage the sun, seeing nor truly hearing the world around him. Images of the vision flashed before his eyes whenever he turned his sight away from the light. Whenever they claimed his mind's eye, his heart's pounding would rise into his ears, and he'd still it—ere he'd drift his hand into the light and behold it, unable to see yet still feel the blood that had marked it.  Looking upon it had he been once more when Elrond was traversing the corridor to his quarters. The Herald wore still the dark mourning garments under his turquoise cloak. The bruise upon his cheek, which had begun to morph from its deep mauve into reddish hues, was yet to fully heal, while the cut on his lips had darkened and sealed. Sealed not on the other hand, had the wounds upon his heart. By every step with which he approached his King's study—dolorous he felt them become anew. His grey eyes had fallen upon the faint daylight which cast itself upon the stone in the door frame before he stepped into it. When his sight entered the room, it found the King silently facing the window, robed in a deep sapphire tunic—still, without his golden circlet of a crown . At first sight, his deep brown hair seemed almost blended into the deepness of his garment, calling into the Herald's mind the likeness of a shadow. Quickly he, disturbed by the thought, turned away his eyes. Hands clasped in his back, his face then crept from the shadow of the corridor into the light as he stepped into the room—and bowed.

   "High King." said he.  Elrond's voice reached his ear, and it—like a warm hand upon freezing skin—retrieved him from the numb absence wthathad claimed him. First he felt the heart within his chest liven with a beat; then, all else followed. He drew an inaudible breath. His ring-bearing hand, which rested upon the table, curled into an unclenched fist. Then he turned his head ever so slightly,

casting his eye upon his Herald.

   "... You are returned."

   "I am," answered Elrond, nodding and stealing a glance at him as he lifted his eyes. "as you demanded I do in your letter—your Majesty." He heard the King—who still stood with his back to him—exhale. Immediate relief eased Gil-galad's shoulders and led him to—if only for a moment—close his eyes.

   "Unharmed from the journey back?" asked he.

Silently glancing once more, Elrond nodded. For a time after, he felt the King's eyes linger on him.  At last this one, too, nodded, beginning then to make his way to the other side of the study. Gil-galad kept his eyes to himself, looking only at the elf when this one did not—afraid that the torment weighing on him would show in his eyes. With Elrond now before him, all thoughts passed on his safety—his well-being—and the safety of the refuge rose from the depths of his mind; he cared greatly. Having witnessed how deeply the fall of the city and Celebrimbor had affected him for days after their return to Lindon, he wished now to ensure that he felt understood before sending him away for good this time. The careful words that had to follow next would have to rise from his heart; and though such a task had always presented him great difficulty, he sensed, in his spirit in a way he hadn't before, that this moment would not allow for anything else.

   "I have called you here," he began, looking down upon his hands, "because there is something you must know." The Herald's eyes rose, fixing themselves upon the King. 

   "What transpired in Eregion has greatly affected all of our kind. Nothing nor anyone can remain as they once were after such loss."  Elrond felt goosebumps claim his skin the way an unexpected, freezing wave would lap against one's tendons. The short silence that followed—to him— swelled with strangeness as his gaze went adrift and yet his hearing remained. 

    "I know that you cared deeply for Celebrimbor; and... I've witnessed how greatly his loss has affected you and seems to do still." he said as he turned his back to him once more, letting his fingers find a book along whose edges he let his finger run. 

    "It seemed to me as though remaining here in Lindon had become painful to you....It seemed—here, you were losing yourself in grief and falling into strangeness."

At those words, Elrond first felt vexation restrain the air in his lungs before he found his heart twist with sudden anger. Immediately he recalled the look in the shipwright's eyes when he'd—in rage—blamed the rings for the turmoil which their kind had suffered; a look he'd found in all pairs of eyes he'd met. Pity. As though looking at someone who had lost control of their self. In his skin: someone whose lesser nature had taken over and clouded his judgments, words, and deeds. Heat rose first in his ears—suppression then grew and further tightened his chest. Still he remained silent, shutting his eyes as shivers of rage began to claim his skin. Unable  was he now to silence the suspicion that Gil-galad had sent him not because he trusted him—but because wanted him gone: Distant, as  not to interfere in plans and orders—orders which would rise from a greater power they had trusted against his warnings.

A power which had cost them once; One time too many. 

    "... Strangeness." started Elrond, rising to stand.  Gil-galad, confounded by the sudden rigour in his tone, turned and found his Herald's piercing glare fixated on him. 

    "My strangeness?" repeated he, advancing by a solitary, measured step—letting his hand lay against his wounded heart. Gil-galad turned all of himself to him then, still silent and staring. Not understanding.

   "And what of yours?" questioned the Herald. The King's stare deepened. Slightly did his head shift upon his shoulders before his regard wandered ever so briefly. Slowly Elrond watched this one's lips part in the at once: It seemed certain to him that he once more had been absent-minded in the past moment, certain that he had not expected to find himself questioned.

   "...What?" The question escaped him in a quieted breath.

   "Do not speak to me as though you are unaffected; unchanged — When you are who is most transformed."

 The Herald watched the King's shoulders stiffen at his words; his dark brows crease and his eyes sharpen ever so lightly, twisting his face into an unreadable expression between confusion, fluster—and irritation. Fear should have claimed him in that moment, remorse should have come alive in his bones about having uttered such words. But it did not. Anger had heated his blood, and now this heat would not be stilled.

   "I have noted your absence of crown —and mind." said he coldly, his voice steadying with every word, "Be not the one to speak of strangeness to me."  Gil-galad could only stare at first, unable to do anything but doubt the meaning of the words he just heard. The soles of his shoes scratched the ground as he retreated half a step, looking him over, searching his face. His eye caught at the bruised skin around the wound upon his cheek, from a cut he'd suffered in battle. Eyes full of pain and indignation—their cool grey hue telling of the sorrow behind them. He felt anger start in him but stifled it, incapable of believing that Elrond could have misconstrued and taken offence at words that were meant in sincerity. He therefore shook his head and turned his eyes away from him for as long as he could, before he laid them upon him again; shaking his head—thinking that maybe he'd placed too high a burden on him; That he was therefore no longer of a mind sound enough to act and speak in reason.

   "...You do not understand the weight of your words." whispered Gil-galad in an anger-laced voice as he shook his head.

    "You are confused."

"No," answered Elrond shaking his head, "I am now of clearer mind that I have ever been. At last my vision, too, is now clear...clear to see the errors of my ways by having obeyed your every command." said he advancing another step, invading his Majesty's space. "I obeyed when you exiled me to the Grey Havens for the 'insolence' of suspicions which turned out ever wiser and truer than your own. I obeyed your command when you sent me to Eregion after you had given into the rings—sent me when you all had already begun what could no longer be stopped." continued Elrond, "I showed patience when you doubted my concern of an attack on the city! When its rescue laid in the falling sands of time!"

    "—And still I followed in spite of my doubts, and I placed a thousand men behind you!" exclaimed the King, "Still we came!" 

    "Too late!" returned Elrond, now visibly gripped by anger.

    "All of those delays—all of those mistakes!" cried he, "They rest upon your shoulders! Know that!"

    "How dare you?" whispered the king in a tone that now gradually grew harder and more menacing.

    "How dare you think yourself wiser than me? How dare you place these blames on me - you, who knows nothing!" reproved he, "What do you know of the things I have seen? The things I alone bear for this kingdom and all peoples??"

"I have seen your lone journeys into the night." revealed the Herald coldly. "I have observed your strange gazes into the distance; into the air around you. Looking upon things that aren't real nor true! Mere illusions, called upon by your own weaknesses and shadows—and the ring around your finger!" Gil-galad felt his blood run cold at the unexpected revelation, for he'd known immediately what Elrond spoke of. The words had cut like a blade, right into his heart; touched a thing he would've wrung and broken necks for. But somehow the rage did not come; instead, the words had incapacitated him. His eyes quelled with emotion strange to the Herald's eye—grew shadowed and yet suddenly abated with something he could not decipher. As he looked at Gil-galad, watched his eyes begin to tremble and glisten with tears, he knew not whether this one was about to lunge at him in rage. A heavy and thick silence settled between them as their eyes remained unmoving upon the other,

until Gil-galad spoke. 

"The things I see—all of them…" uttered he as he looked at Elrond, his anger eerily evaporated and now replaced by hurt. "are very real...    

You do not know what you say."

   "...I care not." answered Elrond. 

"But I know that in truth, I have not been myself. I should have known when you sent me, a mere politician—apt at serving your every demand yet undeserving of sitting at the council—away to keep a haven—to guard a refuge," embitterment began to taint his voice as he spoke.  "And at first I did not question you; I thought you had grown to trust me." he said, feeling an ache start in his throat and his eyes begin to burn, "But I see now... that all along you only wanted to rid yourself of me." Gil-galad shook his head, "That is untrue-"

   "Had I been myself!" intercepted Elrond, "I would have stopped you. Had I done so... Celebrimbor would still be alive.

    His blood—is on your hands." Gil-galad felt a shiver chill his spine; dread and guilt turn his gut. Before his mind's eye returned the image of his blood-marked hands. Overwhelmed and unable to speak, he diverted his eyes, knowing suddenly not how to breathe. Elrond's chest rose and fell. His agitated breath only added fuel to the fire in his lungs. 

"Whatever you called me here for matters no more, for I will not return to Imladris. Call upon the generals at your disposal; Call upon Arondir who still remains there. I will not go from this city again. Detain me for it if you must—but I will not see an unfortunate thing happen again; I will not watch error and misdirection bear the fruits of tragedy again. I will remain here." said Elrond bitterly, feeling the scab on his lip tug as he spoke. Then a tear trailed from his eye.

            "Whether I am wanted or not." Without another word, he turned his back and left the room. Ereinion hadn't looked at him ere he'd departed; as he heard his echoing steps grow fainter as they crossed the corridor's distance, a shuddered, strained breath escaped him. Only then did he turn to face the now empty door frame before which he had stood, watching the spot with lingering, glistening eyes. Cìrdan, books in hand, had found himself in the corridor at the foot of the stairs which lead up Gil-galad's quarters when Elrond came storming down on them.

    "Elrond?" exclaimed he as his eyes widened in concern. "Elrond?!" The Herald listened not, nor turned his eyes his way. Confounded he watched him hurry past him and mount his horse to ride away. Hastily the shipwright tried to follow him, calling his name; but Elrond did not stop. He rode away not turning once to look back. Cìrdan stared. Felt the wind that normally did not affect him suddenly chill his skin. Up then his eyes turned to the window of the King's study in the tower, where they remained as he asked himself what could have transpired.

I have smiled at you from the heavens, I have kissed you in the wind.

I have caressed you by the blades of grass that brushed your skin, And have sung to you through the songbirds when days begin.

Ereinion, Ion lerya, tulë Aran, I have loved you since time itself begun.

Daylight broke through the treetops, casting away the shadow of night.  Ereinion hurried through the forest on the beast's back, riding so briskly the cold wind caught in his dark mane. His eyes stared ahead and up at the swarm of tanagers that soared over above him, together in an almost unnatural looking red flock that seemed to guide him back to the way he had come.

As the leathern reigns lay locked in his hands,

his mind pondered, turning her words over again and again in his mind. He hadn't needed wonder about them. Their meaning was clear the moment they had parted from her tongue. As she'd spoken them, a part of him, and in a most strange way, the past of him, had remembered and breathed again.  If he was to honour the gift of her revelation, he knew what he had to do: revisit the place he'd sworn to never return to. As he guided his horse through towering trees and snaking roots, the red leaves above and beneath him returned to gold. So, too, did the dark and old bark begin to brighten.

Arwafëa, now one again with the wind and nature itself, watched him grow smaller and smaller in the distance, though he himself could not and would not see her even if he tried to. And would not for a long time. When he stalled his horse and turned, having reached the end of the forest, he looked back, knowing now that the lands on the other side of the bridge guarded places and secrets it would only reveal to those who dared believe what could not be known, the way he had chosen to tonight.  Silently, he stared and listened to the whispering wind casting anew a vow of secrecy, promising to keep what transpired a mystery, witnessed by no other eyes but the ones of the forest.

It was that same murmur which awoke the shipwright out of his sleep. He sat astraight in his rocking chair, gasping as though something had shaken him. His eyes wandered to the window. Cold light tumbled through its glass. It seemed he had missed sunrise. Having held his breath until that realization, he exhaled, then searched his mind, certain that he had dreamt of something he did not want to forget,

when he suddenly heard strange sounds not too far from his loft.

Alerted by them he listened, wondering who it could've been working the harbour this early in the morning. His old hands rose and hovered above the armchairs as he hearkened for anything that would give away their identity. When he heard the neigh of a horse follow, any remnant of weariness melted from his being, for he needed only hear it once to recognize it.

But the old shipwright was already too late when he reached the port. Briefly, his eyes brushed over Hírion, who had been tied to one of the masts and was eating apples out of a loaded barrel. The elder watched the shape of his son and the small ship he'd embarked upon grow smaller in the distance.  He was still close enough to hear the old elf had he called out his name. But something told this one not to do so. His dark, turquoise cloak lifted in the marine breeze, and his piercing blue eyes, clouded with worry, were left with no choice but to watch.  There was only one place Ereinion could go. And he knew not whether his son would return the same, once he set foot back onto the island of

BALAR, the map read. Ereinion clasped it tightly in his hands as he looked up at the hoisted sails, gripped by the strong wind. The salty breeze, biting at first, forced him to squint his eyes. He fixed his sight on the old compass he had found under the old canvases on the deck.  Out he looked. The ship was sailing West, journeying out of the Lhûn's narrow mouth. He turned around, casting his sight back at the harbour, now growing smaller and fainter the further he sailed. Unknowingly, his grip around the orientator tightened. Then a weight settled into his chest. He knew where he was going yet was once more uncertain of what he was doing. For a moment, any thought of his died away, leaving behind only one question to echo in his mind: whether he understood that he could still turn the ship around. Return home, to a place and world he still recognized. For the destination marked on the map mattered not; he would not reach an island, but another world. One older, deeper and separate from all and anything he believed to understand. He'd embarked on voyage upon the open water, a voyage without return. One he had to finish once he'd set sail and depart the shores...then, at the mercy of the unending waters. And water was unlike the sturdy, solid earth he knew beneath his feet. Both held secrets, both held memories. Only one allowed for them to remain forever buried.  For an instant, the sweet, familiar longing for safety returned, attempted to nest as the cold dust of whipping waves befell him and the harsh wind cut his skin. One hand curled around the wooden handle of the wheel, the thought to make half-way tried to grab a hold of him.  But when Ereinion closed his eyes and remembered her face, he knew her image would haunt him until the end of his days if he relinquished. He had to sail on. And if it meant that he lost himself in the storms that raged between worlds following her, he had to trust that clear skies awaited him at journey's end. Soon the marine haze hovering over the waves gave way, parted by the ship as fingers parted a veil. Even through the mist, he'd seen old isle's form from miles afar. When it faded away and the air shifted, the King felt it in his bones. It was as though he had crossed the threshold between the present and the past.

He arrived upon old shores.  Dark, volcanic stone stood upon bright sand. Rich moss overgrew jagged rock as hope would sprout from scorched, black earth. Ravens, like strokes of a brush across coarse cloth, glided through the cold, cloudless sky. The breeze, unlike the waves that danced around the land, lay still. When last his feet had walked upon the bright grit, he'd wandered the coastline bare-footed. Now, the leather of his shoes moulded around his feet like a barrier, keeping the flesh from recalling. But the mind, despite and still, remembered. 

It was silent. Strange, in his ears. The sound of bellowing horns calling fishermen's boats to the harbour. The thudding of hammers burying needles into wooden planks, erecting warm halls and extending quays along the shore on the other side of the island. The laughter of children and songs of mothers. All were now only wasting remnants. Memories, echoes only his heart could hear. 

Balar was desolate.

A ghost.

And he had returned to its haunting. The blackbird's cry bellowed through the ether and he looked up, catching it soar high before it steered north to follow the winds old warships once set upon, never to return. The isle's silence was mournful, and yet laced with peace. It was time he walked on to seek what he'd sailed there to find. The familiar ravine awaited him at the end of the coastline's curve, where great stone, by nature's own forces, had broken apart. Picks and mattocks had worked away and broadened the path while feet had dulled the rugged trail. He climbed it in slow steps, one hand upon the hilt of his blade as the other ran along the obsidian walls. The rolling waves began to fade in his back. Wind-bent pine trees announced the stretch of land ahead. The moss and grass softened and steadied his steps. He remembered this terrain. Halting in between, he knelt to gather a posy of Scorpion Grass and Eyewort that grew in sheltered hollows. Bright fern began to brush his knees. Then he perceived the meadow of wheat, still as golden as it had been when it etched its image into his mind that fateful day. He stopped, and for an instant only stared.

On the raised ground in its midst stood the maple tree, its rufous leaves bowing in the wind. Now, through clear eyes, prophetic. Aside he laid his sword, down at the threshold of the golden blades before he stepped among them. The King walked, feeling the spikes caress his fingertips anew, until he felt to have gone as far as he could. When last he'd stood in this meadow, both his heart and his every step had been weighed by unbearable sorrow and fear. As he now knelt in it, neither was true anymore. Gently, he laid the posy of wildflowers upon the dark earth for the boy who in this place had relinquished his innocence and for all that had forced it from him.

"...I remember you." he whispered to many things.

"I remember you." 

A tear glistened in the King's eye as he fell silent, pained by losses too great to enunciate. His chest rose from a deep, awaited breath as he listened to the wind come alive. He first watched it command the golden wheat of the meadow before its sound found his ears, and when it did, he let it whisper.  The zephyrs no longer wielded mysteries, but in his ears now spoke clearly. His bare hand laid upon the one which bore Vilya, and as the pressure of his fingertips weighed upon the glimmering blue jewel, before his mind's eye the dream he'd dreamt lying against this very earth repeated. Only this time,

he saw what he before had not seen.

He hadn't been alone.

She had been there, beside him in what he had thought to have been his darkest hour. The warmth of her hand and her kiss, a consolation and promise. Her eyes shining with tears and beholding him as though she had found anew who she had known in all lives, lived and passed. As though in the same moment, she had experienced gain and remembered loss.  It was now to him to, by all means ready to him, remember her.  Ereinioncame to stand and his eyes rose to heaven as the cry of a raven rang out. Its sound, so eerily alike to the one the ears of the boy had harkened the eve of his becoming a King that he could have sworn the same bird had awaited him for a century, on this island frozen in time.

I linyë Valar unnendur i enyalië nírëo,

Mal ista — o lyassë Arwafëa né essë nya.

Old gods faded the memory of our soul's claim,

The Scarlet Tanager,

The King awoke. And when his eyes opened in the darkness, he perceived the maple leaf upon the distant table, enshrouded in the mysterious gloom of the moon as though it had called out to him from beyond.  Unmoving, he remained with his head upon the pillow, from which he observed its rich and mystical hue, lurid and unchanged by the silver light that beshone it. Upon touching it as he'd lifted it off the ground, he remembered a strange sensation settling against his fingertips. That night as he held and felt it, he'd believed it to carry remnants of her, the being who had last held in its hands.  Now, the longer he stared at it... the more it seemed as though it had all along contained a magic of its own.

Slowly he rose in his bed, coming to sit as the covers brushed off his skin. Languid off slumber and a dream he could not remember, he sat astraight in the darkness of his chamber, still, before his exhale broke the silence. As he settled back into his body, the palm of his hand found his chest, and he closed his eyes to focus on the beating of his heart.

Long had it been that he'd felt it beat so strongly.

... It had not in a millennium. Not for anything... or anyone.  Long gone had he thought matters of the heart, for the hardships of love and loss had forced him to bury any trace, any hint of it so deep he'd believed it to no longer rest in his chest. Because although he'd been chosen to stand under the light of the sun, what had reigned inside him had been a never-ending age of ice. A most cold and bitter winter.  Now that it had returned alike a strange familiar appearing when he'd long forgotten their name, when all he remembered of it were the sorrow it had caused and the weakness it had born... it frightened him.  Suddenly realizing that its rhythmic beating had entranced him, he opened his eyes. Drew breath. And when his gaze lifted, it found the scarlet leaf once more. The King came to stand and had walked up to the table before he'd realized. Stare did he at its numinous depth of colour.

Red as blood.  When he picked it up, unaware as to the reason, he drew it near as though he held something irreplaceable and fragile. And as he looked it over, her image, unlike any likeness he'd seen before, appeared in his mind's eye.

Her eyes.  He'd felt as though he'd looked into them before, even if he could not place the time... or life.

She'd beckoned him through the wind. Appeared before him... only to vanish as though she'd been a mere figment of his imagination. And by her disappearance, in him, she'd left behind a whirlwind. of emotions, leaving him disrupted and forever changed.  And despite all of it, he'd sensed that the sands of time had ceased slipping the moment their eyes had met. That the skies had somehow merged, that night and day had touched. That the moon and sun had reigned beside one another as they'd stood in the veil of twilight between worlds. The King cast his gaze past the window glass, out into the black night. And as he stared at the distant white moon, the voice of wisdom whispered to him an intimation meant only for his ears to hear.  Slowly, his eyes descended back onto his hands. The leaf within his grasp stared back at him.

Scarlet,

unlike the leaves of the Mallorn Forest in the immediate surroundings of the kingdom. He ruminated, trying to recall the part of the lands in which maple trees grew. But he seemed unable to remember.

"...From where have you come?" he murmured in the darkness. Wherever it was, he thought, it must have been where she had plucked three.

Maybe...

he closed his eyes,

he'd find her there once more.

He decided then within his heart that he had to find them, for it meant finding her. In the deep of night, the King mounted his stallion in the palace's stables and embarked on a nightly journey through the forest, knowing not how far he would go nor whether he would find the lands he sought before the break of a new day.  As he rode out into the night, the breeze carried a faint chill. From the highest cliff of the promontory the city stood upon, he looked down and far, and saw no lights from where he stood. It seemed as if the entire kingdom slept.

All but Elrond.  Hidden behind the crowns of trees this one stood before Celebrimbor's tomb with a burning candle in his grasp, staring up at the wooden carving of his likeness... a solitary tear gleaming in his eye as he whispered a prayer. With burdened heart, the Herald knelt to place it among the others before he rose to stand again.  He then turned to cast a glance past his shoulder to where his horse stood waiting, strapped down with loaded bags of his belongings.  He was to return to Imladris and fulfill the task the King had entrusted to him; This was his last night in Lindon. Still, through his grief, Elrond found himself at odds with what it was that he wanted. His duty called him to image resilience, determination and strength to rebuild, though his soul, wounded by the loss, longed to flee the realm and the sudden crushing weight of duty altogether.  To flee even from light itself and hide away until he felt deserving of its warmth again. Silently, he tightened the cloth wound into the brooch of his cloak, before his hand swept across his cheek to dry the tear that had fallen. Silently his horse walked down the beaten path, and Elrond, atop it, looked ahead into the misted woodland that lay before him. Dense forestation lay at both of his sides, though through the treetops to his left, he could see the King's Halls, the pale stones which made it stand out against the foliage which surrounded it...even in the night. The Herald pulled the reigns to stand still and stared for what felt like an eternity, when there in the distance, his eyes perceived lone in the night the King upon his horse so black that it blended into the dark, journeying towards the main bridge which stood at the city's border. The sight of him forced the elf to recall the strangeness he'd witnessed in his Highness mere hours before. As more questions than he'd held before arose in his mind, he found his mind lacking an answer for what he observed. Where was the King going? The Peredhel felt his mind burdened by worry and his heart burning with concern as he watched. For a moment he contemplated making haste to follow him or send word to have the King followed, but as his eyes him, something told him to do neither.

So, he watched, and said no word.

The King held the stallion back by its reigns as they reached the bridge's threshold. The place his eyes first turned to was the depth that yawned between the cliffs the bridge united. The path he had chosen had led to the side of the city where the ground beneath one's feet hardened from dark earth into sandy stone. Grass and trees one found there still, though the true forest and its looming trees lay on the other side. High above his head young fireflies glowed, sparsely dispersed in the air.

When his eyes lowered again, his gaze wandered over the forest's mouth which waited by the bridge's end, shadowed and strangely quiet. Ereinion breathlessly stared, a tight grip on the reigns as his beast neighed, wanting to ride on.  It was he who could not. Still, suddenly uncertain as the breeze whispered and made ochre leaves tumble across bent grass and dry stone, he waited for a sign. For the sweet sound of her voice to erupt, for the air to twist with magic... the way it had before.

But it did not come to pass. The wind quietened and in turn his mind grew loud. Raising whether the reason why he had struck out was sound, whether his senses hadn't misled him. His gaze became lost in the low air. The past day had led him to question everything. The ring around his finger forced him to mistrust his own wisdom. Why, in spite of it all did his heart persist in feeling so differently? Insist so assuredly that something awaited him on the other side? He knew not the answer. His hand reached into the fold of his tunic, right over his chest, to pull free the leaf. He looked at it, turned it by its stem. Then, his dark eyes returned to the black-barked trees that stood tall, alike a gate to another world... for those who harbored enough faith to believe. The King's eyes closed briefly, before they opened once more, changed, as though a decision had been made behind them. When they did, they turned to his trusted companion.

"... Lenno, mêllon-nîn," he uttered gently, nudging it forward.

"Onward." The stallion's hoofbeats echoed into the depths as they crossed the bridge, bone against pale stone as all else lay silent, until they reached the end... and the onset of the forest. One last time did he turn to look over his shoulder, before he rode on into the dark woods.

They strode, crossing terrain he at first knew like the back of his hand, passing shadows and shapes of trees and foliage as he himself became one in the night. As they travelled, the King's eyes rose to the sky above him and wandered through the treetops to watch the stars. Out of them, he chose to follow the trail of those who shone the brightest. Deeper and deeper he journeyed, approaching the forest's heart as his own's beat, too, deepened within his chest. And as the black sky began to blue, he watched the trees' crowns begin to shift colour. The golden yellow leaves began to recede; bark began to darken...

red hues began to show, above as below. Around he looked. As far as his eye could see, there stood only trees on one kind: maple trees bearing scarlet leaves. Never before had he seen this part of the forest.

"... À daro, Hirion.", he said as something told him to halt. Swiftly he descended from the horse's back. Then his hand laid against the animal's neck to bid it goodbye until he returned, before he walked on alone. The sea of fallen leaves beneath his steps had decomposed into a brown, purplish hue. He felt no other presence but his own, heard nor saw an animal. It seemed desolate.

But he walked on, looking at every tree that drew his sight to it, observing twisted and straight trunks, tangled roots that snaked across the ground. Still, he did not unearth the leaf to try and find the tree from which it had grown, for he felt that he would recognize it when he found himself before it.

And so it came to be, for when he perceived it, tallest and fairest among all others, the King came to pause before it. Majestic it was, its crown stretching almost as far as its roots. In reverence he stared... and wondered whether it was under its shadow that she had awoken. Unearthing the leaf, he held it up to another that clung to a branch that hung his way.

A smile appeared on the Elven King's face.

This was the tree from which she had plucked three,

as he recalled in his memory.

In this he found consolation, for he feared the sun would dawn faster than he could remain there to wait for her. Having mourned that he had not found her, he felt weariness from the hours journeyed suddenly claim him. The weight of slumber first burdened his shoulders before it began to weigh his eye's lids, calling him to rest. Up he walked to the trunk of the old Maple Tree, his steps climbing its old, grand roots, overgrown with moss. He unbound his silver sword from his hip and placed it first, before he himself moved to sit against the tree. Staring through the crown as his eyes began to flutter, he noticed the colour of the heavens. A deep, mystic cerulean.

... A sign of the Gods. Last, as his eyes closed, the King thought to have sensed the tree speak, murmur to him a strange whisper, one not heard but felt by one's flesh. Asleep he fell, and still the woods became again as the sound of his breath quietened.

Then began a dream.

Night turned into day. Rays of the sun befell the forest, glowing past tree crowns to wake sleeping, bowing blossoms. Light broke through the sky to reveal the beauty of nature's hues which had been concealed in the night,

when suddenly, bare, russet feet met bright moss. A warm, sweet gust of wind came rushing, caressing jaden coils which cascaded past bare shoulders.

Robed in a dress fair as snow, Arwafëa came to stand. Stare did the fallen star at the elf who slept at the tree's foot, and so for a long time, before she moved to approach whim. The stone in her silver circlet, as old as the stones that shaped the earth, bore an ancient sparkle. Beshone by the rays of sun, its glow emanated only stronger. One step after another she climbed the old maple's roots until she came to stand beside him. Lowering herself onto her knees, she came to sit beside the elf, staring first at the glowing silver sword that rested against the tree, before her eyes turned onto him.  For a brief eternity she sat silent to adore his peaceful and seemly face.

And think in that quiet moment she did about how long she'd waited to behold it so closely,

how deeply she'd longed to reach out and touch it in the nights she'd admired him from the dark sky, lonely among an unending sea of her kind. Lonely still, because it was he who was her kindred. She extended her arm, reached out to lay the palm of her hand across his heart when she, as her fingertips hovered above his silver and golden chest plate, stopped herself. Her eyes found focus on her fingers, fully formed and solidly bound around her eternal soul. A night ago, they had been a dream, a mere wish.  But it was no longer. Here she was now, in a body

granted in mercy, born in heartbreak and love.

No turning back. He had come a long way to find her, and night had she walked day had she stridden away from all seeing eyes, passed time until the hour permitted their meeting anew. A tear dared to fall when she exhaled and the heart within her drew breath. Silently, right over the beat of his heart, she laid her hand to rest,

to wake him with a mellow caress.

A novel sensation against his chest forced the King to stir in his sleep.  Slowly, as his first waking breath rose his chest, his heavy lids fluttered open. Daylight, gentle and strange at first, greeted his sight.

And then a face.

Her face,  so close to his.

All weariness bled from his gaze.  Under the light of the sun and the gentle shade of the old maple tree, her resplendence was overpowering. Wonder, silent joy and immeasurable emotion found its place. And in wonder he stared as did she, following the path her eyes traced across his features to then trace her own. Moved by the love reflected in her eyes, Ereinion laid his hand over hers, and, fingers folded into the palm of her hand, pressed it against his heart, where overwhelm and serenity suddenly lived beside the other.

"... You found me." she said as her thumb feathered over his chest, a smile gracing her lips. A revering silence overcame him, lasting a beat, before he nodded.

"I have." he answered, sensing a smile growing on his lips as her dark eyes caught a joyous sparkle.

"... I remember not your face," he uttered as though he still searched his mind "Nor do I... recall your name.". Arwafëa's smile faded as she began to feel the weight of destiny in his words. Tremulous, his other hand rose to cup her face in it.

"And still," he breathed, "I recognize you." A solitary tear fell from her eye as the last word parted from his tongue.

"Am I mistaken?" he asked, brushing it away. She shook her head in certainty.

"You are not."

He did. From a distant, secret place that was not this. He looked at her and begged her with his eyes to reveal him the place. She accepted, shifting out of his touch to draw him closer, and finding his face with her hand the way he'd found hers. Her lips parted, and the sun brightened around them as she began to speak:

“I have smiled at you from the heavens,

I have kissed you in the wind.

I have caressed you by the blades of grass that brushed your skin,

And have sung to you through the songbirds when days begin.

Ereinion, Ion lerya, tulë Aran," she said, eyes glistening anew with fresh tears.

"I have loved you since time itself begun.”

Tears burned in the King's eyes as she fell silent, having not heard her words with his ears but with his soul, waking in him the memory of a moment he'd tried so desperately to forget.

“You have never seen me here as I am before you… but you have known my love across lifetimes.”

"I... waited," he said, "to hear your voice ring out, for your song... to call my name, the way it had nights before."

"I know." she smiled, caressing his cheek "But things never happen the same way twice, my love." In her words, wisdom and painful truth resounded. As he looked into her eyes, he felt as though it was only the first of many lessons he was to learn through her.

"I had to let you find your way back to me through the mere faith within your heart." Her eyes rose to the sky, before they fell onto the earth beneath them, heavied by woe.  It was time to go. She looked up and met the heartbreak in his eyes as he realized they were within a dream.

      An ending dream.

"... You will see me again." she promised.

"... When?" he whispered, taking hold of her hands as though they were holy.  Arwafëa took a breath before she moved to kiss him.

          "Rú." 

she breathed into the air between them, before the half of her lips tenderly met his. The other half, for him to keep as a promise. She felt his breath catch within his chest, felt life pulsate through him beneath the skin of his bare neck. To the world of the living he was now to return, for she knew it was there she would meet him again.

Ereinion concentrated on the warmth of her hands and her lips in that moment. And as a tear fell from his closed eye, he hoped he would feel it still after he awoke.

He opened his eyes, carried out of the dreaming realm by the whisper of her voice, speaking words in the old tongue. He awoke in the last moments of twilight. The sky and the woods, still tainted in a mystical blueish hue. In his lap, lay the scarlet leaf. As he lifted it, he found the remnant of another, now dry and grey, and he knew without having to doubt what it meant. But now there was sound. The song of a bird rang out, clear and bright. When he turned his head, he found a bird sitting on the guard of his sword.

A tanager, as scarlet as blood. Looking at him and singing to him as though it had come bearing a message. He listened in silence, locking eyes with the spirit, before it flew away. His eyes followed it, up into the tree's crown as he himself rose to stand.  It disappeared, and silence returned to the forest for a brief moment, when suddenly a red storm came forth, a cloud of tanagers just like it, flying forth intoning a mighty chorus as they circled the eldest tree.

        The King startled at first, but then watched in wonder and glee,          certain that it was her doing.