Her hands ache; they shake and hurt, appendages that no longer seem her own, but part of the aching wound that is her body. The two elements that had never betrayed her - not in the forge, not in battle, not in the late hours of the night when she had climbed the trees to behold the brilliance of the stars - now tremble with every simple movement, unreliable and foreign. 

Her hands ache; it is not as if they had never ached before. She had been hurt often, in war or skirmished, with her craft or even on the road. But always have they healed fast, never prolonging the torture of not being able to use them properly for so long. Or perhaps it is not so long - it’s been only a matter of weeks she knows, and she had been on the threshold to Mandos’ Halls, she cannot expect miracles so soon - but her soul hurts as does her body and the small glimmer of hope that had sustained her for so long seemed to have died out as soon as the fires had started burning in her woods and the battles had begun. Ironic, that what she had wished with all her heart for centuries without end - seeing her homeland restored - comes now when she can no longer find any joy in the image. 

She is restless she knows; restless and wounded in both body and spirit, with a darkness preying on her mind that seems unwilling to lift and a feeling of bereavement she had not felt ever since the waves had risen to swallow Beleriand. But she can find no drive in herself to sooth that restlessness, no desire to try and quench it even on the road. She knows there is no healing to be found, not even in the lands of the Shire. 

ii. She offers to take him to the Shire without meaning to, a suggestion made more in jest and accepted, driving panic in her soul. For she loves the Shire more than she has come to love anything in Middle Earth save for Nan Elmoth, but she knows so many of her kin see her love as something to be scorned. But he does not, all wide eyes and child-like wonder, allowing himself to be ensnared by the simple pleasures of hobbit lifestyles. Even when he gets felled by the fabled hobbit moonshine she cannot find it in herself to laugh at his expense for here is another of her race that understands the beauty of the Sun kissed lands of the Shire, and oh how rare they are. She vows to share more of this world with him.

iii. Duties and the road separate them now and then, but he returns to Eryn Galen often and she shares her patrol with him, her archers already accustomed to the sight of their mentor sharing the paths of the forest with someone other than themselves. She shows him the small parts of the forest that yet remain untainted, the bubbling brook near the northern border and the meadow untouched by darkness in the western side. She tells him of her family, brings to life stories buried for millenniums, secrets she had thought only hers to keep. She tells him what she is called in other lands, how Cypress came to be her name in the Shire and how the dwarves hold a name of their own for the one they had once gifted the title mahalkûna to.  She listens, enraptured, as he speaks of his family and homeland. 

iv. She remembers his awe in the lands of the hobbits and cannot help but compare it to her own as he leads her to the Orocarni, to the lands where the quendi had once woken. She is enraptured, ensnared by the sights and can understand why her kin made their choice and is fiercely proud of it, now even more than before. When she meets his family, she is overwhelmed in the beginning, shy as she had not been since youth, clumsy in responses and unused to family dynamics, her who had been alone for so long. But her reticence melts as she spends more time in their company and with a pang she wonders if her own family had ever been thus. Time has eroded their memory and she cannot remember. 

v. She is not one to remain idle for long, never had been ever since her homeland had been swallowed by waters. She itches to leave and he wishes to stay, so the Road separates them once more. “Return” he asks her and she vows to do so, lips forming his true name as she bids him goodbye. 

vi. It takes being away from him for her to understand the truth, to admit it to herself and when she does she staggers, body flinching and hands curling in fists at her side. ‘You love him’ her heart whispers in the dead of the night and her soul shrivels in fear for when had she ever been allowed to keep that which she had loved? All had died, ashes and dust lost in the passage of time, memories buried by the grains of sand falling in the hourglass. ‘I love him,’ she whispers, a confession to the glittering stars above her head, determination burning in her gaze. She will not allow fear to rule her.

vii. She holes herself in the forge when she returns. She opens a chest long left untouched, kindles the fires of her forge and makes them burn bright. She places the ore of metal in the heat, forces memories back to the surface and motions long left unused back to life. She crafts galvorn once more, crafts a dagger from the remnants of memories and remnants of metal, from ores still surviving from lands long buried under water. She gifts him the dagger and is unable to explain more, to put everything in words. But she knows words are not needed, for he will understand. She poured her words in the work, in the runes, in the metal that no other but her had ever wielded since the Dawn of the Second Age, in secrets that were hers alone but she chose to share with him.