Memories
"It will not last," she said softly.
Legolas did not move from his contemplation of the brilliant stars above them, gleaming in the twilight sky.
"There will come a day when I can bear no longer to be at the side of an immortal, unchanging elf," she said. "A day when I will leave you, and go to die, and you will continue on as always you have."
Legolas was yet held captive in his fascination with the thousand sparkling eyes of the night.
"Have you not always known the truth?" she said.
He turned at last to look at the mortal woman who lay beside him on the whispering grass, and his heart ached in apprehension of the day when he would lose her. "I have always known I could not cage you," he said. "You are a thing wilder and freer than a butterfly's wings, meant to fly."
"And no less ephemeral," she whispered. "Not to you."
"Darkness does not recede for-ever," he said. "Given to us are but the briefest glimpses of the light."
"Perhaps the entirety of the light would blind us," she said. It was a familiar argument, and she took refuge in it.
He, too, drew comfort from their long debate. "Perhaps there is no light but a flash."
"Do you truly believe that?" she said.
Legolas looked at her, startled. Never before had they passed beyond the theoretical. "How can I believe otherwise?" he said. "No happiness has ever lasted. To my blood, nothing is eternal."
"Oh, Legolas," she whispered sadly. "Remember me forever."
"Until the end of time," he promised, and he traced the silver glimmer of a tear down her pale cheek.
"Forever," she said. "As I am now, as you love me."
"I will always love you," he said.
"There will come a day when you will hate me for leaving you," she said.
He glanced once more at the soft blackness surrounding them. "There will come a day," he said at last. "But it is not this day."