A/N: To all those who have patiently followed and reviewed this story:
I've made the decision to scrap much of the old story and upload new chapters. When I first started this story, it was on impulse. It had been months since I'd last written a fan fiction, but I was so excited to finally publish a story here that I wrote without planning ahead. Predictably, I hit a roadblock. I've had to make the decision to chop off the last few chapters of Nostos- really, anything beyond the battle at Tolfalas (besides the Epilogue and final chapter that I will be posting), because Lothíriel decided that her story didn't need to be explored any farther (at least, not this time around). I apologize to those of you who hoped for more, but my hope is that this tweaked version will be a smoother, faster, more interesting read.
Thanks to all the reviewers who offered encouragement, suggestions, and advice over the course of this story's publication. I have taken everything you have said to heart.
To new readers: Enjoy the story!
I have chosen to write this story out of love for the works of J.R.R. Tolkien; no copyright infringement is intended.
Nostos
1
-Out of Memory-
73 F.O.
Winter
[excerpted from the collected letters of Eldarion, son of Elessar Telcontar, High King of Gondor and Arnor]
Cousin A.,
Well, she is gone now, and well pleased at having seen her little island. I suppose I must grant to her the pardon of the elderly. She wishes that I give you my thanks for your hospitality. I have sent word on to Cousin E. and the king and queen in Minas Tirith.
Elfwine the Fair, etc., etc.
.
My dear cousin Eldarion,
I hope this missive finds you, your honored parents, and sisters well. It has been far too long since I have made the journey to Minas Tirith; rest assured that I will take it upon myself to gather up these old bones and venture into the depths of your stone mausoleum before the year is out.
I thought I should inform you that Aunt Lothíriel has passed. No doubt messengers from Rohan have already brought the news to your father, but perhaps my account may shed some light on what is no doubt a woefully terse narrative. Cousin Elfwine, for his many excellent qualities, resembles his father in temperament if not in looks, and as you well know, he is not much given to loquacity, especially in regards to matters that he holds near and dear. As I too hold your family near to my heart, and as my aunt and uncle were beloved of your parents, I believe you ought to know the full tale of her death and her errand to Dol Amroth.
I have enclosed the note Elfwine sent to me upon her passing, and with it I shall tell you the tale that has long since hidden behind the great annals of the War of the Ring. We are surrounded by legends, you and I and Elfwine, for did not our fathers snatch victory from the very jaws of Mordor? Your ancestors, and in part mine, are half-sprung from legends tbat shadow all others who wander near. Some stories that are so small as to slip from memory, yet great enough to tip the scales of history.
Some weeks ago, Aunt Lothíriel came to Dol Amroth, accompanied only by a handful of guards and Elfwine. She had grown old, even with the blood of the Elves running in her veins; she told me that there was a growth in her side that none could remove. I remember it quite well, our conversation: the two of sat together by the fire, for she was very cold, in my study, and she said that she knew well that death was coming closer and closer-
.
"I have but one request of you, Alphros."
The Prince of Dol Amroth looked into his goblet of wine. It could not warm the chill that had settled through his bones at the sight of the pain deep in his aunt's eyes and the age that had settled so clearly across the finely-cut features of that familiar face. "I shall grant whatever you ask of me, if it be in my power."
"I wish to go to Tolfalas."
"Tolfalas!" he exclaimed. "You cannot be serious. The old island off the coast of Belfalas? It has been deserted for-,"
"Years," said Lothíriel calmly. "Decades. I know."
"It is destroyed. Haunted, they say. There is nothing to see but the ruins of the old fortress."
"I know that as well," said the Dowager Queen. "I was there when it crumbled."
A myriad of questions begged to be asked, and answered, but Alphros, with the patience that came with age, reigned them back. "Aunt Lothíriel, you have the blood of the Elves, and of Númenor, in your veins. You cannot be dying- not yet."
She looked at him very gently, and he felt his heart tighten. His aunt was the last remnant of his childhood, for his parents and his uncles and grandparents had long since passed on. His earliest memories were of his father and his father's brothers and sister; he could remember very clearly his aunt Lothíriel taking his hand as they walked along the beach, remembered the sea-salted air of the harbors. He remembered strange new ships and flags and strange foreign languages, remembered clasping her hand all the more tightly, her murmured assurances. His mother had been a lady of Lebennin, his father busy with administrational matters, but his aunt had, once upon a time, doted on him and spoiled him. He remembered a wooden carved horse she had given to him when he turned five, and when she left for Rohan, she had for years written to him and sent him little tokens from Edoras.
"Oh, my dear child," she said gently, and took his hand in her own. If he looked away, he could pretend that they were both young once more. In truth, he too was growing old. "You need not mourn."
"You are the last of my father's family left," he said dully.
In the face of the stark truth, she was silent.
"Elfwine will miss you as well."
"He was crowned ten years ago and needs me no longer."
He will always need you, he thought, and bowed his head.
"I must see Tolfalas," she said, and he thought of the sea, inexorable, unending. "Alphros-,"
He looked up.
"Please," said his aunt, quietly. "I am so tired. I have just one last goodbye to say before I may find my home."
He scrubbed at his face, wished that he could anchor her to the earth, as though he could cling fast to this last remnant of his family. "Very well," he said. "We will take you there tomorrow. But first, tell me why you must go there."
"It has been so long," she said. Then, "Oft have I wondered where the road to Tolfalas began. There is, you understand, no clear line of demarcation, where a story begins."
.
It began when she was nine and he seventeen, at first the occasional missive- hers carefully printed childish scrawls, his neater but with the careless hand of a near-man unused to confining thoughts to paper and ink- but as the years went by, they wrote to each other more frequently and Lothíriel found herself confiding the most trivial of details and the deepest of secrets to him, mostly because he had faded to only a mere shadow of a memory. It was much easier to confide in someone who had become nothing more than a shade.
At first it was something secret- the thrill of the forbidden, the locked box she kept hidden under her bed. It was a pretty carved thing that her father had given to her, a sort of memory box, and there she kept the letters he had given her. On lazy afternoons she would unlock it- she kept the keys around her neck, as though they opened a treasure chest- and leaf through the letters, inhaling the perfume of vellum and ink.
At first the letters had been trivial. She had told him of the sea, of the friends she made with the village children, her dolls, her new dresses, her brothers' antics. Later she would wonder if she had tried his patience.
But childhood was a luxury of happier times, and rosiness and caramel-sweet afternoons began to fade as she grew older, and the shadow of Mordor began to extend fingerlings into their everyday lives. Her brothers grew darker, her father older, and Lothíriel wandered like a lost child through those years. Still, her treasure box remained, and the letters continued to arrive.
.
"I do not understand," he said. His stomach was knotted with the memories of the days before Mordor had fallen to the might of the West and the courage of the Ringbearer.
"Oft have I wondered," said the Queen, "where the road to Tolfalas began."
"Aunt," he said, "you have already said so."
Her eyes were clouded.
"Truly?"
He nodded.
"My apologies. You must forgive an old woman and her memory... In October," she said, "the Steward's son arrived in Rivendell, I am told, from where they would later to set out to begin their quest." She gestured impatiently. "In November of that year, your grandfather sent Amrothos and I from Dol Amroth. I was too young, and a girl besides, to remain within the reach of the Corsairs, and the healers told us that Amrothos would never ride in battle again. An old injury. We rode to Minas Tirith-,"