Title: Nainie

Rating: PG. It's harmless.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended and no money made.
Summary: The Fourth Age, Year 120. Legolas' POV. A lament for the passing of hope.
Warnings: None
Beta: The lovely Milady Hawke
Author's Notes: Nainie is Quenya for "Lament"

Grey has settled over the land. The roads that lead away from the city are stark against the muddied earth, a maze of white lines stretching across an empty plain. Osgiliath appears silent. The cold wind that blows through the stone eaves, singing its melancholy dirge for all to hear, barely moves the heavy banners set atop the spires of the fortress. One would think it still unoccupied as it was before the War of the Ring, were it not for those embroidered tributes. The river rushes away beneath my gaze toward the Sea, a glimmer of silver glass in the distance, calling, ever calling. Black ships, long since sailed away, first kindled my lust for something other than the boughs under which I was born. My heart yearns to make the crossing, to find sweet forgetfulness upon white shores, but I cannot leave the high walls of this city yet. Not yet.

The first drops of a frigid rain ring out as they strike the turrets, the music of the Ainur echoing through the marble halls within. It pools atop the earth as it grows heavier, another day in a month of days as such. The land itself has begun to weep, for the loss of summer, and for the loss of her great King. Smoke twists and writhes in a death-dance as the fires of the torches are quenched, leaving the city in darkness. I feel neither the cold nor the wet. I fear no sickness but that that has begun to implant itself in my heart. It has worked itself into coils of knotted metal, sharp ends left to impale me, and like a mallet, seeking to break me.

Bright ceremony has given way to a time of mourning, and a silence has fallen over the city unlike any I have ever known. Each day, at the hour of sundown, a bell tolls, shattering the stillness, harsh reminder of what took place not four days past. Each dawn is more cruel than the last. Death is no longer strange to me. It is a daily bread that I must break if I choose to remain here in Middle Earth. I never understood the willingness of men to interrupt an already short lifetime until now. Were I mortal, I would go and cast myself down on the pillow of stone upon which his head now rests. All things die, save the elves who pass across the Great Sea. I would stay, could I but do the same. A ship comes for me, though, and with me I will take Gimli, son of Gloin, a faithful friend through the many ages since our meeting.

Two thousand years I have walked this earth, but never did I live so much as the day I first faced Aragorn Elessar. Still foolhardy, I could not understand the things I saw in him, nor the longing I felt when he rode away from my father's home in the forest and disappeared beyond the shadowed eaves, not to return for a decade.

Many days did I walk with him in the protection of Mirkwood when he returned, and gladly did I go with him when he departed in search of the creature Gollum. We passed into the realm of Elrond as different beings. As the sun sank below the horizon on the first night of Yavie, painting the leaves in vermilion, umber, and earthen brown, he turned to me and pressed his lips against mine, swearing to love me until the stars faded from the sky. I have since wished to pluck each one from its abode and place them in my pocket, if only to save us the suffering we faced. Neither Elrond nor my father ever spoke of what was between us, but it is certain that they knew.

At twilight, on the first day of Viresse, he stumbled upon the Evenstar braiding white flowers into her hair. There is something to be said of the magic of elven women, for he was smitten at last by her charms. For the space of half a year, it seemed I was forgotten. Then the veil dropped from his eyes and they turned upon me once more. Against my will, I had waited patiently. An elf's heart is unlike any other. We are faithful to one throughout our lifetime, doomed if that one being is mortal and not of elf kind.

He loved Arwen, I am sure. The fires of his soul were sparked beneath my touch, however. I alone could make him burn brighter than Anor. That flame has since burned out, like the colors of the leaves in the dying fires of autumn, turned to grey ash upon a bed of rock. And still, I am as outwardly unchanged as the Sea itself. I am forever, and I will live to forget this horrible ache that would consume me. I will forget the rough calluses on his palms as they drew over my skin. I will forget the free scent of him. I will forget the wild thing I tamed with a single kiss. The world will fade and I will remember that I loved once, greater than even Tinuviel and Beren, but that my love was all the more doomed.

Ai, that I am so cruelly fated as to forget that which I loved so desperately. Twice have I lost him, and twice have I felt that the world would slide away beneath my feet, leaving me to fall through space and time for eternity, and yet I would do the same again if only to hear his voice, feel his breath against my skin, warm and soft and real.

I weep, for a loss of hope.