It Filled the Sky
It had been so long since they met, so long since they had spoken and laughed and loved and lost. So long since she had felt pain so deep. Tauriel had left the battlefield and gone wandering, a vagabond roaming Middle-earth. She was aimless and alone, and after years and years—she did not know how long it had been, in truth—she had begun to forget.
Tauriel had left the world of pain and grief behind her and become someone entirely new, a being made of starlight and dreams. She was a ghost, a shadow; she haunted battlefields and villages, always just out of sight, though not out of mind. She was kind to those she visited, though they felt unsettled by her presence. She wandered throughout the world of men, leaving gifts and advice for those in need, though she never divulged her secrets.
She slept beneath the stars and thought nothing of the past. There was nothing left there for her. Not if she wished to continue.
She came to a village one night, in the south of Rohan. The sky was dimming as the sun set and she saw the moon rising.
"I heard rumor there was to be something spectacular in the sky tonight," a villager commented, close enough for Tauriel, who hid in plain sight, her startling hair covered by a hood, to hear. "The king's astronomers predict a fire moon!"
I saw a fire moon once.
The words came to Tauriel's mind unbidden. She flinched as Kíli's voice echoed in her mind unbidden. She had not thought of him in years. She did not want to think of him. Not anymore. After the battle his loss had nearly destroyed him. Now she thrust him from her mind again.
She left the village. She would stargaze tonight, fill herself with the wonder of the night and the brightness of Varda's creations.
She had forgotten about the moon.
She settled down as the sun vanished and the night became blue and black, sprinkled with stars. The moon rose and she smiled: so the villager had been wrong. There was nothing spectacular in the sky; or else, it was all spectacular.
She felt the wind blow gently through her hair. She closed her eyes, becoming one with the spirit of Arda, her home. It was long after most of her kin had departed, leaving for Valinor and the wonders of the Valar. Tauriel had not left. Middle-earth was her home, and the home of her ancestors. She would not disgrace their memory by going to where they had refused to dwell. Nor would she leave this beautiful land of stars and and sunlight and trees, however marred and imperfect it was. It was where her spirit dwelled, where her heart dwelled, ever since...
She opened her eyes, just to reassure herself that it was a normal night, like always, with the moon silvery white and stunning as usual. It was full tonight, and huge—
It was red. While she had thought with her eyes closed of the wonder of Middle-earth, the moon had turned red. A fire moon.
It rose over the pass near Dunland, huge!
She sat straight up. A tear traced its way down her face. The fire moon was beautiful, just as he had described it.
Red and gold it was; it filled the sky...
He had smiled at her, his eyes alight. So enraptured in his story, hoping to somehow impress her with the wonder of the sky.
We were escorts for some merchants from Ered Luin, trading in silverwork for furs. We took the Greenway south, keeping the mountain to our left...
His voice was so sharp in her mind, but warm as it had been in the memory. She looked up at the moon with a wobbling smile.
And then out of nowhere, this huge fire moon, lighting our path!
Red and gold it was, she saw, and she remembered everything. All the pain, the grief, and the heartache returned, repressed for so long—but the joy and the light, too. She remembered speaking to him of the skies and the stars and white light of forever...
You should have seen it.
She saw it now. But this wasn't what Tauriel wanted. Not this; not alone. She wished to see this moon with him, not alone in the middle of Rohan. She reached out her hand in the grass, her heart aching, but his hand was not there to take it. She'd pictured in her mind, when he was still alive and his heart still beat with love for her: the two of them, holding hands, gazing up at the shining stars and the glowing red and gold moon, the light filling their souls. It would be unending, a bliss of happiness and of love. But that future, that dream...it had died with him. It was buried with him beneath a mountain she could never return to.
"I saw a fire moon once," she whispered.