I have always thought, even at the age of ten when I first read the trilogy, that it is inexpressibly sad that the elves had to leave Middle Earth after the rings were destroyed.
It was recently that I began to wonder, not how much the world lost when they left nor the pain of those who had fought so hard for the world having to leave it once their task was over, but how terrible it would be for an elf whose life had hardly begun to know that the age of the power of the Elves was over and she will never know what it was like.
Notes:
Tolkien once said that Elves grow slower in body but quicker in mind than humans. They stop growing at age fifty and become fully mature at one hundred years.
I see no evidence at all in the books that Círdan left with the ringbearers. Rather, I am sure the canon says he stayed in Middle Earth until the last elf sailed over the sea.
Unless I specifically say otherwise, you can assume that Elrond is looking at the sky and Elanna is looking at the ground or the trees around them.
"El" can mean either "elf" or "star." In this case, it means "star." Thus, "Elanna" means "star-gift," a fitting name for a foundling who appeared without explanation, as if dropped from the sky.
Gift of Stars
She wasn't the first to know, but she was the first to scream. She ran out of the infirmary, where she was allowed to deal with medicines and watch healing, and down the hall, shouting.
"It's over! They won! We won! We won! It's over!"
She screamed in the overwhelming thrill of the end. It was over. They had won. She screamed, unafraid that anyone would scold her – she was quiet enough most of the time that shouting from her provoked joy rather than anger.
It was over. Sauron was gone forever. They had won.
And yet, Elanna tired quickly of the celebrations that night. She knew the Hall of Fire would be full of song until dawn and the valley would not be quiet for days. But she felt no desire to sing anymore, and it was barely past midnight.
She slipped out of the hall, avoiding Linlóth, the widowed elf that had taken care of her as a child. Old stories didn't feel right tonight, not even written ones. She usually liked written words better than spoken ones, as more thought was given to them and, if she got the point more quickly than the author expected, she could skip ahead. She spent plenty of time in the library buried in books, which the older elves found adorable. But she avoided the library tonight.
She ended up lying in the grass behind the back porch, looking at the stars and wondering.
It is over. But did we, the elves, did we win?
Elanna had only been five or seven when some of Imladris's scouts had found her, curled up under a tree, asleep and alone. A tiny elfling – though perhaps not so young as she had appeared, considering she had never grown tall. No elf would have left something so precious get lost. It could only be believed that her parents were dead.
They could only guess that Elanna's foreknowledge – if it could be called that, as it rarely showed events more than a minute beforehand and preferred to offer her information about what was happening out of sight or hearing – was the reason she had survived. They thought she had sensed orcs before the adults had and run in the other direction, too young to realize that others didn't always have the knowledge she did. So she had survived and they had died fighting.
It didn't seem right that it had happened like that.
Star-gift they called her, as if she had fallen from the heavens, as if she had never had parents at all. She had become all of Imladris' child. And, though she was almost two hundred now, she had never ceased to be that. At least she worked in the infirmaries now, a real job, though she was not a healer yet. At least they respected the fact that her strange and flighty foreknowledge was not an easy gift to carry, especially in war.
The last year had been difficult for Elanna. She would be in the middle of a meal, or ordinary work, or even sleep, and suddenly she would know – know without a hint of doubt – that something good or terrible had happened – but not what. Or she would glimpse a moment of a battle or see someone's face for a quarter of a second. Or she would be allowed to hear a word or two without even knowing who had said them.
She had once had nightmares of the war never ending. Of attacks on Imladris – of siege. There had been few skirmishes in all, and all on the borders of their land, but still she had always feared.
All she had looked to was the end.
And now it was over.
And they had won and lost.
"Well," said Elrond.
Elanna jumped up from the grass, and her heart jumped even higher than her body. Curse her unreliable foreknowledge. She hadn't known anyone was there. She hadn't even heard.
"It is a fine night for stargazing, and I grant that it is the first clear one in some time, but I thought it a better one for song and company."
Elanna pressed her lips together to stop them from letting out her irritation at being disturbed. At the same time, she felt heat rising in her face, all the way to the points of her ears, as it often liked to when the lords paid much attention to her.
Elrond, knowing exactly what state her face was in, looked to the stars, himself.
"I thought that, as I told Linlóth that you were all right, I should make sure I did not lie to her."
He was concerned. He always cared about her. That didn't make her feel any less embarrassed.
Elrond sat on the grass next to Elanna's feet. "I did not mean to make you stand," he said.
Elanna sat, feeling awkward. It wasn't as if anyone in Imladris didn't know Lord Elrond well, and much better if they liked to work in the infirmary as Elanna did, but she didn't know what to say to him anymore. The fact that he had left the hall because of her didn't help at all.
It was soon clear that he wasn't going to start the conversation. Elbereth…
"I am all right," Elanna said finally.
"But not happy," the lord answered.
"Are you?"
"I never expected to be."
Elanna had no answer for that.
"You did," the lord commented.
"I did not think," she said. She hadn't considered what would happen after the war was over.
"At least we can rejoice tonight."
"I only now realize what it means, and right now it is – is –" Elanna had always thought that she had missed the Elven gift of fair speech. Perhaps foreknowledge had taken its place.
"Yes," said Elrond as Elanna finished, "difficult."
They were silent for many minutes.
"And?" asked Elrond.
"Why?"
Elrond hesitated. She must have said too little this time. She was used to him, at least, getting the point easily. He turned to her for the first time, studying her face with slight puzzlement before understanding lit on his. "Ah, well, I've had a thousand years, or even ages, with many of those inside but less than two hundred with you."
Elanna nodded and then, to her great surprise, collapsed into tears.
"Ah," said Elrond softly as if he, once again, understood something. He touched her arm lightly as comfort.
"We lost," Elanna whispered.
"Did we? Perhaps we do not belong here. Perhaps all elves have gone to Valinor and none left, even if in a better manner than we did."
"But," Elanna managed.
He gave her a handkerchief.
"I do not want to," she whispered through it.
"What do you want?"
"To live."
"And?"
"And," she echoed.
Sobs shook her again. It took her some time to find words.
"I want to live a long time," she said. "If you go now, at least you had time here. Time to live. Here."
"Ah." She felt him nod, though her eyes were covered. "I had thought of this long ago. We must leave, all of us sometime. As hard as it is to stay, the grief is great. For us. But for the young ones? You shall not be the youngest, soon."
"Next year," Elanna whispered. Now that the war was over, every young elf-couple would want children.
"Yes. But those will live without danger and with no question of when the end for us will come, for it has come already."
"I want time to love, and marry, and have children, too," Elanna added.
"Ah, you have been a child too long."
Elanna shut her eyes and nodded.
"I could not bear to tell everyone that they must treat you as an adult. That there are no children left in Imladris. Perhaps I should have. I even considered… if you had shown any wish to travel, even to fight, I might have sent you out. But that was not your path."
It was not.
"I cannot change that now."
Elanna nodded.
"Go on," he prompted.
"I want to stay here," she whispered. "It may be centuries before I have to go west, but Imladris…"
"Shall be here for as many centuries as you wish."
"Without you, without – can you feel the loss yet? How soon until the power is gone?"
"Who told –" The lord corrected himself. "How long have you known?"
"Always."
Elrond's hand opened, palm down, on the grass, and Elanna lifted her head. Vilya shone in the starlight, the stone that she had never seen with her eyes, the greatest power in Imladris.
"Why?" she whispered, and he knew this time.
"Because even Elves can be fools. And, as we are more powerful than mortals, our mistakes are far greater."
"They ended the world for us."
"Not all Elves can see as clearly as you. It is ended, yes, but there is some time left. You may have a thousand years or more, if you wish. Círdan will leave with the last ship, not before."
"Six thousand."
"Yes, I did have that. But there is life, and love, and children in Valinor." He closed his hand, and the blue light vanished.
"There is not Imladris."
"Do you have no sea-longing? No desire to see Valinor?"
Elanna shook her head. "Only curiosity, to see the place of the songs, and the knowledge that I should feel it."
"Perhaps you are not the Noldor you look," he said, smiling, touching her black hair.
It was a joke in Imladris, that the foundling was noble. They knew she could not have very much Noldor blood, if any, or her parents' identities would not be unknown. Besides, not all black-haired elves were Noldor – Elrond's hair was not from that side of his ancestry.
"This is my home," Elanna replied, lowering her head. "The house, the rivers, the valley. But not without you."
"Why not?"
"Without your power –"
"What about another's?"
"Glorfindel will leave."
"Yes, he has taken more time than what might be considered just."
Elanna managed to smile.
"It was a gift, if only to fight the war. But he will not leave immediately, and my sons also do not wish to leave yet."
"They do not stay in the valley."
"They will return, and soon there will be no more orcs to kill. Many others will stay."
"It cannot be the same."
"There will be no more fear. No talk of war. You may not have been permitted to hear it, but I am certain you knew of much of it."
Yes. It had practically tortured her since the day the ringbearer crossed the Ford – no, before, when Glorfindel and the other lords left to search for him. She also knew that many of the people who had come to her to offer distraction during the most difficult times had been sent by Elrond.
"You have never felt change, except perhaps in the past few years. It will be difficult at first."
Elanna nodded.
"And if we had lost?"
Elanna turned away. "I cannot imagine," she whispered to the night.
"I can."
A chill passed over them for a moment, but the stars were still bright above them.
"We won. And so the mortals may live in peace."
"Peace?"
"There will be some trouble, I know, but with the darkness gone –"
"And the light."
"Not all. There shall be kings again."
"For some time, for an age, perhaps. But will there not be a fifth age? Or a sixth? An age when Arwen's blood will fade, as well as Elros'?"
"We will not know," Elrond murmured, his words filled with pain at the reminder that the sacrifice of his daughter would not last.
"I am sorry," Elanna replied.
"We will never know. And it is better."
"Why is the world this way?"
"What if it were not? You do not wish to go to Valinor. Imagine the world as it might have been."
"We would never know what we missed."
"You wish for life, you say. You wish for struggle, in truth."
The young elf nodded slowly. "What is life without…"
She had lost her words entirely.
"I have never had the chance to find out."
"I am sorry."
"I shall grow weaker without the ring, and tired. But, more, I will have no purpose in staying here. And without purpose, why should I not return to my wife, to the others who left, to our final home, to a place beyond pain?"
"Valinor is not our home. This was our home."
"But we lost it. It is for the mortals now."
"I wish I had done something," Elanna said, looking up to the stars.
"Ah."
"It is over now."
"Not entirely."
"And I am a healer."
"Yes. And there is much to heal."
"Yes."
"Why mourn now? Why not live while you can?"
"Yes," Elanna whispered.
They watched the stars for several minutes of silence.
"Will you return to the Hall?"
Elanna shook her head.
"Tonight is the greatest joy for us –"
"Another night I will."
Lord Elrond stood. "Another night."
Elanna stayed and watched the stars until the last vanished.
The conversation, I must point out, is not written in the way it would have been spoken (Elvish-English aside). Many extra words were necessary to convey the message to a reader.
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