In San Francisco there is a man who sits on the docks and looks west at night. He sits so perfectly still it would be easy not to see him.
All things have a yearning inside them. Sometimes buried deep, sometimes burning at the surface, but it's still there. Everything wants to go home. To return to the beginning of all things. The man on the dock hasn't been home for thousands of years.
The sun is sinking slowly into the seat when you find him, as you always do, eventually. And you stand for a few moments watching. "You always come back to the sea, don't you? On anybody else I'd call it morbid."
He turns around and looks at you. He looks more tired than ever, his face unchanged but his hair longer, his eyes darker. All his shadows accumulating at his back. You smile, an expression he doesn't return.
"Been a while."
"Daeron." He unfolds his legs and stands up, and you're reminded all over again how tall he is. "How are you?"
"Same as ever. Nothing ever changes with us, does it?" His voice is soft. For someone like you who's heard him sing, it's strange. Even soft, every word he says crawls down your spine with latent power. If he wanted, Maglor could bend the world to his desire, the way you sometimes think he's bent you.
But he doesn't want that, and hasn't for a long time.
The sun is almost gone. "Why here?" You ask. One shoulder lifts, and falls, as he turns back to the horizon. You wonder what he sees in the stars, what he sees in the ocean.
"I'm waiting for a ship," he says, and you half smile.
"Thinking of Asia again?"
"Not that kind of ship, Daeron." Even after all this time, he still pronounces your name strangely, with a slight Noldorin lilt. No one but you would hear the difference. No one but you and he speak both languages.
You know what kind of ship he means, and it disturbs you. All those ships are long gone, and there are none left. They've been gone for a long time.
"I don't think they come to port here," you say, and Maglor's head bows.
"The port doesn't matter," he says, still in that quiet, soft voice that sends shivers down your spine. "It's me they won't come to. No ship to bear me home." He half turns, the smile lopsided and unpleasant on his slightly too thin face. You glance away. There's a bruise beside his eye and it hurts to look.
"Water makes you maudlin," you say. "I think we should stay in the landlocked countries."
"Don't you ever think about it, Daeron?" he says, and his hands slide into the pockets of his black slacks, because even when you're a broken Prince of the Noldor you still wear the best of clothes, apparently. "Everyone wants to go home. These people have their Eden."
You shrug. "I never knew Paradise. What is loss if you don't even remember it?" It's not quite a lie. It's not Valinor you dream of, nights you wake up shaking with loss and longing with the smell of sweetness in the air. It's something closer behind you and just as far away.
"I do," Maglor murmurs. "I remember the days before the sun and the moon, when it was only the stars in the sky. I remember when the Valar walked among us, and my brothers-" His voice hitches. Maglor never speaks of his brothers. It's probably wise, given your feelings on them.
For some reason, Maglor is an exception. You don't quite understand that.
"You could have gone when the rest were leaving," you say, and Maglor laughs, a brittle and bitter sound. It's a sad and sour sound.
"What ship would have taken me? What ship would bear a Kinslayer to the Undying Lands? There is no going back, Daeron. A child can't return to its mother's womb. I can't return to Valinor. It's dead to me, as I am dead to them." His eyes half close. "My mother will have done her grieving. There's a book…you can't go home again. No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
"Come," you say. "Get drunk with me. You need it. There's a place…"
He doesn't smile at you, just looks for a few moments. You can't face those eyes and sit down on the dock with your feet hanging over the edge. The air smells like city but the lights are mostly at your backs. The stars are largely invisible.
"I'm sorry," you say, finally. Maglor laughs.
"Was it you who made me swear? Was it you who burned and slaughtered at Alqualonde? Was it you who killed your way to your own hell? No, Daeron, you have nothing to apologize for."
Silence. You long for the days when things were easy, when you could stand up and walk away and not worry, because in another hundred years you would see him again and if you didn't it wouldn't matter. It's been too long, and you know too much. Leaving him alone like this isn't an option.
"There's a girl," you say, "On 12th. She serves at the bar. She wants me to go home with her. She has dark hair and pretty eyes, and smells like lavender."
Maglor half turns his head to look at you from where he is still standing. "You amaze me," he says.
"What?"
"How easily you adopt human trappings and cast them off," he says. "Moving from age to age, decade to decade. You're so young. This world is still new to you."
The words almost sting. "I'm not human," you protest, almost offended, and his mouth twists slightly.
"No," he says, "But you're not me, either – the last remnant of a dying world. I keep moving because I can't let myself stop. I'm tired." You don't really know what to say. You're not sure there is anything to say. There probably isn't.
"I'm sorry," he says, finally. "I am not the best of company tonight."
"You're never the best of company," you say, jokingly. Maglor glances at you, and in the growing dark you can't quite see his eyes.
"What about the girl?" he says. "Will you go to her?"
"No," you say, because you won't. "She deserves better than that." You both stay silent, and you look out at the water again, rolling in slow waves, undulating like something will rise from the deep. You think of Ulmo, sleeping beneath the waves, perhaps. Of Yavanna in the sky. You think of Luthien dancing under the trees while you play and play until you can't hardly breathe just so she won't stop dancing.
You've never been anything more than a fool.
"God," you say finally, because you've learned to invoke that name, "Do you ever think about just…" You trail off and don't finish the thought. Maglor doesn't answer, but he comes and sits beside you. His feet dangle down and almost touch the water. A plane flies by overhead.
"Maybe it'll come," you say, finally, and clarify, "Your ship."
Maglor doesn't smile. He's looking down, down, down into the water. "Maybe it will." You wonder if he dreams of drowning.
"Walk with me," you say, and it might be a little bit of a plea. So you care, what of it? He's the last of his race the same way you're the last of yours, and the enmity is too old to matter. Even your love is fading. You can't remember the way Lúthien looked when she smiled. You don't even really hate Beren anymore.
You think when those things are gone, you might cease to exist.
"No," says Maglor. "I think I'll wait here. Just a bit longer."
"I'm at the Edwardian Hotel. Come find me."
He nods, but you already know it'll be another hundred years, or maybe five-hundred, or maybe a thousand. You put your hands in your battered coat's pockets and turn away, toward bright-lights big-city.
You glance back once as you reach the street. He's still standing, barely visible with the dark all around and the night sky just a slightly lighter shade of blue. He's looking west. Waiting for his ship.
You'll return the next day, but he'll be gone, and you'll look down at the dark water and out at the fading horizon and hope his ship finds him someday.
Yours never will.