Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.
They departed by the East-gate, but following the river rather than the road. Ninluthur burned yellow with lamp- and firelight behind them, the western sky a fading purple as the vale shadowed and darkened into dusk.
They rode up into the hills, the mountains looming over them, and the trees grew larger and thicker. Kho found his footing with little trouble, and he soon saw what he looked for half a mile higher, on the knees of Mindolluin.
"See," he told her, "it is the White Barrow, where uilos grows, in the shadow of the mother-mountain of Minas Tirith."
They dismounted, and went then on foot, he leading Kho. Though it was dark, the top of the hill seemed to glow with light, and when they reached the summit and walked along the face of the Barrow, it seemed Kho's hooves sank to the fetlocks in white flowers. A pale glimmer hung over the ground, and though all else was night-hid and lightless, the moon high and cold, where the uilos grew he could see the color of her eyes when she looked at him.
"Uilos," he said, "the Evermind, called in Rohan the simbelmyne, the flower that grows where lie the quiet dead." He looked off into the flowers, to the other side of the White Barrow where it sloped down again to the mountainside. "People say it is a sad flower, to only grow on graves and loss. But I always thought it the most steadfast, remembering long after there is no one else left who does."
She was turning in a circle where she stood, her eyes wide. When she looked at him again, there was a childish wonder in her face that he had not seen in her before.
From nowhere, from somewhere, music came drifting on the wind, the soft music of a lute. Ninluthur was not far away, and the White Barrow was high enough to look down on gleams of yellow light.
He hesitated, then held out his hand. "Anne..."
She looked at him, looked at his hand. He felt embarrassed, ready to take it back, but then she reached out and put her small hand in his.
They danced, he leading her slowly and carefully through each step, she following with inexpressible grace, and it was a dance he had seen his brother execute enough times in their more youthful years to be able to do it himself, a dance that the older people disliked for its displays and that the younger people disobeyed them to dance for how deeply it spoke of love and slow, quiet longing.
He had never liked dancing, for he felt foolish and a bungler beside his quick, bold brother. But this was moving in time to her, her breath and body matching his in turns and closeness, and their hands coming together, coming apart, and it was as if nothing else existed and there was no one to see if he fumbled, if he missed a step, for she only looked at him as if he were the whole world.
The music had faded almost as soon as it had come, but they danced on by the light of the uilos, the white flowers of the dead, and they seemed to speak to each other without speaking.
At the last turn of the dance, they slowed and stopped, his hand on hers and standing very close.
She laughed, softly, gently, and said to him, "Damrod," but he shook his head to stop her.
From his neck he took two fine chains.
"When you are not there, I feel as though I sleep," he said, "and when you come near, I wake."
He showed her the two trees that lay branches entwined, carved of culumalda wood, one with its bare branches and one leafed in silver, each no bigger than her thumb. He showed her how the branches could be taken apart to make two trees, but looked lonely and incomplete by themselves, and gave the silver-leafed to her on its own chain, keeping the bare-branched one. He showed her how he put his back on his own chain, and wore it around his neck.
He did not tell her that he had spent sleepless nights carving them, did not tell her that he had gone into North Ithilien in the gloaming to find the wood, burned himself and brought the Master Silversmith's rebukes down on his head in insisting on doing the silver-work himself.
She laid her hands against her eyes, and he thought she wept. He pulled gently at her hands, saw her face wet with tears, and, gathering her up in his arms as if she were a child, lifting her off the ground, he kissed her.
"Damrod," she whispered, and they lingered a while on the White Barrow, by the light of the quiet, nameless dead.