In a grey dawn light, I stood naked on a threshold.

Ahead of me was the fogged outline of a great marble hall, adorned with white silk flags and crisp glass windows. Inside, I could hear quiet, contented voices discussing matters of consequence, but without hurry or consternation. Perfumed scents wafted from the building's open doors, as did the gentle lullaby of a harp and singer.

Though the scene was painted all in tones of grey, it seemed comfortable rather than dreary. These were the tones of an overcast day before a storm, when the air was warm and slightly damp but not yet uncomfortable. I was quite keen to carry myself along the bright stone path leading to the hall, and to find good company and a soft bed there. To rest. But I was acutely aware, though I did not know how, that if I entered, I could not turn back.

Behind me lay a great maelstrom – it was the life I had known.

I did turn, though I did not move from my spot on the precipice. It was very dark behind me, and eerily quiet. A fog lay between me and that destination too – but it was not inviting, or gentle. This was a harsh smog that crackled with little sparks and explosions, and if I stepped into it, surely it would consume me bodily.

But, like a curtain to a drawing room, it need only be peeled back for me to gain entry to what lie beyond. A little pain, and I would return from whence I'd come. A violent, visceral place – that was all I could recall of my past life in the moment. A place with terror, and exhaustion, but also vibrant with life and passion – there was very little grey there, as there was in this in-between place and the land that lie beyond.

I raised a hand to my lips and the thought of passion. I knew that word, though its written definition evaded me. Once, in that life, I had known love. A deep and resounding love, that had echoed in my bones and warmed the marrow within until I could hardly stand it.

Why was I here? How could I have left that behind? And why now did I feel very much like wet clay being run between a potter's hands on a wheel – fragile and insubstantial?

I turned again to the pale monolith. Is this where I would dwell, formless and lonely but not alone, for the rest of my days? The rest of my days…. Had the days already been spent?

I was panicked now, and I felt the storm cloud behind me drawing nearer. Ahead of me, halfway to the great birch doors protecting the haven within, appeared a woman.

She was so lovely, yet so immensely full of grief, I thought. Though there were no tearstains on her cheeks, her eyes glistened as if she had just been weeping. Her mantle was nearly so sheer that I could not distinguish the silk from her own pale skin, and when she walked to me, she shimmered like rainfall on the surface of a lake. Her blonde hair was nearly white and was bound up in a circlet of simple braided silver, except for the single tear-shaped diamond that sat between her brows.

Though language seemed to have been lost to me, and I could recall so little else, I knew her name.

"Estë," I breathed, and she smiled delicately. My voice was as harsh as a crow's, but if the din pained her, pristine as she appeared, she did not show it.

"My daughter," the Grey Lady responded, and she took my hand in hers. I looked down at the sight and was ashamed – her hand was smooth and pearlescent, like a white opal. Mine appeared withered and claw-like, as though I had turned to brittle ash.

She must have been able to discern that I was lost in dark, anxious thoughts as I attempted to make sense of this. I was realizing – I had no sense of time, in addition to my apparent amnesia. What had my hand looked like before, if not this hideous thing?

"Peace, child. Hush." She pulled me very close - as close as she could without gathering me up against her bosom. "You have nothing to fear. Nay, nothing at all could harm you here,"

I felt as though I was going to choke, but I spat the words out in a garbled growl. "But where am I?"

She seemed to chuckle at this, and the sound in her throat was like water meandering along a rocky brook. I could not help but smile at the sound, queer as it was compared to my hiss.

"You are in a middle place. A half-world, where evil cannot creep, but neither can light. Here there is only rest,"

This made no sense to me, but was a comfort nonetheless. I leaned into Estë's embrace, but was surprised when I was firmly rebuked.

"But you cannot stay, my dear,"

I felt myself frowning at her. How could she deny me? Could she not see how desperately I needed some reprieve from the haunting behind me?

The Grey Lady appeared to be on the verge of tears again; clearly this decision pained her too.

"I wish I could keep you, my child, but now is not your time. My siblings – they would not have it. I sense they have some grander plan for you,"

Estë stepped aside, however, and raised one hand to the Hall beyond. "If you would choose it, however, we cannot forbid it. It is final, however. It is the most final,"

I was shaking my head. I was too weary for this. I could but I could not? Should but should not? And what grander plan could there possibly be, withered and broken as I was? I firmly suspected that if I took a good look at myself, I would find cracks and tears too deep for any mortal hand to heal.

Estë was weeping now; clearly, she thought the same. But her hand was still outstretched. The white stepping-stones were gleaming, and the harp was growing faintly louder.

My next words to her came out as a question, but I knew the truth before they had left my lips. "I must go back?"

The lady's head dipped to the side mournfully.

"It is not a matter of whether you must. It is a matter of all that would be lost if you did not. But even the most stalwart among us know that that is too heavy a burden to bear. If you wished it, you could pass into these halls and recall nothing of the choice you made today,"

I pressed one of my dry, skeletal hands to the other and wrung them in indecision. Too heavy a burden to bear.

I recalled then a dream I must have had in a past life. Of a dark bird flying a long distance with his feet bound. If he landed, surely, he would be overtaken and die. But if he did not land, he would perish of exhaustion.

I looked down at my own feet – they were bloodied and blistered, and woefully thin, but they were not bound.

I looked back up at the Grey Lady. "So long as I have this choice, I have my strength. I will not succumb to grief. If there is a duty for me yet, I will bear it,"

Estë bowed her head and dropped her hand. She nodded at this, though it clearly took her effort. "You will come to me one day again, my daughter, and I will take you. I will show you all the care and tenderness you deserve,"

I believed her, but that day was not this day.

Before I could second-guess myself, I turned on my fragile heel and plunged myself into the gathering storm.

The soldiers happen upon the body sometime in the night. At first, their reactions are unchanging, the same blank gazes emptying out through their eyes, for they have been conditioned only to see the corpses of orcs and their comrades. But as the moments pass, realization reverts to confusion. 'Who is this girl, half-dressed in rags that match the tones of our armor?' they wonder. The speculate quietly amongst themselves.

One man gathers the body up into his arms. 'So light,' he thinks as he draws what is left of her cloak over the bloodied expanse of her skin.

Another picks a jewel from the mud beside her. He rinses the necklace in the river, and as it begins to gleam again, a crowd gathers about. Their fevered conjecture begins anew upon the sight of this token.

The men agree on one point; she is to be taken to their Marshal. He will know what is to be done with her.

If she had appeared as anything else, they would have left her to die. But something calls to these men; some indefinite innocence that bleeds through her garish wounds. The haunted expression on her face does not drive them away; rather, it pains them into pity for this wayward creature.

Moreover, she captivates them subliminally. In their hearts, they see through her alien guise and feel in her the same song that binds them all. She is of their kind, if only in the blood now barely pulsing through her.

A pack of them see to it that she is born safely on a makeshift pallet to their camp. These men, although having only been in this land for three days, have mastered the terrain of this river. The Anduin is theirs to keep safe, and safe thus far they have kept it.

A league passes beneath their feet. A mass of tents and firelights appears from behind a secluded moor. A camp of what had been several hundred only a day ago has now ebbed to a third of that number. And yet the expanse of what remains is thrilling.

The crowd grows as they pass into the encampment, moving to the heart. One might have thought it was a wake, as solemn and silent as the soldiers move.

Those that do not join the throng watch on with curious eyes, staring at the bare skin and the bloodied hair of the fallen angel. She appears familiar to some, and almost all feel the same, subconscious kinship to this girl. But she remains nameless. An anomaly.

They come to the center of their fortress. Here lie the many wounded and the ill. Healers work even in the gloom of a clouded moon to recover some of their fading numbers. Illness has stricken the already weakened camp.

She is carried further, until her pallet-bearers make a turn in the rows of canvas and soldiers. Feet from the ornate tent that holds their Marshal, a captain appears. He has been looking skyward, as if in prayer, but as the procession approaches, he tears his eyes from the veiled stars and looks over the body. He breaks his solace, his mourning silence, and calls out to her.

There is some shock – this man has not spoken since before the battle. He suffered tremendous loss, they know, but so had many others.

But now he is weeping, and he is murmuring senseless words in a foreign language. He takes the wraith's hands in his own and tenderly brushes the matted hair from her face.

Furtive glances question his sanity. 'Do you know her?' they ask, 'Or is this another product of your insurmountable grief?'

"No," he speaks aloud to their inquiries, "This is my sister. This is our Shieldmaiden,"

The healers have pried the Shieldmaiden from the hands of bewildered men. Now, they simply watch, for they have found that her wounds are not those that can be healed with poultice or stitch.

Her back is a mass of bruises, and many of her ribs are broken. She still breathes, much to their astonishment, but laboriously. Her forearms are slashed from self-mutilation that she herself will never remember. Her fever persists, but not from an illness or poison that could be prescribed a simple cure.

These are not seasoned healers or nursemaids – they are field surgeons and butchers. Even still, they sense in her a breakage and a hemorrhage that was not born of flesh or bone. Though they do not understand it, for they possess none of the skills that might have mended her ailing mind, they recognize it.

All they do now is wait, watching her when they can but leaving her for other patients more often than not. But she is not alone, for the one who has called her sister stays at her side.

He whispers in a language that none in that camp would have recognized. It is a language he has only recently learned, and he speaks it hesitantly, as if he is unsure of the power of his own words. But the affect is the same whether he pronounces them or not, for that is the way of that noble language.

Eventually, the spoken Sindarin hymns rouse the woman from her coma. She awakes in a panic, her eyes rolling this way and that. The healers rush to her side, and the man is pushed away. He watches in a bastion of hope and despair as too hot broth is poured down her throat, and her nude body is prodded by the hands of strangers. She is gagged when she resolves to screams. He feels the terror exuding from her writhing body. And though he knows better than to intercede, he cannot help it.

He pushes past all of them and looks into her eyes. A moment passes in which she is silenced, in which the room is thick with silence.

The wild terror vanishes from her face as she remembers.

"Lenwe," she murmurs, and she reaches up to stroke his face as the rest of her body recoils. The paradox of her actions is noticed by those that look on the two, and looks of alarm pass between the them. A pair of healers pull the man from the tent, and the rest return to the girl.

Brought forth to Lenwe is Elfhelm, senior Marshal of the camp.

"She has awoken?" A rhetorical question meant for the healers, for Elhelm looks with disdain towards the shrieks coming from the tent.

"Yes, lord," the captain replies, lowering his head.

"She will not quiet unless they leave her be, Marshal," Lenwe says, begging that the stern man will hear him out.

Elfhelm looks over him. He has dwelt with men long enough to learn the difference between truth and lies. In Lenwe, he cannot be certain of what he sees. Certainly, the younger son of Cadda has not proven his merit as of late.

But the young captain cares not, for the screams have grown both louder and greater in distress. "My sister… she will not suffer strange men, even if they are healer folk,"

In this, Elfhelm sees truth ring through. He nods once to the guards before the tent. "Call them off. Let us see to her,"

The woman lies now in a pained sweat. Though she is in more anguish than she has ever felt before, she is grateful to be alone, and to feel the fullness of her body without other's hands upon it, even if the enormity of her pain is now laid bare.

Two shadows stand before her though. When she has calmed herself, she looks up into their faces. She recognizes both.

And Elfhelm sees in her the matured reflection of a child he once saw riding beside Cadda of Fenmarch. Before him now is what is left of Rohan's dawn, a glimmer that drowns behind the veil of night.

He no longer doubts her, nor her brother.

But he sees also what the healers have suspected. A dark plague eats away at her, as though she is already dead and rotting.

And as the two watch her, see her ragged breathing, and the weight laying upon her brow, she falls once more into something that is a mockery of sleep.

Elfhelm turns and takes Lenwe by the shoulders. "My healers do not have the ability to manage her wounds, for this malady is of the sort that buries itself ever deeper. You must take her to the Houses of Healing. You must ride swiftly, Cadda's son. We cannot let our Shieldmaiden perish,"

Lenwe agrees, but he says nothing. Born in him now is hope, and in Lenwe's heart is the hope for redemption.

A day has passed, and in a secluded hollow at the easternmost foothills of the White Mountain lays a fire, a horse, and two restless siblings.

Calahdra stares listlessly at stars she cannot see. The emotion that registers in her eyes is of an eerie, indefinable kind.

In Lenwe is a warmth, but also a fear. He had tried his hardest not to believe the rumors circulating her disappearance, but in his heart, he had feared the worst. He is not wholly certain, however, that this wraith is his sister. This silent figurine is but a memory of her.

He has tried to make her speak, to pull words from her. But she has lost the will.

She does not know why she has survived, nor does she wish to know. She had been so sure of her death. As sure as she had been of so many things that had once been good and pure in her life. But there she had been, on the threshold of passing into some grey beyond, and she had turned face.

And she does not know why the evil she faced before has not returned to claim her mind, for her defenses are but a comical reflection now. Her thoughts lie open for all to read.

One fact has piqued her shallow musings, however - she cannot read Lenwe's thoughts, nor the thoughts of his steed. She muses upon this, wondering if it is because they simply have nothing to think about. But she grows bored with speculation, and instead falls back into a landscape of blanket blackness.

Lenwe notes this, and he fears as he has all day that she will not return from it.

For Lenwe has discovered that he, too, has gained his sister's ability. He, too, can read minds and speak to beasts.

Calahdra had once thought it to be a gift. Now they both live with the opinion that it is a curse.

"Calah?" he asks, shifting to look at her from across the fire. She lies on her side, her brother's cloak propped behind her blackened back. Shadows dance over her wan face.

She blinks and turns her head to peer at him. The nickname, having not been used since he last used it awakens something within her that survived.

For a moment, Lenwe sees this light, this flash of gold. He pounces on it.

"Are you sure you are not hungry?"

Calahdra considers this question. In truth, she is. But she cannot come to answer as such. She posits that the will to die still lingers above all other impulses within her.

Lenwe flinches as she comes upon this realization.

"Why?" is his automatic reaction.

"Why?" she repeats, now turning to lie on her stomach. Lenwe watches in wonder as she accomplishes the feat, unable to offer to help. She is clearly tortured by it – when she was nude, in the healer's tent, he could make out the outline of broken ribs against her taut, dehydrated skin. But the sound of her voice, for only the second time, has rendered him silent.

She raises an eyebrow, perching it on a forehead that is splattered with mud. Lenwe takes in the sight, of that normally inquisitive expression now on the feverish face of one who is dying. Her emaciated body is drowning in one of his tunics, and her arms are bound by blood stained bandages. If he had not been her brother, Lenwe doubts that he would have thought that there was hope for this creature.

"Why do you wish to die?"

Calahdra contemplates answering this question. She decides against it, but the words fall from her mouth anyways.

"I wished to die because I was a threat, Lenwe. I chose to desert my men and my King before I was given the chance to betray them,"

Lenwe notices the use of the past tense. He finds comfort in this.

"Betray them how?"

Calahdra licks dried blood from the craters of her lips. "Sauron was going to make me his queen,"

She expects Lenwe to laugh, to declare her mad, to say anything other than what he does.

"I understand, then,"

Calahdra begins to cough. Lenwe crawls to her and lifts her up into his lap. He lets water fall down into her throat from his canteen.

'She is so weak, yet so vibrant,' he thinks. And she is.

For something within her, something with all the spirit in the world is fighting for her. And though it could not possibly be a will of her own devise, it is one that dwells within her as any other part of her does. It is something made of gold and viridian and the fey storm clouds of a passing gale.

Lenwe pushes this thought away and sees to it that she is better. He pulls his saddle to them and she leans against it as gingerly as she can. Her brother gently stuffs a rolled tunic behind her neck.

Calahdra gives him a grateful smile. It surprises them both.

Lenwe pokes at the fire with a branch he has stripped of leaves.

"I have the ability to mind speak, Calahdra. I have felt the Enemy's presence,"

Calahdra looks through benevolent flames towards her brother. She, too, understands. For before the Enemy had said a word to her, she had felt him grow at the back of her mind.

She wonders when it was that Lenwe learned of this, and when it was that he had mastered Sindarin.

Lenwe answers this. "When father fell, I stayed with mother. She was mad with grief and terror, and then fury when the plot to unseat our family came to her attention. But in rare moments she became lucid, and I learned what I could. For a time, I wondered if it was because she knew she was going to die or go West. I think it was a little of both – but also that in me, she saw you,"

Calahdra is mesmerized by the flames, and how different they are from those that she saw in her waking nightmares, and she no longer looks at Lenwe. But she listens.

"I went through your things, read your books. And as I studied from them, I realized everything I am. I have learned so much…,"

Lenwe halts, suddenly overtaken by emotion. He does not cry, for he does not wish for her to trouble herself over him.

Calahdra feels his pain nonetheless, for it pours over the ramparts that he himself has made and into the night between them.

"I have changed, Calahdra. I am not who I once was,"

Calahdra stares at him through the fire. His eyes are filled with guilt, with love, with flames brighter than those that lay between the siblings.

"Huor did a terrible thing to you, Calahdra. And by extension, in my silence, I was complicit – no better than an accomplice," she tries to stop him, but he defies her. "We committed a detestable sin against our own sister. And neither of us had the heart to repent while we had the chance,"

Lenwe rounds the fire pit again. He kneels before her and takes her hand gingerly.

"You were right to despise me, Calahdra. The kindness you showed me all our lives – I did not deserve it, though you did not know of my shortcomings. You confronted me at Dunharrow and you were right to. I am not worthy of many things – of mother's tutelage, of Marshalhood of Fenmarch or inheritance of our home- and neither am I worthy of what I ask of you. But I must ask, please sister,"

"Forgive me,"

Calahdra looks into his eyes – eyes that look so much like her own, but also so much like eyes that use to haunt her every dream. She thinks of the rage she once felt towards Huor, and then towards Lenwe when he admitted what he had known.

Lenwe cannot atone for Huor's crimes, that would be an impossibility. But he is atoning for his own. And yes – he is capable of change. Though her power feels inaccessible to her, Lenwe's own unguarded authenticity is such that his sincerity has boiled over unto her.

This raw empathic connection gives her hope. She feels, in that moment, as though she is capable of healing. She feels that if Lenwe is capable of such a thing, then why isn't she? For a moment, she feels the light that Lenwe had seen.

"Please, forgive me," he repeats. Calahdra is torn from the borders of her epiphany.

She speaks in truth when she says "I have loved you always, Lenwe. I can forgive you, too,"

Lenwe nearly moans in his relief and elation, and Calahdra lifts a weary hand to her brother's bowed head. But before the moment can settle, she recalls something quite dark. She can scarcely remember the details, but she does remember this – Huor approaching her, blade held high, and Éomer sternly telling her to flee. All in the shadow of the tall, dark mountain.

"Where is Huor?"

Lenwe's shoulders fall. He has dreaded this.

His eyes meet hers, and now there are tears.

"He is dead, Calahdra. On order of the King. When you fled, he was blamed. The allegation of his raping was brought forward. At first, he denied it, but by the end his will failed. He did not name a victim, only admitted that it was so, and he would not die a liar, lest his honor be tarnished further.

"King Théoden commanded him ride to battle and die either in defeat or victory. And yet for all his talk of honor, he was found dead by his own hand the next morning,"

She is shocked, and for a moment she does not breath. Though she does not need too, truly, the lack of oxygen confuses her already ailing body and she begins to cough again. She pinches her eyes shut, trying desperately to quell the pain, both bodily and mental, she feels.

Dead by his own hand. It is a dark and gruesome thought.

And then, in a torrent, she remembers her own suicide - the falling, the drowning. The memory comes back to her in full. She relives her life in a blink of an eye, and her mind, as if in reverse, folds up into something tangible. The shards fuse back together.

And though she is not healed, she is whole. Though she is still empty, the scaffolding is reformed.

Lenwe feels this surge, and he witnesses every moment of it as her thoughts lay naked before her. He is rendered silent in marvel, but he does round the fire to sit beside her, and soothe her back with a kind hand until she stills herself.

He watches as his sister runs her hand over her temple. She sighs in a mixture of emotions; grief, joy, perception, confusion.

Calahdra forces herself to see through the memory that had blinded her before she passed into that void. Calahdra remembers the cliff, and she remembers Meleare screaming out as she pitched herself over stone and granite. And Calahdra remembers the sensation of riding Meleare bareback – being nearly fused as a proper rider to her horse – and then sliding slowly from her mare's body in the wind.

She does not remember the crash, nor the pain, nor the hours spent in coma before she was washed up upon the banks of the Anduin.

"Meleare," she says, as if in a fog, "Where is Meleare?"

Lenwe gulps. This is a question he has been wishing that she will not ask.

"She did not survive, Calahdra. She was buried properly,"

Pain is undoubtedly clear in her eyes. But the fact that her eyes are clear now, and not masked as they had been before by misery and fever, is cause enough for at least a little joy in Lenwe's heart.

He takes her hand. "Meleare loved you, Calahdra. Never was there a rider and a horse with a greater bond. Grieve for her, but only for a little while, for she lived a life of joy, and knew very little of pain thanks to you,"

Calahdra knows this. And she does grieve, though only for only a moment, staring blankly at the leather of the saddle at her side. She breathes in the smell of horse and sweat and blood. She closes her eyes.

When she opens them, she watches sparks shoot from the dying fire as it collapses in on itself.

"Goodbye, my friend,"

A broken smile crosses over a scarred face. Its brilliance gently chases the shadows still in her eyes, and the light begins to grow behind the wells of tears.

But Calahdra does not cry. She will not cry for a fellow warrior's sacrifice.

They startle sometime in the night to the braying of Lenwe's steed. At first, Lenwe draws arms and passes a knife to Calahdra.

They find that it is only a family of voles that has spooked the horse, and they rest easier.

But the excitement has awakened them, and they cannot fall asleep.

Lenwe rekindles the smoldering fire into a small glowing oven.

Calahdra looks over Lenwe's horse and realizes that not only does she not recognize it, but that it is also of a breed not native to Rohan.

Lenwe reads her thoughts, but he is loath to tell her the story unless she asks of it.

And she does ask of it. "Who is this new horse? Where now is Meldis?"

Lenwe sits cross-legged beside her. "It is a terrible tale, Calahdra. Meldis fell upon the Pelennor,"

Pain burns behind amber eyes. Calahdra reaches to a hand resting limp on Lenwe's knee.

She is stricken. Her brother has lost so much – His father and mother, then his sister to some unknown fate, his brother by suicide, and his steed in war. For a moment, they sit in silence, until Lenwe shakes his head. "Grief shall pass,"

"But tell me then of the Pelennor, Lenwe. We triumphed?" Calahdra speaks with a little of the vibrancy that had shimmered before. Lenwe sees to it that she has settled down before he shares the tidings of war.

"Indeed we did. The city was almost overtaken, nearly breeched when we arrived at dawn. Such an army, I have never dreamed of, for the enemy was tens of thousands strong and was composed of every fell beast and race of men…. And we ourselves nearly failed had it not been for Aragorn son of Arathorn,"

Calahdra's eyes grow unnaturally wide. She feels shallow and light, as if she might float away. "He lived? But he entered the Dwimorberg!"

"Aye, and with him he brought an army of the undead, as well as an elf and a dwarf of the likes of which I have never seen before. And with them, we vanquished all, save the Nazgul,"

Calahdra is overcome by this news.

He is alive.

The words ring over and over, like a bell that is not stilled by the force of gravity. In fact, each toll grows stronger, threatening to consume her.

But a voice of reason, perhaps that of the wisdom she has earned, holds back the tide.

You shall cross that bridge when you come to it… if you come to it at all.

Lenwe sees her confusion clear, and he continues.

"The last stands of men and our allies now hold in Minas Tirith, preparing for the final battle, whatever that may be. King Éomer ordered Elfhelm into Anorien with three hundred riders, to hold the Anduin,"

Wisdom does not hold back Calahdra's panic this time, however.

"King…Éomer?"

Lenwe curses himself over and over and shall continue to do so for the rest of his days. This was the news that he was supposed to break gentlest of all. For the Shieldmaiden beneath few others would be most aggrieved to have lost her King.

Lenwe struggles to console her as he tells her of Théoden's valiant passing. He tells her also of Éowyn's valor and the hobbit Merry's bravery.

But Calahdra does not hear the many synonyms for the word 'courage'. She merely matches the names to death and sees nothing else.

For a moment, she slips back into despair. But Lenwe catches her.

"You have a new King, Calahdra. You are bound to Éomer, now,"

Lenwe does not truly know if her oaths to the new King could be renewed. Even with as good a reason as being terrorized by one's assailant, she has committed the grievous crime of deserting.

But Lenwe gives her a purpose anyways. He lays before her a false hope.

And though Calahdra is lured from despondency with this knowledge, her grieving does not cease. Her fever returns, and the light in her eyes dwindles to the slightest of sparks.

This time, Calahdra does not play the part of soldier.

This time, Calahdra plays the part of daughter, grieving for the loss of her father.

Her tears fall mercilessly until the fire dies out again.

When morning breaks, the two set out on Lenwe's new steed, a great brown beast called Dacil. Calahdra falls into a fitful slumber in her brother's arms. She dreams of all the many variations of Théoden's death. Every once and a while she screams, and Lenwe has to calm her before Dacil will go any farther.

Despite these halts, they arrive in Minas Tirith in only a few hours. By now, the Pelennor Fields are almost clear of bodies. A smog hides the great pits of burning corpses and wrecked war machines from view.

The road is mostly empty, save the occasional messenger, or gravedigger seeing to the cleansing of the field.

Lenwe fears that he will not be admitted through the ruined gates of the White City. To his surprise, no one stops him upon entering. The truth is that no one expects anyone to willingly enter the plagued city anymore, especially not a soldier – the host is far away to the North, committed to its course even if that course is doom.

Dacil passes through the many levels of the city in silence. Smoke and mist hide the riders from the view of others, and in the primordial gloom of the city, no one cares to notice them.

When at last Lenwe comes to the Sixth Level of the city, he finds himself in the mitts of a miracle. This level is teeming with the injured and their healers.

Dacil halts before the Houses of Healing, and the famished horse is enthralled by the smells of herbs wafting from the nearby gardens. While the rest of the city smelt of ash and rotted flesh, this is a miraculously perfumed place.

This is the only place in Minas Tirith that still resembles life.

"Bair Nestad," Lenwe sighs. His arm fastens around his little sister, willing her to thrive once more in this place. As she is, she is lolling her head from side to side, and shivering violently.

Before she is taken from him by another crowd of healers, Lenwe whispers sweet words to her.

"You have changed much, Calahdra. A Shieldmaiden you have become, and a harsh soldier. But I see more in you. I see tenderness, and vivacity, and the ability to forgive.

"If there are days ahead for any of us, then I see in them better days for you, my dearest sister,"

And Lenwe, having found his redemption, places a kiss upon her brow. He pulls an emerald necklace from within his cloak and clasps the chain around her neck. He imparts with her, also, enough protection to ward off Sauron's will should he find her and try to invade her mind again.

A healer woman ambles forward, grim and serious. "Who is this?" Though it has been some time since the great battle, her skirts are stained with fresh blood.

"This is Calahdra Medlinniel. Earendel. Shieldmaiden of Rohan. You must save her – she is the jewel of her people… and of my life,"