Letter from Lady Hilde to her sister

Well, it is done. Blaedswith the housekeeper, Mildritha the cook, and all their many women did us proud, with a feast fit for several kings and queens (they keep talking about the Lady Galadriel, but rumour has it she is five thousand years old and led her people to safety across the frozen wastes of the icy north, so I count her a queen).

But the most honours of all must go to Leofgifu the seamstress and her team of tire-women. The dress they made for the lady Éowyn! A beautiful deep red silk which shone beneath the torches and candles. And so cunningly cut. I guess it is a mere five or even only four months until we will be blessed with an heir to the throne, the king's sister-son (or perhaps sister-daughter and just as beloved for that – for the blood and spirit of heroes would run in her veins just as strongly). But except from the odd angle, for the most part you would not have guessed – the stomacher looked like part of the dress, not a covering for the natural fullness of the lady's belly.

But oh! the smiles upon their faces as they plighted their troth. And the way they looked at one another, as if the whole world had shrunk to a tiny realm centred on just the two of them. I must confess it brought a tear to my eye – and seems to have got me waxing all poetical, which is most unlike me.

Lord Elrond's journal

Letter to Celebrian, never to be sent

More than ten yéni have passed since last I saw you, my love, and still I write to you.

I wrote of how much it pained me to watch our beloved Arwen follow my brother in his choice to embrace the gift of Illuvatar to mortals. How it hurts, more than the wounds of battle, to realise she will one day lay herself down upon Arda's warm earth, there to commit herself to the care of Mandos, never to sail to Valinor. The doom of Lúthien fell upon her long before her wedding to Estel, yet still I found it hard to rejoice at her wedding.

Yet today I attended another wedding, of two mortals, which has perhaps played some small part in reconciling me to her choice. When I looked at the young man and young woman in their joy, I realised that this is how mortals embrace the gift of Illuvatar – by living each moment within that moment, in full. And that love is the greatest way they can fill their moments, and that the knowledge that the fruit of their love, their children, will live after them, and their children's children, allows them to live with the knowledge of their death.

I also had a glimpse of Estel – not as foster son, dearly beloved, or as the man who would take my daughter from me (for which I felt so much anger for so many years), but as child of the child of the child of my brother, back through the countless generations. In him, Elros lives on, and in his children, Elros will continue to live on.

Oh, but it still hurts.

But there is joy in love. And maybe an even more acute joy in love lived under the shadow of death.

The political memoirs of Lord Úron

What a jolly affair, and admirably well done – King Éomer's household are a credit to him. Most properly carried out in the end.

And the Rohirrim have a rather splendid tradition, not just of dances for couples, but of dances where the men and women face one another in lines as if to tease and challenge one another good naturedly, and also of dances just for the women to celebrate the bride, and (most appealing to me) just for the men to celebrate comradely solidarity. The joy of being able to dance arm in arm with one's fellows, to feel the joyous companionship of their muscled bodies, without having to hide in a quiet private chamber to do so.

Lord Faramir and Lady Éowyn look most nauseatingly happy, I must say. I hope they get it out of their systems before I have to return to my clerking duties in the Steward's office. But it is genuinely lovely to see them so.

~o~O~o~

AN: One yén = 144 solar years. Celebrian was attacked and sailed west circa 1500 TA, and we're now in 3020.