Arwen approached the young Rohirric woman with silent steps. She was sitting on a bench looking out to the forests coating the sides of the valley around them. Her profile was, all at once, so familiar and so foreign to Arwen. She paused, just barely, as she shook the cobwebs of deep memory from her mind. She pushed on, resolving that no dredged emotion would push to the surface.

Loena, daughter of Leofwine, must have been deep in thought, eyes drawn back, for it wasn't until Arwen was close enough to touch her that she noticed her arrival.

"Oh, my Lady," Loena said, standing quickly and half bowing. She glanced up, apprehensive. "I did not hear your approach."

"Worry not," Arwen assured her. "You were deep in thought. I am sorry I disturbed it."

"It was a strange thought, and one that ought to have been disturbed," Loena assured her, smiling tightly. Arwen had not been to Rohan before, but had seen the Rohirrim when she'd been living with her grandmother Galadriel. From time to time they'd wander the woods. Sometimes they would be lost, and sometimes they would be searching for the Elves.

They were all fair of hair, tall of stature, with sun-kissed skin and sky coloured eyes. They were more earthy than their Gondorian counterparts; Arwen remembered how Aragorn would describe them – wise but unlearned, generous and simple, but proud. Loena had the Rohirric blonde hair, and their blue eyes and soft, near-gold skin. She was strong of stature, fair of face, and bore an old, familiar beauty.

"Even odd thoughts are often worth thinking," Arwen offered. "I always find my thoughts wander when I look out to the woods."

"It sometimes feels as though you're lost in them, just by gazing at them," Loena said, wistful. She cleared her throat and straightened, clearly embarrassed. "Is there anything I can do for you, my Lady?"

Arwen gazed upon her a moment too long, fascinated and unblinking, and had to swallow her growing shock before it wrote itself clearly across her face. For Gandalf had been right about Loena, impossibly right.

The flashing beauty of that long-dead daring Rohirric Sheildmaiden who had led the charging eored herd behind her, was nearly perfectly resembled before her. That woman who had lived so long ago, and survived to her old age, as strong and as virile as the country she had loved.

In Lothlórien, there had been a song sung of her during Arwen's stay. She remembered it well, a litany about an orphan girl, who shed her grief and arose with the rising of the sun; Horse-Spirit, they had called her, Shield Maiden, Thandwen.

Beornia.

Loena blinked with Beornia's eyes, and smiled with her mouth. She held herself with Beornia's grace, and her confidence. She pushed her locks back from her face with Beornia's clever hands. Golden haired for a Golden Age.

"I come to welcome you properly to my father's house," Arwen smiled at her, blinking away the disconcerting feeling that had been creeping along her neck. "I have heard, rather to my displeasure, that you have not been properly shown around yet. If what I have been told is correct, one such as yourself will need to know where it is we train for battle."

Loena seemed to nearly sag with relief. "Thank you, my lady."

"Come," Arwen said, and Loena came into step beside her.

"I know the baths, and the dining hall, and Frodo's bedchamber," Loena listed.

"You would have had the entire house mapped out soon enough, without my help, then," Arwen said.

Loena beamed. "Thank you, my lady."

Arwen smiled back. She pushed on across the yard, and could feel her dark locks bounce against her back as she picked up speed. She took Loena to the archery range, where the elves and their blessed eyesight shot true from many metres away. Then to the fields where the elves practiced sparring, and other forms of hand-to-hand warfare.

"These fields have been busy, of late," Arwen said, feeling the worry and loneliness of her age fill her, and she closed her fists against them. "When I was a child, only the elven guard need train for battle. Our great warriors would come here, and we would all gather to watch them. Now all must fight. Now, no hands have yet to hold a blade."

"At least you prepare," Loena said, voice low and worried. At Arwen's curious glance, she ducked her head. "I…apologise. I didn't meant to insinuate—"

"No, no, please," Arwen brushed off her apology. "Go on. How do you mean?"

"Rohan continues as if peace were certain," Loena explained quickly, the girl tugged at the ends of her golden hair, filing it between her fingers absently. "From what Gandalf and your lord father have said, it seems to me that the opposite is true."

"Perhaps your king has hope," Arwen offered.

Loena's face darkened, and she shook her head slowly. She let her hair fall, and crossed her arms in front of herself, as though she were staving off cold. "No, my lady. If for anything, one can be hopeful and still practice realistic foresight."

"You believe in the rising dark, and your king does not?" Arwen asked.

"My king is lost to old age and senility," Loena said, bitterly. "He ignores those who would do him well, and listens to those who would do him harm. He fears war, and thinks that by avoiding its mention, he can avoid it altogether."

"He is frightened, then," Arwen said, softly.

"He'll let his fear overcome him, and then all in Rohan will fall," Loena said, sounding hopeless. "The tales Gandalf and Elrond have told me are frightening, my lady. These are not moments of random panic, these are the stirrings of a dark intent. One that would eliminate all the light from the world."

Both fell silent. Arwen absently felt at the cut on her cheek, the cut that had almost healed. It was now just a pink mark against her skin. She remembered the cry of the Nazgûl, and the screams of their horses. "Come," she said quickly. "Imladris is better seen before the sun properly sets, and we have only a few hours of sunlight to survive it."

Arwen showed her to the great statue halls, and Arwen delighted in Loena's wide-eyed wonder at the ancient figures housed there. Then the crypt where they kept the broken shards of Isildur's shattered blade, and the tale of his victory over Sauron on the walls. Loena had frowned in concentration as Arwen recounted the tale.

Loena had shook her head slowly as Arwen had finished, as if trying to chase a thought that had gotten lost. "I feel like I remember that story, perhaps from my younger days."

"All should know that story," Arwen said.

Loena had bowed her head in agreement, but said nothing.

The light became properly golden and low around them, and their afternoon seemed spent. Arwen walked astride Loena, slowing her steps for the Rohirric woman's comfort. "It pleases me to see you enjoy my home, as you do, young one," Arwen said, noting with satisfaction the easier hold of her shoulders, and the looseness of her brow.

"Thank you for showing it to me, today, my Lady," Loena smiled at her, with a wilfulness, and a fierceness. "You must come to Edoras, my city, so I can return the favour. Edoras is simple, but it is beautiful."

"I would enjoy that," Arwen told her truthfully. If her fate had now, been truly set, and if she truly was the child of Luthien, then her days left waking were numbered. Places like Edoras had once been somewhere she had thousands of years to attend to. Now she had a mere scattering of moments.

"Sister!"

Arwen turned at the familiar voice calling to her in Sindarin, and felt Loena pause and turn beside her. She smiled when she saw her brothers approach her, so similar in look and sound that to any but those who loved them, they would have been indistinguishable from one another.

"Elladan," she smiled, and nodded, speaking in Westron for the benefit of her guest. "Elrohir. I thought you were to return to Rivendell two weeks from now."

"We were," Elladan said, reverting to Westron to match her, casting a curious eye to her companion. "Father requested we return with all possible haste. The council approaches; all must remain."

"Ah," Arwen said, stealing a look at Loena, who was still watching her brothers with a bewildered look on her face. She wondered if Loena were caught on their sameness to each other, or their strangeness to herself. "Elrondion, meet the Lady Loena of Edoras. She joins us for that same Council."

"Mae Govannen, Loena," Elrohir said, and Elladan nodded in turn. "We had not known we would be accepting a showing from Rohan, and I am glad the information was wrong."

Loena's nervousness shone through when she spoke. "Ah, yes, well, I am here by Gandalf the Grey's request, not of that of my liege."

That seemed to have piqued Arwen's brother's interest. They looked at her with a renewed curiosity.

"Go, find a table for us to eat at tonight," Arwen said, dismissing Loena alongside her brothers. "I have one more errand I must run."

Loena looked at her, stark and petrified at the idea of being left alone with two strangers. Arwen felt for her, deeply, and expressed this as well as she could. "I will return as soon as I can," she promised gently.

Loena went without complaint, and Elrohir and Elladan came to walk either side of her. She heard their voices, and then hers rise up in answer. She seemed quite short between them, and her hair all the fairer compared to their dark tresses. Arwen watched them go with a pang, and swallowed her worry away.

"You feel for the girl," Mithrandir announced himself behind her in Sindarin, and she turned, greeting him with a soft smile. "I should have known, my Lady, not to send lost things your way."

"I do have a soft spot for the cast-offs of this world," she said lightly, switching to her mother tongue also, turning to face Mithrandir as he approached her. She glanced back to the door, where Loena and her brothers had disappeared. "Mithrandir, she feels adrift to me, anchorless." She looked at him, and her smile dropped. "I know not why you brought her here, away from her people. She loves Rohan, she would have protected it to her last breath." She worked her jaw.

"You know as well as I, Undomiel, that the strongest move we have is one perilous, and far from home," Mithrandir responded, though he sounded pained to say it. "If Galadriel's prophecy was correct about the fate of her line, then she has some part to play in this. I would not have us sacrifice the entirety of Middle Earth for her discomfort, no matter how much the idea of her being so pains me."

"Beornia would not have left her people," Arwen said, unconvinced.

"Loena is not Beornia—"

"How do you say…you have seen her as well as I have."

"She…" Gandalf stopped and sighed. "Arwen, the prophecy is as complicated as Beornia's legacy." He paused. "And Beornia would have come to Rivendell, if I had approached her with the same terms I came to Loena with."

"Beornia would not even come into the woods of Lothlórien," Arwen reminded him, remembering.

"That was not her choice," Gandalf reminded her gravely. "Her people are a superstitious type. They thought that if she left, she would take their spirit and their fire with her. Loena has no such mythology."

"Perhaps it was not mythology."

"Perhaps," Gandalf agreed. "But if you had let me finish, just before, my dear Evenstar, I would have said; Loena is not Beornia, yet."

Arwen fell silent, and held her lips tightly together.

"Thank you for taking care of her today," Gandalf said, finally. "I think, between you and the hobbits, her spirits may have been lifted somewhat." He sighed. "Rohan is a proud people, with a strong heritage. They love their home, they defend it. She knows this, knows it instinctively.

"And Rohan will know her love for it, before the end."

Arwen felt a great wind come through the courtyard, it pulled at her hair and at the corners of her gown. "The path is none too easy."

"The way is hard for all who seek to undo the great undoing Sauron seeks to wrought," Gandalf said. He looked at her kindly. "Do not worry, dear Lady. She will be, if for nothing else, under my protection, and under the protection of all free people."

Arwen felt, despite her worry, slightly gratified at that. "Thank you, Mithrandir."

He nodded to her, in a half bow. "Now, do not let me keep you. I have no doubt that Aragorn and your father await you."

"I shall, I think," Arwen said. "There will be many songs of Elbereth sung throughout this realm tonight."