It was a chill, dewy morning on the shores of Valinor. Legolas was walking alone, away from the vast civilization of the elves built to last forever. He walked along the shores where he himself arrived in Aman, with his dear friend Gimli at his side, many centuries ago. On that day the sun shone, sparkling in the little tips of the waves and shining over the sands undulating gently up towards their new home and he felt great joy.
But Gimli, Bilbo, and Frodo had long since gone to face the fate of mortals. New elves had stopped arriving on the shores long ago. Even his father and the elves of the Greenwood, who stayed long after most had succumbed to the call of Undying Lands, had come to live out their long lives in the Blessed Lands.
For there was safety and plenty in Valinor for all of its inhabitants. Time passed both quickly and slowly among the delights the Valar have gifted to the elves, who are bound to the land and shall live as long as Arda remains. They enjoy feasts, dancing, music, nights spent gazing at the beauty of the stars, and mornings watching the sun rise over green hills and forests and gleaming waves. But the future is long, and for Legolas, the days had begun to run into each other, repeating themselves, until all of life felt like a slow dream from which he never wakes.
In his nostalgia and the mist, Legolas failed to see the elleth in the water until he was almost upon her. Legolas was startled by her appearance: she was naked and soaked, her lower half submerged in the water. She bobbed listlessly at the edge of the waves, unconscious. She was the palest elf he had ever seen – her limbs like sun bleached driftwood and her hair as white as the surf in which it floated with every incoming wave. He could see little blue veins through her skin. He thought to himself that she looked like something from the deep ocean, dead and coughed up onto the sand – alien and unsettling, but beautiful. As he approached her, he thought at first that she must, indeed, be dead. But he could see her chest rising and falling a little, and when he reached her he could feel her heart fluttering in her wrist.
Legolas was then filled with dread and pity as he began to wonder what could have happened to this elleth, who he has never seen in his many long years in Valinor, that she would be here on the shores that his people had long ignored since the ships stopped coming. Was she the last elf in middle earth? Could she have tried to swim the straight road home, alone? If there was a ship, where was it?
The melancholy that sent him out to the sea that morning lifted – Legolas's heart filled with purpose as he lifted her out of the water, wrapped her in his cloak for warmth and dignity, and strode swiftly back towards the lands occupied by the elves. She was wet in his arms, and too still. He propped her head up on his shoulder, so it wouldn't flop with every step. He felt a thrill of energy fill his body, and he was determined to care for her. It felt wrong to rejoice in another's misfortune, but he admitted to himself that he was relieved. Finally. After all this time. Something new.