As much as she loathes to part her late husband from the sword he carried until old age prevented him, she cannot bear to see it rust and fall to ruin. Aragorn had spent so many hours caring for the blade: oiling, polishing, sharpening it. To watch it deteriorate would do nothing but count time spent living without him.
All of Gondor watches their queen ride for the last time out of the gates. Her dark hair is a brush of ink against the gown of pure white. In the field of mallos, the flowers stain the edge golden like the sun as they part around her in worship.
Their son has taken his birthright, she had stayed long enough to see that, and to assure him and his sisters that they have been taught all they need to know.
A piece of her feels selfish, abandoning her children when they are still so young in life. But there is a chain of grief about her throat choking her and every word she speaks comes out hoarse and broken by it. It is only when Eldarion, on the first anniversary of his coronation, beseeches her to leave that she finally feels she can free herself from this mortality.
Ammë, go with father. It is time for your peace together.
There is only a single boat left to sail west- the last Círdan built. She must make it to the Grey Havens before it leaves. The scabbard creaks upon her back and the sound of leather and steel and hoofbeats is so familiar, so very much like him, that tears join the dust she leaves behind. Their salty brine strikes dry dirt and from the crystalline drops of mourning grow niphredil, white and glittering in the night.
She refuses to ride through the Valley on her way. She knows it has all but been abandoned to Yavanna with the final sailing of the elves. She knows that it will cause nothing but anguish to see her father's pride reduced to empty ruin, to see how the time she has lived without his guidance has changed her childhood home. Still, as she passes close enough to recognise the way, she can almost hear the merry songs from the Hall of Fire beckoning her home.
Her horse thunders onto the dock at Mithlond. Only three figures stand there, looking westward.
Two tall and lithe with golden hair and the other shorter with a fall of silver spilling down their back. All turn to see her and she watches shock, then confusion, then sorrow glance across their faces like rays of sunlight.
Glorfindel bows, my lady.
She throws herself off her horse and cannot resist the urge to hug her father's closest friend. It may not have been Elrond himself, but the two had spent so much time together over millennia that she could pretend they were the same.
In the lonely emptiness of her grief, the embrace feels like mercy.
When they part, she holds out the scabbard, so painfully recognisable to everyone who knew Aragorn, Estel, Elessar.
Please, you must take it to my father. I could not bear letting Andúril fall to martyrdom or disrepair. It is his sword alone and when Arda is remade, I would see it returned to him, she cries.
Legolas reaches for the blade with trembling fingers as Gimli grasps the elf's arm in wordless comfort. The last time they had seen it, it had been clasped in the cold touch of its master, on the day the king's final procession left the city and did not return.
But he only brushes his fingers over it for a moment before snapping his hand back. Glorfindel steps forward and wraps the blade in cloth with reverence, seeing the younger elf's struggle.
"I shall keep it safe on the voyage. But you, Legolas Thranduilion and Gimli Elvellon, will be the ones to deliver to Elrond. It is only right that Estel's closest friends return it home."
Arwen Undómiel, the star that could not be diminished, meets their gazes solemnly. Her eyes, so full of joy and light only a year ago, have hardened into glass. She bows her head to each in turn and forces herself to walk back to shore. It takes all of her mother's strength, drawn up inside like armour, to not throw herself upon the boat and sail with them.
But she knows she can't. The Blessed Realm will not accept her. It is a decision she has long contemplated, only strengthening in regret as Aragorn's story began to end. But the love she has basked in for nearly two hundred years is reason enough to choose it all over again.
Her choice is that of her foremother, Lúthien, whose love upon which the world was sown.
As she disappears into the city, Glorfindel sings a familiar melody, echoing over the water and across empty cobblestone streets.
Fanuilos le linnathon nef aear, sí nef aearon! To thee, Everwhite, I will sing, on this side of the Sea, here on this side of the Ocean!
The ship passes noiselessly beneath the harbour arch of Alqualondë, cutting through clear waters as cloth ripples in a breeze. Elbereth has settled her cloak upon the city and across the glittering waves is the light of a thousand lanterns. Some cast aglow from windows, their flameless pink-orange accompanied by the silverbright of stars woven like jewels in the sky.
Upon the pier, there is a solitary figure draped in a cloak of bronze. It is Elrond, the circlet upon his brow not the one of Imladris but rather Eärendil's star entwined with curling vines. His shoulders are light for perhaps the first time in the many long years Glorfindel has known him.
He expects this to be a joyous reunion. He is not prepared for the truth of it instead.
Their footsteps are quiet on the stone though their hearts thunder beneath their ribcages.
Legolas and Gimli both kneel before the elflord and with hands forced steady, offer the cloth-wrapped symbol of one man's dedication to peace.
Elrond's eyes fill with tears and he desperately tries to hold them back. Now is not the time to crumble into grief. Though he wants to, oh does he want to.
Enno onna enno enne, after all. A person's child is a person's purpose.
His daughter and youngest son have passed on and only at the singing of the Second Song shall they meet again. A part of him always felt he would know when they left. Of course he would. But this had happened so simply, so peacefully, that he had not even the whisper of a feeling to warn him.
And, he supposes, that is for the best. They ended their stories gently, in the way Ilúvatar had gifted them so long ago. Like a ship quietly slipping its mooring at night, only to wake and find the tide carried it far from home.
Elrond Peredhel's life has been defined by loss. One after the other, he was torn from his family, his friends, his home, those he loved. So he sought to become a healer, to heal the wounds of flesh and the wounds of soul. To reforge bonds in others in the places where he had only cut, fraying threads.
But in the end, he could not even heal himself.
It is only after much sorrow in the house of the Half-Elven, that Elrond summons courage enough to unwrap the sword cloth. And freed from their binding, two letters fall to the floor.
One is labelled in thick tengwar, the ink pooling in the nooks and flourishes; the other in a delicate, near thread-thin hand.
But both read the same:
To Ada.
Suddenly needing to see the blade he had forged once more, Elrond draws it free from the scabbard of Lórien, the evening sun striking the steel like fire upon dry kindling.
For Andúril, Flame of the West, has finally been reunited with the very light it was named for.
