Elessiel stood alone on the battlements of the citadel, looking out beyond the night-lit city to the shadowy surrounding plains. Gondor had not changed in the four months since her father's death, the fields remained green, the city remained an image of ivory beauty, and even it's people seemed to continue their lives much the same as they ever had, only under the rule of Eldarion. It seemed to Elessiel sometimes when she saw the faces of those who had been her father's subjects, in a moment of silence, when all around them the world continued to wheel, their faces would turn to stone, and the memory of the loss of Aragorn would resurface and consume the soul entirely. Such was the view of the world Elessiel had found since the day of Aragorn's death. All around her Gondor seemed to be slowly remaking it self under the rule of Eldarion, but Elessiel felt like a beacon of pain. Every moment her heart seemed to turn cold and her grief was indefatigable. She seemed permanently made of stone. And while the grief of the Gondorians seemed to wax and wane on a moment's notice, Elessiel felt consumed by her loss uncertainly, not seeing an end. The world seemed to be falling apart.

First the funeral of her father had passed before her eyes without incident. At first Elessiel had found comfort in the crying of her sisters, though she shed no tears of her own. But as the days grew old her sisters' tears were less, and Elessiel found comfort only in the presence of her mother. It seemed to Elessiel, Arwen sought only her attendance, and the young princess knew her company was the only comfort to her ailing mother. Arwen avoided Eldarion, Ardael, and Arwelil, rarely taking meals with her children. Each day Arwen seemed to disappear further within herself, and it was often at night Elessiel would see her, in the courtyard, after waking in the middle of the night.

Many nights Elessiel would wake when the moon was still high to find Arwen and Legolas sitting in her father's courtyard, under the splendour of a white tree, speaking in hushed voices in the tongues of their people. Elessiel would never draw to close to the couple, always standing at a distance, hidden by the shadows of the night, content to hear their melodic voices hushing her to sleep, remembering not how she came to find herself each morning, not lying on the cold stone of the courtyard, but in her own bed.

And each day she would come to the battlements of the citadel, to languish for endless hours in the sterile sun flying over Gondor. She would hear again the voices of her mother and Legolas, speaking in words she could only guess at, for Elessiel had not learnt the language of her mother since she was a small child.

Each morning, as he had since arriving in Gondor, Legolas would ride his horse from the stables, out into the fields. Elessiel would stand and look out on the path Legolas would take, and though she knew it was illogical, her eyes would narrow as she saw him enter back into the city, she would view him suspiciously when seeing him sitting with her mother in the courtyard each night. To Elessiel, Legolas seemed a fate filled enigma; his coming was as the very footsteps of doom. She had come to resent his presence in her family as a counsellor to not only Arwen, but Eldarion, who regularly sought out the company of the elf, something Elessiel viewed as a means of compensation for the loss of a father- for it was Legolas who seemed to best recall the past of Aragorn.

The only morning Elessiel had not watched Legolas' ride from the city on his sparkling horse, was the morning Arwen departed.

Elessiel had slept fitfully the entire night, waking late in the morning with the sun already warm on her face as she walked to her usual place atop the battlements. From the corner of her eye she had seem the glimmer of Legolas' horse accompanied by the guilded white steed of her mother as they came proudly from the stables.

Elessiel watched them as the horses and their rides moved through the streets of the city strangely un-noticed by the eyes of the Gondorians around them. And as the two riders passed through the arch into the outer-most ring of the city, Elessiel knew it was some last elvish power that granted the usually conspicuous queen of Gondor the ability to move within her people in silence. Suddenly the impulse of panic seized Elessiel, and she flew to the battlements of the citadel, to see the riders emerge from the Great Gates into the emerald green of the fields around the city. All at once the horses broke into a thunderous clamour of speed as they gained distance against the city. Elessiel stood watching in stunned horror as the vision of her mother, a midnight blue flurry of material atop a crystal white horse, accompanied by the pale green of Legolas atop his own grey horse, fled across the plains to the north. At the peak of the furthest hill Elessiel shielded her eyes from the sun to see her mother halt her horse, seemingly waiting for Legolas to catch up. Arwen turned back towards her city, and her youngest child, and for a moment Elessiel didn't need to squint her eyes any more to see the clear face of her mother shining out against the distance. For the first time in four months Elessiel saw her mother's lips peel to reveal the smile loved and treasured so by all who met her.

Elessiel tried to open her eyes, and realised they were already open -this was no dream- and she heard the voice. The sweet, mellifluous voice of a nighting gale singing in the dusk, speaking clearly in her ear. " Namarie, sweet Elessiel Tindomerel, until we meet again." She felt a tear slide down her cheek, and thought it the heaviest ever to be shed, pulled down the smoothness of her skin with the weight of a thousand tears unshed for the loss of her father, and now, for the loss of her mother.

She looked out across the valley to see her mother remaining atop the hill. For a second Arwen seemed to rethink her departure, but Elessiel knew better than to hope. She saw the pale opal hand of her mother raised once against the sky, and then Arwen Undomiel, fairest of all the children of Iluvatar alone for the last three Ages, vanished into the distance like a whisper of a spent cloud, fleeing after a great rain, never again to be seen by the eyes of men.

*

Legolas sat alone on the stone ledge of the wall surrounding the citadel. From his position he could see the streets below, empty life in the late night, whistling with the pale wind that stole through the city. The elf looked along the wall, guards no longer walked the innermost wall of Gondor as they had during the days of Denethor the second, not since the War of the Ring had guards been needed. And now the absence of average sounds made Legolas all the more aware of the minute pace of someone coming along the wall towards him. He pricked his ears to the sound and turned to the left sharply to see Elessiel coming towards him, up the stairs from the courtyard directly outside her quarters. She was wearing different robes from what she had worn that evening at dinner, and as she came closer Legolas realised with a slight blush they were her bed robes. By the state of her unkempt hair he could tell she had only recently awoken.

Now as Elessiel came to stand but a few feet from Legolas' side, she seemed to not have noticed him. Legolas cleared his throat almost silently, not wanting to break the serenity surrounding their unified solitude. He had felt separate from the youngest daughter of Aragorn and Arwen recently, and could not place the tone with which she spoke when she replied to his sudden noise.

" I see you, do not worry." she said flatly.

Legolas cocked an eyebrow at her dejected tone and pulled himself down from the wall to stand beside Elessiel. " You have changed your pattern of late." He said in encouragement of conversation.

Elessiel turned towards him. " What pattern have I to change?" She said quietly.

Legolas smiled slightly when his eyes met hers. " Each day you stand atop the battlements, not five feet from this place, and watch the city for hours. As though you were waiting for something, or someone to arrive. Yet today you did not come, and for the first time in months I did not see you as I departed the city."

" Maybe I do not wait for someone to arrive, but for someone to depart." She said pointedly. " What business is it of yours to watch me. Why do you remain in Gondor, Gondor has no need for you."

Legolas frowned deeply. " I do not understand."

" Let me speak clearer then, for I could not bare to have you confuse this, my most important statement to you. You have seen the death of my father, and spent a time in mourning, and the departure of my mother, and aided her no less in her flight, what now holds you to Gondor? Why do you stay?" Elessiel said. She fought to keep the hint of desperation from her voice. " What is it that keeps you here?"

" A promise." He said simply.

" To who! What promise could hold an elf among mortals." She cried in disbelief.

Legolas smiled. " You have little faith in elves?"

" Only of late, I've learnt too well they fail to keep the dearest, and strongest of bonds."

" You mean to speak of your mother. I think you do not understand her departure, nor the force that stays my own." He said wisely.

Elessiel scoffed and turned her pained face away from the elf. " I know you do not understand my mind, and hopefully you never will." She sniffed, wiping quickly at her tears. " And what of your promise?"

" You would ask me to tell you my promise?" Legolas said, observing Elessiel's reaction keenly.

She turned to face him, composed and once again of a stony disposition. " I would command you to tell me."

Legolas nodded slowly and cast his gaze up to the sky. Far above a fleeting star drove across the sky as though by signal of his speech to come. " Your father made me promise, Elessiel, to guard over your family. To see you each to your destiny, wheresoever it might take you. You know of what I speak, you know of what your father spoke to me, to your family." Legolas paused to note the stunned expression of Elessiel. " For your brother, a wise and prosperous rule over the kingdom of Gondor, for your sisters, happiness, and the promise of eternal beauty through the lives of their daughters-"

" And for me? What did my father tell you for me?" Elessiel said with baited breath. She craved the knowledge that someone else might know what was to come, what words her Aragorn had spoken on his deathbed.

Legolas paused in his thought and stared at Elessiel for a long moment before answering with calculated precision. " What secrets your future holds are within your mind, something I know nought of. Obviously." He said pointedly. Legolas bowed slightly and turned from the princess to walk along the wall for a pace before stopped and turning back towards her. He was struck dumb for a moment by the sad view that confronted him, of Elessiel Tindomerel weeping closely into her hands against the impenetrable stone walls of the citadel, the moon hanging both high above her head, and threaded a million times through her long, pale hair.

" Elessiel?"

She turned towards him, pulling her hands from her face, no longer making an effort to hide her tears. " Yes, Legolas?"

He took a deep breath and continued, knowing from the sight of her face what he must ask. " When you came just now from your chambers, you were asleep? You woke from a dream, this is correct?"

" Yes. A dream..."

He nodded and moved to continue along the wall. " Then you will leave Gondor tomorrow."

Elessiel looked p sharply at the elf, a deep frown creasing her face. " Yes, I will leave Gondor tomorrow."

***