Evening came, and Arwen sat alone on a rickety chair forgotten by the door. Those gathered had melted away once they'd realized nothing 'exciting' was about to happen and so the peredhel was left alone with her thoughts in the empty street. Occasionally voices could be heard within, but the words were too indistinct and she wasn't really expecting any trouble.
She knew now, what Él had meant when she'd said someone had lost something, but she didn't know how a visit from a fallen star--- while an amazing thing in itself--- could help Ælfleda regain the life she'd lost.
With a sigh, Arwen dropped her head onto her raised knee. Her eyes closed and she dreamt that she was back in the forests of her youth when it had been filled with so much laughter and love and not the melancholy shadows that now dwelled there. The door opened on a high-pitched squeak that woke Arwen and at first she thought she was still dreaming for joyful laughter still sounded in the air.
Going into the dark interior of the room, Arwen's eyes easily adjusted to the lack of light to take in the scene before her. A handsome, grandmotherly woman sat beneath a window of moonlight illuminating her silvery hair. The elf knew that this must be Ælfleda, but instead of the solemn, deathly figure she'd expected there was laughter deepening the lines around the older woman's mouth and eyes. Turning her head, Arwen's gaze alighted on Él, sitting at the other end of the small bed and the peredhel wondered if it was a chimera caused by the shadows or did the star- child look as if the light within her had dimmed?
"I'm all right," Él replied before Arwen even had the chance to ask her question. The peredhel narrowed her eyes because things didn't seem that way to her, but further inquiry was stilled when Él said, "Doesn't she look happy?" Though Él still smiled there seemed a weariness in the small stooped shoulders and shaded cerulean eyes that hadn't been there earlier.
A worried frown creased Arwen's brows. She went to sit next to Él, the rigid mattress barely depressed under her weight and pulled the girl to her side as if she were any other child in need of love and care. In a purely childlike gesture, Él turned her head into Arwen's shoulders and said in a pitiful voice, "I'm not strong enough."
The elf reached up to stroke the girl's pale hair, murmuring soothingly, but as if Él's words had been a dire portent Ælfleda suddenly began to cry softly, the tears running down her wizened cheeks.
Él shook her head in distress, going over to the old woman to wipe away the crystalline drops with her small rounded hands. Unable to see their grief Arwen turned away, going to the window in her cowardice to glare at the moon. What good had this visit done? It might have been better for all involved if Él had never fallen to this earth. Like she had done the night she'd left Lórien the peredhel raised her hand to the sky and once more the moonlight flashed off the golden ring encircling her finger.
Just then, Él turned to her, "Help me," she whispered the entreaty through her tears and suddenly Arwen knew what she was here to do... Why she had been sent on this quest. With slow, steady steps she walked to stand before Ælfleda, the woman's milky eyes stared through her blindly; with visions only she could see.
Arwen raised her hands, invoking the magic of her elemental ring, the power of starfire and of dreamweaving. A golden glow rose slowly around her willowy form, the sparks coalescing into silken strands of light that glinted in the pale light of the moon as they flowed. The sound of whispers and faraway laughter, the giggling of children, words of love... sounded in the ensuing quiet, and Ælfleda seemed to know the voices for she turned toward them in the darkness.
With the hand bearing Olnäthron, Arwen picked through the interweaving threads searching for the right one. After frustrating seconds of picking and discarding various light fibers Arwen began to wonder if her conclusions had been wrong. It was more difficult than she'd thought to pick out Ælfleda and her family's threads from the whole weaving surrounding her.
And suddenly Él was there, standing beside her, the lustrous pearl cupped in her small palms mingling the golden glow of Arwen's dream tapestry with the white fire of the moon and stars. Of its own violation, a single burnished thread moved toward the gem and Arwen plucked it from the air, carefully unweaving it from the whole with nimble fingers.
It was the right one.
At her steady hold on that particular thread the voices surrounding the three women grew louder bringing once more that serene, dreamy smile to Ælfleda's face. Arwen smiled in answer and taking the thread between thumb and forefinger, she released it with a gentle wisp of breath from her lips and a silent prayer. The golden strand danced toward Ælfleda to settle in a shimmering crown onto her hair. The woman's pealing laughter overflowed into the sad little room, making it brighter until every corner seemed filled with all the happy memories that had passed within those four walls.
The tapestry of light surrounding Arwen and Él slowly faded, the whispers blending into the sound of the wind and the intensely bright sphere returning back to its latent form. The peredhel reached down to wipe away the wet tracks running down the star-girl's face. They turned toward Ælfleda who lay on the bed, her face turned away from them and Arwen's heart ached at how fragile the old woman looked in the moonlight.
"Everything will be all right now," Él said, slipping her hand into Arwen's and they seemed to cling together, the elf and the star-child, for assurance and comfort against the passing of the night.