Title: I Remember The Wind That Night

 Remember The Wind That Night

I remembered that it was raining when first we kissed. I remembered the wind that night, coming through the half open window, carrying the smell of wet earth as he lay beside me and held me in his arms.

I remembered all the notes that made up the music of his love. I remember all the times that he spoke my name: in a velvety lilt just this side of shy, in hoarse chants as our frenzied dance rose to a crescendo, in a half-sob that spoke of wonder and amazement, in a low whisper against my skin, in a murmur in his sleepIremember his sleepy laughter when I tickled him awake. I remember the lazy conversation I had with him in the dark, his hand twirling a lock of my hair around his finger while I tried not to fall asleep listening to the steady rhythm of his heart. He once sang an old, slow ballad in a low, murmuring voice, and I remember asking him about it. He said the song was of a hobbit who had found his true love. I never saw him look as happy as he was that night at the beginning of April.

Then something must have happened that he never told me about. There was talk of his leaving Hobbiton, and when I asked he only said that it was true. That September, a day after his birthday, he went away. He never explained why, even after his return.

Somewhere along the cruel paths that he had trodden, his music had changed; twisted, maimed, broken. His voice was that of a stranger: polite and gentle, but cold and distant. I was filled with joy to see his return, but soon I realized it was not him who came back arrayed in the glittering garb of some faraway lands beyond my imagining. Humbled and at long last resigned, I watched him vanish once more, this time right before my eyes. He still lived in his smial up the Hill. But he had disappeared all the same. And this time, I was certain he would never come back. Where his song once was in my soul, there was only stillness.

Then one night—I remembered it was the day before his birthday—I heard a knock in my door and when I opened it, he was there. I invited him in, the way I welcomed a distant relative who came to tea. The conversation was stilted at first, but when he suddenly asked, in a very quiet tone, "Will you forgive me?" the dam broke and words and tears fell in torrents.

He did not leave because of something that I did. His quest changed him in ways even he did not fully understand and he wished to spare me the horrors and the anguish. No, there was nothing I could do, there was nothing anyone could do to ease the memory of his burden.

"Do you still love me?" I asked. "Do you remember loving me?"

He held my hand in his and I saw the gap between his fingers. His eyes when they met mine were neither ashamed nor afraid, but the sadness and hollowness in them chilled me. When he stroke my face there was a painful look in his eyes, as though he was trying hard to remember how it felt to love, to desire, to surrender the heart and mind and body. But I saw that his grief and pain had robbed him of that memory and his loss tore at my heart.

When I led him to my bed and undressed him in the dim light of the candles I had wished not for the ardor that would melt us into a single being of flame and heat. When I traced my fingers on his bare skin it was not to re-awaken the past now buried deep. When I kissed him it was to show him that that part of my heart that was his had survived the cold, uncertain months unscathed and unchanged. When I held him close it was to thank him, to let him know that I would be all right, that he could move on, that my love would endure.

He reached out and softly ran his hand down my cheek. I remembered that his touch used to feel like sparks of fire that tingled on my skin. A mere brushing of our fingers used to singe me with a sudden longing for the warm pressure of his hands on my body, for his searing caresses that sent me soaring to that place where I was suspended in limitless brightness and profound serenity. His touch was the open window to his heart that showed me more clearly than mere sight could ever tell the tenderness of his feeling for me, because even when desire blazed within him, his fingers were gentle upon me, as though he feared of hurting me. The contrast between the wild fire of passion in his eyes, in his voice, in his whole beautiful body, and the nearly reverent touch of his slender hands on my heated skin was one of the memories I treasure of the days before.

His touch now reminded me of the day we sat side by side by the bank of the Water, my toes dipped into its currents, water swirling, sliding against my skin. It was soothing, comforting, but transient, like hurrying water in the brooks. I did not know those hands that glided over my skin; that left hand that felt colder than the rest of his body, that right hand with the ring finger missing, they seemed to belong to a different hobbit. His touch made me feel lonely, because when he caressed me with the back of his hand for an instant I still burned, but I saw no echo of that flame in his eyes. I saw longing, yes, longing and love. But there was pain there, pain and regret, cold and grey like ashes. And like a sudden rain that put and end to a stifling summer day, his touch ended the passion even before it was kindled. We lay there side by side, my fingers painting a picture of wistfulness on his pale skin, probing the scars that scattered where my lips used to lay hungry, impatient kisses, trying to find the hobbit who used to set me on fire by a single touch. He was not there; what remained was the broken and charred shell of the radiant jewel of a hobbit that he was. And when he touched me again, I shivered. Yet I held on, because loving him was more than fire and flights into the very Sun and Moon. Loving him was like breathing, and even when the air was so cold it burned my lungs and turned my heart into ice, I still needed it, as I knew he did.

I knew he sensed that I longed for what once was. He knew I only wished that he would stay. I knew he was saddened by what he had become. He knew I loved him nonetheless.

It was a long, still night. But before the break of dawn he sang a song in a language I did not understand before his silent tears began to fall onto the white pillow. I soothed him and comforted him and he fell asleep in my arms.

In the morning he told me he was leaving. This time I knew I would never again see him. I made him breakfast and as I poured his tea I asked what was the song he sang the night before.

"It was a song of the High Elves," he explained softly. "They say that the Sea tastes like tears."

I remembered the wind that first night after he left. It had carried a strange sharp tang and faint sounds I did not recognize. I remembered it because last night, years and years after he was gone, I smelled that scent in the air again. I went to sleep with his name on my lips and dreamed of a vast body of water bordered by the sky. I could hear his voice. His laughter was once again the sound of sunshine and merry summer bonfire. When I woke I tasted salt on my lips and I knew that I had seen the Sea.

He was waiting.

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