Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo! I cannot tell you how sorry I am that this has taken so long. Most of the next chapter is already written, however, so it should not take anywhere near the length of time to put out that Chapter Ten has done. We promised that we wouldn't abandon this fic, and we won't! In the meantime, thank everyone for their patience and kind comments. I must now address one of the most recent reviews.

FrodoFan, Phe-chan and I are well aware of the names of the cast (and some of the crew members) of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. However, in order to comply with one of preexisting statutes, all last names have been changed to protect the innocent. If you look closely (with some characters, it's obvious, while with others, not so much so), you will see that our characters' last names generally reflect movies in which their corresponding real-life actors have starred. Thanks and God bless you! - EHAB

Chapter Ten, "In Dreams"

Siobhán stood alone in the center of a mighty ruin and felt the pain lash through her in sheets of fire. Unable to bear it, she fell to her knees. She knew this place. She loved this place. It was secure, unassailable, proud, and strong. It was also destroyed, deserted, and dead. She crawled into the center of the stone porch and curled into a ball, then threw herself from her side onto her back as the paralyzing convulsions came again. Surely she could not survive this. She must join her sister very soon. Her head lolled and thrashed, her eyes trying to follow the lightning leaping from cloud to murky brown cloud. There was a putrid stench in the air that pervaded and overmastered her mind. Where was Ereinion? Where was her father? Mother? Friends? Anyone at all?

"Someone come! I don't want to be alone… Please help me! Please! Don't leave me alone…"

"Everybody's alone."

The voice was soaked in raw pain and bitter resentment.

"You love, you lose, you love again, you lose again, but in the end you ALWAYS. END. UP. ALONE. Everybody's alone."

"No…"

"YES! ALWAYS! And I hate it! And I hate you! Do you understand that? I HATE YOU! You and your stupid hope, that's what got us all into this mess. You should have just let me cry. You should have told me the TRUTH and LET. ME. CRY."

"I love you…"

"Well, I don't love you, not anymore. I'll never love you again."

"Please…"

"Your turn to cry."

The presence and its voice disappeared into the nothingness, and Siobhán screamed. She was suddenly under water, and small white hands were on her throat, pushing her further and further down into the obsidian oblivion. Her mother's starlight was obscured by the smoking clouds and the endless fathoms; her father's eagles could not reach her here.

"GOD, PLEASE SAVE HER!"

"Melui, Melui," Gil-galad cried, taking his wife in his arms and caressing her as she shrieked and sobbed into his shoulder, "Melui, speak to me, what has happened? What is wrong? Please, I'm here; you're not alone anymore. Melui, I love you so much. Please calm down. Please tell me what is wrong."

"Save her… please… not because of me, God, please, not because of me," Sivi wept.

"Melui, who is in danger?"

"I… I… I don't know what to do. It isn't my place… I…"

"Vardamiriel!" Gil-galad shouted desperately, and his wife looked up at him.

Her grey eyes grew slowly wider in a sudden realization.

"I did it again," she whispered.

"I know you are distraught," Gil-galad said gently, "but you aren't making sense. Slow down. Speak clearly. What has happened, my ever-love?"

Sivi licked her lips once and stared at him for a long moment, her eyes still huge and wondering.

"Nothing…" she said at length. "At least, nothing more than a terrible dream."

"What did you see in your dream?" Gil-galad queried.

"I was alone."

"Melui, I don't understand," her husband told her with a troubled sigh.

"You… won't. Go back to sleep. Sorry I woke you."

"Melui," Gil-galad protested.

"Dear Ereinion, I'm so sorry," Sivi said softly, tracing the side of his face with her fingers and smoothing one of his golden eyebrows. "This is the place where you can't follow me. I'll try to stop shrieking at night. I know it worries you. You must be happy. Please be happy with me. I think that I have but a little longer."

"What?" Gil-galad breathed in terror. She couldn't mean what he thought she meant. "We have forever together, my love."

"Forever is beyond my comprehension," Siobhán said simply. She lay herself down again with her back toward him so that he could not see her weep.

With a knot in his gut that refused to come undone, Gil-galad watched over her, playing with her russet hair till daybreak. As the slender band of red-golden light on the horizon at last signaled the rising of the sun, he slid back down beside her, wrapped his arms around her, and slept. He could not find her in his dreams.

She was crying. He lay before her on a bed of some sort and could do nothing to halt the flow of her tears he so desperately wished would cease. And yet, even while the salty wet trails made her cheeks sticky and her nose runny and as red as her unkempt hair, she seemed to him a creature of such beauty he could not tear his eyes away. She was rocking herself in the chair beside his bed, whimpering soft words he couldn't make out. Sivi's form entered the room. She tried to comfort her friend, though Andrea only pushed her away with her words.

"It's my fault," she cried over and over again. With each cry she seemed to shatter her own heart. The tears came harder than ever before now. He could stand no more of it. With one massive effort he struggled to rise from the bed, though his chest burned fiercely with the strain.

Orlando shot up, waking from the dream. He brought a hand to his chest only to find there was no pain there at all. The dream broke, its pieces falling out of memory, save for one. It seemed that her face now haunted his every thought, her tears staining his soul with their sadness. Slowly he rose to locate the little red haired girl who haunted his sleep. Self-consciously avoiding the Elf at the tiller, he made his way up to the prow. There he found not Andrea but Andy. The voice-actor was leaning over the rail in an attitude of utter exhaustion.

"Andy… couldn't you get any rest either?"

"Rest? What mean this word, 'rest'?" Andy quipped not altogether pleasantly.

"Sorry, man," Orlando said. "What's keeping you up?"

"The usual psychopathic tendencies," Andy answered, not looking at his friend.

"Ah… I guess I'm just worried about this whole 'wife' thing," Orlando confessed. "I mean, she's probably scarred for life because her own husband doesn't remember her… but I don't know what to do about it."

"I don't know what to do about any of it," Andy said sullenly.

"Andy, are you okay?" Orlando asked quietly.

"Yeah, I'm great, man, just great," Andy snapped.

"Okay. Er, is there anything I can — I mean, if you just want me to leave you alone — but if you need me, I'll be happy to —"

"To do what?" Andy demanded. "You and John and Viggo and all the others get to have your fun little identity crises, and if these wackos are right, what do you lose? You get to go back to your ethereal lifestyle as immortal royalty. What about me? What am I gonna become?"

Suddenly it hit Orlando in the face what his companion had been driving at: Gollum.

"No…" he murmured. "Andy, you can't. That's not — I mean — you CAN'T."

"I don't WANT to," Andy said painfully, "but if it's true… if we're all really our characters… do I have a choice?"

"You always have a choice," Orlando insisted. "That was the whole point of your character! You always have a choice, no matter what. You don't have to be anything you don't want to be. If worst comes to worst, and it's all true, just ask these Valar not to change you back."

"I'd still be him," Andy whispered with a shudder.

"Andy, you're our FRIEND."

"I can't change the past," Andy said in defeat.

"But you can change your future."

"It's too late."

"Andy," Orlando began again, but his friend pulled back from the railing.

"I gotta get some sleep," he said, and walked away.

Orlando sighed into the stillness.

"I hope one of us does."

He leaned his back against the ship's railing and looked over the deck. The helmself was characteristically unruffled by Andy's sudden exit into the lower decks. The ocean to either side of the vessel was rolling smoothly, beautiful in the shell pink dawn. Suddenly, off to the port side, the waters were stirred into a soft whirlpool, and Ulmo emerged and rose onto the deck in a shimmering cascade that did not seem to get anything wet. There was another figure in the man's arms, but the young actor could not make out who it was.

"What say you? Do you forgive me now?" Ulmo questioned playfully, but there was an underlying urgency in his tone.

"I forgive you," said a pretty alto, "but I need time to forget. It may be a while before I can just let everything go back to the way it used to be. You caused us a lot of pain. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes," Ulmo replied sadly. "Please believe me; if I had known —"

"You didn't know. I didn't know. They still don't know. You and I have to fix this. Skeletons in mortal closets are ugly enough, but this has the potential to be —"

"I know," Ulmo interrupted. "Let me think about it. I need to pray about what's best for us to do next."

The helmself turned and asked the pair a question that Orlando could not hear.

"No, that's fine," the alto replied. "Anyway, I'm going below to my cabin. Goodnight, Ulmo… what's left of it."

"Goodnight," the Vala answered. The figure, back to Orlando, made her way to one of the staircases before Ulmo added, "Ëarhen — you were never out of my dreams."