Their path had been completed in haste, no one wishing to delay in the hopes their hasty exit would save their lord, but he watched them board the silver ship without moving, no expression discernable in either his face or his eyes. His hair alone moved, shimmering on the wind under the light of the stars.
Nallina turned to him, the last in the line. "You are coming?" she half asked, half insisted.
Legolas took a deep breath and slowly shook his head. "I cannot." He sighed heavily, all the weight of the world in the sound. "Not until I know it is what I wish to do. As long as I am here, I have the option to fade away. If I pass to the undying lands, that choice is taken, and I may have to endure an eternity of emptiness, on the verge of fading without ever quite doing so."
Nallina could see his pain, but she could not understand the desire to die. Still, she knew it was not her place to question him. Instead she nodded and swallowed, looking towards the ship that awaited them.
"Go," Legolas murmured, seeing her indecision. "Tell my parents I yet live, though in uncertainty." When she nodded he glanced down at his companion. "Master dwarf, you have been granted passage on that ship. There may never be another. Go, and see Galadriel once more, or stay, and perhaps find yourself standing helplessly by as one of the last elves on Middle-Earth passes into death."
Gimli hesitated for only a moment. Then he looked up at Nallina and nodded. "Tell the Lady for me that I hope to see her again one day, and that she is never far from my thoughts." When the she-elf looked at him in surprise, he shrugged. "Can't leave the lad to pine away alone, can I?" She smiled before turning to run to the ship, leaving the last of the fellowship standing on the shores, watching the ship with little overall emotion. "Come on, elf. Let us at least wander while you think. There are many places yet I have not seen. May as well see some of them before the tale is told, one way or another."