Trine
(Inside Light and Shadow)
Aragorn strode on long legs into the open courtyard. Around him, four towers marked the cardinal directions. The white tree stood only waist high to the tall man whose hand had gladly rooted it in its place of honor at the heart of the city. He stood thinking a while as he regarded the graceful sapling's limbs. The budding leaves were rich waxy green, but underneath they showed soft silver-grey. Sadness tried to creep into him at the thought that this ancestral tree would be Arwen's sole reminder of her past and people. It was alone as she.
Aragorn's eyes crept up the white stone, gold in the morning sun, to her high window on the southern tower. She stood tall on the balcony, watching the sunrise. Her milky skin was warmly golden as the dawn itself. Aragorn stood watching her. She wore a light and flowing gown of a material woven by her grandmother in Lorien. It was the same color as the leaves of the white tree. It struck him that where the fabric rippled in the wind and caught the light just so, that it, also, was the same silver-grey as the bottoms of those leaves. As he watched, the breeze moved Arwen's dress about her, silhouetting the full curves and long lines of her lithe body in silver. Something moved in him then as it had when he first saw her standing so in the dawn among the elanor of Cerin Amroth. And as she had at their first meeting, Arwen turned her striking gaze on him as though she knew how long he had stared, as though she had been expecting and waiting for him. And then she smiled. Her smile warmed him so completely that, though he still stood in the shadow of the north tower, he felt that he too was standing on the balcony with the gentle sunlight on his face. What doubt and anger there was growing in Aragorn's mind dissolved in the fluid, perfect moment that passed between them then. He trusted her without qualm or condition. Whoever had visited her so late, however unseemly it appeared, he knew that she would not betray him. In that moment he wanted, more than anything else, to be near her, simply to touch her, to caress her. It struck him then, how rough his hands were and how road worn and filthy he was.
Pulling his eyes away from hers, he made his way to his own apartments in the western tower which pointed the way to Numenor. Aragorn wished to be clean before going to his love. He crossed the court, passing the pair of armed guards that stood watch at the heavy oaken door that opened onto a long stairway leading to the king's private chambers. Upon entering his bedroom, the king began to doff his clothing. Andruil, he placed on its wall mounting. As he continued to undress, his mind raced. He thought of how forlorn Legolas had been. Gandalf's words and warning echoed through is tired brain. Then, he remembered Arwen, standing glorious on her balcony. When he closed his eyes, she was there, smiling down at him from her perch. He was glad to be home.
Home. Aragorn's eyes flew open as he ceased disrobing abruptly. He stood, seminude, clothes scattered about his feet. Home, he thought again. Home--and an elvish song--an elvish love song whose singer had been admitted by the back door of the South tower. When he, again, closed his eyes he saw both Arwen and Legolas. Neither smiled. In fact, they wore the same doleful expression. Surely Legolas had not been the dark haired figure Gandalf had seen. Legolas had known of Aragorn's troth to Arwen from its birth. His thoughts turned once more to that silver misted morning in Lothlorien. The morning star had just peeked above the mallorn canopy that the sun had painted gold. And beneath the surreally beautiful halo of a nascent daylight had stood the evening star, his beloved Undomiel. She was so lovely, so ethereal that she might as easily have been a dream as a trick of the light. Aragorn had wished for nothing more than to spend the rest of his life in the presence of this fantastic creature who he had been sure would vanish if he looked away.
He wandered a while through that pleasant reminiscence before finding the way back to the wider path that his thought had taken. He had found Arwen in Lorien, but he had sought Legolas there. Doubtless, some other matter had brought Legolas to the Golden Wood. Surely he had not gone so far simply because he had wanted to be near her. But then a small and ugly voice crept out of a dark, shadowed, cobwebbed corner of Aragorn's mind. It reminded him that he himself would cross any distance, face any peril just to be by Arwen's side. He tried to wrap his unwilling mind around the connection that presented itself. A pleasanter voice told him that he looked too hard and too long for something that wasn't there. After all, it meant nothing that Legolas had been in Lorien at the same time as Arwen. Arwen had lived there for a great many years with her grandmother, Galadriel. Certainly Legolas had been there on some embassy from his father, Aragorn reassured himself. Ah, but an elvish love song, the ugly voice hissed. But there were many elves in the city, friends and relations, come to attend the approaching wedding. A serenade such as Gandalf had heard could have been sung by any number of Arwen's multitudinous well wishers. But why, then, was the singer so anxious to come inside? needled the voice again. Why? it demanded. Aragorn could posit no counter, and the pleasanter voice remained silent. Shaking his head, the king removed his final articles of clothing. He continued to mull over the uncertainty that plagued his mind. Was the unbreakable love of the song the love he shared with Arwen, for he truly loved her and had no doubt that she loved him, or was it a love she shared with another that he had known nothing of until then? He was unsure as he sank into his steaming bath, immersing his weary body, and it vexed him. Soon, though, the muscles that had screamed at him through his long night's journey back to the city began to be soothed and quieted. His flurried thoughts stilled and consciousness escaped him as he slipped into a light but peaceful and dreamless sleep…
Arwen watched Aragorn, the man she loved, walk through the shadows to his door and disappear into the West tower. As the door swung shut behind him she felt her heart snag on something cold and contemptible. The something, she feared, was resentment. But then, she looked out from her high vantage point toward the horizon. The sun, which had stained the sky about it the soft shades of morning, had fully crested the mountains in the distance. She was beginning a new life with this dawn, a life with the man she loved, with Aragorn. As Arwen stood pensive on her balcony, a new pair of eyes moved hungrily over her. She immediately felt Legolas's gaze upon her and returned it. Though Legolas devoured the sight of her, he yearned to experience her with more of his keen elvish senses. He longed for her, and she for him. Looking down on him, hidden in the deep shadow of the North tower, out of sight of the guards at Aragorn's door, she perceived the power within him that radiated from his body like a light, a beacon beckoning her as it had when first she had encountered him so many centuries ago. The same radiance shone from her, in Legolas's sight, drawing him to her as irresistibly as she was attracted to him. Arwen leaned over the rail, extending her hand, inviting him to come to her. His grey eyes gleamed and a small triumphant smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Then, swiftly and silently, Legolas slipped through the dying shadows of the courtyard. The guards did not see him as he opened the wide door just enough to admit his lithe form and closed it behind him.
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