When he came to again, the first thing he noticed was the noise. A constant roar, growing louder every now and then, rising in pitch and falling again, sometimes interrupted by a screech. He could not place it. As he opened his eyes, he found himself lying on a hard floor of grey stone under an overcast sky. The ground felt rough, cold and unfriendly to his hands. Boromir shifted uneasily. The whole atmosphere of this planet seemed to make him restless, uncomfortable. Its air burned in his lungs and made him cough. He took a look around. Metal boxes of the brightest colours – red, blue, yellow, silver – on black wheels were moving past, set in motion by some invisible magic. 'This is where the noise seems to come from,' he thought. 'and I wonder what these strange metal posts with their coloured eyes are?' He watched them for a while and noticed that their eyes lit up alternately, and accordingly the moving boxes stopped or were set in motion. Was this where they drew their magic from?

Boromir's eyes scanned the rest of the scene. On every side he seemed to be hemmed in by huge grey buildings, crowded wall on wall. Ugly blocks, made of a stone unknown to him, with flat roofs and large but graceless glass windows. The only change they presented was found in large but shabby banners of a hard material which paraded colourful letters he could not read. For the first time since that fight in the forest near Rauros, he found himself wishing vaguely for the palace of Gondor in all its splendour, the White City in its purity and grace.

Every now and then, people were rushing by, and Boromir was relieved to find they were human. Apart from their strange clothing, which to him seemed plain and cheap in material as well as design, and apart from the metal constructions some wore around their eyes, they looked like men, some of them perhaps with hobbit blood in them. Their most common piece of clothing seemed to be trousers made of a coarse blue material, and now Boromir realized that he was wearing a pair of them himself. The upper part of his body was covered by a brown shirt of a soft, linen-like material. Most important of all, his body had become substantial again, and he hardly differed from the men and women around him.

From scraps of conversation that drifted over to him, Boromir gathered with astonishment that the inhabitants of this planet spoke the Common Tongue – or at any rate, that he could understand their language. However, like the metal boxes, they were hurrying past, some alone, some in small groups, brushing against each other, not taking any notice of each other or of the strange visitor.

In the middle of this chaos, leaned against a square stone pillar that formed some corner of a building, there stood a young woman. Something in her slender figure attracted his full attention, almost mesmerized him. Slightly curled hair of a rich golden colour – not unlike his own – framed a white oval face with slightly slanting, almost elvish-looking, serious blue-green eyes. A black, tight-fitting dress emphasized her delicate beauty and set off her long golden hair like amber on night-black velvet. She looked so fragile, so lost in this bleak wilderness of stone and metal. A graceful flower wedged in between stone slabs, a rose in the desert. Somehow she reminded him of his mother.

He slowly approached her, his eyes fixed on her steadfastly for fear this ethereal apparition might vanish into thin air and be gone. "What is your name?"

She cast down her eyes and was silent.

'Am I intimidating her?' he wondered. Suddenly an irrational panic gripped him that he might scare this delicate creature away like some beautiful wild animal. That he might lose her the moment he had found her. That he might awake and find it was only a dream.

"I won't tell you my name," she finally said, and her blue eyes were directed steadfastly towards him now. "Because I don't like my name."

He had never heard such an interesting voice before. Perhaps much of its effect came from the fact that she pronounced every word very carefully and distinctly; but above that it was so rich and deep that it seemed to contain everything: a clear, acute ability to analyse and maturity to reflect things, yet a freshness and dreaminess, a tinge of wistfulness; something like acceptance or resignation, and yet a strength and resilience; a certain caution, but capability of enthusiasm if a worthy cause was found.

"Hmmm ... what shall I call you then? Have you got a nick-name? A pet-name? What does your father call you?"

"My father doesn't call me much at all, because he has left us long ago."

"Oh – I'm sorry. What about your mum?"

"She doesn't have any pet name for me. (And not much time either.)" The last sentence was muttered more to herself than to him.

A surge of compassion flooded his heart and gushed towards her. How well he knew these feelings! Even beyond the bare facts of life circumstances, he recognized a kindred soul. From the way she looked at him, that proud little shake of the head, to the depths of thought, and yes, of pain, that were mirrored in her serious grey-blue-green eyes (he could not make up his mind exactly on the colour, since they seemed to change). His heart jerked with a sudden jolt of longing. He felt it pounding as he asked, "And your boy-friend?" A bitter laugh was her only answer.

"Hmm… If you don't mind, I will call you Ninglor. Where I come from, this is the name of a golden flower growing in the water. For you are as graceful and beautiful as a flower, a delicate golden flower with your golden hair, and your eyes remind me of water – in all its facets." And it had to be an elvish name for her, he added in his thoughts.

She burst into a light laugh, and a smile appeared on her face, lit up her face in a sudden change that was like a sunrise, a sunburst, like the moment when Rivendell, the Last Haven of the Elves, had presented itself to Boromir's eyes for the first time, the valley clad in a golden array of sunlight, its waterfall dancing in a dazzling eddy of beauty, of stunning, unearthly radiance. He had not been prepared for this, neither then nor now. It disarmed him, completely overpowered him. He swallowed hard.

"Thank you," she then said, in a very natural, sincere and heartfelt way that conveyed to Boromir the feeling that he mattered to her, that what he said was important and was taken seriously. "And where do you come from?"

'Can I tell her? Will she think I'm mad? Or will she fear me?' "I come from a place that has got much more nature. Huge forests, majestic mountains, rivers running proud and free…" ('Hmm,' he thought, 'I'm getting really poetic about Middle-earth – I must be missing it!')

"Oh, it doesn't look like this everywhere in our country," she retorted. "There are nicer places here as well."

"Would you mind showing me one?"

She looked at him with furrowed brows and a sceptical expression in her eyes. "There isn't any nice place near, really. And it's getting dark pretty soon. – Well, we could go to the park if you want. It isn't much, but still …"

'The park' was a pond, fringed by rushes and surrounded by some old weeping willows and a few trees and bushes unknown to Boromir. Still, the blue and green colours, the less poisonous air, the birdsong instead of machine noise, were balm to his senses. He stole a furtive glance at his companion. Yes, she looked much more in place among the rushes, beside the water. Ninglor. His golden flower. If only she were his.

In fact she seemed happier here than she had been ever since he had met her. They pottered about among the trees and flowers, and she told him the names of the different plants and what they were supposed to be good for. She also invented charmingly odd stories about small beings who lived in these plants and cared for them, and then went on to strange animals he had never heard about, which were living in another part of that planet where she had spent some of her childhood. After that she started to spin myths about fabulous creatures, good and evil. Boromir hung on her every word.

"Would you like a sandwich?" she suddenly asked. Boromir had already got used to her habit of changing topics abruptly, and far from annoying him, it fascinated him as yet another aspect of her oscillating, mysterious personality. She produced a small packet from the bag that was slung around her shoulder and unwrapped two half-squashed squares of a white bread glued together with a brownish paste. They cut it in half with his knife and shared it. In spite of the paste, which was very salty, it tasted stale and dead to someone used to the fresh wheat of Gondorian fields and the art of Gondorian bakers. Yet Boromir would not have traded it for all the cakes in Minas Tirith. Even the ducks on the pond got some crumbs. Boromir noticed he could hardly take his eyes off his companion. Her childlike pleasure at these simple delights – feeding the ducks, watching wild birds, catching glimpses of some mice, and once a squirrel – captivated him as much as the concentration and enthusiasm with which she recounted her funny or fantastic tales, or the grave, meditative expression on her face when they were sitting silently on a bench, side by side, staring out into the dark mirror of the pond.

"Tell me about your home," she suddenly broke the silence. So he told her, about Gondor and the White City, about the menace in the East, about Elves, about Rivendell, about the Fellowship and about his own failure. Hesitantly, haltingly at first, and reprimanding himself for his recklessness. 'I must be crazy,' he thought. 'Will she ever swallow this? Can she believe in another world besides her own? Will I scare her away?' But she listened without interrupting, intent upon every word, her eyes fixed on him earnestly, with a certain expression of trust and sympathy, so that he grew more confident and unburdened his heart to some extent, at the same time painting her a vivid picture of Middle-earth.

"Do you believe me?" he finally asked. He did not know why, but he felt as if his life depended on her answer.

"Why shouldn't I?" She sounded surprised.

'I love it when people don't negate everything outside their range of knowledge or experience,' Boromir thought. 'And by Ilúvatar, I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't believed me!'

He then asked her about her own life. She was eloquent on bits and pieces of her everyday life and her world in general, but he could only gather a scrap here and there that gave him insight into her personal concerns. He did not mind. To him, it seemed as if they had known each other for ages. No need for words.

So before long they fell silent again, each of them wrapped up in their own thoughts. Daylight had slowly faded into dusk, and the moon had appeared, a pale crescent far overhead.

"Will you go away again?" she finally asked.

"I do not know." It was the truth.

"I wish you wouldn't." It was whispered so quietly, almost inaudibly, that Boromir was not sure whether he had purely imagined it. He searched in her eyes, and she held his gaze steadfastly, without fear or shame, as if her soul had decided to open up to him through those shimmering blue-green windows.

Tenderly, almost tentatively, he took her in his arms. She did not flinch. He enveloped her, held her fast, imbibing her softness, burying his face in her fragrant hair. She nestled into his arms and they clung to each other, desperately, two little floating islands in a raging ocean, two small, frightened animals seeking to warm each other on a bleak, windswept mountainside.

He did not dare to kiss her, not yet. Instead, he took her hand and bent to kiss that – and then he saw them: cuts along her arm. Some scarred already, some fresh. He could never tell afterwards why this affected him so – more than anything else he had learned about her so far. He had seen, inflicted and received enough – and far more ghastly – wounds in his life. It was not that. His own history repeated? But he did not think of himself now. All he wanted was to protect her, to shield her, to love away this compulsion. To love away its causes. Yet, staring down at these marks of despair, he felt helpless, so helpless he could have screamed with rage. Far overhead a lonely owl was hooting. He had not noticed it till now – an eerie, uncanny, trembling sound. He felt tired, so tired. Failure. Ruin. The White City. This white flower. Our lives. Ruin.

What was that? A teardrop – and there another one – glistened on the pale skin of her arm like the pearls of a broken bracelet. Boromir became dimly aware of a presence. Looking up, he sharply drew in his breath. Tear-dimmed eyes of the deepest ocean blue, strong oval face with soft full mouth, dark tangle of hair – he had seen this face before, but never before this expression. Compared to the depths of pain and love he read in these eyes, his own love for her seemed superficial, insignificant, ephemeral.

A shy, infinitely tender touch. Scarred hands, torn by nails, on a scarred arm, lacerated by a fallen world. Enfolding. Sharing. Aching to heal.

An infinitely sad, infinitely gentle kiss. Warm tears on icy pain. Dying to heal.

Ilúvatar, the Creator of the Universe, was weeping for his beloved.