The Lady of Ithilien stood in the doorway, contemplating the snowy wood before her. There, all sound and color and warmth seemed to be swallowed, and yet the cold light of the moon shimmered everywhere as if in celebration. It was the solstice, the darkest evening of the year. She brushed her hair which had taken on, as always in that season, the burnished hue of rust on iron. In summer, she spent the long hours of each day in the sun, and the pale golden light with which she shown lent her an almost Elvish air, as her husband's dark kinsmen had oft remarked with wonder. In winter, she had not the same remote, celestial brilliance, but rather the richness of a blazing fire in the hearth—perhaps a better reflection of her temperament now, which crackled in her middle age with both inviting warmth and frightening intensity. Faramir had noted as much at her forty-eighth birthday celebration the day before, lamenting with great sentimentality—and his usual wry wit—that neither their son nor any of their daughters had inherited their mother's lovely hair.
So it was that the Lady of Ithilien, untangling her amber tresses on the threshold of the darkening wood, discovered a single strand as pure white as the sparkling expanse before her. For a moment she held it delicately aloft between her left thumb and forefinger, rotating it in front of her eyes. Then she let it fall to the ground and walked through the door onto the balcony, where she let the snow fall on her for a span of time she could not recall.
"Éowyn?" Roused by her husband's bemused greeting, she shivered with the sudden awareness of where she was. She did not turn to him, but he came to her and wrapped his arms tightly around her. She took a moment to appreciate the strength in them, for he remained nearly as vigorous at sixty as he had in his days as a young captain of the City.
"Gladly I will follow you to any peril, but this seems most imprudent. You shall catch your death in this cold, Éowyn."
Deliberately, almost with caution, Éowyn averted her eyes from the deep wood before her to meet his tender gaze.
"You have hit the mark, as always. One day I shall die."
"As shall I, love," he over-enunciated each word, not grasping her meaning or, more likely, not wanting to, yet.
"I am not of the race of Númenor. You know this, and I know it. One day, sooner than I can accept, I shall go where you cannot follow me."
Faramir held her gaze for a long moment before gathering her more closely to him.
"And all other days," he began, his voice again smooth and low, "you shall not."
Though neither of them knew it, they stood on that day at the midpoint of both their lives. In his later years, Faramir looked not unlike his father, though so different were they in demeanor that few marked the resemblance. Éowyn, though suffused in old age with an ethereal pallor, remained as full of life as ever; daily she rode beneath the sun in continued resistance of the creeping stillness she had kept at bay for many long years. When, on an icy winter day, she fell from her horse and was hurt, only she and Faramir knew the significance of her injury. She accepted medicine as a means of appeasing her children and grandchildren, but she did not get better, knowing in her heart that she would not recover. Faramir was ever at her side in those days, his official responsibilities having long ago passed to his son, and those who happened upon them sitting together saw no tears, only knowing smiles and hushed reminiscence on all they had seen and done together.
On the eve of the winter solstice, having poured her last wishes for her children lovingly into their ears, Éowyn sent them away, unwilling to have them see their mother surrender even in the face of darkness unescapable. Then she called Faramir back to her, and he took her hands and kissed her brow as she sunk at last into sleep. When he rose and looked upon her where she lay, not to stir again, their mingled tears glistening upon her face in the moonlight, he thought of Boromir passing him on the waters of the Anduin. So too would this moment pass, and he could not stop the passage any more than he could follow the traveler where time's river carried them. He turned and went silently from the room, for the White Lady was no longer there.
In Minas Tirith, Éowyn's death was felt more deeply by many than they anticipated or desired. To those who did not know her well, this unyielding lady of sunshine and snow had seemed ever to dwell just beyond comprehension, while the peculiarities of her relationship with the Steward Faramir had garnered much speculation and even a little wariness. Perhaps in spite of all this, as her shrouded form was borne along the Silent Street, the whole city seemed to hold its breath; there was a sense that some high and brilliant star had passed forever from sight over the horizon, leaving even the vast expanse of night darker in its absence. The people's hearts broke, too, for the lord that they loved, even as they praised the apparent steadiness with which he met his sorrow. In recent years, the lord and lady of Ithilien had witnessed more than one old friend interred at Rath Dínen, and on those occasions both had wept uninhibited; this made Faramir's placid bearing and serene smile on that day all the more remarkable.
"Even so great men great losses should endure*," one onlooker remarked as he beheld the Steward of the City, a stalwart monument to patience, before the doors of the tomb.
As the mourners dispersed into the early morning mist, Faramir remained, his thoughts straying out of time and place as he looked towards dawn in the east. Arwen the Queen remained also, and for a long time, neither of them spoke.
"I come at last," she began, "to wonder anew at the doom of Men. It is a grievous fate which until now I have contemplated only from a distance. Seeing it thus reflected in a dear friend, I begin to guess at much that I did not understand when I chose this path, all those years ago."
"Seeing it thus reflected, would you now have made a different choice?"
"I would not."
"Nor would I."
In the years that followed, Faramir did not grow despondent or withdrawn; on the contrary he seemed to delight more than ever in his children and grandchildren, and in the care of his realm and service of his King and friend. Indeed, in all things of the world he saw a glimmer of his departed love, and though his heart ached he was yet grateful. Those around him began to mark, though, how with each passing year he seemed to spend more time in silent contemplation, and it seemed to the eyes of the King especially that the Steward was no longer fully of that world, a visitor in the land of the living, much as he might enjoy the time he spent there. In the tenth year after the White Lady's passing, Faramir confided in his children that he felt his heart and mind being drawn slowly away from the green glades of their home. When at last it was time to leave this life behind, he concluded, it would be but another step along the dark and lonesome path he had long followed.
The winter solstice came again in year 82 of the Fourth Age, and Faramir walked alone at sunset, marveling at the snowy glades of Ithilien gilded for an enchanted moment at the ending of the day. It was in the golden glow of this half-light that he found himself, suddenly, within a waking dream of open plains and a vast sea of grass that rolled on under the sky. Then the vision passed, and he nodded in silent acceptance of what would happen next.
On the dark road to Minas Tirith, after the sun had sunk beyond the trees and he had crossed the river for the last time, he passed his son's daughter as she returned home from an errand. Seeing him silhouetted on the path before her, a halo of moonlight about him, she cried out.
"Grandfather! Where are you going? Will you not accompany me back home?"
She was stock-still upon her horse in the middle of the path, and as he passed close to her he slowed but did not stop.
"Nay, dear child. My road now leads the other way. Farewell and may you always live in such peace as I have known. It is a wondrous world you have inherited, and my heart is glad for you." And so he passed out of her sight, drawing nearer to the stone city that lay ahead.
The King of Gondor rose before dawn, leaving the warmth of his bed in search of he knew not what. The cover of snow that laid upon the city muted his footfalls, and all around him was still. Coming at last to the door of Rath Dínen, Aragorn saw who stood upon the threshold and called sternly to him.
"Whither do you go, Faramir of Gondor, so early in the cold morning and without the leave of your King?"
The aged Steward turned to face him, and for an instant, Aragorn found himself looking at the grim young man who had awakened from near-death beneath his hand all those years ago, gray eyes alight at once with recognition and fealty.
"I am glad to meet you here, my friend, again at the threshold of the unknowable. But this time I cannot tarry. The White Lady calls to me, and I must go."
Then the King bowed his head low in a gesture of fond farewell, and when he raised it again there were tears upon his face. Faramir was gone from the doorway, and was never again seen by mortal men.
*From Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.