The Undying Lands really were paradise, in the truest sense of the word. Pain never lingered long here, and neither did darkness. Even the nights were bright and most often clear, the stars glittering overhead and the moon close and ever full.

Frodo leaned against a white stone railing and breathed deep the clean scent of fresh earth carried into Tirion on the slow night wind. The spring planting in Valinor had just finished, and the hobbit had delighted in spending days turning the soil in preparation alongside Sam and Bilbo and countless other Elves, some he knew only in passing, others only by sight, and still more that he had never met before at all. They had been laughing and singing and celebrating the whole time, and there had been dirt and mud and water fights more than once amidst all the joy of life.

Now it was done, and all that was left was to tend the fields as the plants grew and their fruits ripened. Frodo wasn't even sure he was familiar with half the things they had planted; he had been told the names before, but there was a big difference between the plant and the finished food. In addition, it had been a great many years and his Quenya was finally approaching halfway conversational, as few Elves born in Valinor knew Westron or remembered Sindarin. Still, even if he couldn't understand all of the songs being sung behind him, the happiness and bliss they conveyed were unmistakable.

Yet bit by bit he became aware of a ringing in the background, in the distance - no, not a ringing. A clanging, but not an alarm. He got up to follow, and found himself at a small smithy off in one of the side streets, away from the main thoroughfare. A tall, dark-haired Elf stood at the forge, hammering something into shape on an anvil. Even to Frodo's untrained eye, it was clear he had the skill of a master, but the hobbit saw no great works on display to prove his worth, only normal things like hammers, chisels, knives, and nails, simple but impeccably wrought.

When the smith turned to heat the material, Frodo finally saw his face clearly in the light from the forge. He looked very like Maglor, who had long since repented his deeds of old and finally been granted leave by Eru Himself to return to Valinor. The Elf had been sad to leave Mordor, which had become something like a home to him over the decades spent there combating Sauron, but greater was his longing for the White Shores of Aman in the Far West. He had sailed with them, and sung seemingly without end until the Tower of Avallónë had risen into view above the horizon, his voice pure and honed with millennia of experience.

The more Frodo watched this smith work, the more he was convinced that this was one of Maglor's kin, or perhaps a relative of his father Fëanor. He had an almost single minded focus for his work, and didn't notice that he was no longer alone until long after he finished, wiping away the few tiny beads of sweat that had formed during his exertion. Unlike a hobbit - or any other non-Elven race - he didn't jump or yelp when he finally spotted him, only raised an eyebrow and said in perfect if faintly archaic Westron, "Well met. I am known as Dring. What can I do for you?"

'Hammer'? What kind of a name was that? "Nothing at the moment," the hobbit answered with a faint smile, "I am only watching you work, and wondering why you are here in your forge, instead of on the streets celebrating."

The Elf sighed. "It is the same every year," he replied, turning to put the… thing he had made away, "There is nothing I didn't see last year, and nothing I won't see next year. My time is better spent working on commissions."

Frodo hummed in doubt but did not gainsay him.

"But who are you?" Dring asked, "I heard in passing that mortals had come to Aman, but I haven't yet had the opportunity to make your acquaintance."

"I am Frodo Baggins, a hobbit of the Shire," he answered, "It's a pleasure to meet you."

They exchanged some other pleasantries while Dring started on another commission, before at last coming around to their families. "I am wondering if you are by chance related to Maglor Feanorion, who came West with us and some others," Frodo said, watching the Elf closely, "You have a similar look, and his family is famed for its many skilled smiths."

There was just the briefest hesitation; if the hobbit's attention hadn't been riveted on the Elf, he might not have seen it. "Aye, we are distant kin," Dring replied, "but then, most Eldar are related, even in only the vaguest sense. Our lines have been a confusing tangle of intermarriages since the records began."

"True enough," the hobbit agreed, "It was much the same in the Shire in some ways. We hobbits are a small people, even smaller than the Eldar, and not just in body."

That earned a brief flick of a grin.

But then Frodo heard Sam calling from him somewhere nearby, and knew that it was time to return to the celebration. He hopped down from his perch, and bade farewell to the smith.

"It has been good talking to you, Frodo Baggins of the Shire," Dring returned, "Come back anytime."

And Frodo did return, sometimes bringing Sam with him, but circumstances never fell right for any of the others to come meet the smith, to see if Maglor recognized his distant kin and could tell Frodo what his name really was.

(But maybe he already knew. There was a thought drifting in the back of his mind, something Idril had said so many years ago - "With nothing to bind him here, maybe his spirit has passed into the West.")

For a long time, at least a decade or longer, nothing came of it, until finally the hobbit became something like friends with the Elf, friendly enough to invite him along to one of their excursions to the sea. Though he was much more at home in Tirion and the fields beyond, Frodo couldn't deny that there was just something refreshing about the salty air and cool breeze.

Bilbo and Sam - and Gimli, now that he and Legolas had come (along with a red-haired she-Elf, who had vanished into the Halls of Aulë and not come out again) - got roped into rounding out a group of young Teleri Elves' teams for some four-way sport played with ten balls on a flat spot of sand not too far from the water. Frodo wasn't really clear on the rules, so he sat back with Dring and watched them play.

But as the day went on, he became aware that Dring wasn't really watching the game. Instead, he was looking east to the horizon with a faintly grief-stricken look on his face. He called the smith's name, but it took several tries to get his attention, and when he finally looked at the hobbit, a single diamond tear rolled down his cheek but was quickly wiped away. "What is it?" Dring asked without the slightest waver in his voice.

"Something is clearly wrong," the hobbit returned, "You look east as if it is your death, and we have known one another for years but I have never once seen you weep - or any of the Eldar, for that matter, but this is about you. What ails you, my friend?"

Dring shook his head. "Nothing that anyone can fix, so do not let it trouble you. Only memories of my time in Arda."

"I know the feeling." Frodo too looked east, back in the general direction of Middle-earth. "Even so, a burden shared is a burden halved."

That pulled a soft laugh from the Elf. "Not this one."

The hobbit turned back to look at the other, who now had his legs pulled up to his chest, his arms clasped around. "What wound is so great that you refuse to let it heal? That you keep ripping it open even here in the bliss of Valinor?"

"It is not a wound I received, but one I dealt," Dring answered, only half aware that he was speaking as he buried his face in his knees, "I - betrayed a great many people to their deaths… and one in particular above them all, who in no way deserved it. He had already lost so much to the darkness - his wife and son, all his friends - and I only made it worse before leaving him to die."

Gotcha.

"I see," said Frodo, "and this one above all - his name wouldn't happen to be Talion, would it?"

Celebrimbor went taut as a wire and struggled to master himself before finally looking up again, his face pale. "You… know about…?"

"He lived, Celebrimbor," the hobbit said gently, "Not a happy life by any means, but he lived. Though he never spoke of how you were lost."

"'Lost'?" The Elf let out a self-deprecating laugh. "Is that how he worded it? I was lost?"

"That's how everyone else did, and so far as I heard, he never said anything at all to correct them."

The smith let his head fall again with another biting laugh. "I was never lost," he said, "Not physically at least. But what story did they tell you?"

So Frodo told him the same thing Idril had told him so many years ago, right down to how the Elf-wraith was never found after the fall of the Dark Tower, though it hadn't stopped Talion from searching. While he was pleased that… whatever had happened on the bridge to Barad-dûr had not been the end of the Ranger, hearing that he had fallen into darkness, had become one of the Nine - even though he later returned - only seemed to compound the Elf's grief. "That was my fault," he whispered, staring blankly off into the distance, diamond tears rolling slowly down his face, "I wasn't lost, wasn't stolen by Sauron, as they seem to imagine. No. I was blinded by my anger and hatred and greed, and when he wouldn't do as I ordered, when he set that Ringwraith free rather than bend him to our will, I abandoned him. I held shut the wounds that the Black Hand dealt in that ritual…" Here he reached up to touch his throat. "...and when I took our Ring and left him, they opened again. I left him to die on that bridge. Him and all those who followed us. I thought… I don't know what I thought. To face Sauron on my own? That together with my aunt's Blade and Light, I would be enough to overcome him, when Talion had been the source of our strength? When I made the New Ring to be used by him and no one else, not even myself?" He let his head fall again. "I was a fool," he choked out, "I was a blind fool, and it cost us both absolutely everything."

Frodo didn't know what to say. Though they were both Ring Bearers, he had only met the Man a few short times before sailing, so he couldn't even begin to guess at what he had been thinking, why he had refused to speak of what happened to make him put on the Ring, to begin his long, slow slide into shadow… and why he had kept silent even after he returned to the light. If anyone had had the right to speak, it had been him - but he hadn't.

Finally, the hobbit said, "I do not know why he never told anyone the truth of what happened - I only met him a scant handful of times. But I do know that he never spoke ill of you."

Celebrimbor huffed out a short laugh. "He is a better man than I."

"Of course he is. He's actually a Man, and you're an Elf."

That pulled a real chuckle from the Ringmaker. But then-

"Mr. Frodo!"

The hobbit looked up as Sam raced over to them. Bilbo, Gimli, and the Elves had abandoned their game and seemed to be fishing for their lunches, but that wasn't what the other hobbit was calling his attention to. "What is that?" he asked, pointing out over the water, "That isn't any seabird I've ever seen, that's for sure."

At this distance it seemed completely white, almost like a gull of some kind, but it wasn't flying at all like one - not wheeling and diving, only aiming straight as an arrow for the shore.

It was getting bigger, too, still some ways out but already too big to be any seabird Frodo knew, either. And the details were starting to resolve out of the blur of white; on its wings close to its body and on its belly there were brown markings, bands of some kind, and on its back was another blotch of brown and a smear of glinting metal…

…of black and gold.

No. Not markings or bands. A harness.

Frodo got to his feet. "That's no seabird, Sam," he said, a wide grin blossoming on his face, "That's a fire drake."

Celebrimbor shot to his feet at once, barely seeming to move through the space between. One second he was sitting, and the next he was standing, staring out over the water and seeming to experience every possible emotion at once. At last, he gasped, "Talion?!"