The car ride over would have been miserable if not for the two ellyn at her side. While Maethor still hadn't warmed up to the idea of suits, he was quick to fall in love with her crappy car. In the thirty minutes it took to drive to the cemetery near her mother's house, he'd peppered her with questions, pushing all the buttons he could find until she gently batted his wandering fingers away from her windshield wiper controls.

Haedirn maintained a death grip on the handle above his head and pressed his body into the back seat with enough force to arch his spine. "And how does this thing move again?" He kept asking.

Charlotte's limited knowledge of the mechanics was not enough to assuage his concerns, and, at one point, she was positive she heard him murmuring a quick prayer to Elbereth. But then Maethor had found the radio, and any anxiety vanished in the music pouring from the speakers around them.

She wasn't even sure they could die in whatever dream-world they were trapped inside.

Still, she was both relieved and anxious when they parked beneath one of the massive oaks that lined the cemetery road. Though the oak was much smaller than the trees in the Greenwood, Charlotte couldn't help but think of home.

The sun fought through the grey winter sky, casting twisting shadows on her windshield, and dozens of people milled at the crest of the hill where a black tent loomed over rows of folding metal chairs. A smidge of pink blossoms, her mother's favorite color, was visible beyond the cloud of mourners.

Charlotte's lungs shuddered.

Maethor's hand settled atop hers, and he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles as if to remind her. She wouldn't be alone this time.

A blast of winter air whipped across her shoulders and stirred her curls as she stepped from the car. The Greenwood had been transitioning into winter when she'd "left." Now, in this world of reality and dreams, they'd settled into the full depth of the season. There were still mounds of snow, brown with dirt and loose gravel, piled at the dead ends of the cemetery roads.

"I'm not sure I want to do this," Charlotte said, eyeing her gwaethainn as they came to her side.

"It's your choice." Haedirn rested a hand against her spine. "If you wish to return to your chambers, we can find another way home."

But they all knew that this was likely their only chance. Still, warmth fluttered in her chest at his offer, and Charlotte shoved her arms into the sleeves of Maethor's jacket and trudged up the slick hill.

"Charlotte!" A hoarse voice called once she'd reached the top.

Her eyes scanned the assembled guests until she spotted Betsy pushing her way through the crowd. The woman instantly shuffled Maethor and Haedirn out of her way and wrapped Charlotte in a hug.

"I've been calling you for days," Betsy chastised. "I would've called the police, but my boss said you'd sent an email." She pulled away, keeping her hands wrapped around Charlotte's arms as she studied her. Then her eyes moved to Maethor and Haedirn, and one of those hands fluttered to her chest. "Well, now I see why you didn't answer."

Charlotte rolled her eyes, but her heart swelled with affection. "These are my… friends: Maethor and Haedirn." Charlotte cringed at the pause that had only made it sound like precisely what Betsy thought they were. But there was no way to explain what she'd been through since she'd last seen the woman. No way to explain how Betsy had never met these ellyn, and yet Charlotte considered them family. The idea of sharing that they were her soul-bound warriors, her bonded shields, was laughable.

"Well, good for you, honey," Betsy said with a firm dip of her chin. "I don't mean to sound insensitive, but it's time you got to live a little. Your mama would've wanted it too."

"Thank you, Betsy," Charlotte said, though it was clear by her tone, she was thanking her for far more than her words.

"Of course," Besty said. She gave her a gentle pat and went to find a seat.

"Thranduil is going to develop a complex," Charlotte said once the woman was out of earshot, "if people keep assuming I'm sleeping with both of you."

"Technically, you have slept with both of us." Haedirn winked.

"Multiple times," Maethor deadpanned.

Before Charlotte could reply, the first of many guests approached her to offer their condolences, and a line quickly formed to offer sympathies to Dora's daughter. She was grateful for Maethor and Haedirn's presence, their quiet support and occasional touches kept the sharp edge of her grief away.

Maethor would squeeze her hand when her voice turned thick or delicately usher people onward if they hovered too long, and Haedirn had taken to leaning into her side whenever she felt like she would fly apart at the seams. She received a fair amount of looks, and her guards weren't without admirers, but one sentiment was overwhelmingly present.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

It seemed endless, and she tried to remind herself that most of the people present were genuinely sympathetic. But those same five words echoed again and again, and she couldn't bear the weight that each repetition stacked on her heart. To her, it sounded like a constant refrain: Your mother is dead. Your mother is dead. Your mother is dead.

When she couldn't stand it anymore, Maethor was quick to whisk her away, settling them into chairs facing the shining steel casket. Abby and her family sat beside Haedirn, and if she tried to engage him in conversation, his answers remained clipped.

"How do you know Charlotte?" Abby asked.

"We met through an acquaintance," Haedirn said, his eyes resolutely on the steel casket before him. His arm grazed Charlotte's.

"From the university?"

"Yes."

"I suppose that explains your accent," Abby said. When Haedirn was silent, she asked, "Where are you from?"

"A forest."

"Ah." Having finally understood that he was in no mood to indulge her, Abby gave up and turned to her husband.

"She left you to fend for yourself," Haedirn whispered to Charlotte when she'd gazed at him with confusion. "I doubt I will ever forgive her for abandoning you."

He hadn't meant to send the memory, but Charlotte saw his mind flash back to their bonding, when his heart had broken as he'd watched her fall apart alone in her tiny, empty apartment.

She wrapped his hand in hers with a watery smile.

The service was brief, the way her mother would've preferred. Most of her old coworkers had come, as had some of the volunteers at the animal shelter. If her mother had any other surviving family, they were too distant for Charlotte to have known them. Truthfully though, her mother would've just been happy that Abby had finally shown up. Her two daughters by her side at last.

She barely heard the service, and the people trickled away at the end without a word. Everyone would head to the wake, and these near-strangers, the people who had leaked out of their lives in much the same way, would spend hours sharing memories of her mother, of the person she'd been with them. And there was some comfort in that, but not enough to ease the jagged edges of what was now an old wound for Charlotte. Because, to her, they were mourning someone who had died a long time ago.

She knew the cemetery personnel waiting patiently off to the side wouldn't allow her to stay for the internment, but she was more than okay with that. Just the idea of watching them lower her mother's body into the ground was enough to set her shaking. So she let Abby say her goodbyes and remained glued to her seat until the last of the cars had carried the witnesses away.

And then she rose on quaking legs, her two gwaethainn resting hands on her back in support, and marched the meager steps to the imposing steel casket. Sun-warmed metal greeted her hand, a stark contrast to the utter emptiness, the cold that invaded her chest.

It felt so real.

She fought the urge to yank the lid open, just to see her one last time. It wouldn't be the same. She wouldn't be the same. And it was probably sealed.

Charlotte would never see her again.

If her incident in the river with Thranduil was a tempest, this moment was a summer storm, sharp and quick, a vicious downpour. Her face crumpled, and Maethor tucked her into his chest, where her tears silently soaked through his crisp white button-up. Haedirn rubbed her heaving shoulders as she purged it all.

This. This was the very last she would see of her mother. When she'd been in Middle Earth, there had been some slim chance in her mind that she could come back and fix it all. Some possibility that maybe, if she mastered the necklace, if she found her way home, she could heal her.

But her mother was dead, and Charlotte had come home to a silver box.

Charlotte drowned in her agony, hand pressed to her mouth in a failing attempt to smother her cries. The other hand was a claw on the lid shielding her mother's body from the world. It felt like she was tearing her heart out all over again.

"I'm so sorry I wasn't there," she whispered. Her eyes and nose burned. "I'm so sorry. I love—" The knot in her throat swelled. She had to tell her. Even if her mother wouldn't hear it. Even if this place wasn't entirely real. She forced the words out like jagged knives in her throat. "I love you."

Her chest was burning. Would the pain never end? Would there ever be a time when it didn't feel like dying to think of her? Haedirn and Maethor sandwiched her between them, murmuring soothing words she couldn't understand over the roaring in her ears. She squeezed her eyes shut against all of it. And then the pressure on her sides vanished.

She dropped to her knees in a lush garden, arms wrapped tightly around her shaking body. The distant sound of waves soothed her raw nerves, and on the grass before her, mithril antlers shone brightly in the moonlight. She lifted the necklace from the grass, and a sharp pain shot through her at the deep crack in the glowing stone.

"I never wished that for you," a wispy voice said, and Charlotte raised her head to find Nienna waiting. Tears marched down the elleth's skin, twins to the tracks on Charlotte's face.

"Then why?" Charlotte asked, her voice rough.

"Spite? Pride?" Nienna said. "I am not certain about Vairë's intentions when she stole you from my brother's realm, but I would guess that she wished to break you, cause your fëa to fade, and in doing so, break the very elves I sought to save."

"And now?"

Would she be safe? Would Vairë try again?

"Now my brother has forbidden her access to you," Nienna said. "She will only tell your stories in her tapestries, no more. And you shall have many more stories that she will be forced to weave. Your very presence has altered the course of this world. The ripples will be felt far beyond this moment, into the age of men."

A question burned at the tip of her tongue. She'd been craving the answer since she'd first woken in the fields outside of Imladris.

"Ask it," Nienna said and delicately folded her hands.

"Why?"

Nienna's lips twitched, and she was quiet for a moment before she said, "Middle Earth was heading toward its own destruction. Your Elvenking grew cold and distant with heartbreak and grief, pushing away even his own son. His advisor whispered in his ears, convincing him to sequester his people within the northern realm of Eryn Galen when he would normally stand and fight. Maethor and Haedirn were unable to resist the call of the sea, and they sailed. All the while, Mairon grew ever more powerful, amassing an army in Aman Lanc."

The elleth settled on a stone bench surrounded by pink roses and patted the space beside her. Once Charlotte had joined her, she said, "Mairon swept through the forest with fire, eradicated the people and elves within, and seized Eryn Galen for his own. From there, the rest of Middle Earth fell, divided as they were. That same preordained battle, the one that saw the world turn to ash and fire, arrived one hundred years earlier than Vairë's original tapestries depicted. Eryn Galen stood against the horde and claimed the victory, thus changing the path of the world."

It didn't sound like Charlotte herself had been necessary for that. The elves would have defended the Greenwood anyway.

"But they would not have possessed the enchanted river to guard them," Nienna said, seeing the doubt on Charlotte's face. "Nor would they have survived without the shield you created with the help of your gwaethainn."

"But you could have given that necklace to anyone to the same effect," Charlotte said. She didn't want to sound ungrateful, but she needed to understand why.

"Yes," Nienna shrugged one dainty shoulder and frowned, "and no. Have you not realized it then?"

Charlotte had realized many things, but which was Nienna referring to? "Do you mean my fëa? That it's made from a star like my necklace?"

Nienna smiled softly. "Not like your necklace. You are made from the same star. Combined, you are the whole of its power."

The stone grew heavier in her fingers. The same star? Part of her soul was within the necklace?

"Not your soul," Nienna said. "It may feel that way because you are its key. That is why it had to be you."

"I'm sorry." Charlotte's eyes closed, and she squeezed the necklace, covering the star stone. "I still don't understand."

"We learned from our history." Nienna straightened her skirt and folded her hands in her lap. "Long ago, our people warred with each other, slew innocent elves, to possess such power. We would not unleash even a sliver of my ability unchecked in Middle Earth. Not after that."

"Is that why no one can take the necklace off but me?"

Nienna nodded solemnly. "Aulë is the smith of the Valar, and it is he who crafted the vessel for Varda's star, as he has crafted all of the vessels for her works. He has made it so it cannot be removed save by your hands."

Well, Mairon had already found a way around that. Her hand went to her throat, remembering the sword raised above it.

"He would not have been able to use it," Nienna said.

"Because I am the key?"

"Varda crafted you both from the same star," Nienna explained. "While my gift resides within the stone, only you, who matches the star within, can hold its power. To anyone else, it will be nothing more than mithril and stone."

Which was why even Thranduil, with his good intentions, had been unable to use it. It never would have worked for any of the elves. Nienna would have had to pull someone from another world regardless to form their fëa from Varda's star. But still… Charlotte had been a student. Wouldn't a soldier or some political genius have been better? Someone with experience?

"Perhaps," Nienna said, hearing her thoughts again. "But your grief reached me, and I recognized myself in it. You had enough compassion, enough pity to honor the courage of those who incited such grief within you. You spoke to me in a language I understood so well, the language that would be required to use my gift."

Nienna was silent for a moment, staring over her moonlit garden. "I can only apologize for what you have endured since I have made that decision. I have felt your pain, and I have sorrow in abundance, but not regret. My champions are doomed to a difficult path: that is the nature of grief. But from it, I believe, they learn much: endurance, strength, wisdom. I see that in you. I am proud, little one. I chose my champions well."

Charlotte caught the word and pieced the rest together. "Oropher. He is your other champion, isn't he? That's why you sent him back."

"He is," she said as she plucked one of the roses free and twirled it between her fingers. Its sweet fragrance drifted past Charlotte's nose. "He was given a similar choice: to stand again in Middle Earth or to return to these shores and at last find peace. I'm certain you already know what he decided, just as I knew what you had decided when my brother explained his offer."

It had been an easy decision for Charlotte. There was no way she would leave her new family. She'd chosen Middle Earth and fully expected to wake on that same battlefield.

Nienna tilted her head as if listening to something far away. "Your loved ones are growing concerned that you haven't woken. We'll meet again, Charlotte Annuiel, but before I send you on your way once more: I have a gift, one for your line, for they shall be a line of our making. A jewel worthy of a protector, if the protector is worthy."

If they were made from starlight, as she was.

Nienna's dainty finger scooped a tear from her cheek, and then she pressed it into the crack in the stone of the necklace. It burned brightly, the seam sealing until it left only a glossy surface behind, and Nienna smiled softly, already fading from view.

"Live, Charlotte," she said. "Live well enough that you have something to grieve at the end."

And Charlotte vanished from the garden in a flash of starlight.


AN: A quick second post to make up for the big gap between 50 and 51. Thanks so much for reading and for your reviews! I cherish reading them!