Summary: B2MEM 2011 – Day twenty-five – Lothlórien – Challenge – start a story with these two lines… She knelt on the floor, carefully picking up shards of glass. Why did it have to be this one that broke? (Arwen)

Entwined

She knelt on the floor of her grandmother's talan, carefully picking up tiny shards of glass. Why did it have to be this one that had broken?

She had been admiring the detailed craftsmanship in a shaft of sunshine glinting through the thick, leafy roof when it had slipped through her fingers as though oiled. She had been unable to catch even the chain though she had lunged to do so, landing in a very unladylike sprawl on an elbow that throbbed now, though she paid it no mind.

And now the bit of blown glass no larger than the end of her thumb was a meager pile of splintered pieces dipped in tiny river of sparkling purple. Though entwined, the threads of color had been trapped in their own airspace, individual, he had said, yet together, when he had presented it to her last evening. Like the two of them. Blue for her calm, elven demeanor; red for his impulsive, forward Edain nature.

At least that's how he thought of himself, though he was the most patient man she knew. And she knew many more now than she had thirty years ago when they had first met.

Aragorn was the soul of fortitude, endurance and persistence. He had waited twenty-five years for her – a very long time in the lives of men. And would likely see as many more pass before ever their dreams came to fruition.

Arwen longed to take him to her grandmother's mirror and show him the man she saw every time she beheld his face. The man of bone-deep integrity and iron will whose silver eyes had intrigued her from their first encounter. The Edain of the ancient noble houses of Bëor and Tar-Minyatur.

But one could never tell what the mirror might chose to reveal and she did not want him to see some possible future that did not include her. For though his heart was given wholly and completely into her keeping, she knew if he saw a possible future that did include her, he would embrace it wholeheartedly. Her father's grief weighed heavily upon him and he ever sought ways to turn aside her insistence on following him beyond the circles of this world.

Like the entwined threads of color in the necklace he had so painstakingly made for her, their lives were now entwined, the bond, by elven custom, unbreakable unto the ending of the world.

Why oh why, out of the dozens of gifts he had given her, did it have to be that one?