Lúthien was gone. She had slipped free of her guards one night and left to face the dark of Angband alone. His betrayal had not kept her safe, he had only doomed her to go to her death alone. How foolish he had been, to think she could be held in Doriath against her will. He had said that he loved her, but he had abandoned her.
He had searched for her, trying to fix his mistake. However worthless he may be, Lúthien did not deserve to die alone. He had gone even to within sight of Tol-in-Gaurhoth, but he had seen no sign of her. So, he had continued searching.
Well, he called it searching. Deep in his heart, he knew that wandering would be the more accurate term. After all, he could think of no reason she ever would have journeyed so far east. Maybe that was why he had gone this way. He was desperate to find her, but terrified that when he did she might be dead. He could not bear it if she were dead. So he had wandered on, both hoping for and fleeing from any evidence of her fate.
Now he found himself in a distant mountain range, and he found that his legs would bear him no further. He sank to his knees beside a small stream. He knew his body was failing. Even the mightiest elves have need of food and rest, and he had had neither for far too long. Besides, he was not mighty. He was only a lonely musician who had thought he was in love.
The wind blew from the east, trying to bear his spirit to the halls of waiting across the sea. But he would not go. Lúthien might be there, and then there would be no denying that he had let her die. He could not go west.
But he could not keep searching either. He was too weary even to rise, he could not keep walking.
So he lingered kneeling beside the stream, and sang, and though even breathing had become a wearisome task, his voice was clear as ever. He sang of Lúthien, every song he had ever written of her. And when he had run through all those, he made new ones. Long years passed and his body faded, but his spirit still lingered, singing of Lúthien beside the rushing stream. And in his mind and in his songs she was always as she had been, a maiden dancing lightly among the niphridil, immortal and unchanging, the fairest being in all the world.
