3

The Parting

Laiqualassё held her in his arms tears streamed down their cheeks as they held each other desperately on the hill over looking the sea. All others had drifted away leaving the couple alone in this moment. Aria had left in Ellion's arms her tears just as filled sorrow as her parents. She knew that she had to leave them in their last moment together, and that when she next saw her Ada he would need her more then ever. As they reached the bottom of the hill she saw Elrond and Aria ran to him throwing her arms around his neck. Elrond looked up the hill knowing he was losing his Nanneth again and this time there was not chance of ever seeing her again. He held her daughter close, the girl who was younger sister to him.

Eruanna had known that this day would come, it was a certainty that she had known for thousands of years, yet now only minutes before she would leave her one true love forever it seemed it was no easier to bear. How could she return, after all that she had seen all that she had lived? How could she return to being a twenty year old student, when she had been a high lady of elven courts? Fresh tears began to trail her cheeks as she tilted her head back and looked into the storm grey eyes of her one true love. Laiqualassё, her teacher and her guide, her lover and her beloved. She had never seen anything more beautiful then his eyes, and she knew she never would.

"What can be said at such a moment?" he whispered. His eyes searched hers and then his lips claimed hers. A kiss that was filled with utter despair and sadness, each of them put their souls into that one kiss holding to each other like they were the only real thing in the world.

"Meleth-nin, you must not fade when I leave. It is hard enough to know that I am leaving but to know that I have condemned you to death with my parting is more then I can bear. You must live, for me and for Aria. She may be married but she will need her Ada more then ever now." Eruanna looked up at him her eyes begging him to grant her his word, to ease at least a part of her pain.

Laiqualassё's eyes help all the sadness in the world. He wondered if he could grant her his word in this. Could he live if he did not have her by his side? Could he live if he did not wake to the sunrise on her face each morning? Did he want to live with out her? Then he remembered holding his daughter for the first time, Aria, the gift that Eru had given them. Their child delivered to them when they had never had even a dream of a hope that Eruanna would conceive. He could not abandon his child. He thought of Elrond and Lailitha her foster children who had lost so much, he thought of Mirwen, his sister, who would be loosing her best friend, he thought of all those who had cared for Eruanna and he knew that he could live. He would live for he could not cause those around him more pain then they undoubtedly already felt.

He stepped back and took her slender hands in his. "I will live little one. I give you my word, if you give me yours. Promise me that you will live your life to its fullest. Promise me that you will learn and go on to make your world a better place for all who dwell within it. Promise me that if you find someone who makes you happy and who loves you, you will marry again and have a family."

"I will never love again Melamin. I promise you all those things but know that I will never marry again, you and you alone hold my heart and so shall it ever be." She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him again sealing her promise to him and his to her.

He broke their kiss and knowing time was short he picked up her winter cloak that she had dropped on the ground. It would be much cooler where she was going then it was in Valinor. He draped the cloak over her shoulders tying it for her as he had so many times before. He ran his fingers through her auburn curls. They spoke no more words for it felt as though to say good bye would rip them open. They stood close her body felt as perfect against his as it had the first time he had held her like this. Their lips crashed together in a kiss unlike any they had ever shared before. It burnt so bright with pain, and longing, and passion that Eruanna was sure that all that would be left of her would be a pile of ashes. Her eyes closed and her fingers roamed his face, a face she wanted to remember every detail of.

It was as sudden as it had been millennia before when she had first entered Middle Earth. One moment her hands touched warm flesh and her lips were against those of the man she loved most, and the next she felt a cool spring breeze against them. Her eyes shot open and she saw before her a lake vista that had been only a distant memory moments before. She felt as though she had been slashed through the heart. Her first thought was to run off the cliff and end this pain. End all her suffering, to go into the embrace of Mandos. Yet she remembered her last words to Laiqualassё, the promise that she had made him, a promise to which she had vowed with her very soul. She fell to her knees on the rock. The warm elven made cloak fell around her shielding her from the cold. She did not cry for she was far beyond tears.

She did not know how long she knelt there, but when she looked up the sun was sinking in a dazzling array of gold and reds in the western sky. ~How long had it been she thought since she had seen the sun set in the west? ~ She thought bitterly. In the distance she could hear someone calling but she paid it no heed. She couldn't think of what to do. The voice was getting closer but she wasn't paying it any attention. She stood up knowing that she needed to go back to her apartment, it didn't feel like home, she knew no where would ever feel like home ever again for her. For home it is said is where your heart is and her heart dwelt in Aman, in the Blessed Realm ever green and fair.

"Anne-Marie," she heard someone calling. At first it did not even register as her name. She had not been Anne-Marie for almost twelve thousand years. When it finally clicked that someone was looking for her she nimbly climbed down from the cliff and came face to face with a light blond haired man with blue eyes.

"Where have you been?" He asked her sternly and then he did a double take as he saw her dress and cloak. He noted that her hair now reached her thighs where that morning it had fallen to her mid back. "What happened to you?" he asked. "Anne-Marie?"

Although she remembered English perfectly she found the language strange and awkward after speaking Quenya for so long. "You would not believe me if I told," she murmured to her room mate Aidan. "Please, let's just go…go back to the apartment." She looked down at her hands and a single tear trickled silently down her cheek.

Her eyes looked haunted to Aidan. He had known her since they had been children; they had been best friends for years yet now he looked at her and he saw someone utterly changed. She was not his best friend; she was not the girl he had seen only that morning. She was now as he imagined one who had lived a very long time would be, full of memory and pain. "Come, Annie, lets get you home and you can tell what I wouldn't believe," he said gently. He picked up her back pack and slung it over his shoulder and then he put an arm around her back leading her home as silent tears trickled over her grief ridden face.

Valinor—

One moment she had been there, kissing him and clinging to him, and the next he had been alone. He let out a cry of pure anguish, he felt someone put a hand on his shoulder and he turned to see Glorfindel standing behind him. The older elf looked at his friend, and with out a word took the ellon in his arms, as he had when Laiqualassё had been an elfling long ago. "I waited after everyone else had left, leaving you alone but knowing that once she left you would need someone," explained the golden elf.

"You must be strong Laiqulassё. If not for yourself then for her, many here, including myself, will miss her greatly and are hurting as you hurt. Where she is it is likely that no one will believe what happened, but you can be certain that she will fight on. You have ever said that she has a steely quiet inner strength. It was that strength that aloud her to put you on that boat in the second age against your will. It was that strength that let kept her whole through out her years in Middle-Earth. And now it is that strength that will carry her through her pain. Come Laiqualassё your daughter needs you."

Laiqualasse looked up at his friend with pain riddled eyes and nodded before following Glorfindel down the hill.