Eventually it Wins

"What makes you think that?" Legolas furrowed his brow.

"I could ask you the same question you asked me this afternoon."

He seemed to think for a moment before he said, "Why I was so short with you."

"Yes." I had meant to let the subject rest. But it had stuck with me. He'd gotten his answers, of course there had been a half-truth or two, but I'd continued to wonder why he'd seemed so displeased.

"I wasn't sure you wanted me there," he said after a long pause.

"I don't understand."

"Well," he looked like he was choosing each word carefully, "I can understand why you resented me for keeping you in the dark."

I lowered my eyes. Just as I did, he retreated to the safe space. Or to put it another way, he took me at my word and left me to address the other matter myself. After all, I was the one who had claimed it wasn't important to me. It was my own fault.

So I took a deep breath and said, "I rather think it has something to do with the moment you ran away."

"I didn't run away," he shot back, sounding a little offended. I bit the inside of my cheek to stifle a grin. Score. He may be old, but apparently even elves could still be grabbed by their pride.
"It certainly looked that way to me."

He expelled the air. "Then you are mistaken."

"Well, well." Now I couldn't stop the corners of my mouth from twitching after all. "You know, I can understand that this was a one-time thing and it won't happen again. And I don't blame you at all. You were curious. There's nothing wrong with that."

"But?"

"You should at least admit it. I'm not stupid."

"I never meant to imply that."

I sighed. "I realize that. But I think as long as that's left unsaid between us, it's going to continue to feel, at least to me, like I can't speak freely."

Now the corners of his mouth twitched, too. "I never was under the impression that you would let anything stop you from saying what you wanted to say, even if the world burned down doing so."

"You might be right." Pause. "Gimli has taken it upon himself to educate me about elvish customs."

Now I wasn't imagining the amused smirk. "Do you think a dwarf is the right source for such knowledge?"

I looked at him. Legolas was only slightly taller than me, we were almost at eye level, which gave me a certain authority. "If you had taken over, it might never have come to this... situation. He told me that elves only marry once and that it was possible but unusual to articulate feelings to more than one person. Was he wrong about that?"

"No," he said. I sensed he was thinking about cutting the conversation short. Apparently, he decided against it. "We are marrying with the knowledge that we will keep our mate forever and see them again in Valinor after we die or after we sail west."

"Your elvish mate."

"Yes."

"Because humans or dwarves are not allowed to sail to Valinor?" I wanted to understand this once and for all. I knew that elves were technically immortal, but what did that mean specifically?

"They are allowed, but only if they have been invited. That's not what I was trying to say."

"But?"

"You are not immortal."

"Obviously," I said, thinking of the first gray hair I had discovered this year. "Thank you for reminding me."

He lowered his eyes. "Elves don't die like humans. When we pass, our souls travel to the Halls of Mandos. We linger there for a while and then have a choice: continue to walk there as spirit beings or return to Valinor or even Middle Earth at some point."

"So you reincarnate, interesting."

"You have one of your words for everything, don't you?"

"You better remember it, it won't be the last."

He grinned faintly before continuing, "If our partner passes before us, they aren't lost. We have the assurance that we'll see them again when we get to Valinor - one way or another."

"That's a nice certainty."

"Yes," he said quietly.

"And humans? What happens to us?"

"That I cannot tell you. Your souls leave this world. They are not bound to it, as ours are."

Wonderful. And I had already hoped to uncover one of the greatest mysteries of our time with the help of a being that I had not known existed until a few years ago. "So that means that any kind of relationship with a mortal means for elves to lose them to death sooner or later," I stated.

"Yes."

"Then why is your best friend one?" After all, that aspect seemed to bother him immensely. Wasn't it only logical to rather form friendships and relationships with other elves?

Legolas took his time with the answer. Finally he said, "Mortals have given me a view of life that elves can never have."

"And what would that be?"

"Not to live in the past or plan for a distant future, but to shape the present."

I frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Again he took his time, searching the sky with his gaze as if he would find answers there. "Elves fill their lives with many things. But for me, at least, it has never felt as fulfilling as it did until the moment I decided to become a member of the Fellowship of the Ring."

"So you've had the perspective of an endless life, but only learned to live it properly when it was shown to you by people whose time is limited?"

He nodded. "I guess you could say that."

I probably would never have thought of that had I not met him. My own mortality was something I had never questioned, let alone wondered what it would be like if it wasn't there. "Have you thought about what you will do when your friends die?", I asked suddenly. Only afterwards did it occur to me that this was probably a sore point for him. "I'm sorry, you don't have to answer this question."

"I want to, though."

"Okay…"

He turned to me. "I will probably answer the call of the sea and sail to Valinor. As many of my people have done."

"Do you think you will be happy there? If the elvish perspective already bothers you here in Middle Earth, surely that will not be any better there?"

"That I cannot fathom," he replied thoughtfully. "But what about you, Aspen?"

"What do you mean?"

"When you return - and you seem to desire nothing more - what will you do? Who are you?"
The last question in particular touched something in me. I had never fully arrived here because I didn't consider myself part of this world. I had taken on a personality that was adapted to my surroundings. But who I was here, I had never really figured out. "I only know what I wanted to do then," I finally admitted. "I wanted to see the world. And after that… I wanted to start a new job that would make a difference. Something meaningful. But whether I can do that at this point? I don't know. It also depends on when I come back: If it's like I've only been gone a few days, then I could probably pick up where I left off, but if four years here is also four years there, then I'll have to start over."

"Is that what you want?"

"What?"

"Start over?"

I broke eye contact. He had hit the bull's-eye. Because I'd been asking myself that very question countless times lately. And if I didn't want to: Why was I even trying to get home? Instead of an answer to his question, I replied, "Do you know what the old woman said to me?"

"The woman from the village?"

I nodded. "She said that she believed that her journey to Middle Earth had a deeper meaning, and that perhaps everything was meant to turn out just as it did. Sometimes I wonder if the same is true for me. But how am I supposed to know which is the right path?"

"I think that's a question all of us face," he said.

"And I thought your age had made you wise enough to give me some kind of answer to that."

Again he smirked. "I may be ahead of you in years, and certainly in knowledge, but I'm sure you know more than I do in other fields."

I could hardly imagine that. "Which would those be?"

"Human relations." If it had been perfectly still until just now, now a gust of wind drove under my cloak. I shivered. "You are cold, you should go inside," the elf stated.

"Yes, I think I should." Our conversation had calmed my mind enough that I would be able to sleep. "Thank you for your honesty."

"I must thank you."

I smiled briefly, then said something that had been on my mind for several minutes now, "I fully understand your reasoning now. Hopefully you will overcome your fear of death someday."

As I was about to turn away, he asked, "Why do you say that?"

"Well, from what you've told me about your perspective on mortality and us mortals, you appreciate our way of life."

"That's true."

"And from that I conclude that you would like your life to be similar. Because you don't appreciate the focus that elves usually have."

"Yes."

"But you can only truly understand what it means to live like a mortal if you stop thinking of death as something that takes things away from you."

Legolas looked at me for a moment. His mind was working, I could clearly see that. "How could I, death will take something away from me."

"If you want to live in the present, you must accept death as something given. It is the great equalizer, eventually it wins no matter what. You just have to do something with the time that has been given to you. Why are you wasting it doing the very thing you criticized about the elvish view of things when it's so easy?"

"What do you mean?" he asked again, this time his voice had a sharp undertone.

"Whether to me as a mortal or to you as an immortal: The present is now, and anything that comes after the death of your friends, you must address only then. There is no point in worrying about it. You won't change it anyway."

He stared at me, thinking about what I had said. This time I turned away, knowing he needed time to let it all sink in. "I bid you good night," I said as I walked away.

"You too," he replied absently.

When I had almost reached the stairs, he said so quietly that I almost didn't understand, "I enjoyed our encounter thoroughly, Aspen."

My heart leapt. I knew by instinct that he didn't mean the day we had first met in the alley behind the library. He meant the night we had danced together.

I swallowed down my pounding heart and replied, "So do I."

A glance back told me that it looked like he wanted to say more, but decided against it. So I left the walkway - with more questions in my head than I had on the way there.