Aiër

by emon14

Shëanon embarks on a quest that will change her life forever and must come to terms with her heritage, her abilities, and the desires of her heart. Tenth Walker. Legolas/OC

37. Chapter 31

Content Warning: This chapter contains imagery and themes that may be upsetting to some readers.

Aiër Chapter 30

Shëanon was walking along a white shore. The sea was to her left. Waves were gently rolling and ebbing; she could feel the salty ocean mist kiss her face. Ahead nothing could be seen but the long, tranquil beach, but still she kept walking.

She somehow knew what she would find.

The sun was warm upon her. Though she walked and walked she felt no time passing, and she was not weary.

She felt peace.

At last, as the water continued to caress the shore, she could see what it was she sought. In the distance there stood a solitary figure, unmoving and expectant, just as Shëanon had anticipated. She approached readily, until they stood face to face.

Tall and still, Lady Galadriel was waiting. Her eyes, searching and pensive, were bluer than the waves, her raiment whiter than the sea's foam, her hair like gold. Though the breeze stirred Shëanon's hair and clothes it did not seem to touch Galadriel at all.

Shëanon stopped in the soft sand before her, and only then did she feel the weight of her long journey—her feet knew every step, her body ached with every wound, and she looked down at her wrists expecting to see the marks of the manacles that had bound them, but her skin was fair and unmarred.

She lifted her head to meet Galadriel's gaze. She was exhausted, ravaged by the dread and turmoil through which she had come, but as she looked at Lady Galadriel, Shëanon felt neither worry nor despair, for at last she knew that her errand had ended—that for better or worse, she had done all she could.

Then Galadriel stepped forth, and a light was in her eyes, and she lifted both her hands and touched Shëanon's face. Shëanon did not move or speak, and Galadriel did not speak, either, but as the lady beheld her Shëanon felt a lump in her throat, and tears blurred her vision, and her chest ached, for she could tell, at once, that Galadriel knew all that had transpired.

Galadriel knew who she was.

They looked at one another for a long moment in silence.

Then, brushing the tears from upon Shëanon's cheeks, Galadriel released her, and at last she stepped aside to reveal the stone pedestal behind her, upon which rested a gleaming basin of water. Shëanon froze, but it was not hesitation that had stilled her.

She closed her eyes, and drew a trembling breath, and when she opened them she found that Galadriel was holding out her hand.

Shëanon took it.

She crossed the remaining few steps to the mirror. As untouched by the sea air as Galadriel seemed to be, its crystal surface was smooth and clear, and, somehow, Shëanon knew that this time when she looked upon it, she would at last see what she had for so long so desperately wished to see.

She cast one last glance at Galadriel, whose anchoring hand she still held, and then Shëanon leaned forward and peered into the depths of the mirror.

XXX

It was dark. There were black branches barely illuminated by faint stars, and a single shadow moved through the night. In his hand he held a great bow, and he crouched in the brush, bending to look down upon the ground where many prints in the dirt seemed to catch his attention. He straightened and hurried onward, through the wilderness, clearly hunting something or someone.

Firelight shone ahead of him. He stopped beyond its reach, obscured by the trees. On the air carried a terrible din of animalistic shrieks and fell voices, and the cloaked figure reached over his shoulder and silently drew an arrow from his quiver. He fitted it to his bowstring and prowled with unnerving grace through the trees toward the commotion, but he had not yet lifted the bow when a new sound pierced the night: a female voice could suddenly be heard, struggling and screaming.

At once the hidden stranger bounded forth, and the firelight illuminated a large clearing milling with dozens of monstrous creatures, yellow-eyed and grey-skinned, their faces twisted and distorted, their hands clasping crude, jagged blades and spears, and in their midst, fighting against the two beasts that held her, was a human woman. The orcs did not yet seem to have harmed her; a large black dog with a face like a wolf had sunken its teeth into one of her captors' legs, and the orcs bellowed with sadistic glee, jumping forward toward the animal with bloodthirsty anticipation.

The young woman was sobbing.

Three of the orcs were dead before any of their fellows had even noticed the person who had emerged from the darkness. He had traded his bow for a blade that glowed like blue flames, and in a flurry of astonishment the orcs swarmed about like a hive of disturbed wasps. Most moved to attack him, but some of them fled into the deep forest as one by one they were felled. The two who held the struggling girl released her and ran off into the night, but falling to her knees the girl did not rise or try to escape, and instead seemed frozen in bewilderment and terror as the orcs swarmed her rescuer…

XXX

The scene shifted and changed, and now Shëanon beheld a small room that she could only guess was the main living space of a humble cabin. The wooden shutters on the windows had been pulled closed, and no light showed around the edges; it seemed to be the dead of night. In a hearth opposite the door a fire was burning which bathed the room in flickering gold, and on the low bed along the far wall a person was lying as though sleeping. His raven hair was splayed across the pillows, his face was creased as though with pain even in his dreams, and his unmarked brow was beaded with perspiration. He lay on top of the quilt, naked to the waist, and his skin shone with sweat before the firelight.

On the floor before him a young woman was kneeling. Her hair was brown, though several shades lighter than his, and while the figure on the bed groaned and writhed in fevered agony, she appeared to be working furiously over him. She leaned away to dip a strip of linen into a bucket on the ground beside her, the water within tinged pink, and as she moved a gruesome wound upon the ellon's abdomen came into view. It was clear that these two were the pair from the woods, the screaming girl who had been at the mercy of the orcs, and the elf who had fought them.

The girl seemed to be sweating almost as much as the ellon was; her hair was disheveled about her face, her dress covered in dirt and stained with blood, but though her eyes were wide with fear her hands did not tremble as she worked…

XXX

Pale daylight seeped into the room. The fire in the hearth was extinguished. At the slatted wooden table in the middle of the cabin the woman was slumped over, her arms folded before her on the tabletop and her head resting upon them. The black dog lay underneath the table, its great head upon her feet, though its amber eyes were open and fixed upon the bed. The bucket was still beside the girl, the water within now clear, and in one hand she still clutched a linen cloth. She was asleep.

The ellon was not.

His eyes opened, and he could not have had more than a brief glimpse of the room before he shot upward, grasping at his hip as though reaching for a sword. He had been divested of his weapons, however, so his fingers closed only upon empty air, and what was more the attempt to move had evidently pained him, for he suddenly flinched and hissed a muffle curse, stilling upon the thin mattress.

At the table, the young woman woke with a start.

"Oh!" she gasped, leaping to her feet. "Do not move!"

The ellon looked up at her with obvious consternation and bewilderment.

"Please, my lord," she pleaded in Sindarin, rushing forward and grasping his shoulders as though in an attempt to urge him back down onto his back. "You were gravely wounded! Lie back, please—"

She pushed, but the ellon did not so much as budge; it seemed that she might as well have been pushing the side of a mountain for all the effect it had upon him. Seeming to realize this at last, the girl froze and withdrew her hands. She looked into his face uncertainly, and must have seen the look upon it, which was grim and stony.

"Please lie down," she said again. "You are hurt."

The ellon stared wordlessly back at her and seemed to appear, impossibly, more forbidding.

"Do… Do you understand me?" the woman asked slowly.

His grey eyes looked her up and down.

"You are a descendant of the people of Númenor," he said at last, in a voice that, even despite his injury and pain, was so clear and fair that the woman gave a start to hear it.

She blinked at him in evident astonishment.

"I—yes," she stammered.

The ellon however was no longer looking at her, but rather casting his gaze about the room before glancing down to study the neat stiches that closed the wound beside his navel.

"Few mortals make a habit of speaking the languages of my kind," he said flatly. "And you have the look of them."

This last part he said so carelessly it might have been an insult, and the girl it seemed thought so, too, for her face colored at once.

"Fewer mortals still make a habit of showing such poor manners or paltry gratitude in a stranger's house," she said evenly. "But perhaps this is the way of 'your kind'."

The ellon raised his eyebrows.

"And how did I come to be in your house?" he asked her. "I think I neither begged entry nor imposed upon your hospitality."

Her face turned pinker still.

"No, my lord," she replied. "But as you were bleeding to death in the forest I felt there was little choice but to bring you here. Should I have left you to perish?"

Suddenly his face flickered with an expression so haunted and empty that indeed he did look dead, but it was gone as quickly as it had come, so that it might have seemed only a trick of the early light.

"I wish you would have," he said inflectionlessly.

The woman stared at him.

"Alas I did not," she said after a tense pause. "For my people do not leave men to die. You are alive, and you are not well enough to leave. Please, lie down."

The ellon shook his head.

"I cannot stay," he said.

"No?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. Suddenly she moved to sit back down upon the bench at the table, laying down the cloth she still held, and crossed her legs as though to make herself more comfortable. She smiled calmly at him. "In that case, I bid you farewell, my lord. May better fortune find you."

The ellon blinked but seemed satisfied that she did not argue, and swung his legs over the side of the bed to stand. As he rose, however, his pain was obvious to see. He moved very slowly and haltingly, and his whole body seemed to suddenly shine clammy and pale. He grit his teeth, standing at last, and looked around until his gaze fell upon the pile at the foot of the bed, where his clothes, weapons, and pack had been laid.

Though he seemed even taller and broader standing than he had lying upon the bed, in his attempt to leave he appeared markedly more unwell. He lifted his foot to take a single step forward, tensed, and went still, his jaw and his fists clenched.

At the table the young woman was watching him in silence.

Again the ellon tried to move, and this time succeeded in crossing the few steps to the foot of the bed, where he visibly steeled himself, and made to bend down to gather his things. This time, however, he swayed on his feet, and when the young woman hastily rose from the table again and urged him gently back onto the bed, he did not fight her.

She looked down at him, no longer appearing angry or stubborn, but worried and troubled.

"You lost a lot of blood," she said softly. "I think a blade can harm an elf just as easily as a mortal man, can it not? Perhaps we are not so different."

She reached for a pitcher and cup set upon a low stool beside him.

"Here," she murmured. "Please, drink. I will make some broth so that you might regain your strength."

She pressed the cup of water into his hands and the ellon acquiesced and drank from it.

"How did I come to be here?" he asked again, now looking at the girl with a measure of curiosity.

"I brought you here," she repeated. She looked as though she feared perhaps his head had somehow been injured, as well.

The ellon raised his eyebrows.

"You carried me here?" he asked dubiously.

"Oh, well, no," she blushed. "You were too heavy. I supposed I… dragged you."

It seemed that she thought the elf would not like to hear this, but his face creased only with deeper thought, and he studied her for another long moment before he spoke again.

"That must have been quite a labor," he said at last.

The woman looked down and did not answer. Instead she stood and bent to kneel before the fireplace, taking kindling to start a fire once more, and as she worked the ellon stared at her back.

"How did the orcs come to find you? There is no damage to your home; they cannot have pulled you from it."

"They did not find me," she murmured, still working over the fire. "I found them. Well, Lumeth found them."

"Lumeth?"

The girl nodded at the dog, whose eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon him.

A shadow seemed to blacken his gaze.

"You cannot mean you were foolish enough to wander the woods at night alone," the elf said darkly.

"Lumeth heard the orcs and ran into the woods. I chased after her."

The ellon stared at her.

"They would have killed you," he said. He set down the cup and moved as though to rise again.

The girl suddenly looked up from the fireplace, her eyes bright and color high in her face.

"And they would have killed her!" she retorted.

For a moment, the elf was silent.

"You would risk your life for that animal?" he asked at last.

Her eyes seemed only to blaze brighter.

"She is not worthless just because she's an animal!" she snapped. At the sound of her agitation, the dog's ears swiveled.

"Indeed, not," agreed the ellon stonily, "and yet many of your kind would disagree."

"Would you not do anything you could to protect someone you love?" she demanded.

The fire cracked in the hearth, and the elf did not reply. A tense silence fell within the cabin, as the black dog lay its great head on its front paws and watched the pensive ellon, who in turn was closely watching the young woman as she prepared the broth.

Finally, when there was no more work to occupy her, she spoke again.

"I should thank you," she said very stiffly, stilling before the fireplace but not yet turning. "I am in your debt."

The ellon seemed not to like this comment at all.

"Nay," he said at once. "There is no debt."

"You saved my life," she protested.

"And you have undoubtedly saved mine in return," he said. "Whatever debt you have imagined is repaid."

The woman rose and at last glanced back at him.

"My name is Mírsell," she said.

For a long time, the ellon looked at her, and as the moments lengthened it was obvious that the girl had decided he would not answer her again, for she frowned and glanced back down at the fire.

"Thank you for your care, Lady Mírsell," he murmured at last, more courteously than he had yet spoken. His dark brow was pinched with thought.

"Have you a name?" she asked tentatively, when it was clear he had no intention of offering one.

The ellon did not avert his gaze.

"Not one you would like."

XXX

The cabin was dark again but for the light of the fire. The ellon was sitting up now upon the bed, taking a whetstone to his gleaming sword. Some time must have passed, for the sickly pallor had left him and he appeared restored to some strength and healed somewhat of his pain. The girl was sat once more at the table with a pile of needlework in her lap, though she seemed more intent upon studying the still bare-chested ellon than sewing, for her needle was barely moving, and she continued to glance surreptitiously up at him from beneath her eyelashes, as though afraid to be caught looking and yet unable to keep from doing so. At her feet the black dog was curled in a tight ball, snoring.

"Where is your father?" the elf suddenly asked, and he must not have made much conversation before, for the girl jumped at the sound of his voice.

"Who says I live with my father?" she asked in surprise.

The elf did not look away from his whetstone.

"You were unarmed in the forest," he observed, nodding toward the mantle above the hearth, where several knives and a broadsword were mounted upon the stone wall. "And you could neither wield that blade nor readily lift it. It cannot be yours, and yet you are unwed, so it does not belong to a husband. If it does not belong to your father then I would guess a brother, but I think not, for there is a burden of duty weighing heavily upon you that I think few brothers might bring upon a sister, and yet which many fathers set upon their daughters."

The girl was visibly taken aback.

"I suppose elves can tell at a glance who is wedded and who is not?" she bristled sarcastically, as though to divert the conversation away from his somber comment about burdens and duties, but the elf was unabashed.

"Yes," he said plainly, still without looking up, and the woman looked more astonished still.

"My father has gone to trade for supplies. He leaves for a few weeks at a time, for the journey is long."

"And he leaves his daughter behind alone with no manner of defending herself?"

"I'm not alone," she protested. "Lumeth is here with me. And I am not defenseless. I have a bow and quiver—"

"Which you cannot shoot—"

"And he leaves me the sword—"

"Which you surely cannot lift from the wall."

She glared at him. It was the most affronted she had yet appeared, and yet the ellon seemed angry, as well, as though he found it a personal offense that she could not defend herself.

"How would you know whether I can shoot an arrow or lift a sword?" she demanded, scowling. "You don't know anything about me."

For the first time, the elf paused and looked up. His eyes were keen beneath his dark brow as he regarded her from the bedstead.

"I speak not to offend you," he said at last, and the girl blinked in surprise. It was the first time the ellon had seemed to care whether he offered offense at all. "Indeed I do not know you, but I have known your touch as you have tended me. You have the hands of a healer, Lady, not a warrior, and that is not an insult."

The girl blushed and glanced away from him.

"My father forbids me from using weapons," she muttered, leaning over her sewing much more intently than she had previously. "He cannot take me with him on his trips, for there would be no one to mind the animals, but he leaves me the sword just—just in case."

"And what of your mother?"

The girl did not look up.

"She is dead," she said shortly.

The ellon absorbed this in silence, watching her with a very peculiar look in his eyes.

There was a silence during which the only sounds were the cracking of the fire and the snores of the dog, for the elf had not resumed his task.

"What of you?"

"Me?" he blinked.

The girl seemed to steel herself.

"Have you a family?" she asked, still looking down at her needle and thread.

The ellon seemed, impossibly, to sit even stiller.

"My father and brothers are dead."

In her seat before the fireplace, the young woman paused.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and seemed to mean it.

"And your mother?" she pressed, when he said nothing.

"I will never see her again."

"And your wife?"

The elf's eyebrows shot toward his hairline, but the girl was staring determinedly at her motionless needle, and did not see.

"I have taken no wife," he said.

The woman bit her lip.

"Have you come from Imladris?" she asked, when the ellon began again to drag the whetstone over the edge of his sword.

"Nay."

"Lothlórien?"

"Nay."

The girl blinked.

"Then do you come from the woodland realm to the east?" she asked, looking up from her sewing in consternation.

"Nay."

At this the woman looked utterly perplexed.

"Then you must hail from the Grey Havens to the west," she said after a brief pause, her brow knit with thought.

On the bed, the ellon met her gaze.

"Nay," he said again, and watched her shrewdly as though waiting to see what she would say next.

Indeed, the girl looked baffled.

"Where were you born?" she asked, taking a different tactic.

"In the west," he answered shortly.

Now the woman set aside her sewing completely, laying it all upon the table beside her and fixing the ellon in a positively astonished stare.

"Do you mean Beleriand before the flood?" she demanded. "Or do you mean to say that you were born across the sea?"

"I was born in Valinor."

"And you… crossed the sea?"

"Yes."

The girl suddenly leaned backward as though afraid, or at the least as though wary.

The ellon was gazing warily back.

She bit her lip.

"I see," she whispered.

"Do you take some meaning from that?" he asked, his eyes gleaming before the firelight.

It was the girl's turn to raise her eyebrows.

"Shouldn't I?"

"Few mortals would."

"And do you speak with many mortals, my lord, to know so surely what they would and would not understand?"

"In truth, I do not," he conceded after a moment, frowning.

The girl looked away.

"Then perhaps you should not be so quick to pass such judgments," she murmured.

The ellon was looking at her very oddly.

"Perhaps you are right," he said at length.

XXX

It seemed to be early in the morning. The ellon stood at the wooden table in the middle of the cabin, loading arrows into his quiver. A soft light was whispering through the window shutters and touched his dark head.

Suddenly the door at the far side of the room opened, and the young woman stepped through it. Seeing the ellon on his feet, she froze, and her wide eyes darted from his clothes, to his booted feet, to the weapons set out before him.

"I am well enough now to leave," he said, without glancing up at her.

Though she might not have known it, the girl's face appeared tremendously crestfallen.

"Oh," she whispered. "Are you certain? I should at the least check your wound—"

"I have tended wounds for thousands of years," said the ellon calmly. "It is healed enough."

The girl appeared more crestfallen still.

"I should prepare you some provisions, then," she reasoned, watching him anxiously. "Food for your journey—"

At last the elf looked up at her, hefting the quiver from the table.

"I shall have no need of it yet," he told her frankly. "I think I cannot leave a helpless maiden here alone with so many orcs about the forest."

Still standing beside the door, the girl opened her mouth and then clamped it shut. It seemed she was torn between displeasure to be called helpless and relief that he was not yet leaving. For a moment neither of them spoke.

"So… you intend to stay?" she asked warily.

"For a time," said the elf. "Until your father returns to you. In the meantime, you will learn to defend yourself."

XXX

"You are not drawing the string back far enough."

"This is as far back as I can pull it!"

The ellon and the woman stood in the clearing outside the cabin, in bright sunlight beneath a blue sky. Several bales of hay had been stacked many yards ahead of them and marked with a target, and the girl had tied back her wild hair and pushed up the sleeves of her dress. In her hands she held the bow once mounted above the fireplace inside, and the elf stood beside her with the quiver.

He was frowning.

"If you are too weak to bend the bow, we will have to make you a smaller one," he murmured.

The woman turned to glare at him.

"I'm not weak," she snapped.

He raised his eyebrows.

"I did not say you are," he replied evenly. "Only too weak to draw a bow meant for a man much larger than you."

The girl huffed and again lifted the bow and pulled back the bowstring. Her arms seemed to shake with the effort.

The ellon was watching her closely.

"Why has your father forbidden this?" he asked. "He leaves you alone and has not taught you at the very least to shoot. It is folly."

The girl grit her teeth.

"Yes, yes," she muttered testily. "I am weak and my father is a fool and my dog is a worthless beast. Anything else, my lord?"

His eyebrows drew together.

"You think it not unwise to leave a child alone in a darkening forest with no means to keep herself safe?"

"I'm not a child."

"Your grandsire's grandsire would be a child to me."

The bowstring slipped from her trembling fingers and the loud twang as it fluttered and finally stilled echoed in the clearing, and the girl looked down at the bow as though in disgust. She brushed the loose strands of her hair away from her face and grimaced.

"I think my father fears if he teaches me to defend myself, I'll run off to hunt orcs," she confided, when the elf stood patiently watching her and only the nearby birdsong could be heard.

The ellon's brow creased further still.

"Would you?"

"No," she laughed bitterly. "I'm not brave enough or mad enough to dare it."

"Why then would he fear such a thing?"

"Because that is how my mother died," she murmured. "She and my father were rangers of the Dúnedain. My father did not like that she still took patrols after they were wed, but I think she did not listen to him. When I was born, she could no longer stray far from the village, for she had to care for me, and I think my father was glad of it, but one day when I was very small, our people came under attack. My mother wished to fight, but my father forbade her. He asked their Chieftain to command her to stay and seek refuge with the women and children who could not do battle, but he would not do so. My mother was killed the same day."

As she spoke, the girl's gaze was far away, trained upon the target ahead of her but seeming not to see it.

The elf's gaze was trained instead upon her.

"How old were you?" he asked.

"Two."

"It is a grievous thing for a child to be sundered at so young an age from her mother," he said, in more gentle a voice than he had yet spoken.

The woman shrugged and fiddled with the arrow in her hand.

"He hated them for it, I think," she breathed.

"The orcs?"

She shook her curly head.

"The rangers. That is why—that is why we live apart."

The ellon's keen gaze roved over the clearing.

"Grief twists many thoughts," he said at last.

The girl peered shyly up at him.

"Did your family die in battle?" she asked softly.

The gentleness instantly left him.

"Enough," he said flatly. "Come, you will make no progress this way. Let us find a worthy branch. I will teach you to carve a bow."

XXX

"Lift your elbow."

The girl stood in an afternoon breeze, a small, smooth bow bent in her outstretched hand. She had the string drawn back to her cheek, and stood facing the target. The elf stood beside her, studying her form, and with his hand patiently pushed her elbow higher beside her head.

The woman seemed to go still.

He used one booted foot to nudge one of hers forward, and then adjusted the grip of her fingers upon the bow.

At once, she stepped back and lowered bow and arrow, her face flushed.

The ellon raised his eyebrows.

"You're—distracting me," she explained.

He stared at her.

"I am teaching you," he said plainly. "You will learn bad habits if I do not now correct them."

The girl grimaced but lifted the bow once more, shuffling to stand as she had been shown and making a visible effort to reposition her hands as he had placed them.

She loosed her arrow, and across the clearing it struck the very edge of the target.

Her eyes widened.

"Again," said the elf.

XXX

The two had clearly fallen into a routine. In the mornings they seemed to venture together from the cabin, tending the chickens and goats kept around the back while the black dog tramped between them. The ellon went with her to the stream to draw buckets of water. They sat together in the quiet at the wooden table or outside in the grass, breaking their fasts, then spent long hours at archery.

"Will you teach me swordplay, too?" asked the woman, as the ellon passed her another arrow. The hay bales had been pushed further back, and though a few arrows littered the ground around it, most had hit the target.

The ellon seemed to be watching critically.

"Do you wish me to?" he asked, sounding surprised.

She glanced over at him.

"Shouldn't I?" she blinked. "It was you who said I should learn to fight."

"Nay," the elf argued at once. "I said you should learn to defend yourself."

"I think a sword would have served better than a bow the night you saved me."

The elf cast her a look of stern exasperation.

"Do you mean to venture once more into the forest alone at night?" he asked.

The girl lifted her chin.

"Do you mean to say you won't teach me?"

XXX

"This is a stick."

The woman and the ellon stood once again outside the cabin, and both held a long, smooth wooden rod. The girl was looking down at hers in disbelief.

The elf did not smile.

"Indeed, and until I judge you will not cut yourself to ribbons, it is as close to a blade as you will get," he said shortly.

"Are all elves so stern and somber?" asked the girl, glaring at him. "Or had I the misfortune of finding the strictest elf in Middle-Earth?"

The ellon's face seemed to darken.

"Are all mortal children so impatient and heedless?" he asked in return.

"Heedless?" the girl echoed hotly.

"I am stern because this is the difference between your life and death. And you did not find me. I found you."

She scowled.

"I think you're just afraid to smile," she told him.

"Why would I fear such a thing?"

"Why, indeed? Has it been so long that you have forgotten how?"

The ellon's only answer was a glower.

"Give me a reason to smile, then, child," he suggested imperiously. "Perhaps when I am assured you can face another foe and live to tell the dog, you will find me grinning with relief."

He began then to show her how to hold a sword.

XXX

It was night. The only light that touched the clearing poured out from the open door of the cabin—the black dog sat contentedly before the threshold, looking out into the evening.

Before her, beneath the clear sky, the ellon and woman were sparring. She wielded his much lighter elvish blade, whereas the ellon had taken up the heavier sword from above the mantle. His teaching and her long hours of practice had yielded obvious results, but more than that her visible enthusiasm and determination seemed to be the main source of her progress, and even the ellon seemed pleased as she blocked his blows exactly as he had shown her.

"The hour is late," he observed when she paused to swipe the sweat from her brow. "And we have lost the light. Come—you must rest if you would continue tomorrow."

For a moment the girl seemed prepared to argue, but all of a sudden she gasped and seized his sleeve. The ellon looked down at her in bewilderment until she pointed toward the stars above and bid him look.

Several shimmering arcs were racing across the heavens.

The ellon blinked.

"They are falling stars," he told her, and the girl looked at him and laughed.

"I know what they are," she smiled. "Are they not beautiful?"

As he beheld her she craned back her head once more to observe the dark sky, where more stars left trails of glimmering light scattered behind them. For a long moment the girl watched the stars while the elf watched her, until finally she moved to lie in the black grass, her gaze trained straight above.

"Lady," the ellon said. "We would be wise to—"

"Many thousands of years have you had to see the stars," she interrupted from the ground, stretching her arms over her head. "And many thousand more await you. Perhaps you have looked your fill, but my chances will not be so many, and I have never seen so many shooting stars all at once. If it does not please you then let me see it, at least."

Her voice was not argumentative—it was breathless with wonderment, and the starlight was reflected in her eyes.

In silence the ellon stood over her for several long breaths, watching her, until finally he moved to gracefully recline beside her. As he came to rest she glanced his way in surprise, and he looked evenly back.

"You are wrong," he said sorrowfully, turning to look up at the sky, as she had been. "The starlight is hallowed and enduring, and no count of years nor hour spent in admiration may diminish its beauty—though grief and despair met in a single day may mar it forever, if the heart may no longer find joy in beauty or in peace."

At these sad words the girl frowned and turned toward him.

"Can you find no joy in the stars?" she asked quietly.

The elf did not look at her.

"The stars are beautiful to me on this night," he said simply.

The girl looked back up at them.

"They make me sad," she whispered after a moment.

The sound of crickets and the wind in the trees was all that could be heard.

"There is some joy so poignant indeed it almost is despair," the ellon murmured.

The woman laid her hand over the rise and fall of her breast.

"Sometimes at the sight of them—I ache," she breathed. "As though inside me there is some terrible sorrow or longing so old and strong I can barely stand it, and yet I cannot tell for what I yearn, and despite this pain I never learn my lesson, and look eagerly again the next chance I get."

The elf rose up onto one elbow and looked down at her with an inscrutable look upon his face.

"Do you think it's all like that?" the girl asked.

His brow furrowed.

"What?"

"Do you think that—that everything good and beautiful in life must be bought with some measure of grief?"

He stared at her for a very long time, where she lay before him in the grass, her dark hair arrayed around her like a net that caught the starlight, her pale skin luminous in the night, her eyes questioning and intent upon him.

"Perhaps," said the ellon at last.

He rose and left her in the clearing.

XXX

The woman and ellon were seated on opposite sides of the wooden table, eating supper in companionable silence.

The dog's head rested upon the elf's lap, doubtless hoping to receive scraps of food or retrieve anything dropped or spilled. Though the elf had eaten and had begun feeding the dog bits of bread, the girl had barely touched her meal. As the silence wore on, she bit her lip and seemed to brace herself.

"When my father returns… will you leave right away?" she asked finally. It was clear in her voice that she hoped to sound disinterested, but it was obvious she was anything but.

The elf glanced up at her.

"There will be no reason any longer for me to stay," he said slowly, after a brief pause.

She immediately seemed to wilt.

"Where will you go?" she inquired forlornly.

"East."

"You have no… destination?"

The elf fed the dog one last piece of cheese.

"I do not long linger in any one place."

The woman watched as he folded his arms and gazed impassively back at her, and when he said nothing else, a moment of hesitation seemed to leave her wavering in indecision.

Finally, she set down her spoon and drew in a deep breath.

"Will you ever… come back?" she asked softly.

"Back?"

Her face turned pink.

"Back here. To visit."

The elf stared at her.

"I just thought… maybe if you were nearby and—and wished some—some company—" she stammered.

He fixed her with an expression so cold that even the watching dog suddenly lifted her head and sat back on her haunches with a whine.

"By the time I might think again to return this way you would likely be withered and gone," he said.

A gust of wind rattled the window shutters, and the girl's face pinched with hurt.

"Oh," she murmured.

There was another long silence.

The heavy wooden bench scraped against the floor as the girl abruptly rose.

"I think Lumeth and I will go to bed," she said, her voice tight.

"Mírsell—"

She whirled back around as he rose in kind, her eyes flashing.

"That was a cruel thing to say," she bit out.

The ellon shook his head, but he seemed suddenly grieved.

"It was a true thing to say," he murmured. "You are mortal, and I am an elf."

At this, the woman visibly trembled.

"Elves and mortals can still—can still—be friends," she managed.

The elf stood straighter.

"You wish my friendship?" he asked meaningfully. "Then let me tell you something as a friend—you would do well to leave this place as quickly as you can."

The girl blinked.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"You have a bow now, and you know well enough how to shoot. You can hunt. Bring Lumeth with you. Return to your people."

"This is my home—why would I leave? You would bid me abandon my father?"

The elf shook his head.

"Your captor, you mean? Do you not see that you are a prisoner?"

"Prisoner?" she gasped.

He paced toward her around the end of the table.

"A man who leaves his daughter alone in the woods, but who does not teach her even to shoot an arrow to save her own life?"

She retreated back toward the hearth, her eyes wide.

"I told you! He—it grieves him—my mother—"

"He has ensured you could not leave even if you wished to. You could not hunt or defend yourself in the wild, so you could not go."

"That's not true—!"

"You do not find it odd he has kept you hidden away in seclusion and loneliness? You said he lost love for the Dúnedain, and that may be so, but the Dúnedain are not the only Men in this world. Why not seek another village? Why raise his child alone in the forest?"

The girl's face was white now, her hands shaking where she had clamped them over her heart.

"He just—he likes his peace and quiet, that's all—we don't—we do not need anyone else—"

"You told me you have not been allowed to accompany him to the village since you were a small child," the ellon reminded her. "Do you not think it strange?"

"I have to stay and tend the animals!" she burst.

The ellon seemed to be losing his patience.

"You stay because he fears that you will catch the eye of some man who will seek your hand, and you will wish to give it," he said sharply.

"That's—not—"

"Would you deny that you yearn to leave here? That you are lonely and angry?"

The woman suddenly stepped forward.

"You are the one who is lonely and angry!" she accused. "I have my father and Lumeth and—and—"

The elf sneered.

"Your father guards you as a dragon upon a hoard—a king with a jewel—jealously and covetously, that none should look upon it. He has locked you away to keep any from taking you from him, or indeed, to keep you from leaving."

"You know nothing of my father or of me."

"I know that you crave more than this."

"My father needs me. I cannot just leave!" she hissed.

The ellon stepped closer still, so that they were very close, but he did not move to touch her.

"And what of your needs?" he asked sternly. "Have you none? Would you forestall them all to see to his?"

Something in the woman's eyes suddenly shone vulnerable and stunned, and she lifted her chin.

"Why would I listen to someone who won't even tell me his own name, and who by his own admission would not even care to spare me a single thought for the rest of my life?" she demanded.

Then she turned on her heel, beckoned for her dog, and disappeared into her bedchamber with a snap of the door.

XXX

There was a pink dawn, and the young woman rose and dressed with some haste. After she had combed her hair and washed her face, however, she stood unmoving before the closed door that opened into the main room of the cabin, wringing her hands before her and wiping them nervously over the front of her dress. Only when the dog yipped impatiently beside her did she finally push the door open and step through it.

She drew up short.

The cabin was empty and silent. The ellon was nowhere in sight.

For a single instant the girl stood unmoving, her eyes wide with confusion and disbelief, until suddenly the door across from her opened and revealed the elf silhouetted against the burgeoning day. Catching sight of her, he froze, too.

"Come with me," he ordered.

Her eyebrows drew together.

"I beg your pardon?"

The ellon drew himself up straighter.

"I have attended to your chores; they are finished. Now, come with me."

He watched her waver outside her bedroom, while the dog sat and waited obediently beside her. Then, as though against her better judgment, she crossed the cabin and followed him outside.

"Where are we going?" she asked warily as he led her across the clearing and into the forest.

He did not look at her.

"There is something I wish to show you."

XXX

The sun shone directly overhead when the elf at last halted, and beside him the woman stopped and pressed her palm over her mouth.

Before them, enshrouded by the tall trees, was a steep waterfall that fed a serene pool. The midday sun upon the cascading water cast bright prisms before their eyes, and the water in the pool was clearer than crystal.

The pair stood side by side in the grotto while the dog bounded forth to explore, and the young woman observed the scene before her in wonder.

"How did you know this was here?" she asked the elf in amazement—it seemed after the long morning passed in angry silence she was willing to speak at last.

The elf only looked at her.

"Many long ages have I wandered the wilderness of this world," he answered.

The girl seemed unable to tear her eyes away from the sight, casting her gaze voraciously over the towering, shining waterfall, the deep pool, the fronds and flowers that grew near to and between the glistening rocks encircling its edge, and at the gentle streams and rivulets that flowed away into the forest.

"It is lovely," she said after a moment.

"Indeed it is," agreed the elf, "and yet many lovelier things are there to see, if you would venture further still."

The girl tensed and turned to him, but he did not avert his gaze.

"You cannot mean that you made me walk all this way to continue our argument," she said angrily.

But he shook his head.

"Nay," he murmured, "I brought you here to ask forgiveness."

She studied him suspiciously until he continued.

"You are right that I spoke cruelly to you. Still do I believe that you should leave your father and seek your happiness elsewhere, and I would not be swayed in this… But indeed I regret the hurt I caused you."

The girl regarded him for a long moment in silence.

"Thank you for your apology," she said at long last, brushing her hair behind her ear.

The elf's gaze seemed to follow the path of her hand.

"Um, well—shall we go in?"

"In?"

"Into the water? Surely we have not journeyed so far merely to look?" She kicked off her shoes and began to unfasten the ties at the front of her dress.

The ellon appeared, for the first time since their meeting, utterly taken aback. He strode forward and caught her wrist, and the girl glanced up at him in confusion.

"This would not be wise," he said lowly, his eyes fierce and direct so that she blinked and backed away from him.

"Surely there will be no Orcs about in broad daylight?" she asked.

The elf had still not released her.

"Lady," he began.

She twisted out of his grasp and pushed her dress down over her shoulders and hips until it fell around her feet, and she stood in her threadbare underclothes.

"It is hot," she said pointedly. "The water is clean and lovely, and I have had very few adventures in my life. I would like to enjoy this one."

With that she turned and waded into the water. Her shift floated and billowed about her legs the deeper in she went, until finally she ducked down and submerged herself fully. When she resurfaced her hair was made several shades darker by the water and clung wetly to her neck and shoulders, and her clothes stuck to her skin.

The black dog gave a bark and leapt in after her, tail wagging happily as she paddled.

But the elf did not share in their amusement, and stood upon the bank with his arms crossed over his chest and his head turned sternly away from them both. While girl and dog splashed and swam about, he did not move nor even look their way.

"What are you doing?" the girl called, when she caught sight of the ellon's furious face.

He did not answer.

"The water feels so good," she breathed, floating onto her back. "Stop ruining it. Come swim."

"If I swim who will prevent anyone from assailing you while you are indecent and unaware?"

The woman suddenly lurched in the water and almost sank like a stone until she righted herself and stood, spluttering.

"I am not indecent," she said in amazement.

The elf turned his head and cast a critical eye over her from head to toe.

"You would allow a man to look upon you in this state?" he asked sardonically.

The girl stared at him.

"You are looking at me," she pointed out.

The elf's expression did not even flicker.

"I am not a Man," he said flatly. "And to me you are a child—"

A torrent of water suddenly hit him in the face, and the elf froze in shock as he suddenly stood dripping and soaked. His expression when he had blinked the water from his eyes and looked once more upon the woman was thunderous and disbelieving.

"Are you mad?" he hissed.

She smiled sweetly and shook her head.

"Mad?" she asked with exaggerated innocence. "No, my lord. I am only a child, acting as childrensurely do."

She dipped her hand back into the water and splashed him again.

At once he moved. In what seemed a single bound he had dived into the pool, caught her around the waist, and seized her. He stood with her flung over his shoulder, shrieking in surprise and kicking her legs, and began wading toward the bank.

"Put me down!" she cried.

The elf obeyed her immediately, and dropped her unceremoniously back into the water where she landed in a graceless heap. She sat up and swept her tangled, wet hair out of her face, spluttering and looking up at him in shock.

"How dare you!" she gasped.

The ellon stood over her and raised his eyebrows.

"Forgive me," he said, without any remorse. "That is how I would deal with an errant elfling making mischief, Lady."

He leaned down and splashed her for good measure, succeeding in throwing much more water than she had previously done, and only when he stood glaring down at her in challenge did she finally seem to come back to herself, and she seized a lily pad beside her and threw it directly at his face. He dodged it, but seemed to have been moved past some bound of patience or restraint, and crashed at once back into the water toward her.

"I am not a child!" she shouted as she splashed him again and again, attempting to swim away from him.

The elf caught her ankle and tugged, so that she was hauled toward him and momentarily went underwater.

"You act like one," he snapped when she had come up again.

"Just because you are old," she huffed as she continued to kick and hurl water at him, "doesn't mean you are right!"

"Yes—it—does—" he grit out as he caught her again, struggling and splashing, and hauled her up into his arms.

He looked for a moment as though he intended to drop her again, until suddenly like a fountain she squirted a mouthful of water right at his face.

He sputtered, and the girl laughed at the astonished look upon his face, and at the sound of her laughter, his face split into a broad grin.

The woman stopped laughing at once, and stared.

"Have you at last had enough fun at my expense?" he smirked, but seeing the way she was looking at him, his smile melted away, and he stood unmoving in the shallow water at the edge of the pool, holding her against his chest, their wet clothes sticking as much to each other as to their own skin.

The girl seemed to swallow.

"Have you finished insulting me and commanding me like some disobedient ward?" she asked breathlessly.

He looked at her for a moment without answering.

"Nay," he answered at last, but something in his eyes seemed very gentle. He then moved to carefully set her down on her feet before him, and she gazed back at him as though transfixed.

But then his eyes cut away, and the girl looked down at herself and seemed at last to realize just how indecent she indeed was, and her whole face reddened as she hastily clamped her arms against the front of her soaked, transparent shift.

The ellon at once unclasped his waterlogged cloak from about his neck and draped it over her shoulders, and then he waded to the edge of the pool and turned to offer her his hand. She took it and allowed him to pull her out of the water.

They sat at the edge of the pool, soaking wet, their hair dripping droplets of water that glimmered in the afternoon light. The girl sat bundled in his cloak, and clutched it modestly over her wet clothes. While the black dog shook out her long, shaggy coat, the two looked at each other in silence, and the only sounds were the waterfall and the call of a crow in the boughs of a tree close by. It seemed that both of them were wary of spoiling whatever tentative peace had suddenly fallen between them.

"You were right," the girl murmured finally, dipping her chin. "About what you said last night. About my father."

The elf regarded her patiently.

"I think he has never healed," she whispered, "from losing my mother. Some nights he sits up drinking in the late hours, until he is… not himself. Sometimes he weeps, but sometimes he is… very angry."

The elf visibly tensed.

"Has he harmed you?" he demanded.

Her eyes widened, and she shook her head.

"No," she promised, though her face had changed, as though some thought had come into her mind for the first time and had given her pause. "But he breaks things, sometimes. And he yells. I think… I think he feels I am all he has left of her, and sometimes I think… I think he blames her, as much as he blamed their Chieftain, for what happened to her, and when he does not have his wits about him, sometimes he looks at me and sees her, and… and how is it possible, to love and to hate the same person at one time? For that is what I see in him—grief and wrath, and want and blame, and love and hatred. But then I think… I think that I understand… because when he is like that, sometimes I feel that indeed I do hate him even while I love him."

She looked down at her knees and fell silent once more, and the elf's eyes were like fire as he studied her profile.

But then his face grew suddenly stony.

"There is something I must tell you," he said, his voice stiff and somber. A shadow seemed to have fallen about him despite the gauzy sunshine.

The girl went still, and glanced hesitantly up at him.

"What is it?" she whispered, searching his face.

He looked briefly away before it seemed he forced himself to meet her gaze once more, and his expression was so blank that the girl seemed to flinch. He could not have looked more unlike to the grinning ellon of moments before.

"I have not been honest with you," he said.

"About what?"

"Who I am."

The woman bit her lip, and looked at him levelly for a very long time.

"I know who you are," she said softly.

He shook his head.

"You think you do," he said darkly. "There is a reason I did not tell you my name—"

"I know your name," she interrupted.

He stared at her.

"You cannot," he protested.

She smiled sadly.

"Why can I not?"

"Because I have seen your hope in your face," he said coldly, "and if you knew who I am and what I have done, you would think me worthy neither of your regard nor your smallest kindness."

"Don't tell me what I would or would not think," the girl bit back, though her face was pink. "I have known your name from almost the first moment we spoke. You are not so subtle or mysterious as you might believe."

"And you are not so clever as you think, child," he said.

She lifted her chin.

"No?" she asked. "Then are you not the second son of Fëanor?"

The ellon gaped at her.

"Not so clever as I think, perhaps, but not so ignorant as you think me, it seems," she said bitterly. "You said you were born in the Undying Lands, and so I knew you to be one of the Noldor who defied the Valar and left, and yet you did not come by way of the Helcaraxë, for you said you crossed the sea, so I knew you must have been among those who slew their kin at Alqualondë. Few, I think, who were there to see the ships burning still walk the shores of Middle-Earth, and fewer still I imagine go not in Elven-lands among their own kind but roam the wilderness in solitude and exile. I am, as you have oft reminded me, not but a mortal child who has never journeyed farther than the nearest village. Why keep your name a secret from me? Surely it matters little whether a peasant child should know your name? Unless it is not from me that you wished to hide. For what if I had told my father whom I had met? What if he told the Dúnedain rangers, who told the elves in Rivendell? That, I think, is what you feared from the moment you knew me to be a descendant of Númenor. What other elf would have such need for secrecy? What other elf who sailed from Valinor, who has not yet perished in the many ages since? Perhaps my life is humble, but I am not a fool."

"You're wrong."

"Oh? You are not Maglor of the house of Fëanor?"

The ellon gazed at her for a long moment.

"Maglor I am," he said at last. "But I do not think you ignorant, and I do not think you a fool."

The girl grimaced and looked back toward the waterfall. She began to nervously scratch the dog between its ears, and there was a long silence.

"Why have you let me stay in your home, if you knew who I am?" the elf asked finally. "Why did you continue to treat my wound and give me shelter? Why did you allow me to stay for so long after my healing?"

The girl looked at him.

"Why shouldn't I have?"

"If you know such names as Alqualondë and Helcaraxë, then you know me to be guilty of the worst possible crime."

"If you had meant to harm me I hardly think you would have saved my life," said the girl.

"So it matters little to you if I have murdered, so long as I do not murder you?"

"That is not what I meant."

"What did you mean?"

"You are not a murderer," she said firmly.

"I have killed more people than you have met in your young life."

"Indeed," she whispered. "And I think you have atoned for it."

"What would you know of my atonement?" he asked darkly. "You think you know my sins and the price I must pay for them?"

"No," the girl answered gravely. "But I know what it's like to be bound in hopelessness by love and loyalty to a father. I have known the plague of loneliness and the torments of grief, and while my life compared to yours has been fleeting, I have spent many of my days weathering a storm of great despair. It is true that I have seen few of the world's wonders, and walked none of its long paths, but I think I have felt many of its hurts."

She turned fully away from the pool and looked into the ellon's face.

"And I think you must surely be the loneliest, most hopeless, most tormented soul in Arda," she said. "Is that not atonement enough?"

XXX

Dusk had fallen. The trees threw long shadows before their feet. The ellon and the girl walked together through the twilight, the dog trotting happily beside them. As they walked, the young woman, who wore again her dress but still had the ellon's cloak about her shoulders, kept glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, but the elf, if indeed he noticed these sidelong glances, paid them no heed, for his gaze was fixed straight ahead.

Suddenly, he threw out his arm and caught her elbow, and his other hand settled at once upon his sword.

"There is someone ahead," he hissed, when she looked up at him in concern. "Someone approaches."

But rather than shrinking in fear, the girl's eyes grew wide, and she shook off his grasp and bounded forth through the trees.

"Mírsell!" he hissed, running after her, but she did not heed him.

Instead she broke through the trees into the clearing by the cabin, and barreled straight toward the man who had come into view.

"Father!" she called, seizing him in an embrace, but her relief and happiness were short-lived, for the man stepped away from her immediately, and it was only then that she seemed to see his anger.

He was tall and strong looking, and he was dressed in dark, muddy clothes that spoke of long travel. Though no grey touched his hair and no age bent his back, many long years seemed to lie about him, and his face was weathered, and a jagged scar of some wicked cut years before slashed his skin and distorted his features, so that his mouth and half his face seemed twisted into a scowl.

But perhaps not all the scowl was caused by the scar, for his eyes were fixed furiously upon the ellon, and he seemed barely to notice his daughter at all.

The girl clutched nervously at his arm.

"Who," he asked shortly, "is this?"

The ellon seemed somehow even more suspicious and unfriendly than did the man, and he looked more haughty and aloof than he had ever looked before.

The woman obviously noticed.

"Father," she breathed, "this elf has saved my life. He found me captured and slew many orcs to rescue me."

But the man's face did not change.

"Who are you?" he brusquely asked the elf instead, almost as though he had not heard his daughter speak.

"Maglor is my name," said the elf, and the woman gaped at him and seemed to shake her head. "Indeed I did deliver your daughter from peril; my surprise was great, when I discovered she had been left alone and unguarded in this dangerous land with neither skill with bow or blade to try at need nor kin to keep her safe."

His words were as cold as ice, and his regard even colder, and the man's eyes shone with fury.

"Maglor," he demanded, sizing the elf up. "Many in Middle-Earth may yet have forgotten that name, but the Dúnedain are not among them," he spat. "Great was my error indeed to leave her unguarded—for here is a thief and murderer before me!"

"Father," the girl said frantically. "He has shown me only kindness—he has protected me these last weeks while we awaited your return—"

But at this the man appeared suddenly incensed.

"Weeks?" he snarled, advancing on the ellon.

The elf did not so much as blink.

"You wish instead I had left her at the mercy of the orcs?" he asked imperiously. "Is her life so worthless to you?"

The girl was wringing her hands and dithering between them.

"Her life, no," her father growled, "but her virtue no less!"

The ellon's lip curled.

"I have no interest in your daughter's virtue," he said darkly.

"You walk in exile," sneered the Dúnadan, "for taking much that was not yours to take—lives, children, treasure. Now you dare to set your sights upon my daughter—"

"Your daughter is mortal," said the ellon, with such distaste and scorn that the girl heard it and her eyes visibly welled. "And you are a fool. A shepherd may save a lamb from a wolf, but he would not then lie with it."

The woman paled, and the man's face bloomed ruddy and purple.

"He just devours it later," he accused furiously.

But the elf did not pay him any heed. He turned to the young woman instead.

"Remember what I told you," he said sternly.

And then he turned on his heel and strode from the clearing, and he did not return.

XXX

The girl lay on her bed with the black dog curled at her feet. Only the scant rays of moonlight that seeped in through the window touched her face, and though she did not weep, her gaze was trained not out the window at the stars but upon the dark ceiling, and the look in her eyes was remote and forlorn, and dull, as though all spirit had left her or indeed had retreated far within, like a wild animal kept in a cage that has lost the will to escape.

XXX

The seasons changed. Summer passed. The leaves turned and fell. The branches beyond the girl's window became barren and bare, and still the girl appeared bereft and hopeless.

And then it was spring again.

XXX

She wandered through the sun-mottled forest with the black dog at her side. In her hand she carried a basket that was full to the top with fresh berries that she paused to pluck from the bushes, feeding some to the dog as she went.

Then suddenly, as she knelt to pick some more, the dog's ears perked up, and the loyal animal bounded away through the trees and left the girl alone.

"Lumeth!" she called, rising with a huff. She had only just begun to chase after when she drew to an abrupt halt, and her eyes were wide in her face, and there was a look about her of breathless fury or unwilling exhilaration.

Her knuckles went white upon the handle of the basket.

Ahead, where the dog was happily hopping and pawing at him in greeting, the ellon stood half-hidden in the shade beside a sturdy tree.

The moment their eyes met seemed to jolt them both, and they gazed at one another for a long moment without moving or speaking, until finally the girl called the dog again and began to march resolutely back in the direction she had come.

The elf said her name, however, and at the sound of his ancient, commanding voice, she halted. Her chest was heaving, and she bit her lip before she turned back to him.

"What do you want?" she demanded.

He came to stand before her, but his face remained blank.

"Are you well?" he asked without prelude.

The girl's eyebrows rose so high they almost touched her hair.

"Why do you care?" she asked coolly. "I am but a lowly animal, am I not?"

The elf's eyes flashed, and his mouth was set in a hard line.

"That was not my meaning—"

"I know what your meaning was," the woman spat.

"The forest is not safe," he said stiffly. "I have tracked many bands of orcs this way. They are abroad in droves. You and your father must flee."

"We don't need your help," she snarled. Again she called the dog and strode away, and the elf stood unmoving in the sunlight gazing after her, and his eyes were troubled and dark.

When the girl returned to the cabin, she hurried to her room and shut the door, and began to pace anxiously back and forth before the bed, wringing her berry-stained hands in front of her and casting nervous glances at the window as though half-expecting to find someone watching from between the trees beyond.

XXX

She was in the forest again. This time her basket was empty, and she was plainly distracted. She jumped, startled, when the elf stepped out of the shadows before her, but she appeared unsurprised to see him.

"Go away!" she snapped.

"Be thankful the orcs are not so quiet as I," he retorted angrily, "or you would be dead where you stand."

"You've been following me," she said in outrage.

"And you have been taunting me," he hissed.

The girl's eyes widened in disbelief.

"Taunting you?" she demanded.

"I told you there were orcs in great numbers," he said furiously. "And still you wander about unarmed and alone—"

"What I do is not your concern!"

"This recklessness must cease at once," commanded the elf. "I will speak with your father if I must—"

"Recklessness!"

"Do you think I know not why you walk in the woods each day?"

"I am gathering food—!"

His steely gaze landed upon the empty basket, and his eyes were so cutting as they fell once more upon her that her entire face reddened.

"You are pretending to gather food, and hoping to see me."

"You think far too highly of yourself, my lord," she snarled, though she held the basket out of his sight. "You are the last person in Arda I should ever wish to see."

"And you are the worst liar I have ever met among all the Children of Eru," he said coldly. "Your every thought shows so clearly in your eyes that a man long-blind could see them."

Though she stood not even as tall as his shoulder, the woman looked suddenly ferocious.

"Go then!" she shouted. "Leave me alone and you need never see me or my eyes again!"

"I tried!" he barked.

"What do you mean, 'you tried'?"

The elf paced even closer to her.

"I tried to leave," he seethed, "and yet here I stand. I cannot go on until I have seen you are safe."

The girl's chest was heaving, but the rest of her was utterly still.

"Why would you care if I am safe?" she asked at last, her voice twisted with contempt and hurt and accusation. "Is not one sheep alike to any other?"

A look of such displeasure crossed his face that it was almost fury.

"You think I do not care for you?"

"You said you did not!" she burst. "You said once you left, you would not even think of me again until long after I was dead!"

"I lied."

"What?" she blinked.

"That was not true, Mírsell," he said lowly. "I lied."

"You—?"

"There has not been a day that has passed that I did not think of you. There has not been a night when I have not met you in my dreams. You think you have not haunted me? You think I have known any peace? Every moment that I have not spent in longing or in reverie I have passed in dread."

"Dread?" she whispered.

"Have you heeded nothing I have spoken? You are in peril, Lady."

"You… dreaded…"

"I dreaded some harm might befall you."

The woman took a step forward, but the elf stepped away and the look he cast upon her was severe and forbidding.

"Return to your father," he said icily. "Tell him you must return to the Dúnedain."

The girl bit her lip.

"He would not listen to me," she whispered.

XXX

The elf, the girl, and her father stood once more in the clearing, and this time the man and the elf were not speaking, but shouting so loudly that the black dog was distressed and agitated and stood before the girl, barking.

"Stay away from my daughter!" the man was yelling.

"You have not listened," the ellon answered furiously. "Your daughter will perish—"

"I do not need any man or treacherous wretch to tell me how to protect my daughter!"

"There is evil at work here. There are orcs in numbers unseen in an age—"

"I have seen no such orcs—"

"You must return to your people—"

"You think you can command me, Elf—?"

"Do you care nothing for her safety—?"

"You may have deceived her but you cannot deceive me!"

"You are blind!"

The man seized the ellon by the front of his tunic.

"Blind I would be indeed to believe it is her safety you seek!"

The elf's eyes flashed, and he slowly pried the man's hand from his clothes with such obvious, unfaltering ease that the woman seemed to look at him with new understanding and worry, and her father was visibly livid as his arm was forcibly moved by his opponent's superior strength.

"You failed to save your wife," said the elf with cruel composure. "You may yet save your daughter."

XXX

It was the dark of night. The woman was creeping between the whispering trees. Her small bow and quiver were upon her back, and she carried a pack, and the black dog was slinking along at her ankles when a sudden hand clapped over the girl's mouth and hauled her backwards into the shadows.

She shrieked against the palm clamped to her lips.

"Be silent," commanded a furious voice, and into the moonlight the elf emerged, his face livid with anger.

He released the girl but continued to glare.

"Are you mad?" he hissed. "What is this folly? Did you not learn your lesson when last you entered the forest alone in the dead of night?"

But the girl did not appear chastened.

"I knew you would hear me," she argued, hoisting her pack higher over her shoulder. "I am doing as you bid."

The elf looked at her blankly.

"I have never bidden you to venture forth into the woods after nightfall."

"You bid me leave my father," she whispered. She appeared suddenly very shy, and looked away from him.

It seemed to take a moment for the ellon to realize just what she was saying, as his gaze alighted over her pack and her bow and the great black dog at her side.

"You would leave him behind?"

The girl nodded, but the elf stepped closer and grasped her arm.

"Do not make this choice lightly, Mírsell," he warned. "Once we leave, there may be no turning back, and it may be that you will not return."

She looked for a long, silent moment toward the cabin, and her grief was plain to see, but when she glanced up at the elf at last and answered, there was no indecision or hesitation, and if there was regret it seemed to be regret not for her decision but, perhaps, regret that she was forced to make one.

"I am certain," she breathed.

The ellon gently released her arm.

"I will bring you to the Dúnedain," he vowed.

XXX

They seemed to travel for many days, and it seemed that they spoke little, but always when the woman was not looking at him, the elf studied her, and when she thought he did not notice, the woman cast him looks of longing and uncertainty.

XXX

It was dawn.

The two had stopped to fill their flasks at a gentle stream, and knelt upon the rocky bank holding them into the flow. Long rays of orange light competed with the lingering shadows of the trees, which were all that was left of the waning night.

In the sunrise, the surface of the stream was gold and pink beneath the blushing sky, and it was reflected in the woman's eyes as she warily appraised the silent ellon at her side. By the set of her shoulders and face, it was clear that she was very nervous.

She pressed the stopper back into the mouth of her flask.

"What if I said I did not want to go to the Dúnedain?" she whispered.

The ellon paused but did not look at her.

"You wish to seek a different people?" he asked.

She bit her lip.

"No, I… What if I wished instead to stay with you?"

Still, the ellon did not turn.

"I would say it is folly."

The black dog was noisily lapping water at her other side, but all the girl's attention was on him. She seemed to steel herself.

"Why?"

"Mírsell," he said warningly, staring fixedly at the water before him.

"You said you dreamed of me," she breathed. "You said you thought of me every day. Was it not true?"

The ellon was silent for a long moment, until finally he turned and met her gaze. His face was hard, but his eyes were animated by torment.

"It was true," he said.

The woman blinked.

"But I… I dreamed of you, too. I thought of you each day and night…"

"Lady, you must return to your own kind."

He capped his flask and stood.

"Is it because I am mortal?" she asked, rising in kind.

"Nay."

Neither of them moved but for the girl worrying her lip.

"I know our fates are apart…" she whispered, "and I know… I know I would not be the one to pay the price for it… I would perish, and you would linger after…"

"Enough," he ordered sharply.

"If that is why, then I—I could not fault you—"

The ellon made a sound of disgust and averted his gaze.

"I should say it is," he said darkly. "I should tell you that is the reason we cannot be together, but in truth I would buy one day in your company with a thousand years of grief."

These words fell heavily upon the quiet morning, and the girl appeared stricken by emotion.

"Maglor…" she whispered.

"Do you not see?" he asked. "I could not give you what you deserve."

"What do I deserve?"

He still spoke to the stream.

"A home. Children. A life in peace among other people with whom to share your joys and woes."

The woman took a single step closer to him.

"Why do you think you cannot give me that?"

He shook his raven head.

"You ask questions when you already know the answer."

"You and I could make a home if we wanted—"

"We could not."

"Were we not—happy—when—?"

"Such happiness would not last."

"You only think so—"

The elf turned to her and appeared to have been moved past the bounds of his restraint.

"I am cursed, Mírsell—"

She stepped closer again.

"I don't believe that—"

"Whether you believe it matters little, for it is the truth," he said in a voice so severe that she paused for a moment, her glistening eyes fixed upon his ravaged face. "My fate was foretold long ago, and neither your will nor mine might prevail against it. Were we to wed, my torment would be certain, for I am bound forever to this world, and when you perish we would be sundered until the ending of days. Our time together though it would span all the years of your life would be as a blink of an eye to me, and yet this I would endure. I would bear that grief—perhaps I would even deserve it. But do not ask me to bring the bane of my curse upon you. In Death's shadow I am doomed to dwell—all I seek ever withheld, all I treasure lost or destroyed, and all I begin even in purest heart ever to turn to despair. So it was promised and so it has ever been."

The girl's eyes were blazing.

"This curse is of your own making," she said finally. "Nothing is withheld but what you withhold from yourself—!"

"You know nothing of what you speak," the elf snapped.

"I know I love you," she said hotly. "I know that the day that we met was the first day in all my life that I felt. As though I had not before been fully awake—as though I had never truly felt the wind, nor seen the sun, nor felt the touch of the grass. I know that when you left, I tried to hate you and couldn't. And I know that I will never love another as I love you."

"You have never met another," the elf said sharply, but the longer she had spoken, the more aggrieved he appeared.

"Why does that matter?"

"You think you love me because you know no better," he sneered, though his eyes were at odds with his words, and the girl clearly knew it, for she stepped closer to him again.

"You are afraid," she said.

He seemed to snap.

"Yes, I am afraid," he hissed. He stepped so close that they were practically nose to nose as he bent toward her. "For I know what would await you were you to bind yourself to me—what sorrow would find you were you to follow me into the shadow—"

"That is my choice to make," she snarled. "Not yours!"

The elf grasped both her shoulders.

"When I perish," he swore, "and my body is withheld from me, and judgment is set upon me, and all I have done must be answered, I will find peace only in this: that I did not bring misery and death upon you, too."

The woman craned back her head to look up into his face.

"Our paths crossed for a reason," she whispered fiercely. "I know it in my heart."

With that she turned and walked away from him along the stream.

XXX

The ellon and the girl strode through the forest, but though they walked together, they were not speaking. The air between them was tense, and the bright sun seemed not to touch them, and upon each of their shoulders seemed to lie a mantle of heartache.

XXX

It was night.

The ground was littered with bodies that were visible in the moonlight and by the blue glow of the ellon's blade. He moved so quickly that the weapon was visible only as an ethereal blur of light in the darkness, and though the elf had clearly been greatly outnumbered, he at last slew what seemed to be the last orc standing.

He cast one last glance at the surround as though to check for unseen foes, and then he sprinted frantically across the small clearing toward what had clearly been his camp—and against the base of a broad tree, clutching her bow and kneeling beside her still-growling dog, was the young woman.

Before her, some of the slain yrch had arrows protruding from their bodies.

"Mírsell!"

She stood on legs that seemed to tremble.

"Are you hurt?" he demanded the moment he reached her. He seized her by the arms and cast his gaze over her in a frenzy, but even as she shook her head she did the same, looking him over as though in terror.

"I'm not hurt," she gasped out, her voice quavering. "I'm not hurt—are you—?"

"Nay."

They looked at one another in the eye, her face pale, his still contorted by the fury of battle, and then the girl abruptly made a sound like a sob and flung her arms around him.

The elf returned her embrace at once, and as she buried her face against his shoulder he seemed to clutch her so closely that she was practically lifted off her feet.

For a long moment they stood unmoving in the darkness.

Then the ellon drew rigidly away.

"I told you to flee," he hissed.

The girl blinked and then glared up at him.

"And I told you I would not leave you."

In the dark night the ellon's face was terrible, and he seemed to struggle to contain the bounds of his anger.

"Have you any idea what I have fought? Whom I have faced?" he asked with such anger that his eyes seemed to burn with the same furious light that had illuminated his blade. "What help do you think you could be to me in battle?"

The woman scowled and nodded pointedly at the orcs slain by her arrows, but the elf barely spared them a glance and impatiently shook his head.

"Lady," he said through gritted teeth, "If I command you to run, you must run. If I command you to hide, you must hide. If I command you to leave me, you must do so."

"Once already you have been wounded while I stood by," the girl snapped. "Once already I have washed your blood from my hands praying all the while that you would not perish. I could not bear it again—"

"Heed my commands and it will not happen again," he said sharply.

"You cannot know that!" she huffed.

His eyes went suddenly flat.

"Yes," he said darkly, "I can."

But as they salvaged their belongings and fled the scene of the attack, the girl's hands were trembling, and the ellon's jaw was clenched, and their eyes were dark and troubled in the moonlight.

XXX

They drew up short.

The ellon and the woman stood at the edge of the forest before a vast clearing, and before them stood a small village of cabins not unlike the one in which the girl had dwelt with her father. Many of them were burned to the ground.

There was not a person in sight.

The girl's face was aghast, and the elf was grim and silent.

"Do you think the entire village was killed?" she asked in horror.

The ellon shook his head.

"Nay," he said quietly. "There is no sign of battle. The rangers must have warned of the coming orcs—long have the Dúnedain been a scattered people, but the days grow darker. I would guess that the villagers fled and sought another where indeed they may have more warriors to defend them."

He began to stride between the scorched cabins, shrewdly assessing as the girl followed cautiously at his heels.

"Do you know of another village?" she asked quietly.

She looked as though she hoped he would not, and by the ellon's frown, it seemed she would get her wish.

"Yes," he said. "But many scores of years have passed since last I scouted it—I avoid the Dúnedain and the lands patrolled by their Men. It may be that village has also been deserted in recent weeks or indeed decades ago, and it is several weeks away on foot."

He stood thoughtfully studying the silent village while the woman watched him warily.

His hands balled into fists.

"We will rest tonight in one of the cabins yet standing," he said at last, without looking at her. "You are weary. We will continue on when you have regained some strength."

XXX

The woman was lying before a small fire. The cabin around her had clearly been ransacked, and the door had been torn from its hinges, but the walls and roof still stood and had not been burned. The wooden bed behind her had been stripped of mattress and bedding either by its previous owners as they had fled or by the orcs who had destroyed the rest of the village, and two of its legs were gone, but a bedroll had been laid out before the hearth for her.

She was wearing only her shift, and the blanket was pulled over her legs, but though the sky was dark through the door behind her, she was not asleep. The bright flames within the fireplace were reflected in her wide eyes as she lay awake.

The fire crackled. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves outside and blew in through the window. The girl seemed to be listening to it.

She rolled onto her back. Her breath seemed to come faster, and the look upon her face as she turned her head to glance nervously at the open door was conflicted. A long moment passed. Then, as the wind fell silent, she threw off the blanket and stood.

The ellon was standing in the night some paces away from the cabin, his back to the threshold where she seemed to hesitate, his body turned toward the forest.

He was preternaturally still.

The girl lingered there for a long moment, watching him in apprehension.

"You should be sleeping."

His fair voice suddenly broke the silence, but he did not turn to look at her, and at the sound the woman started but did not reply.

Finally, when she did not move or answer, he turned.

In her white shift, framed by the doorway, the fire shone behind her and limned her in gold, catching on her chestnut hair as a halo about her head. Their gazes met and held, and he stood with the silver moon about his crown and broad shoulders, and his clothes were as dark as the woods behind him, and half his face was in shadow, and they stood separated only by the night.

The girl's eyes appeared to blaze with the flames at her back, and yet the ellon's eyes were as fathomless as the heavens, glinting as though with the starlight, and marked by tremendous grief.

"Is this how it will be until we find the next village?" the woman finally asked. The rise and fall of her chest was quick and visible. "And if we find it also abandoned or destroyed? We will carry on like this?"

The elf said nothing, but his entire body seemed rigid.

"I cannot bear it," she confessed. She stepped in her bare feet onto the grass, and appeared both older and younger than she had before—younger because her face had never looked so open and unguarded, and older because there was a shadow of terrible hurt about her, and a light of anguished yearning. "If this is how it will be, I will return to my father alone, or go on without you, or stay here and face whatever may come. But I can no longer endure this—I can no longer walk at your side when I know you are desperate to be rid of me."

His face remained stony.

"I will lead you on to the Dúnedain or return you to your father," he said. "But I cannot allow you to journey on alone."

The color in the girl's face glowed brighter.

"It is not your decision."

The ellon's jaw seemed to clench.

"Yes, it is."

"So then am I to understand I am your prisoner?"

She said the words softly, but her meaning was clear, and the elf flinched and looked at her in disbelief for a moment.

"I could follow you and you would never see nor hear me if I did not wish it," he said threateningly after a moment, his eyes ever darker. "But it is no crime to see you to safety."

The girl took another step forward.

"But it is a crime to condemn us both to suffering because you are afraid of loss," she accused.

At these words the elf seemed suddenly to break, and he closed the distance between them so that he stood directly before her, his face thunderous in the darkness.

"As learned as you are in the histories of this world, they are not history to me," he said furiously. "You think you know of what you speak? I am condemned. Whether by the oath I swore myself to languish in the Void or by the doom of the Valar who promised my eternal lamentation, I am condemned, Mírsell. You think you understand it? I watched my father perish, and all my brothers perish, and now I have no company save the memory of our evil deeds and of their endings. Do not ask me to watch you perish, also. For perish you would—and not at the end of your mortal life, but in grief and despair."

The girl's eyes were wide.

"I don't care," she said hotly.

"I care!" he snarled.

"Loving you is not evil, Maglor. And yet if love is enough to condemn me, then condemned I shall be," she insisted angrily. "I would sooner seek what happiness we might find—even if it would be taken tonight—even if this curse you fear should touch me—than live out my days in regret."

The elf shook his head in disgust and made to turn away, but the girl caught his arm.

"When you were wounded and awoke in my care, you said you wished I'd let you die," she said very quietly. "Is that what you would wish for me? To carry on living at such a cost? Life without anything to live for?"

"You have much to live for," he barked.

But the girl carried on as though she had not heard him.

"Shall I swear an oath, too? Shall I swear by Eru—?"

But her words were cut off, for the elf had seized her and clapped his hand over her mouth.

"Silence," he hissed, his eyes wide with desperation and panic.

They stood for a long moment glaring at one another, his hand over her mouth, their bodies pressed close, both her hands grasping his wrist. The firelight reached both their faces now, and the moonlight touched both their heads.

Then at the same moment their expressions changed, as though as they realized how close they stood, and how near their faces were—perhaps as they felt the touch of their skin against the others—their anger dissipated.

The elf slowly took his hand from over her mouth in a movement so gentle it might have been a caress, but the girl did not let him pull it away and instead pressed his palm tenderly against her face.

She stood gazing up at him beneath the stars, and the look upon his face was one of agony. As though against his judgment he brushed his thumb over her cheek, his brow creased as though with torment, and his gaze roved over her shining hair and her glistening eyes and her moonlit skin.

It seemed they were both afraid to move or speak.

The young woman bit her lip, and the elf seemed without realizing to draw her closer.

She drew in a deep breath.

"Do you remember when you said that I have the hands of a healer?" she whispered.

He nodded.

She seemed to steel herself. Then, as he stood unmoving, she laid her other hand very slowly upon his chest, directly over his heart.

"Do you think," she breathed uncertainly, "I could heal you here?"

At once he closed his eyes as though in a tremendous effort to resist some terrible temptation, as though the weight of his longing had at last grown too heavy to withstand, and it was obvious the moment he finally surrendered. He opened his eyes, gazed down into her face as though he saw Aman in it, and then drew her toward him to set a fierce kiss upon her lips.

XXX

The destroyed cabin was lit once more by the light of a fire burning in the hearth. The ellon and the woman were on the floor before it. They knelt face to face, so close that they might have embraced, except that their hands were clasped between them, and held over each of their hearts. In the stillness the ellon was speaking, his voice low and reverent as he gazed into the girl's face.

"I bind myself to thee, in sacred union unbreakable…"

XXX

"What should we name her?"

The elf and the woman strode again through the forest. The dog trotted behind them, and the ellon carried a brace of game over his shoulder.

He blinked and looked over at her face, then down at her abdomen, where her hand was splayed over her clothes.

He raised his eyebrows.

"We?" he echoed.

She looked up at him in amazement.

"Of course, 'we,'" she repeated. "Are we not to name her together?"

But the ellon smiled and shook his head.

"Whatever pleases my wife is what we shall do," he smirked, and beside him she turned pink but rolled her eyes. "Though indeed among my people the mother and father of the child each choose a name."

The girl frowned.

"Really?" she asked. "You have another name?"

"My father-name is Canafinwë," he murmured. "And my mother-name is Macalaurë."

The girl appeared fascinated.

"Is that what you wish to do?" she asked him. "Two names?"

The ellon reached gently for her hand and clasped it in his.

"We could name her after Lumeth if you wish it."

She snorted and glanced back at where the dog pranced carrying a large stick.

They walked in silence for a moment, as a flutter of wings passed over their heads.

"I think you've already chosen a name," the girl said thoughtfully. "I can see it in your face."

The elf's expression remained impassive even as she continued to watch him expectantly.

"Is it a secret?" she pressed when he did not answer.

The elf ran his thumb over the back of her hand.

"Nay," he said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "But I know not if you will like it."

"It is surely better than Lumeth."

The corner of his mouth drew up, but still he seemed to hesitate.

"I thought to name her Shëanon," he said at last.

The woman frowned.

"What does it mean?" she asked.

He turned so that he walked backward in front of her, and looked down at her face.

"Stubborn one," he replied.

She tilted her head.

"How do you know she will be stubborn?" she asked skeptically. She sounded as though she already knew the answer.

"If she is anything like her mother, she undoubtedly will be," he said.

The girl laughed.

"You are the stubborn one," she argued, "not I!"

The elf smirked but his face grew serious once more.

"It also means 'resilient one,'" he murmured.

They reached the clearing near to the deserted village.

"I like it," the woman whispered.

XXX

"No."

"You do not listen to reason. I have done many things, vessë, but aiding in the birth of a child is not one of them."

The woman paced nervously before the fire in the hearth. A new door had been fitted into the doorframe behind her, and the elf stood before her with his arms crossed before his chest.

"If we go to the Dúnedain, you will leave me there with the baby and not return," she said, and suddenly her lip trembled, and tears welled in her eyes.

The elf appeared shocked.

"You think I would abandon you and our child?" he demanded.

She sniffled.

"Maybe," she suddenly wept. She wrapped her arms not about herself but about the growing bulge of her midsection. "If you thought it would spare us from your curse."

His face was white as he stepped closer and put his hands upon her shoulders.

"I will not abandon you," he vowed. "I swear it. But we cannot remain here, Mírsell. We have lingered too long already. The forest grows more perilous each day, and you will not be able to endure the journey much longer."

He wiped tears from her red cheeks, and the woman offered him a watery smile and nodded, and before the fireplace they embraced.

XXX

Their breath rose in clouds before their faces. The leaves on the trees now littered the ground, and the girl wore both her cloak and the ellon's.

They froze.

Before them was a village. On the ground lay the lifeless bodies of slain men, women, and children, their blood dried upon the dead leaves. The houses had been reduced to cinders.

Neither the elf nor the woman moved, and even the dog stood still.

Then the ellon turned and stepped in front of her, clasping her arms and bowing his head.

"Do not look, vessë," he said near to her ear. "Come, let us go—"

But the woman shook her head and clasped his wrists.

"Maglor," she whispered, "we cannot go on with no idea of where to go next," she said nervously. "Even if we could find another village, we may find yet another slaughter—and—"

She broke off, but the elf gazed keenly into her face.

"And what?"

"I'm slowing you down," she said, glancing down at her protruding abdomen. "You could cover three times the distance in a day without me even if I were not with child—"

"No," the elf said at once, his eyes flashing.

The girl lifted her chin.

"You could find another village, and be assured of its safety, and bring me there after—"

"I will not leave my pregnant wife alone in the forest," he seethed.

But the girl suddenly bit her lip and nervously shifted her feet.

XXX

The ellon and the woman stood in a familiar room before a wooden table, and on its other side stood a tall man with a scarred face.

The girl was clasping the elf's hands tightly.

"Do not worry," she breathed urgently. "Father said the journey is not long—"

"I will return with a midwife at once," he nodded, looking into her face, though he seemed very ill at ease.

He glanced up at her father.

"Protect her until my return," he commanded.

The man sneered.

"I would die before I let harm come to her," he growled.

The elf narrowed his eyes.

"And that is the only reason I leave her in your keeping," he said darkly.

He looked at the girl and touched her face.

"I will return to you," he promised.

XXX

There was the pale light of coming daybreak, and inside the cabin it was dim.

The woman was lying on the bed before the fireplace, and upon her chest, squirming and crying, was a newborn baby that appeared only a few moments old.

"She's so beautiful," the woman wept, gently cradling the back of the squalling infant's head. "She's so beautiful."

But her sweaty face was whiter than the linen beneath her, and her father stood at the foot of the bed with tears running down his face, and the bedding was all scarlet.

"Her name is Shëanon… It means… resilient…"

XXX

The elf was staggering between bare trees, and it was dusk. He was visibly wounded; his clothes were blackened by blood. He seemed to have been ambushed and to have barely survived the ensuing battle, and his quiver was empty of arrows. Though he limped he hastened onward at a furious pace, until suddenly overhead came the call of a bird like a crow, and glancing up he saw the creature and swore loudly. He broke into a sprint.

At last he broke into a clearing and came to stand before a cabin.

He froze.

Though night was falling, no light nor sound emerged from within the house, and the shutters were closed, and all was dark and still. But the black dog was tethered outside, and at the sight of him began to bark. No movement came from within the cabin at the sound of the dog's barking.

The ellon did not move, but stood in the twilight, staring at the cabin and then casting his gaze quickly over the surround. His hand went to the hilt of his sword.

On the far side of the clearing, at the edge of the forest beneath a skeletally barren tree, where all the fallen leaves had been moved away, there was a patch of earth overturned.

He seemed not to breathe.

Then as quickly as he had drawn up short he suddenly bounded forward, drawing his sword and bursting into the cabin with a look upon his face of terrible, frantic dread.

"Mírsell!" he called, as he flung himself through the door and over the threshold. "Vessë!"

The cabin was dim. The hearth was bare. Only through the flung-open door did the weak evening light come from beyond, and this light fell upon a single figure.

The Dúnadan man sat upon the bed, facing the dark fireplace. His shoulders were bent. His face was haggard and shadowed by bags beneath his eyes and stubble on his cheeks. In his hand he held a large glass bottle, but from it he did not drink. He was utterly unmoving. He did not even turn to see the intruder in his house.

Seeing him the ellon did not move, either, but stood staring at him as though in terror.

"Baracand," he said at last, in a voice that was terrible to hear. "Where is Mírsell?"

The man did not answer.

"Baracand!" the elf said again, and finally he moved around the table to stand before the fireplace.

"Get out of my house," the man said hollowly.

"Where is Mírsell?" demanded the ellon.

Again the man was silent, and something within the ellon seemed to snap, for suddenly he bent and seized the man by the front of his tunic.

"Where is she?" He shook the man once. "Where is my wife?"

"Your wife," the man sneered, quiet and empty, and finally he met the ellon's gaze, and in his eyes was a terrible shadow of fury. "Your wife! My daughter, you should say! For who cared for her these last months? I! Who was there when her time came, as she labored and screamed? I! Who saw her flowing blood, who heard her last breath? I! And who alone buried her in the earth whence she will never return? I did! I!"

The ellon's face was stark white.

"Where is she?" he shouted, as though he had heard nothing the man had said, but his hands were shaking where still they clutched the his tunic.

"She's dead!" the man snarled.

The ellon released him as though burned.

"You lie," he hissed. "You lie! Where is she? What have you done with her?"

The man leapt then to his feet.

"She is dead," he said. No longer was his voice hollow, but quivering with rage. "Her pains came, and lasted days. She bled and it did not stop. By the end she had no strength even to lift her head. She died in this bed."

"You lie," the ellon was saying, backing away and casting his gaze desperately about the room as though in desperate search for some proof of deceit, some sign of the girl or where she had gone. "You lie!"

"She's dead!" the man suddenly bellowed, with such agony that it was almost animal, and his face was wild. "You killed her! You killed my daughter! Murderous dog! Could you not content yourself with the deaths of your own kind? Did you think your hands too clean, steeped in the blood of your kin, that you would spill her blood, too?! You said you would not have her, and I knew you a liar! You vowed to protect her, and I knew you false! You set foot in my house and I knew you a thief and a murderer both! You killed her!"

"Nay," the ellon said. "Nay! Nay!"

The man threw the bottle against the wall with such force that it shattered, and leaping forth he tackled the ellon so that he fell backward against the stone fireplace, and the swords and knives mounted over the mantle rattled, and the man's face blackened.

"I should kill you," he wept. There were tears on his face. "I should rip you limb from limb and send you to the abyss that awaits you. But I won't release you from this torment. I want you to live with it forever, and never know peace, as I will never again know it. As I will never again look upon my daughter."

He released the elf, who had not once struggled. As soon as the man had stepped away, the ellon fell upon his knees on the floor, and in his eyes was more pain than seemed possible to feel, and it was clear he had at last accepted the man's words, for his display of grief had been undeniable.

The ellon looked down at his hands as though he could not see them. It seemed for a long moment as though he could not stand or speak.

"Get out," the man hissed, "of my house."

"What of our child?" he asked at last. "What became of our child?"

"You have no child," the man said. "Be gone from my house."

In silence the elf rose at last, and his face had changed. In it no longer could be seen neither pain nor trace of any thought or emotion, his regard blank and desolate. He returned his sword to its sheath and walked upright around the table and out of the cabin without a backward glance.

Night was falling without moon or star, and little could now be seen. As the ellon crossed the clearing, though, the black dog began again to bark and howl as never before, straining against the tether with forelegs rising off the ground.

The ellon did not look at the dog. He crossed the clearing and stood, rigid, before the mound of turned earth. For many long moments he gazed down upon it, while the dog struggled and yowled in desperation, and then he turned and strode into the darkness.

Within the cabin the man went through the far door into the second room. Swaddled there, upon the narrow bed in the far corner, lay a newborn baby. Its eyes were closed, its lips pursed. It was sound asleep.

The man looked at it not for an instant before he slumped against the wall and slid to the ground.

There, he wept.

XXX

A small child was sitting at the wooden table, and the Dúnadan man passed her a cup full with water.

"Careful," he said gruffly, "don't spill."

The child's tongue poked out in concentration as she took the cup from him, but when she moved to set it down upon the tabletop, it tipped over and flooded the plate of food before her.

The man suddenly slammed his hand down upon the table and swore loudly.

"Dammit!" he snapped. "I told you not to spill it!"

The child's face crumpled, and in an instant she began to weep.

"Don't cry!" the man yelled, as he began to mop up the water.

Not until he had cleaned the spill and the girl sat covering her face and sobbing did he seem to wilt.

"Here, child," he said stiffly. "Do not cry. Come now, I will pour some more… Just don't spill this one again… Good girl. We'll go feed the chickens after, how about that? But only if you're good."

XXX

The cabin was dark, and the little girl was huddled in a corner of the back room, pressed down into the shadows with her knees drawn to her chest. She was sniffling and rocking back and forth, and her face was wet with tears.

The black dog sat silently in front of her.

From the main room, many crashes and breaks could be heard as the man shouted slurred curses and drunken accusations.

"That's right! Hide! You'd better hide! Half-breed brat! You think you deserve to be alive? If you'd never been born—If you'd never been born—"

XXX

It was night. The ellon was hurrying through the woods, following a jumble of prints upon the ground. He suddenly went still, surveying his surroundings, and then all of a sudden he straightened up and ran with all haste.

He stopped at the edge of a clearing.

Before him was the cabin. The window shutters were open to the summer night, and the light within the main room illuminated its occupants and poured out into the clearing, where there stood a dozen orcs.

Mutely drawing his sword, the ellon approached the cabin in silence, blending into the darkness. He came upon the orcs from behind and slew them one by one; they crumpled and fell as he worked ruthlessly and swiftly to kill them.

When they all lay dead, he drew near to one of the windows and stood to its side, silently gauging the situation.

The scene within was bleak.

Five men stood within the cabin. Four wore black cloaks and were arrayed in shining weapons from head to toe. Each held a sword in his hand, and one of them was shouting what could only have been threats.

The last man was haggard and grizzled. The scar across his face was more pronounced than ever before in the flickering light of the fire, his features twisted and terrible. He was wrestling with the last person in the room, who had at first not been visible through the window—he was grasping her small wrist and kept trying to shove her through the door into the back room as she dug her feels into the floor and clung to the man's leg, struggling with all her bodily might not to be parted from him. She had a mop of auburn hair upon her head, and her tiny ears were pointed, and her eyes were wide with obvious terror as she shrieked and sobbed, and seeing her the ellon at the window went unbelievably still.

"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" the Dúnadan man was screaming at the strangers. "I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU!"

"Hand over the girl," commanded one of the men. "She's all we want."

"NO!" the child shrieked, sobbing hysterically. "NO! Master—don't let them! I'll be good! Don't let them!"

"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" the man screamed again.

Suddenly one of the strangers leapt forth with his blade aloft, and in a bound the black dog appeared and sank her teeth into his arm.

He dropped his weapon with a shriek of pain, but one of his fellows stepped up and drove his own blade into the animal's side, and she fell with a yelp and was still.

The Dúnadan man gave a bellow of rage, but before he could utter another word, the cabin door burst open.

The four strangers in the black cloaks lifted their swords, but their efforts were futile. The ellon ended their lives as swiftly as he had ended the lives of the orcs, but while he had methodically and dispassionately cut the orcs' throats, in the cabin with the men he was brutal and vicious. When the last cloaked man lay dead upon the floor, he turned to the Dúnadan man, who still grappled with the little girl. Her sobs were now so hysterical she seemed incapable of speech.

"Stay away from us!" the man screamed, his eyes bulging, his face red and contorted. His scarred mouth was grotesquely twisted in his madness and rage. He seized the little girl under the arms and lifted her off her feet as though to carry her off, and the child gasped and cried out.

The ellon seemed seized by such fury it seemed to transform him; he looked no longer handsome and fair but wrathful and terrible to behold. He crossed the cabin in a single bound and seized the man with one hand around his throat. The Dúnadan dropped the crying elleth with a shout, driven backward, until the ellon had slammed him with such force against the back wall of the cabin that it appeared to shake the entire room. The man's feet swung helplessly off the floor, and he groped desperately at the elf's wrist and hand, attempting to pry the crushing fingers from around his neck, but the ellon seemed as unmovable as stone, and his eyes flashed like fire as he looked up into the man's purpling face.

"You will not touch my child," he said in a low, dark voice that was terrifying to hear. He seemed to tighten the grip of his hand around the man's throat.

"You dare to hurt her?" he asked furiously. "You dare to keep her from me? I could kill you as easily as a boot might snap a twig. I could end your life before you could draw a breath to beg for mercy—or I could draw out your suffering for weeks without end, and you would beg not for mercy but for death, for death would be merciful. The dungeons of Angband would seem a kinder fate than what I would do to you. Do you think you deserve it?"

The man wheezed and suddenly spit into the elf's face.

"You took my daughter from me," he gasped, defiant. "So I took yours."

In an instant the ellon let the man fall from the wall, and in the next, he slammed him, face first, upon the wooden table. The man's nose broke and scarlet blood immediately spilled over the tabletop. The ellon seized the man's arm and twisted it around behind his back.

"Who were these men who would have taken her?" the elf demanded. "Whom do they serve?"

The Dúnadan man spit out a mouthful of blood but gave no answer.

Then there was a crack like a whip and the man screamed. The ellon had broken his arm.

"Who were they?" he asked again.

The old man moaned in pain and seemed to laugh at the same time.

"There is nothing you could do to me," he said, "worse than what you have already done. You took her from me. You took her! She's dead because of you! You killed her! And I'll die satisfied! You can kill me, but you have to live with it—you killed her! Murderer! May it haunt you all your days! You—!"

The ellon's face was suddenly animated by agonized grief, he seemed neither to see nor to think, and in an instant he moved, and his blade flashed, and the man went still upon the table.

He was dead.

For several long moments the ellon did not move. He stared at the man's body, and only the wind outside and the sparking fire in the hearth could be heard as the elf stood motionless in the still room.

There came then into the silence a small, muffled cry, and at the sound of it, as though remembering himself at last, the ellon started around and seemed to cast his gaze wildly about the room.

The little girl was cowering beneath the table, her hands covering her eyes, rocking back and forth.

Sheathing his sword at once, the ellon bent and knelt upon the ground before her. He seemed suddenly to hesitate.

"Shëanon?" he asked tentatively, seemingly holding his breath.

The child froze, but did not look up at him.

"Shëanon," he murmured again, his voice very soft. "Come here, child. I will not harm you."

Slowly the little girl lowered her hands, gazing back at him with wide eyes over her trembling fingers, her fright plain to see.

The elf inched closer to her, extending his hand.

"Come now, brave one. You are safe. Come."

At last, with a whimper, the elleth crawled out from beneath the table, until she stood trembling before him. The elf's face was suddenly transformed as he looked at her, as though with agony and awe. His brow creased, his jaw clenched, he slowly reached out his hands and cupped her face between them, his gaze roving over her as though he dared not believe his eyes.

"Where's my Master?" the little girl asked at last, visibly shaking from head to toe.

At these words the elf's expression twisted with rage.

"Master?" he repeated furiously, his face dark, but as the child recoiled with a squeak of fear he seemed to compose himself.

"You have no master," he said fiercely.

Suddenly there was a noise behind him, and the ellon released the child and spun, his hand reaching at once for his sword, but there were no others in the cottage. Instead, through the window, there was the gleam of a red eye, and the flurry of raven wings as a bird flew off with a crowing cry.

Creban.

The elf swore loudly, and only when the little girl sniffled did he seem to remember himself.

He turned back to her and clasped her small shoulders in his hands, looking from her to the window and back, then at the dead men in the room—a flurry of frantic thought playing over his face.

Seeming to come to some desperate decision, he unclasped the cloak at his neck, tore it from his shoulders and drew it at once about the child's small body, bundling it around her, and then he picked her up and stood.

"Put me down!" she gasped, squirming, and the ellon looked down at her with such a look of heartache that even she seemed to notice it, and halted.

"Little one, do you know that these were wicked men here today?" he asked her in a soft whisper that even in his apparent attempt to sound gentle came out strained with fury and urgency.

The little girl's lip trembled, and she nodded.

"More will come," he said. "We must go now."

As he moved to the door, the girl lurched in his arms.

"Master! Master!" she cried, again trying to free herself, and the elf held her fast.

"He was a bad man, too," he hissed, spinning around so that she could not see where her master lay dead. "He was a bad man, do you hear me?"

The little girl began to weep again, and the elf closed his eyes as though in torment.

"Listen to me, harmanya," he seemed to beg. "More bad men will come. We must go now. We must be very quiet. Do you understand?"

The child looked back at him tremulously. She nodded.

The ellon paused only once more, before the furry body of the black dog. He looked down at her for a single instant, and then he knelt and closed the animal's eyes. Rising, he bounded forth, the child held in his arms, and bore her into the night. But as they passed through the threshold of the cottage and into the darkness, she spoke again.

"Are you a bad man?" she whimpered frightfully.

The elf's footsteps seemed to falter.

He looked down at her in what was clearly agony, and she stared back, her face pale, and marked with tears.

"I am going to take you somewhere safe," he said instead of answering. "To a place where no one will hurt you."

With that he held her closer and bounded into the night.

XXX

The child was crying. The stars and moon overhead were covered by cloud, and the darkness of the forest was absolute as the elf carried her. Her face was pressed against his neck, his cloak clutched tightly in her hands.

"We must be very quiet, Shëanon," he whispered, never slowing as he moved through the brush.

The child whimpered into the cloak.

"I can't see," she wept.

The elf seemed to hold her closer.

"There is nothing to fear of the darkness," he whispered. "I will allow no harm to befall you."

The little girl did not seem reassured.

"I can't see," she wept again. "I can't see anything."

The elf continued to murmur words of comfort to her, but it seemed nothing would calm her. Then suddenly the ellon lifted her higher, so that her ear was nearer to his lips, and as he continued to walk, he leaned close to her and began, very quietly, to sing.

XXX

They stood beside a river, in a pink dawn, and a fading fire was still burning upon the bank.

The elf was standing at the water's edge, bending to hold a canteen into the water, and when it was full he passed it to the child, who lifted it to her mouth and gulped many mouthfuls.

"Fó, harmanya, not too much," the elf protested, prying the flask away from her. The little girl looked back at him, and her face was smudged with dirt, her hair wild, and, still staring at her as though her every turn of head, her every word and change of expression were a haunting fascination, he seemed to realize for the first time that she was filthy.

The ellon frowned and looked back at the river.

"You must have a bath," he told her, kneeling at her side and reaching for the hem of her dress. "The water is cold, but we will be quick."

The little girl jerked away from his hands.

"I don't need help," she said in her small voice, her large eyes reproachful, and the elf blinked at her in surprise.

He lowered his hands and looked toward the river, waiting for her to undress, but after several long moments, the child had still not moved to get in the water.

A small hand touched his arm, tugging on his sleeve, and he turned.

"I'm stuck," she whimpered, in evident distress, and the elf's face shaded with concern.

"Stuck?" he repeated in his clear, fair voice. "Can you not take off your dress?"

The little girl shook her head, and the ellon frowned deeper still as he reached for her again. Once more he grasped the bottom of her dress, and the little girl lifted her arms, but as he drew the garment upwards she flinched and made a sound of pain.

The elf stopped at once, letting the hem fall, and eyed her critically.

"Where is it hurting you?" he asked with audible worry, his gaze roving over her from head to toe.

The little girl turned her back on him, glancing over her shoulder with trepidation, and the elf seemed to go still, for the back of her clothes were clearly stained and clinging to her skin. He reached forward and carefully grasped the fabric, tugging it away from her back, and the child yelped and tried to twist away.

The elf caught her and murmured close by her ear, and then he carefully pulled the dress over her head and let it fall to the riverbank.

At once the ellon went rigid, his hands stilling on her arms, and it was good that the child was turned away from him, for his eyes flashed with fury. For a long moment he was unmoving, crouching behind her in the early morning, taking in the sight of her, naked and trembling before the water. The wounds that covered her flesh were raw and congealed, the skin around them red. Abruptly he turned her around, angrily looking over the rest of her, at the many bruises and hurts and marks of abuse that covered her little body.

Suddenly the child spoke.

"I'm cold," she whimpered, crossing her arms over herself, and the elf abruptly lifted her under the arms and set her down in the water. The child gasped to be set down in the icy current and at once tried to rise, but the ellon knelt behind her and began cupping his hands in the water to wet her skin. As he had promised, he worked quickly, but his hands shook as washed her wounds, and the look on his face was fearsome. By the time he lifted the child out of the water, she was drenched and shivering. He wrapped her quickly in his cloak and set her beside the fire, where she sat huddled and wide-eyed, while he began to wander up and down the bank, searching for something.

Finally, he disappeared into the trees, and the little girl's face fell with visible dismay. She looked anxiously about her, at the wild forest and deserted riverbank, silent but for the rushing water.

In her bare feet she stood.

"Master?" she whispered. Her wet hair dripped onto the cloak, which trailed behind her on the ground. She cast another glance about her, and, seemingly panicked, she took a step toward the trees.

"Master?" she called, her little voice shrill with nerves.

There was no answer.

Suddenly in the distance there came the howl of a single wolf, and the child heard it and seemed to quail.

"Master!" she cried, scuttling into the trees. "Master! Master!"

She rounded a bend, and crashed right into him. The elf caught her in astonishment, kneeling at once, and covering her mouth with his hand.

"Be silent!" he hissed at her, and the little girl looked back at him in fright. "We know not who will hear!"

Suddenly he seemed to see that she was weeping, and he released her with a start.

"You left me," she cried, sobbing. "I didn't know where you went."

"I will not leave you, harmanya," he promised.

"I have been good!" she cried.

"I will not leave you even if you are bad," he said lowly. "I sought medicine in the forest to ease your hurts. I was never far away from you."

The elf lifted her in his arms and carried her back to the fire, tugging aside the cloak to reveal the lashes on her back. He took a bundle of plants he had returned with, and began to treat her wounds.

XXX

He was carrying her swiftly through the trees, and she rested easily in his arms, peering around at the wide forest, her young face pensive.

"Master?" she asked softly.

"Do not call me that," the elf said at once.

The little girl worried her lip, her face against his shoulder.

"... Master?" she asked again, sounding uncertain.

In the calm sunlight the elf laid his palm against the back of her head.

"I am not your master, Shëanon," he said sternly.

The little girl stared at the side of his face.

"Are you going to take me back to him?" she asked anxiously.

"No, harmanya. He can never harm you again."

XXX

It was night, and suddenly the ellon halted in the forest. He peered around at his surroundings, and carried the child a few more paces through the trees. There, before them, was a path.

The ellon stood for several long moments unmoving, his face stoic but his eyes dark and tumultuous. The only sounds about them were the night-sounds of bugs and animals—the songs of crickets and calls of owls.

In his arms, the child was sound asleep.

Still, he did not move. He turned away from the road, and instead looked down at her. With gentle fingers he pushed back her hair, and stood in the starlight gazing upon her sleeping face. In the darkness he ran the pads of his fingers over the rounds of her cheeks, the slope of her nose, the arch of her eyebrows and the bow of her lips. He traced the pointed tip of her ear, and caught a lock of her hair, running his thumb over the curling tendril. The child did not stir, and the elf did not look away from her. He lifted her hand from where it rested upon his shoulder, and stared as though with wonder at her small palm and fingers.

The ellon suddenly glanced up at the sky, as though to tell the hour, and grimaced.

He looked back at the little girl, and yet still he did not move.

Long moments passed. Again and again the elf looked up at the sky, or else looked around at the trees and at the path ahead, and the more time that passed, the darker the shadow that seemed to lie about him, as though his thoughts were bleak, and in his face was conflict and despair.

He turned to sit on the ground with his back against a tree, cradling her in his lap. As she slept he watched her silently, his gaze desperate and voracious. He bent his head as though to listen to her slow breathing, and then he drew a dagger from his belt and cut, from the nape of her neck, a lock of her curling hair. This he wrapped in linen and tucked into his pack, and then it seemed some kind of resolve had come upon him. He rose, holding her still, crouched on the ground in the summer breeze. The elf held her against his chest and closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he shifted, and set the sleeping elleth carefully upon the ground. He bent to press his lips to her brow, and then he stood, tall and grim.

As a gentle wind blew he stood over her, but then the child began to stir. At once the elf reached up and caught a branch overhead, and climbed easily up into the tree beneath whose sheltering boughs she lay sleeping. Far up he climbed, into the shadowy eves.

He turned to watch her, far below, as the swaying leaves rustled and the night deepened.

At the bottom of the tree, nestled between its roots, the child opened her eyes and sat up. She rubbed her eyes and looked about her, and, seeming to realize she was alone, she froze.

"Master?" she called softly. It was not cold, but the child began to shiver. She gazed into the shadows of the forest as though waiting for him to call back to her, and seemed to shrink against the tree, her little shoulders hunched, her eyes wide, her lip beginning to tremble.

The little girl leapt to her feet, breathing quickly, and turned this way and that in the darkness.

"M-Master?" she whispered.

For several long moments she stood, trembling, and waiting, as though she had recalled that she was not supposed to shout, or that he had told her not to call him by that name, or perhaps she was rendered immobile by her fear, but the longer she stood alone in the night, the more distressed she clearly became, until at last tears wet her cheeks, and she began to cry out in earnest.

"Master!" she wept, her voice high and desperate. She ran around the tree, searching in the night, hysterical and frantic. "Master! Master!"

Up in the branches, the elf watched her in silence, his face utterly still.

Finally, sobbing, the little girl fell huddled upon the ground, cowering against the tree in fright, hiding her face.

"You said you wouldn't leave me!" she cried, hugging her knees. "You promised! I didn't do anything wrong! Master! Come back!"

The child shuddered as she cried, whimpering in the dark, calling for him and begging, promising to be good, and the elf did not move.

"Come back," she wept. "Come back! I was good! Please! Please!"

Suddenly pounding hooves sounded upon the path, and voices could be heard, and then there was a rustle of sticks and leaves as someone came rushing through the brush towards the crying child.

"Elrohir! Man cenich?"

A single figure appeared before her, his silver raiment shining in the starlight. He carried a bow and quiver, and a sword at his belt, but he drew no weapon. He stopped in the underbrush in astonishment, his eyes wide, before bounding forth to kneel before the weeping child.

"Hên!" the guard called to his companion. "Elhêneth!"

Urgently he began to speak to her, but the girl did not answer, recoiling from him and crying inconsolably.

More guards ran into the trees, searching the surround, some calling to each other and others murmuring gently to the elfling as the child was lifted into their arms, wrapped in their cloaks, and carried away.

The sound of a horn, low and clear, pierced the night.

Up in the branches, his dark hair and cloak indistinguishable from the inky veil of night that shrouded the trees about him, still and all but invisible, Maglor watched as the sons of Elrond bore Shëanon over the last bridge, out of his sight, into the valley of Imladris.

Translations:

Vessë: (Quenya) Wife

Harmanya: (Quenya) My treasure

Man cenich?: (Sindarin) What do you see?

Hên: (Sindarin) Child

Elhêneth: (Sindarin) Female elf child

A/N:

Hello, hello, my dearest readers! Please forgive the delay. After two years of avoiding it, covid finally caught me :( I've been very sick, and had to finish editing this chapter on my phone, so please excuse any typos. It's been hard to get back on the wagon, but this is the longest chapter so far by far, so I hope that makes up for the wait!
As always, just wow. I cried many times reading the reviews from the previous chapter. I went back and read them all over and over while I've been sick, and I think I must be the luckiest author on this website. Your responses really, truly touched me. I'm so happy that the last chapter was as meaningful for you all as it was for me. I really poured everything I had into it. With that said, I'm very eager to read what you think about this chapter in particular... I know it's been a VERY long time coming. And I also have to give a huge shoutout to Lacrea Moonlight, who came very close to guessing Shea's backstory quite a while ago!

A couple guest reviewers asked about the poem at the start of the previous chapter. I did write it myself :)

Finally, I have a very exciting announcement: This September, I will be heading to New Zealand for THREE MONTHS! :D I'm so excited to visit the country, explore, meet some new people, and, of course, get to see some of Middle-Earth in person!

The next chapter should be out soon. All my love again, and I hope everyone is healthy and safe.

xoxo Erin