Círdan

It was still so strange, to dwell on the shores of Aman after so many ages of awaiting, and it was still hard not to feel lonely. Círdan could not fathom why: it had been decades, after all... no, centuries... no, millenia since he had boarded the Last Ship along with Celeborn and at last allowed his heart's greatest desire to seize him utterly, the greedy waves of the Great Sea to devour him whole, allowed its waters and him to finally become one, as it had always been meant to be. Círdan had been happy back then, blissfully happy even, when they had first beheld from afar the bright and soaring Tower of Avallónë, and he could not say he now was not, yet... the everlasting state of awaiting had not left him just as the solitude had not as well.

Círdan knew better than to trust Time. He had already learned that Time had a habit of playing tricks in Aman, shrinking or stretching at its whimsical will like fresh resin. He trusted his own soul more and his soul... His body had grown younger again, as much as the Shipwright had let it, but his soul had not, and it still knew no rest. It is not the end. It is not the end yet, it kept repeating the same words to him monotonously once and again like a cuckoo that perches on the edge of the wood.

End. Methed. Metta*. Yet what the end was? Ofttimes it seemed to Círdan there was not more inane, ridiculous even word for an Elda than end. The Eldar knew no end. Aman knew no end. His soul would never know end, so what end it might be cuckooing about? What end might it be waiting for?

He moved the plane once more, pushing harder on the board held by a vice, spread out on a table-like long and flat boulder, and his bare feet sank even deeper into the pleasantly warm sand of the wild beach. He worked like this for some time in a series of repetitive, same motions, so familiar to him that they seemed as natural as breathing. He paused only when a swallow sat suddenly at the end of the plank and began to stare at him stubbornly with its black eyes like two little obsidian stones.

"This bird is not like any other," he said, not turning his head. He did not need to in order to know he was not speaking to himself.

"She is not, lord," the soft, maiden's voice reached him to agree shyly. Círdan, without putting down the plane, now lifted his gaze and peeked from under his thick brows. Just as he had supposed, the girl was sitting yonder, at the top of a low dune, 'mongst dry grasses that in places outgrew her by a head and on the edge of a coastal wood, full of old, twisted pines and single, lone birches.

"Why does it accompany you alway?"

The maid shrugged skittishly like an uncouth, wild pup. "She has chosen me somehow."

This was quite a plain answer. All that lived in these woods much more oft seemed to prefer this maiden's company to that of the other Eldar, just as she much more gladly choose the company of forest wild dwellers over other Elves. A lost and gentle creature, Círdan had thought of her when she had first squatted in her spot among the grasses and silently watched him from hiding with eyes big and round as those of an owl nestling. She as well had not found herself here, stray whenas walking along Aman's unfamilar paths, and perhaps that had made the Shipwright take an interest in her. He had learned that her name was Nellas and she had once been a maiden from Doriath, the primaeval kingdom of Thingol and Melian. Not one of the court she had been, but a lowly girl, had it truly meant something in the freedom of the Elder Days..., yet close to Melian's heart. Eru only knew, and not even Mandos, Círdan suspected, why she had only recently been given her body back. For it seemed to him there could not have been a more harmless creature in the history of Arda than this girl.

Nellas stood up from her cross-legged position and, having brushed back her dark braid, ran lightly down the golden sand of the dune and approached the board. Her fingers danced awhile along the still rough surface of the wood ere she asked, "What are you doing, lord Círdan?"

Círdan. This also set her apart: she was one of the few here to use his Sindarin name instead of calling him Ciryatan or Nōwē at times.

"Are you building a ship?"

"A ship?" Círdan chuckled. "Of one board?"

Nellas got confused, finding she had asked foolishly. Having turned her gaze away from the plane and the plank, she walked to the swallow and gently took it in her cupped hands. The bird resisted not, but was rathe to snuggle its white belly and black wings into the warmness of the maiden's tiny palms, and Círdan silently observed the pair for a while as the memory of one of their first talks swam to his mind.

"Lord Círdan?" the girl had asked him, and Círdan lifted his keen as stars eyes to her. Then, too, she had held the bird in her hand, tenderly and slowly running her finger along its back. "Where do swallows go after death? Where do eagles, lordly and proud? Where do the seagulls go, those small and funny ones that, when they scream, seem to laugh?" And, not waiting for his answer, she had asked more, quieter, "Where do... the Men go?"

"This Eru alone only knows." Círdan could guess which particular Man the maid had had in mind, for it had been Beleg, 'mongst the now legendary kingdoms and lands of Beleriand once known as Cúthalion, also dwelling in the forests near Avallónë and not far from the sea, who had told him her story.

"Princess Lúthien learned that as well."

"She did," Círdan had agreed. "So did every Man who has met death, yet none of them shall tell us. Men do not return. None. When the gate of death closes behind them, it closes for foreverness. It also closed behind Lúthien."

Nellas had wrinkled her nose a little and focused her attention again on the swallow as he had gone on, "Fates do differ for a reason, and not for us to peek under the lid of not ours cauldron of life. No Elda should try to be Man, nor any Man an Elda, just as no swallow should wish to be a seagull."

"Yet this one is fairly trying..." he now finished that old thought as Nellas released the bird from her grasp and it soared aloft and above the sea, then joined the party of gulls wheeling with yammer over the waters, a little black dot among at least a dozen snow-white wings, surrounding it like lily flowers.

"What an odd, foolhardy creature!" the Shipwright wondered, following awhile the swallow's flight path, ere he grabbed back the plane and returned to his work.

"I need to replace one of the timbers," he explained to the girl then, with a brief move of his head pointing to a boat moored at the shore, swinging lazily to the rhythm of almost nonexistent that day waves. Simple and small boat was it, yet bright and graceful, and special to Círdan all the same, made of the finest birchwood, now glistening in the morning sunlight like white gold.

Nellas approached the boat and began to study it with her eyes from all sides, leaning over here and there, trying to discover which plank looked holey or worn. She would not find, Círdan was sure and smiled, yet he said nothing. He only hastened the plane's movements, not paying much attention to the maiden for a while. Eftsoons, however, her sudden shout almost knocked the tool out of his hands. "Lord, thither, look!"

The Shipwright turned immediately and his eyes followed the direction indicated by the girl's outstretched hand.

"Someone is there, lying!"

He strained his gaze at the sight that bewildered him. She was right: less than quarter of a mile away from them, something that seemed a raft was plunging lonelily on the shimmering sheet of the calm as a lake sea, and on it, the sharp elven eyes could spot a figure stretched out in stillness.

He walked amain towards the boat and, having removed the rope from a peg embedded in the beach, pushed it slightly away from the shore and got in.

"Come!" he said to the girl as, having coiled the rope and thrown it into the boat, he grabbed the oars. Nellas swiftly threw her turnshoes off her feet and jumped nimbly over the side. The boat moved slowly across the waters, its bow cutting the sea sheet softly as though it were cutting precious fabric. Erelong, however, it began to sway them much harder than the almost insensible breeze would indicate. Círdan sighed.

"Stop wriggling like a deer caught in a cage, girl! You will overturn the boat."

She cast an apologetic glance at him, at once dropping down onto the board serving as a seat, albeit still equally tensed and gazing persistently at the drifting raft. "I am sorry, lord Círdan, I am just so curious!"

"So am I," the Shipwright admitted truthfully, hastening the movement of the oars.

At last they reached the raft, that turned out not to be one, but a thick, wide log, likely broken more than once before, eaten up in places by the lickerish water. The unconscious figure that lay on it was wearing clothes so torn and tattered that not much remained of them... and this alone made Círdan freeze and wrinkling his brows in the vastness of his astonishment. Hither was not where castaways arrived. Here was Aman, that wrapped the mantle of its care around every Elf who set sail, and both the Sea and Ulmo, its ruler, treated every sailor with boundless mercy, even those who chanced to encounter a storm.

Yet, when he and Nellas dragged the wretch into the boat, Círdan became even more bewildered and seemed to be dreaming. The castaway's fair hair glinted in the sunrays, and his face seemed quite young, and perhaps it would have been even younger had the thick golden beard not overgrown it like a bushy bosk. Yet... it was not the face of an Elda.

Círdan looked at Nellas, and as they exchanged glances, he saw in her now round like platters eyes that she had recognised as well.

It was the face of a Man.

* methed, metta - end