It is not long now.

The barest whisper of breeze caressing long meadow grasses, a sigh through the leaves of the most ancient of forests, or a wind rustling the drapes of our chamber at night, so much is a human in the ebb of the eternal.

Such knowledge I have had ere ever I first brushed your hand, and yet I did so. I would do so again.

You are still and peaceful beside me this night, warm against my fingers as they ghost along the curves of your face, though I have long since mapped your form with my touch. I remember well this scar to your lip, fighting close beside you in a battle long over many moons ago even by my count. And the lines indenting your eyes and mouth, from smiling upon your children I would imagine, and from gracing me also I like to think, though that was long ago as well.

Grey has painted your beard and your brow since that ephemeral time, but you are no less beautiful to me now than on the nights we made love under tree and by fountain, in Rivendell and Mirkwood, under the mallorns of Lorien and on the battlements of your city before the final debate, more alive in those memories than in any since made.

You never spoke the words, and for that I thank you. Perhaps you knew they would break me, though always I saw the truth plain in your eyes; I could not have heard them and still left you to your wife.

I do not regret, for I know it had to be so... and I thank her too, for goodness beyond measure in calling me home to you in the last. To feel your breath filling my lungs as I press my mouth to your lips so slightly parted in sleep, to twine my limbs around thine as ivy encircles the aged oak, these things have given meaning to my life and I would never repent them.

Fear not for me, love; my westward home also calls. I feel the song of the sea crashing upon my shore in these last days by your side. I will sail, and carry my love for you onward until that time when the mind of Eru is made known and all the races are united in love, more than merely a song on the wind.

Return to Archive