I dreamt that I heard the harps in my Father's house and when finally I woke, the cry of the gulls echoed in my heart.
He was not there beside me.
I had never woken to find myself alone, though I had many times left him when visions and torments beset my rest. My fears, it seemed, were not ungrounded, there was indeed a link to this place in him that remained as yet unbroken. I arose and wandered a little while alone beneath the stars before I came upon him.
He stood, tall and unmoving, his hair falling like rays of moonlight about his face, making him seem as a Mallorn wreathed in Ithil's embrace. He was rooted here, to this place, as I had never been and, seeing him in this moment; I could no longer see him sailing to the shores of Valinor, how could this singer of starlight endure in cities of stone and metal?
He was turned away from me, eastward toward where the horizon announced the rising sun, and his shoulders shook with silent sorrow.
The forests had waxed and waned since the fall of the Dark Tower. Almost a full year had passed and yet the damage of Nenya's breaking had not been undone. Our bond had been torn and wrenched and without its soft intimacy I did not know how to help him.
I was loath to disturb him, for I did not know what I could say. Words and gestures seemed so clumsy after an eternity wrapped within his thoughts, and yet they were now all that remained to me. I watched him beneath the branches until I could no longer keep silence.
"Beloved, why are you weeping?"
The surprise at my unnoticed approach swiftly faded to an expression of dull pain. He stared upwards for a few moments at the sky before answering. "Because all around me is possessed of such beauty."
I sat down beside him and searched his face, hoping for understanding, but found none. "Surely that is cause for rejoicing."
He hid his face in his hands. "I can find no peace knowing that I must leave here."
This choice had been thrust upon him with a cruel suddenness. We had not prepared ourselves for it; he had wedded me knowing my exile, believing that we would wander this land long after the memory of the Elves had vanished and we ourselves had faded into nothingness.
Then, after the One had been vanquished; I awoke to darkness and confusion, my abandonment had been complete as Nenya's strength failed and my Beloved was torn from me. I had thought myself beyond help. Then, in the darkness and sorrow of my desolation, my longing had become a calling and I knew that I had been summoned home.
"Does the sea not sing for you?" I said quietly.
It was an empty question asked in vain hope. No Elf who sought the west could suffer so much at leaving these lands. He was tethered here, by blood to the children of his child and by spirit to the fading forests.
He sighed in frustration. "I wish to sail, but," he looked about himself helplessly, "I did not think to find leaving such a sore trial."
I remembered how I had declared so proudly all those years ago that I had no desire to return. I had thought many times upon my banishment since that day. My exile from what should have been my eternal home had grown ever harder to bear as the years marched onward; only he had known of the extent of my longing, and only he had been able to refresh my aching spirit.
Now it was his spirit that ached, his heart that was restless and troubled, and I, who was rejoicing, could not understand his distress. I reached out to him, but could find no answer in the emptiness that now lay between us.
"Why have you not spoken sooner?" I exclaimed.
I meant to speak kindly, but my pride flared and I shivered as the resentment which I had striven to hide found its mark.
Now his eyes met the ground, as if ashamed to speak his thoughts with me. "I had hoped that silence would not endure forever. I had hoped that perhaps our trials had been so great as to overcome us only for a moment and that you would return to me in time. It has not been so."
Though there was yet one comfort for him in his silence. The trees, which had long been silent to me, drowned by the waves and the whispers of the Enemy, still spoke with him. Their counsel would sooth his wounded spirit as Aman never could.
"You need not leave."
The words escaped my mouth almost before I knew they had been spoken and I saw my own shock mirrored in his face.
He turned from me as one wounded by a cruel blow. "Why would you say such a thing? Do you now seek to cast me off as you do your other mistakes?"
"Beloved!" I cried, "you know it is not so!"
"But I do not. I do not know you anymore," he looked at me with raw pain in his eyes. "When I speak with you it is not you who I see, but an illusion which bears your form. It is as if you are merely a shade and phantom of my love."
I knew well what he felt for I suffered in the same way. Still it tore at my heart to hear him say it.
"There is nothing left for us here." He said gently, taking my hands in his. "Let us go to Aman and find healing there."
"You cannot."
I wanted so badly to sail. My heart had turned to Aman and I would find no rest here. It seemed an act of final cruelty in my doom that he should be parted from me in the moment of my triumph. To be without him was as if I had been deprived of a vital part of myself, as if my sight or my speech had suddenly fled. Alone, even in our closeness, I knew now that we were fated to once again walk along separate paths.
He drew in a sharp breath, as if for an angry rebuke, but silenced it.
"I wonder how you can know this, since your thoughts have long been darkened to me?"
"You weep beneath the forests at the thought of leaving." I said softly, "I do not need to touch your Fëa to see that." I watched his eyes as they searched mine, seeking answers that I did not have.
"We will wait for you, Beloved." I folded my hands to keep them from shaking. "There is still much here for you, do not allow grief and fatigue to cloud your love of these lands." At that moment, I was almost glad that our bond was diminished, for I did not want him to know what those words had cost me.
A silence fell between us. His eyes were unreadable, as they had never been before. Strange though, I thought, that the Fëar of the Sindar seemed to shine all the brighter because they were not obscured by the light of the trees. Then, like the rising of the sun, his spirit seemed to awake as if from a long sleep.
"Your counsel is both wise and true."
So it was that we resolved to be parted once again.
I knew that if I had urged him he would have left with me. In my youth I might have made such a demand, unheeding of the pain it would cause him. Now I was wiser and worn down by the cares which that youthful folly had foisted on me. With the wisdom came the knowledge that I could no longer have what I desired at the cost of another. I would have to be without him, at least for a time until he came freely and of his own desire.
No more words were spoken between us until long after the sun rose above the eastern horizon. Time, which we had always had in abundance, now seemed as transient as the flowers of spring and I could no longer tell if I clung to him or he to me.
