Arwen: Not till now

"I fell when I saw the elven-light in your eyes. Lost with no desire ever to be found, if not by you."

Your words surprised me. I had grown accustomed to my beauty being praised, to moonstruck wooers whose eyes seemed stuck to my body's form, the swelling of my breasts. Then their eyes would hastily lift. Blushing, they would seek to hide their lapse with words about my shadow-hair, my well-shaped lips; the nose, the eyebrows' slender curve, the shape and colour of my eyes. All this their mouths would praise, and I heard the same repeated words until the world grew grey and dull. And so I would smile, and nod, and then dismiss them from my side.

Never had I heard of any light within my eyes.

I looked at you. There, dressed in white, I saw a mortal that resembled elven-kin. Your body grown to full measure, tall among the trees; strong hands, strong shoulders, legs long and lean. In your eyes the noon-sun shone, glittering as in a shallow pool.

I looked again.

Behind the glitter-light dark shadows lay, belying the surface's shallow gleam. Deep darkness born of heavy doom, of years of toil and danger, blood and pain and death. And in that shadow I was lost, I wandered wild. My own sorrows small and pale against the sorrows lain on mortal Men.

Then in the dark I looked once more.

Beyond the shadow's blinding sights, beyond the sorrow and the fear great joy shone fort; great courage and a mirth that broke all bonds and boundaries. A light unknown to all immortal kin.

I saw a Man.

A Man grown more in thirty years than I had ever in my thousands. And so I forsook both Shadow and its twilight twin to live in day as long as it would last, and pass beyond the world when nighttime fell.

Still I see your eyes, but nighttime fell far swifter than the twilight ever felt, and neither light nor shadows hold your eyes, except the surface-gleam of mirrored candlelight. Bitterly I learn that at our first meeting I was wrong; I never matched your age, I ever was the young. You were the older all these years. First at your death I know what you have known in all your life; Death will come. The final shadow that you conquered - fear - still hides the secret of the other side.

O Númenór's king. Not till now I understand the tale told of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but now I pity them at last. For if this is, as it is said, the gift of the One to Men, then it is bitter to receive.

"So it seems," his echoed words did ring. "But let us not be overthrown at this final test, who of old renounced both the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory."

When my time comes, beloved, when I can rest and close my eyes in that last sleep of death, when I have grown to match your age and like you willingly give my life away, then will you come? Will you find me in the dark when I am lost?

With courage, mirth; with your great joy: Come! Meet me in the darkness. Bring me home.