Stay for me there! I will not fale to meet thee in that hollow vale.

--Henry King, Bishop of Chichester

So this is how it would end. I had never, truley, considered it before, and lo! it was far too late now. I stood upon the last dim shores of the west, against the tormented waves, to say farewell. To him. To life. I stepped out into the water. It's icy waves seized my body, freezing my blood. Softly, willingly, I lay me down in this frozen bed. I was dying, alone, and unafraid, and long had I seen it.

This is how it would end. It did not hurt, nay. I was not drownding in my life-blood, as some had. I could feel nothing, and had not for so, so long. Nothing but the terrible throbing of my stone cold heart against it's cradle of ice. Without pain. Without fear.

My fingers were gone.Then my legs, and arms. Slowly, my body was lost to the ice. I could not feel it. I was in no pain. I was --at last-- at peace. My head was under the icy paradox. I could hear nothing. Nothing but my heart beat, slow and steady. A thousand Samhain nights gone by. My cosmic fire, slowly fading.

Slow...so slow...it carried the pulse of the universe. Slow, slow, saying, whispering, "I am, I am, I am..." slower now, ever slower, breaking down, growing fainter, and fainter.

 The ice took me. A pleading sigh emmited from o'er my lips. A silenced scream. The last breath left my body. Frozen, dying. Still, my heart beat, throbbing in my cheast, my head, my being, the cosmos. It hurt. I wanted it to stop. The icy liquid burned as it poured into my lungs. Then...silence.

Dead and rigid beneath the ice of the waves, I was gone. Yet, clear as day, a voice spoke within me. "Raise yourself. You have not died. Your life force will dwell with you forever." *

The waves rushed up on the shore,and back.With them, like a babe from out her mother's womb, I was ripped from my body, and hung there, an avatar of moonlight. Free. No longer subject to the force of air or gravity. I was free.

She was so sad, this rigid, frozen corpse beneath me. The maiden I once was. Her dark hair fanned about her, like a horrific sea sirin. Her pallid skin was tinted blue. Her eyes, though, above all, were terrible to behold.

They were dead as stone, and shone with a pale corpse light, all their lovlyness now dimmed. Their likeness was that of a winter's night sky; completly absent of stars or moon. A veil of storm cloud.

I wondered how long it would be 'ere she was swept away, how long till the churning wavers and sand and salt of the sea dissolved her fragile body. How long till she shattered, broke like ashes, into light.

I wondered, for no longer did she look like me. She, the whole world, seemed so alien, distant as the fleeting images of a dream. I was fading, away away...I simply faded away.

*Egyptian "Book of coming forth by Day from Night"
                                    ***

This, at least, is certain: all shall fade. Everything-everything-will pass on. Minerals, plants, animals, the children of men…and eventually, the children of Illuvatar. Only He is truly immortal.

 It is the great cosmic wheel, and we can do nigh to hinder it. Maybe I would have died by the sword…in retrospect, that would have been less painful. Yet I chose mortality, to sicken, and grow old, and die. I would have died anyway, for such was my fate. In the end, would I truly be the less gone?

Life was seeping from my body as it does from the leaves at winter. I could feel it passing on pinions of haunted-yet clean-starlight.

The once great and silver pillars of trees shown ash grey. The trees had lived in a dream like state while Lorien was under Her keep…and now they were wilting, pouring forth bloody leaves from the delayed death within them. They flamed fourth with fierce pride, knowing they should not be taken…whoosh, shiver, they were dead.

Crimson, scarlet burnished copper and tarnished gold…the colours swirled around me like the serpentine dance of a sabbat fire. I was a phoenix. Flaming red, willingly laying down my life. I built my own pyre from sticks and bones.

Empty, life-less forms rattled with the icy wind, scolding me in harsh monotones. "You should not be here! Get thee hence!" within my heart I weakly replied, "Yes, I am leaving. Please, do not be angry, for I am the last." How pitiless and cruel. This place…this one final place…of fell laughter and misty memories of mirth, was slowly fading before my very eyes. My last haven, gone. I prayed only that I would die first.

I ran through the grey pillars, fleeing from my past, my life. Sharp thorns and branches slit open my skin, yet still I went on, leaving bloody footprints in the fine snow. Deathly pale and thin, I must have resembled a vampire. My dark tresses entwined with the wind, which brushed me gently and left. "You must stay behind."

I came to the hill where it began…and where it would end. My fragile body heaved with each shuddering breath I took, breaking down and failing. This is the end…the long awaited end. It has come, at last.

I lay me down on the flowers, so innocent and pure, glinting like the moon and sun. Long afterwards they would remain, growing in my hair. Long after my body would remain, undimmed until finally fading into the surrounding earth. I arranged my body as is custom to arrange the dead; crossing my arms over my breast and bringing my spine and legs into a rigid, elongated position.

I turned my face towards the sun. He was dying with me. Golden rays shot out from the fiery disk and kissed my form, offering me a hand out of this life. The sky burned, flames licked the sky, swirling mercilessly and flowing like warm blood. I forgot my rigid death-position for a moment as I reached out to try and touch the light. And where are the ashes? What is left of this holocaust? Suddenly, gently, they fell and brushed my cold skin. Innocent and pure, the virgin snow would be my funeral shroud.

I smiled with bitter insanity. The sickness--of living-- was leaving at last. Thank heaven! I sighed … releasing my former life...passing, at last. My soul fled. I was dead.

For a moment, I hovered over the maiden I had once been, staring into her unseeing eyes. They would never be closed. They would forever stare out, and see all the world change, untill the birds pecked them out...if there were any birds left in Lorien. Farewell, farewell, at last I saw. These ashes...my ashes...were the ashes of twilight.

My sight dimmed, turned to black--but the black became the fine threads of night. My funeral pall, the curtain of night. Varda cast her veil, her dark hair over my glassy, unseeing eyes. Their, their child. You need not see this world any longer. She had kissed my brow-- she had taken my final breath. I was gone.