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"We are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory."

----Aragorn, The Return of the King

***

When the wind had dried her final tears, she turned from her last view of the city of Men and made her way back down the mountain paths. As she came to the foot of it, she saw a horse coming toward her at full gallop, and when she recognized the rider, everything within her stilled.

There were still farewells left to say after all. And how did one say a lifetime's worth of goodbye?

Legolas had come to her.

He pulled his stallion to an abrupt halt above her. Her hand unconsciously rose to the horse's high crested neck and she stared hard at the animal for a moment, unable to bring herself to raise her eyes.

He waited in silence, and his pain was a tangible thing. She could feel it from this proximity to him, so potent and raw and deep that he might have bled with it. At last, reluctantly, she lifted her gaze.

His grief was absolute, irrevocable, as only those who do not bend under their passing years are wont to know it. Since they had known him, they had shared a love for Aragorn, a complete and undying love. And they paid the price now of loving him, of giving their hearts to one who had left them, the one who had been fated to leave them from the very first day.

He knew death then as she knew and it was a bitter lesson for them both.

His pain was not all his own, she knew. He grieved for her as well, for whatever it was that he saw in her eyes as he met them. At last, he held a hand out to her.

She stepped to his side and took his hand and pushed her face in it, and her tears slipped through his fingers and were greedily taken by the dust of Gondor.

With his other hand, he touched her hair and then lifted her chin, and she looked into his dark eyes and she nodded and allowed him to pull her onto the horse before him.

He would see her to Lothlórien. They would make a last journey as friends, and though she had no need of his comfort or his protection, she would have both. Aragorn would have wanted it so. It was not, just yet, the time for parting.

***

Eldarion, from high in the citadel, with his youngest sister at his side, watched as a horse raced across the plains, not for the city but from it.

The riders' hair whipped like golden and ebony banners behind them, and not once did they slow down, not once did they hesitate or look back.

And neither Eldarion nor Gliriel, nor any who watched the going of their beloved Queen and their King's most loved friend, were certain if they were running away from Elessar, or desperately chasing after him.

At last, the riders passed into the shadow of the mountains and were lost from even the keenest sight. Eldarion had just turned from the window, when from the tower a single blast of trumpet rode out upon the wind, after the two who had passed on. That note reached far into the heart of Gondor and hung upon the air longer than any call from the city had ere that day, haunting and somber.

Eldarion bowed his head further.

"Goodbye," he said softly into the air.

***

They traveled paths that had once been fraught with grave danger, paths where the Fellowship's footsteps had fallen, when they had been so young, and brave, and had refused to accept the coming of darkness, even faced with their impossible task.

When they came to Lórien, there had been few words between them.

The wood too, was dead. Haunted, men said and none dared cross the old borders of the elves. The trees, with none to walk among them, with none to admire them, had seemingly given up hope of their own, spearing the sky like high, broken swords of warriors long lost upon battlefields below.

Legolas would go into the West and find what peace awaited. Maybe the voice of a sea that had called him for so many years would rise above the memory of men's voices and laughter and the sound of wind in the trees.

And so it was that he stood before the Evenstar and leaned forward and kissed her upon the brow, then lightly upon the lips. He held to her hard for a moment, and she to him. She had been such a part of his life, ever smiling and alight with hope and love and goodness.

Legolas had loved them both well and long. But this was a time of endings between them.

There was fear in him. Fear of final goodbye. He wished for what could not be, and he was frightened of what would become of her. Perhaps more frightened than he had been in his time on Middle Earth, he who had stood against the darkest army of the age.

Arwen stepped away first, bringing a slim hand to touch his cheek in fondness, for she loved him still, as he loved her, and there was no need of the words between them.

She turned and walked away, and it was far too late for backwards glances. She pulled the hood of her cloak close around her face, walked into and merged with the mists lingering there with the rotting trees. Her shifting shape was lost in the shadows, and he looked for her long, long after she had faded completely from his sight.

And then he left Arwen in the Lady's woods because it was what she wished, and he turned to find his way home.

***

She went to the hill where they'd made promises to one another, and with the heat of Legolas' lips still lingering upon her brow--a brand to carry with her and the last touch of another she would have upon Middle Earth--she lay herself down and she waited.

For the first time in her life, time seemed to stretch, rather than stealthily absorb the moments between her heartbeats, until she felt she had stayed there for an eternity, apart from him.

But not even so worthy a foe as time may win over loves that will not respectfully bow to the boundaries of hours and days and years and ages, and at last, below her, the earth changed and time relented.

She could feel him again, could hear his voice on the wind and feel his heartbeat beneath the bones of the earth and the sky was the hue of his eyes. He was everywhere. He was everything.

Joy and peace swelled within her to such proportions that she wondered if there was any way to contain it, or if it would simply dissolve the limits of her and scatter her to the wind.

And in escaping the circle of the world, she completed her own.

*******

Title Translation: Farewell, Elessar