Taking Leave

How many times, gwador, did we prevail and leave the honored dead behind us? How many times did we go on while mourners remained to do their weeping and hold their quaint, savage rites? Little did I think on them for my eyes looked ever forward to follow you. I never knew it would be thus.

You and I, we smiled and clasped hands and uttered bold words today, empty words.

I cannot remember them now.

   The world seemed to go still when the bells began their somber tolling. From that cold stone hall your beloved emerged, as beautiful as ever, as graceful, and yet utterly empty. Then did it come to me, the bitter finality of this thing we had refused to acknowledge for the sake of a warrior’s brave face.

You have gone beyond my reach and will never return.

   You have departed and I know not where, and now my courage fails and a great, sickening apprehension falls upon me. It plucks and snatches at my spirit with sharp, cold fingers. It is a dreadful mystery, this mortality. What has become of you, Aragorn? How fare you now? Is there a blessed realm for you beyond the circles of this world? I am only an elf. I know naught but that you are gone.

You are gone.

   Now where once my heart beat there is only a hard, hollow ache. It is like the deep bite of a blade, like falling without end, like a black shadow welling up within me to drown out all light. There is a suffocating silence in my soul.

A mocking voice of madness bids me follow you now, as if I could.

   Instead I walk and I answer and return embraces that I cannot feel. Others weep, yet I do not. Others sing. At last I can bear the empty noise no longer and I flee the throng to wander alone in this city of stones and men.

   Night has fallen. The sky is flat and black and the stars are naught but cold, glittering shards scattered upon it. They do not speak to me. The garden where I stand is silent; only distantly do I feel the soil and the grass under my feet. I put out my hand to leaf and blossom, I touch them, but it is as in a dream. I look out across the dark land to fair Ithilien, that work of love. I look to the north, to my home of old under the green wood where memories lie as thick as the leaves of many seasons. How is it that they no longer seem to be mine? The world has no more substance now than strokes of a brush on paper.

   Yet there, a streak of dull silver on the shadowed plain is Anduin. Oh, it, of all things, is no dead image before my eyes. As keenly as ever do I feel its relentless current slipping away, slipping away…to the sea.

At last I find my voice, and it is as the sound of rending.

It would seem that I still follow you after all, gwador, if only to leave this shore for another.

For now I will sail.

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A/N: The term gwador is elvish and refers to a brother in the spiritual rather than physical sense.

This dittie seems thin to me, but no matter how I tried I couldn’t flesh it out without diluting the emotion.  Criticism is welcome.

AUTHOR"S NOTE: I've been ridiculously busy, but still have managed to piddle just a bit. I had thought that Taking Leave was a one-shot, but it seems the angst monster is not done with it or me. Arwen's story has fascinated me for some time, and it always seemed to me that she and Legolas were connected by their love for Aragorn and the price they paid for it.

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I turn around and it is over.

In all the yeni that came before I never lived so fully as I have in this brief time with you, beloved. I felt my notes rise and resonate, falling neatly into their place in the song. I relished the fleeting seasons and savored their earthy fulfillment: the nights of passion, the days of love, the stirrings of life in my belly that ripened to come forth in a crescendo of agony and joy. We might have been a young couple in a simple cot and not what we were. I would have been happy with that alone, but our years were filled with labor and crowned with glory, for we with our friends and allies mended and reshaped the world. But it was like a nightmare following you to your tomb. I stood by and watched the farewells, all said with terrible calm as if under some evil spell. My heart was frantic to cry out against it and yet I too came in my turn. Never have I wanted you more than in that moment when you compelled me to let you go.

And so you left me. I saw it as your eyes closed. Your breath stilled and there was a soft tug on my heart as your fea wafted up. My eyes followed, though there was nothing to see. Somehow I could feel your flight, ever on and away, receding into endless distance until at last there was nothing. I looked down again and for a moment time seemed to lurch backward, for there before me you lay as if only in peaceful slumber. Your features suffered not the sickly, waxen mask of death; no chill hardened your flesh, and there came to me the brief fancy that it was not, after all, the end. Here was the face that gave me smiles and loving looks, the lips I had kissed, the form to which I had cleaved, the arms that had crushed me in warm revels of the night. Yet strange it was to look upon them then, strange and cruel, for unchanged though they seemed they had become only the image of a memory. You were no longer there and I was left with naught but an intimate effigy.

Somewhere bells were ringing and voices called. Gentle hands pulled me away and I had not the power to resist them. I felt my brothers gather me into the shelter of their union. They pushed back their own sorrow to pour their endless strength over me and it was enough to bear me on for a while. There was a ceremony that required my presence, a custom that the widow show herself. I went to preside over the mourning of a nation.

Duty, it seems, is a merciful burden, full of meaningless gestures that wear down the sharp edges of new grief. It was no great task to stand with dignity and give gracious replies, my part in the official spectacle that acknowledged your passing. It was no surprise to see the wary looks, the bold or tentative overtures, that cynical dance of those who sought to gain or preserve positions of influence and wealth in the face of shifting power. It dismayed me not at all, for Eldarion stood beside me, and in him will those schemers find that an eagle again holds the throne of Gondor.

Yet hard it was to see the ineloquent sorrow of longtime friends, the children bringing little handfuls of flowers and the silent tears of stern guardsmen who had known naught but your rule and had grown old in your service. Hard to hold firm when the black-clad masses stopped that grand ceremony by lifting their voices as one, and filled their white city with an anthem. Hard it was, beloved, to see the setting of the sun at last.

Now all is quiet and the white towers glow softly under the light of the stars. Now I crave the solitude of our chamber, for it was ever our refuge. There we tarried ere this day’s deed was done, bound in a shared promise that no shadow of dread would darken the morning. One last dawning of the day together, one last gentle awakening to drowsy whispers and lazy caresses and the easy melding of our bodies in languid pleasure. In our bed there will be a residue of that warmth remaining and a lingering trace of your scent. I will bury myself among the coverlets tonight. I will clasp your pillow close and feel the echo of our joining. I will cling to a part of you for one more night at least.

Through the deep, still hours a kindness of memories flows around me. I bide again in timeless serenity under the mellyrn; I walk once more in the gardens of Imladris. As the days darken I see the tender, earnest youth who once called me by another’s name return in the full flower of manhood, strong and splendid as a young elf-lord, and again my heart is captured.

The stars fade in the quiet, subtle waning of the night. Now Anor breaks over the mountains, loosing spears of hard, golden light. They illuminate our chamber as they ever did, but now it is not the same. The world has changed and moves onward, and thus the gulf between us will ever grow. The day of your ending is lost, pushed into the past by another and tomorrow by yet another, and I am but a relic borne forward alone on the current of time. I must arise, though I would sooner lie here and dissolve into the air. No, I will arise.

He comes to me shining in the morning sun, strong and fair, the epitome of all I have forsaken, yet now his beauty seems but a thin, brittle shell. Too easily I can see that he is lost. Dear Gimli hovers at his heels unheeded, glowering and ready should he falter or fail. I find myself in his aching eyes, and my fading in the tide of new anguish that rises in him at the sight of me. Have I diminished so much in the span of a single night?  I may hide myself from the mortals under a mantle of morbid dignity, but I cannot hide from him. To him the ruse does not exist.

Many times have I embraced Legolas in friendship and love, but it is in need that I do so now. The life of the Eldar glows in him like a flame; against this strange, clinging shadow of death it now flares with desperate brightness. In his arms I am strengthened by its radiance.

“I have a ship,” he offers, his eyes glimmering with grief and with a bleak, fragile hope. It matters not how gently I speak, my answer will surely break it.

“I cannot alter my choice, nin muindor, I will not. You know this.”

With a small nod he seems to crumble; he is suddenly closer, holding on tightly, his face hidden in my hair.

“I would not see you perish…”

His voice is a soft, broken wisp of melody in my ear. Here speaks a lord and a warrior of renown but now I am reminded of my little ones, when indeed they were yet small, beset by evil dreams or some childish fear no words of comfort could dispel. This sound is the same.

Ai, beloved, did you know? Did you know what would be left in the wake of your departing?

Soon Legolas will sail. He will pass away over the sea and be healed. In time the others will follow but I will not, for with the gift of your love there came also the gift of an end. I am spared that lingering after all is done, ever looking backward to things that are no more. Another path lies before me: to follow you beyond, whatever awaits. This, then, is how the Edain endure.

It is not so bitter, beloved.

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yeni--the plural of yen, an elvish measure of time.

fea--the spirit

Anor---the sun

mellyrn--the plural of mallorn, the trees of Lothlorien

muindor--a brother in the physical sense. I know Legolas is not her real brother, but by this time maybe she thinks of him that way. And I like how it sounds in that sentence.

Edain--Men