At The Closing Of The Day
She did not remember well how night fell in this place, and when it came upon her now, as her breath was failing her, she wondered if it was not her own terror that made it dark. Was her mind, now, failing her as well?
Well, perhaps it was so, but it would not matter for much longer.
She did not dream that night, though she faded in and out of sleep, and always found herself waking, too weary to panic that she might have lost the few precious moments yet before her.
Sometimes, she sang, whispered songs, funeral songs for the humans she had known. The immortal carols of her people as they had departed, too, she sang this night -- after all, now she too was departing this world.
Late in the night, she began to hear whispers on the wind, and she longed to reply, and to ask what tidings from the South, the North and the West, but she knew that she no longer had that gift. She thought she heard her father from the distant West, her grandmother and her brothers too, and all of them asking if it had been worth it.
Flesh remembered things as well as heart, and she remembered lying in this very bed with two Men, and how the three of them had treasured one another when the world's end seemed near at hand.
The world had not ended, of course, but Rauros had taken one of them from her, and the love of the other was all the more precious for the reminder of flesh's frailties.
Yes, she wanted to cry, yes, indeed, it was worth it, for I have loved as you can never love. I have loved as they do, with a love that consumes my whole being since it does not have the whole of time to rest in my mind instead.
Yes, she thought, and heard a distant voice speaking in her native tongue, and realized that it was her own. Yes. The pain I have felt with every death I have endured, the darkness that closes about me even now, all of these only speak to me of love, mine own and that of others.
And then there was sunlight again.
It seemed then that they came to her again, her Men, and now, today, for the first time in all their combined years, there was no fear in their union, for there was nothing that they could yet lose. She kissed them both ferociously, and knew that she must have died, for Boromir had no scars and Aragorn was as young as he had been when she had last been in this place.
"Is this what you wanted?" one of them asked before kissing her. She did not know which it was, for there were too many kisses to count.
"Yes," she replied, and knew that it was she who spoke.
"Yes," she repeated, and behind her words was all the force of every love she had ever loved.
Yes, it had been worth it.