“Don’t cry.” Finrod/Bëor (Ao3: tomefaired)
“Don’t cry, Nóm,” Balan murmured, wiping tears from his lover’s eyes. “It’s alright...it was her time...”
“But she is gone!” Finrod cried. “Gone, and you all watched it, and saw her decline—ai, Balan, how can you bear the weight of it?”
“How can you bear the weight of eternity?” Balan asked. The word he used was oira, a Quenya term, for until now no mortal had any need for the concept of forever, of endlessness. “To live always, and watch the world change around you?”
“For all it is the Quendi who are bound to Arda, and the Atani who are guests here, it seems to me you are better suited to a world of growth and decay,” Finrod whispered. He clutched Balan’s hands tightly. “Ai, beloved—already my heart breaks for thee. What shall I do when you are gone?”
“Have no fear, and do not weep, dear Nóm,” Balan said, firmly clasping his lover’s hands between his own. “I shall follow you home when you must depart, and leave the leadership of my people to my sons; and when old age guides me into death and the world beyond, I will leave you with my memory.”
But this was little comfort to Finrod, who had lived many times the span of a single mortal life, and he wept all the harder. If he grieved now for the peaceful passing of Balan’s great-aunt, how shattered would he be to lose Balan himself, beyond even the reach of Mandos?
“Don’t cry, don’t cry,” Balan whispered again and again, and held Finrod for as long as he could, as long as his mortal life would allow.
