i. The first time she meets him, she is vexed at his audacity of telling her how to do her job, haughtiness oozing from his every word. She is most unkind as is he, but somehow they manage to reach the first outpost without killing each other. It is only later, as the road towards the Halls stretches at their feet and the desire to outdo each other has perished, that she curbs her sharp words and allows herself to get to know him.
ii. She offers to take him to the Shire without meaning to, a suggestion made more in jest and accepted, driving panic in her soul. For she loves the Shire more than she has come to love anything in Middle Earth save for Nan Elmoth, but she knows so many of her kin see her love as something to be scorned. But he does not, all wide eyes and child-like wonder, allowing himself to be ensnared by the simple pleasures of hobbit lifestyles. Even when he gets felled by the fabled hobbit moonshine she cannot find it in herself to laugh at his expense for here is another of her race that understands the beauty of the Sun kissed lands of the Shire, and oh how rare they are. She vows to share more of this world with him.
iii. Duties and the road separate them now and then, but he returns to Eryn Galen often and she shares her patrol with him, her archers already accustomed to the sight of their mentor sharing the paths of the forest with someone other than themselves. She shows him the small parts of the forest that yet remain untainted, the bubbling brook near the northern border and the meadow untouched by darkness in the western side. She tells him of her family, brings to life stories buried for millenniums, secrets she had thought only hers to keep. She tells him what she is called in other lands, how Cypress came to be her name in the Shire and how the dwarves hold a name of their own for the one they had once gifted the title mahalkûna to. She listens, enraptured, as he speaks of his family and homeland.
iv. She remembers his awe in the lands of the hobbits and cannot help but compare it to her own as he leads her to the Orocarni, to the lands where the quendi had once woken. She is enraptured, ensnared by the sights and can understand why her kin made their choice and is fiercely proud of it, now even more than before. When she meets his family, she is overwhelmed in the beginning, shy as she had not been since youth, clumsy in responses and unused to family dynamics, her who had been alone for so long. But her reticence melts as she spends more time in their company and with a pang she wonders if her own family had ever been thus. Time has eroded their memory and she cannot remember.
v. She is not one to remain idle for long, never had been ever since her homeland had been swallowed by waters. She itches to leave and he wishes to stay, so the Road separates them once more. “Return” he asks her and she vows to do so, lips forming his true name as she bids him goodbye.
vi. It takes being away from him for her to understand the truth, to admit it to herself and when she does she staggers, body flinching and hands curling in fists at her side. ‘You love him’ her heart whispers in the dead of the night and her soul shrivels in fear for when had she ever been allowed to keep that which she had loved? All had died, ashes and dust lost in the passage of time, memories buried by the grains of sand falling in the hourglass. ‘I love him,’ she whispers, a confession to the glittering stars above her head, determination burning in her gaze. She will not allow fear to rule her.
vii. She holes herself in the forge when she returns. She opens a chest long left untouched, kindles the fires of her forge and makes them burn bright. She places the ore of metal in the heat, forces memories back to the surface and motions long left unused back to life. She crafts galvorn once more, crafts a dagger from the remnants of memories and remnants of metal, from ores still surviving from lands long buried under water. She gifts him the dagger and is unable to explain more, to put everything in words. But she knows words are not needed, for he will understand. She poured her words in the work, in the runes, in the metal that no other but her had ever wielded since the Dawn of the Second Age, in secrets that were hers alone but she chose to share with him.
viii. The Battle under the Trees leaves her wounded and weary, scars that will never truly heal peppering both body and soul. The world changes and turns, becomes more foreign than ever before and she is torn, part wishing to stay and part wishing to sail, unable to anchor herself to Middle Earth anymore. But she knows there is too much distrust in her soul for her to ever be happy in the lands of the West, too much rancor in her soul aimed at the Valar, so she lingers, undecided and untethered, wondering if there ever will be a simple answer to her conundrum. It is only his presence that soothes her frayed ends, that keeps her unease at bay, but she cannot stop but wonder whether it will be enough or whether one day she will break both their hearts.
