Selfish! Selfish!
Those were the words I thought but could not bring myself to say.
Telfaras wished to know my mind on the matter of his upcoming nuptuals with the human girl but it has never been in my nature to open my mind to anyone, let alone an elf I have known for such a short time and one who is soon to do such a terrible thing.
How could I tell him what I truly thought when such words would only wound him?
I can commit them here, however, for this account will soon be consigned to flames as were the ones before it and in the blink of an eye these words will be naught more than smoke and ash. They can hurt no-one if they remain unspoken and unread. Alas, the same cannot be said of this decision.
When Telfaras and I first met, I briefly came into the company of this woman Gwenbur also. I looked at her and I saw that which she has since proven to me with action.
At that time, only a few weeks past, she was bethrothed to another and now, suddenly, she is to wed an immortal. Faithless, selfish, clueless.
Does she know what she does to him? Does she understand? Forever is naught but a word to those of a short lifespan - a concept without meaning, immutable, intangible. How can she claim to love him when so recently she loved another? How can she claim love when she damns him to endless days alone, mourning that which he had once but can never have again?
And Telfaras...
A foolish child. He believes a mere one and a half thousand years without a love is so long, that he must take it now or forever lose his chance to know it. He would rather spend ten years in her company than eternity without her, he said to me. Does he not realise that such will be his fate? It is unavoidable. He cannot take her to the Undying Lands, he cannot reunite with her in the Halls of Mandos, he will be alone until the End of Days and merely because he grasped blindly at the first chance of love he happened across.
This union will destroy him, but he does not see that and nor, I think, does she.
My love for Darnomir, his recent loss, has almost destroyed me, but Darnomir gave me the gift of being able to find a new love and a new life for we never wed. He would not allow our feelings to doom me so.
I, at least, have the choice and chance to find love anew in time. Telfaras, however, is to bind himself eternally to a mayfly.
They do not understand. They cannot. They speak the words as do all others of our kind, but they do not truly know them, they cannot feel them or see them or know what it is to lose a love so completely. I, myself, did not truly understand until Darnomir was gone, but now I do.
For him it will be so much worse than it is for I, but I have tried to explain. Words are not enough.
