Oh Diary.
Oh, oh, Valar. It is true, it is real. My darling husband lived not long enough to clasp me to his breast, as he wanted, as I wanted. His fëa is fled to the Halls of Mandos for judgment (O judge his true heart with an eye that sees his innocent love for his Tûr and those with whom he fought!) and his hröa, with my severed braid coiled on his chest and Norli's gift at his feet, lies at the bottom of a cairn. I, with my own hands, wishing anything but the reality that lay before me, laid the capstone. (It is funny, Diary -- when I went back to get some of the flowers to press among your pages, there was a glint of something bright I had to stoop to examine. Wedged between the sacred stones was a clasp, such as the Warband of Imladris wear on their cloaks to mark their allegiance. I wonder how it came there? Híril Elisbeth and Khalis were both at the funeral, although they stood back and did not speak. Could one of them have left the silent tribute after I went back to the House, or was it some other member of their group entirely? It is a mystery, although not strange, for the Warband and our House fought together on his last campaign. Perhaps it was Lilleduil, for she esteemed him well and would have sewn my wedding dress.)
When I was but small, I played on the shore often, as did we all. I would find driftwood, sometimes roots that had taken a gnarled and wild shape, but sometimes smooth branches that seemed great within a little elleth's grasp. I took one such to Atye and asked, would it make a good harp for Ammë?
He smiled at my wish to make a gift, but showed me how the wood was lighter, almost hollow. Atye said it was wood at a different stage of its journey. Once it had belonged to some great tree, like Laurelin or Telperion, and grown there for uncounted years. But even trees, he said, come to an end some day. And now the wood of it need not stay in one place, as most trees are content with (for Atye, who never lived to see Arda, never saw Huorns or the great old Tree-shepherds). It might travel, though it did so at the mercy of what waves Lord Ulmo's doings sent up from the deep ocean.
Was it not a miracle, said Atye? That its insides might die in a way, leaving the wood as light as a gull-feather (and thus, he said, not strong enough for the tension a harp must endure), but the bones of it might yet travel in this different form that the living tree never dreamed of? I was much impressed by this, at the time.
Now, Diary, I see myself so. I have been once again uprooted, though my family of Vanimar and my other friends press close about me to keep me upright. Young Meluilindele, he is a tree that yet grows, and in him my last true hope resides -- for I shall never now bear fruit, not on these shores. But I, I am the one who falls and is carried only by the waves of others. I am hollow, without the sap of green joy given me by love, though I be married. Each year our kinsmen hold a festival of spring at Duillond, and by the calendar, I know this is now done. So is my spring done, and with Themodir, my summer. At best it is my autumn, and I deem the winter of all our people is not far off, by our own reckoning.
I pray that I may end up borne quickly to the side of my husband hereafter, if noble Ñamó will find me worthy. Lilleduil says that we bear children in undying Valinor, and that there will I give Themodir the son he wanted and yet deserves. I have already heard tales that Alqualondë is rebuilt. I want to believe it, Diary, for there by now would my parents embrace him as a son -- if he dared go there. He always carried on him a deep guilt, though he was born after I, at Gondolin, and was no direct descendant of those who sacked my child-home. But if he did -- what love would they not lavish on him there, whose hair is as silver as my own? No -- I mean was. I am not used yet to writing was.
I wait upon my Tûr, by oath bound neither to fade nor to sail at once. And Meluilindele, who at first I thought merely a bright youth, the like of Talthas, is harper and healer, and my cousin's son. I would hear more of his tale, of how Ayandil my cousin came to Mithlond, and whom he married. What was her name, and what her kindred? Was she also a Teler? Beautiful, I doubt not, by my young kinsman's nobility of face. Did her character match her beauty? Again, some of this I can tell by the way Melui's search for his last living relative, though he knew not it brought him so unerringly to me, allowed him to stop at the Houses of Healing and offer any help he might provide.
At first, Diary, he dragged plant-pots into the sun, that I might not have to bend to a heavy task -- for he came not long after the two companies marched, after I saw Themodir walk on his feet for the last time, and our greatest healers with them. I had the most experience of any, and thus the Valar arranged for my other reason to go neither to Mandos nor by ship to their green shores, not yet. Because I addressed the west wind at the building of the cairn, and Ayandil's name escaped my lips there, Melui knew our cruelly pruned family still lived, though palely. I questioned him after, for he seemed more affected than I had thought he might, and together we picked apart the riddle.
I must know his tale, that I know, among other things, whether his mother yet lives. For if she does not, then I have one in whom I see every virtue Themodir desired in a son of his own. Bravery is not only in cutting some one to kill him, but in cutting some one to heal him: lancing a wound, or even taking off, with love, an arm that it might not blacken and kill the whole body. These things take courage. Birthing a child -- the Second-born suffer greatly in this, and scream. There are many who have not the stomach for the terrible sights and smells our tasks sometimes bring us. Not many, indeed, so brave as Norli, who knew her patient must die, yet sang her own spirit into him for three days (at full run, Diary!) so that he might have his last wish -- his wedding.
And for this, the bravery of young Melui in allowing me to instruct him in healing, in serving and helping me in every thing, if his mother lives no more on these shores -- why then, I shall take him to foster, if he will have old driftwood to lean upon. To nurture a young shoot into a full-blown tree, bearing, I doubt not, in his own turn -- ah, Diary, the blood of Calpacaro's father and my grandsire's father before him shall yet live on these shores, if only I keep him safe until he is of age. O Nienna whose compassionate tears salt the sea, let me perform this nurturance, and let my frail driftwood yet support my Tûr, who is racked with sorrow for his boyhood friend.
