As I write this, it is two days until my first wedding-anniversary, and two days until the anniversary of my only love's dying in my arms.
I still have the gown, Diary. If memory serves, for a year is but an eye-blink, I had white roses in my hair to match it, for I was thinking much on the impending wedding -- at least, as we were planning it. My hair has grown back, it seems. I can measure it down the length of my arm almost to the fingertips again. It is as if the braid I cut off on the night of his death, and laid upon him so that he would not be cold in the ground covered with stones, as if that braid never was.
And to think -- if I had not been passing through the foyer of the Last Homely House when the messenger ran in looking for Tûr, I might not have been able to marry him at all, for that was a mighty poison and we had not twenty minutes together from the time they laid him down, with just a fur cloak between him and the path-stones, to the time the light went out of his beautiful eyes.
I remember I pressed him to me, and Tûr had to tell me several times to let him go, that his fëa had gone, that every thing that made him Themodir -- boyhood friend to Tûr, and my newly made husband -- was gone, that I held but an empty shell. That must be why dried blood stains the gown still, for Norlië's notes indicate the wound was a large one. Two slashes, crossing each other. And when I saw him in the dream, his fine tunic was still stained by it. So that must be the cause.
I cannot wish that he had not gone, knowing from the book of ancient star-lore how to tell his fate from Varda's jewels, knowing that he would take his fatal wound in the Hithaeglir. Because if he had not gone, though he knew his fate, he would not be the great warrior I loved, we all loved. Yet sometimes, Diary, I do wish it. I wish that he had taken my hand and we had run and run to the Golden Wood, and that we now lived peacefully on some talan high in the trees. And that we would have a son now, called Galadhion, for that is the name he always wished to bestow -- he said he would call him the son of light, for I was all the light in Arda, to him.
Instead I have a theorbo that was his. It is a work of art and majesty, yet I have not had the heart to play it but once, and then it was at the Hammer banquet I was invited to in my slain husband's stead, to receive his badge of honour for his fighting in that campaign. I am honestly not sure whether my heart can turn to music again. Every song I could play would be but a dull dirge, the Hammerfall twisted out of all recognition, as Norlië's notes tell me he left his senses, and babbled nonsense between fits on his three-day journey back to Imladris to die.
I have decided to let Losgael wear the dress Lilleduil made for me. Lille originally suggested that I wear it when at last my work here is done and I take a White Ship, as Fingolrin has already done, back home to the Blessed Lands. Lilleduil believes he will be let out of Mandos and I may give him his son at last. Tûr is not so certain. If only I could have one more dream, Diary! It is what I hoped for, when we had Tûr anoint the cairn with that single drop of the antidote, which Elloen, at my request, painted into his portrait of Norlië.
And the portrait of my love... I hope he understands, wherefore I must have it moved to the Hammer hall when they make a space for it. Then he and Tûr can once again be side by side, if only on canvas. But that canvas is so real... at the unveiling of the paintings, hir Tindir said he was surprised that the glass of red wine -- red as blood -- painted next to him on a table did not empty as the evening passed. I was amazed that my love did not step out of the frame and ask wherefore I wept. For all my heart rushed out to him again, that delicate yet surpassingly brave smile; the shining armour; the long silver hair he would whip around when he danced, hoping I would notice. If I kept such a perfect and beautiful likeness in my own quarters, I should in time never leave the house. I should sit in front of it every day and go mad, waiting for him to move or speak. No -- it must hang where I can visit, but not become a recluse, trapped by memory.
For two days hence, that day, Diary, that day will be almost as hard to bear as it was last year. Lille had suggested I wear the dress home to the Blessed Lands, but it hangs empty in my closet, and every time I rummage for some thing within, the shells and pearls with which it is so thickly covered whisper against the floor, mocking me. So let Losgael have it. She must have her joy, she and the quiet Teler I learned last summer was the son of the cousin who saved my life. Let some one celebrate who can, is that not fair? Why should I hoard such a treasure, like the drakes of old, when my dear Losgael can have her day in the sun?
But first I must endure that day. Just one day. Mirineth, who introduced us, has come back to the Vale. A blink of an eye. And perhaps she will come and sit by the cairn with me, and say things that are soothing. Or Norlië, or Losgael, or Elvealin. There are so many. Hiril Danel was his witness at our wedding, in lieu of his long-gone parents - Ai Ondolindë! - as Norlië was mine. And she gave me the sleeping-draught that night, and sat next to me as I fell asleep without my husband, a maiden bride for the next long stretch of yéni.
I must endure that single day, though my heart is torn out, though it was pierced when he spoke those words: It is not our fate to be happy together on these shores. And I denied it, with all that was in me, and I said, let us take you to the Houses. But we had not the antidote yet. It has taken almost all of this year, and nearly another life that is dear to me, for that to be made successful. So he knew as he gazed up at me that this was our last moment together. And he has not the strength of his arms and legs, so it could not even be a dance. I must dance at the wedding of Losgael and Meluilindele. It would not be right if I did not. For I am Melui's elder kin, and then when they put the rings on each other's fingers, as Tûr had to help Themodir put the ring on mine, Losgael will be written in every book as my kin also. Yet truly Losgael is already so in my heart, she who takes up my cause at every turn, my self-appointed champion in whom even brother Daegond can smell no disrespect.
The last words of Themodir on these shores were thus: I have always loved you. I do not know if he heard me say it back to him, for a light went out in his eyes. And I survived the sack of Alqualondë, but that night long ago was not more terrible to behold than that single moment, a towering strength slipping away like so much dust into the air.
If not for my friends I would have died too, for lack of him, that same night. But I thought, as Danel's sleeping-potion took hold of me, that Norlië would be too sad. So I could not. And I swore a mighty oath to Bar-en-Vanimar, and that too bound me.
All the memories will stand around me. Ulmo and Ossë, great lords of the shining seas, be with your child of the waves two days from now. I must endure the taunting of what could have been. Just help me. Just one day.
