We have lost so much, my family and my people. How is it that I journey to the end of the world, and from a man of silence hear the story of my own name?
Did my grandfather have some premonition? Did he, searching the half-remembered tales he heard as a child, taste the future as he whispered possible names for his first grand-daughter? Olwing ... named for some distant queen, her life and deeds lost to time...
No. Amlarad tells me, as we sit waiting for the dawn to begin our journey. She is not named Olwing. He takes me up, walks me out to the edge of the cliffs. Patiently we wait in the silent snows as he weaves the story, his rich deep voice forming the words with care, as though he caresses the air itself .The story known to all it seems - but not to me.
I know his love for the mariner's hour, as he names it. When the day and night turn, and the world is made anew and in its transience reveals an effortless aching timeless simplicity. A pure star appears briefly, his beloved mariner, sailing the skies with the fairest jewel. A man of the earth and woods, of lake and hill, he gazes upwards to the heavens, where we cannot go. My heart unbidden soars with him, Amlarad - this oddly beloved, simple, unfathomable man - though until now I did not know why.
And I remember - as he tells me the tale of his mariner Earendil and his swan-white wife Elwing - the taste of saltspray in the air as we stood at lake Nenuial. That first time, when he was both with me and elsewhere.
Here, on the edge of the world, he gives me the grace of naming - of myself, and of the hour when she takes wing and flies to meet him. Day and night bejewelled with their tale.
Can I allow belief to unfold within me as he raises my hand to cup the untouchable star - that this meeting is other than fumbling coincidence? Do I believe that the Mariner and his Lady smile at dawn and dusk upon this snowy sea? Upon two small figures wandering earthbound; one who bears the mariner's star on his shoulder and sails an unknown path, one named for the ever-faithful star-spray herself?
