This story takes place a couple hundred years pre-war.
The wide-eyed child peered between the branches of the rosebush. It was small, stunted from too harsh a winter, yielding but a few pale roses. Already now, though spring had scarcely begun, they dropped their colourless petals, as if even the effort for that paltry show was too much.
The bush might offer puny shelter, but small too was the grey-eyed, slender child who sat cross legged on the ground behind it, listening with rapt, wide eyes to the crystal Elven song, sung in the moonlight to the even beat of the hammer.
What wondrous thing took shape beneath the careful strokes of the Elven craftsman, the child did not know. But the song shaped in her mind images of bright banners and gleaming shields, fair faces, and ineffably beautiful dancing to the song of a mighty river.
The Elven song halted, and without realising she did so, the child leaned forward, waiting, hoping to catch just the echo of the enchanting song. The smith held her hammer at her side, and spun around in a graceful dancing movement.
“Ah, what small bird sleeps in the rosebush on a moonlit night? Or have the Dúnedain given up beds for their young and nested them instead among the thorns?”
The child gasped, terrified to be spoken to by the fair Elf. But mustering her courage, she stepped out from behind the bushes, and bowed, “Doltheril is my name, my lady.”
The Elf laughed, “And Gelilthor mine. Does this craft interest thee?”
Doltheril nodded eagerly, moving her wide-eyed stare from the tall Elf to the fire of the forge.
Gelilthor smiled, “Then come, if your parents will not mind.”
The girl shook her head, “I have none. But my aunt will have no objection.”
From then on the child was a common sight at the forge, and the Elf stayed more steadily in the small village of the Dúnedain than had been her wont. In time, Doltheril grew into a beautiful, grave maiden, strong of arm, with a mind to design and shape lovely works of metal. She fell in love with a woodcutter with joy in his eyes. And at her wedding the Elven maid stood at her side, as fair and laughing as the mortal woman was grave and dark.
Soon twin girls were born to the couple, and the Elf visited often. Though as ever she wandered off for months at a time, she returned, and taught the young family Elven dances of old in the small cabbage patch behind their cabin.
Tragedy struck, and the man died, pinned under a fallen tree in the dead of winter. For five years, the Elf stayed in the small cabin, sharing the small cares of an ordinary life, and teaching the older twin Elven craftsmanship. When the children were old enough to help their mother with the small homestead, Gelilthor returned to Imladris and then to wandering, and for a few years was not seen in the small village.
The girls were not yet fully grown, when Doltheril felt herself growing increasingly tired. The lightest day’s labour left her barely able to leave her chair the day after, and the pain grew harder and harder to bear.
Certainty grew with the pain, and she grieved as she looked at her daughters. Never would she see them wed.
The two sisters talked one morning as they piled the hay, and determined that the elder of the two, Rengethril, would go and tell her mother’s friend, the Elven maid of Rivendell, that Doltheril would not live much longer. “She will be comforted by the presence of a friend.”
So she rode, and found Gelilthor barely two days' ride away, at a small Elven refuge in the wild. With heavy heart she told the Elf that Doltheril would surely die within a year.
Gelilthor’s face fell, and she turned away. For a moment she could say little, “I am sorry. I had hoped that long in the years of mortals she would live, and see grandchildren and great grandchildren.”
“Will you come?” Rengethril asked. But the Elf looked merely confused at the question.
“I cannot save her. You have told me how you tried all the healing arts of your people, and that your mother herself told you that nothing can stop the march of death. I would give my own life if it would spare her, but this is one foe I cannot beat.” Gelilthor touched the shaft of her spear sorrowfully.
Cold anger at the Elf’s refusal hardened Rengethril's heart, and she stood for a moment. Part of her wished to plead for the Elf to come. But her mother deserved better than a friend who cared not to travel the short distance in the last months of her life. And so she turned and rode home, determined to waste no more time.
Gelilthor grieved her friend, another in the long list of mortals who had lived and died, and whose names she treasured still, ever clear in her memory.
After a few years she returned, eager to see how the twins had fared. But Rengethril's face was impassive when she opened the door. Though the Elf asked many questions, Rengethril's only said. “Do you come to us mortals only to flaunt that you may return West at any time and see your own mother as alive and young as when you parted? Or merely to toy for a passing season with us, leaving when the ugliness of decay and death shows its shadow over doomed men?”
Gelilthor stood frozen for a moment, shocked at the young woman’s anger, but then answered with proud anger of her own, “Grief piled upon grief is each friendship with a mortal for one of my kin. Many are the partings that never shall be mended, so far as even the wisest among us can see.”
But she stopped, and looked more pityingly on the young woman, thinking she saw the reason for her hatred. She had known many who fell prey to the creeping rot of jealousy—when grieving their own losses they saw the Elves seemingly spared from those griefs. “Do you let your own heart get shadowed so easily by envy? So too did Númenor, when it began to fall.”
Rengethril scoffed, “No bitterness do I hold against the gift of men. Only against the callousness of you who claim that the Doom of Men is a gift, but hold yourself apart from those of us who face it.”
She gestured at the Elf to follow, and came to a small hill, with a green mound planted with roses. “Why did you not come while she lived? It would have been such a small thing for you, and so large for her? She died knowing you did not care enough to come, though you knew she lay dying.”
Gelilthor looked stricken, “Do you think we do not grieve for you secondborn when you go where we cannot follow?”
Rengethril shrugged, “It seems not. Had it been you who lay dying, she would have gone to Imladris or beyond to give what comfort she could, or if not simply to be there for you.”
“I would mar my memories with seeing her, feeble and pained, unable to fight against the disease that claimed her life. Now I remember her as she kissed her husband, young and full of joy, and held her babies, smiling as the sun rose. Or wielded a smithing hammer with intense focus. And I will never forget her.”
Rengethril turned away to hide the angry tears in her eyes, “In the end you cared more for your own memories than being there for your friend when she needed you. Can you claim to care for mortals when the weakness of humanity is so distasteful to you? Do not lie to us. We then are distasteful, an offence to your own unchanging beauty and youth.”
She turned and nearly ran down the hill, leaving the Elf there. Only when morning again cast light on the hills, did Gelilthor stir, and return to the small cabin.
She said no words for the grief was too strong, but gave to Rengethril a knife of Elven design, but made by Doltheril and Gelilthor together. Rengethril nearly flew into a rage again, thinking the Elf sought to exchange the duties of friendship for a treasure, no matter how valuable. But though she could not forgive the Elf for abandoning her mother, she saw that Gelilthor sought to do something amid the terrible helplessness of those left behind by death.
The Elf still could not understand, though she knew now that she had wounded the mortal by her absence.
But Doltheril was gone, and never, to the end of Arda, could Gelilthor repair the hurt that she had given her friend.
"Andreth adaneth, the life and love of the Eldar dwells much in memory; and we (if not ye) would rather have a memory that is fair but unfinished than one that goes on to a grievous end." J.R.R. Tolkien, The Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth
