Chapter Text
She was dreaming. It was merely a dream because it was too sweet and too tender. This, she knew, and yet she let the dream be. He had woken in her arms. His eyes have been filled with light. She had smiled through tears. And the kiss she had planted on him had been warm, not cold. And the stone had not been returned. The stone had been kept. He had returned safely to her. But he was not hers to keep. The stone was cold…
Tauriel woke up. She was cold. She could not live on like these.
These dreams kept her up. Sweet, they were, but cruel was their aftertaste. At least the stars were out. They looked down upon her. With pity? With love? Who was she?
She had been Tauriel, daughter of the forest. Captain of the Guard in Mirkwood. Now, she was Tauriel, the broken-hearted. Tauriel, the once exiled whose own light was fading.
No, she tugged at her heart. She would not fade. Not yet. There was still life left in her. Her soul would quicken again. Or she had to believe it would. Yet, her heart, her heart would not. Tears threatened to fill her eyes.
No, not yet. Not tonight, she begged herself. She sat up. The air was cool and yet spring was near. She felt it in her bones. She was eagerly waiting for it. She begged it to come sooner. Quicken my heart, melt away this bitter winter inside, she thought closing her eyes. If she closed them hard enough, the tears would not come.
She could go back to Mirkwood. Thranduil, through all her insolence and his own pride, had taken pity upon her when she saw her cradling the dwarf in her arms. He had allowed her to return back to Mirkwood, but knowing Legolas had left, she felt it null. Legolas had been her home, her brother, without him the woods would seem as empty as she felt. No, her only path was to follow Legolas, find the Dunedain. Find something meaningful to do. Something to numb herself.
Mirkwood was too close to the Lonely Mountain. And the Lonely Mountain cut at her heart. Every glimpse of it was a fresh cut. Soon she would be far away from it. She would not see it. She would not recall it. And yet tonight the skies were clear enough that if an Elf looked, they would see the shape of it. An ominous shape out in the distance. I care nothing for it, she thought looking at it with resentment. It is a dull rock that harbors stones inside. Stones that do not move or breathe. They have no life. She cared nothing for them. “How can they bury their death?” she asked, her voice almost breaking.
She spoke out loud yet the trees around did not respond. They used to speak to her, she used to feel them once. Daughter of the forest, she was. But now she lived in such shadow, that even the trees dared not speak a word to her. Thranduil had warned her. “Your light will fade,” he had said, “if you do not ward it closely, it will slip from you.” “How did you not fade?” she had asked. He had not replied.
But would it be so awful to fade?, she thought, to forego all pain. I do not want this pain. “It was real,” Thranduil had said. But if it was real how could she only recall him in dreams? How could she only see him in dreams? He smiled in dreams. He spoke to her in dreams. He had pressed that stone into her hand in dreams. It must have been in dreams, because she could never imagine such happiness otherwise. I should have gone with him, she thought. But it was an old argument that she always lost. She knew she could not dwell in the past and yet she lived in it nonetheless. All her dreams were in the past, and all her futures, it seemed, lived and died there. She had already mourned all autumn and well into winter. It had felt like mere days. In the lifespan of an elf, the world moved quickly and time was seldom felt. Yet the pain remained ever so fresh, like the dew of this night. Underneath its dark sky, Tauriel only longed for morning. The Gladden Fields would live to their name. Light would return to the world. She would not have to sleep or dream. She would not have to gaze upon stars.
She had once loved the stars, now they mocked her. They did because how else could fate be so cruel?
To which star above do I owe this love? she asked. Tell me Elbereth which of your daughters is to blame? Which of you has been so false as to curse me with a love I can’t fulfill, a love I can’t touch, a love so far away. A love you cruelly buried deep within the earth. A love ripped from me before it was ripe. How does one pick the fruit that has yet to be consumed?
She had not much lived, 600 years were nothing to elves, yet she felt withered with age. How could someone who she merely knew for days provoke such feelings? She wanted to chastise herself. She wanted to break away and return to who she was before. But she had died when he had died. Or at least that part of her had. She had nothing left but a sense of duty. Her last remaining spark was to fulfill a task: protect Middle-Earth and defeat this new evil. Fight. Protect. However that may be done, it seemed Thranduil had been one step ahead when he sent Legolas off. She knew she must follow him. She knew what lay ahead. She would make her way to Lothlorien for safe passage and shelter, and then continue onto through the mountains. Beyond that, she would figure out. Find Legolas, find the Dunedain. There is work to be done.
She would live many years beyond and all this would be memory. No, she would regard it all as a dream. A sweet, tender dream that had reached its end. She would forget him. His name. His face. His words.
Kili. She remembered.
Amrâlimê. He tugged at her heart. She knew what it meant.