Long Years Numberless by The Wavesinger

Long Years Numberless

Read Long Years Numberless

Varda

 

It has been three ages since I have seen you, and it is three ages too long. I long to see your face, my dearest one, but my even my sight cannot perceive the far-off lands where you rule.

 

I remember your fire, how much you loved and how much you hated, and I long for it, yearn for your fierce, passionate beauty. I do not want this, I said, then, even as I loved you; I understand, now, why you were angry.

 

You must know, Artanis, that we are as old and as young as the world, and we learn, as you do, through mistakes we make. That is not an excuse for us, as it is not an excuse for you, but it is a reason.

 

I think, now, that we were not fated to be, not in that moment. We were too different, too alien to each other, to love.

 

But it was beautiful, was it not, while it lasted? I only wish we had been more free, more open—nay, that I had been more free, more open. If I had loved you with all my heart, if I had not fettered myself to laws that make mockery of the nature of the Children of Eru (and we are those, too; our spirits are different from yours, but we are peers, and now, too late, I understand this) maybe you would have stayed.

 

And maybe you would not. Maybe the gulf between us was too wide for anything to mend, maybe we are destined to be apart. I do not know; in this, I cannot hear the Music, only the song of you and I and what I wish for us.

 

I adore you, and I do not know whether I adore a person or a memory, but I know this: I miss you. My longing for you is a fierce ache in my bones, and I yearn for your smile, for your laugh, yes, even for your anger.

 

I cannot make you come home, love. But I can hope, and I hope with all my heart that I will see you again.

 

 

Galadriel

 

Once, I wished for a realm of my own, a realm to rule, a realm where I made the laws, and the laws did not condemn me, a realm where I could rule at my will. And I took up my sword and fled into exile for that realm.

 

Your strictures angered me then, your hypocrisy and your failure to understand who we are, and you baffled me, with your coldness and then your sudden warmth, a stranger in public and a lover in private.

 

Your strictures anger me still, but it is a different anger; I have grown, have learnt hard, bitter lessons since then. You were wrong, love, I still think that; but one wrong cannot fix another. And after we left, we who fought for love and freedom, who was left to teach you the truth?

 

It is only after blood stained my hands and sorrow and loss tore my heart to pieces and hope and love stitched it together again that I understand. There is no if and but; we cannot find a paradise or a kingdom in a far-off land; the paradise we build is what we take with us.

 

It is irony, is it not, that the very realm I set out to build has taught me that? For I have learned that you do not rule a kingdom; the people of the kingdom rule you. There is a price to pay when you lead, and it is a price I learned to pay only after three ages of toil and swear and blood and tears, a price I only understood the full magnitude of when a little Hobbit gave into my hands the power to reshape the world.

 

And I said no. I said no, my love, and that day, I understood.

 

And one day, too, maybe I will show you that, show you how to change and grow (for that is another lesson I have learned, show, and not rail against).

 

Or maybe, maybe, you have learned already. Maybe you have learned as I have learned.

 

And maybe, maybe (but I almost dare not hope) you have kept the love you bore for me, even as I betrayed you (and it was betrayal; I will not pretend it was not).

 

For I long for you, love, not as a pleasant diversion, a power to be feared, (and oh, how I laugh at the strangeness of that duality), but as a lover. I long for the taste of what we could be, now, and I long for what we were.

 

I long for you, my love, my star-queen. I long for you, and dream of you. One day, I pray, I will meet you again.