For One Year, One Day, of the Flame by cuarthol

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For One Year, One Day, of the Flame

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Her hands still remembered how to make the patterns in her weaving, though her eyes had difficulty seeing in the darkness and lamps did little to aid these days.  She passed the shuttle to one side, changed the shed, beat the yarn, and passed it back.  The rhythm of the loom was a comfort, her mind free to think as her hands busied themselves.

String by string, the fabric slowly took form.  This would be a sturdy blanket against the growing bite of winter.  The final piece would have a striped pattern in the undyed black, brown, and white of their herds of sheep.  She found she liked the look these days.  

It was the cold that formed the greater hindrance to work, her joints aching even for having stoked the fire.  But it was not that which caused her to suddenly drop the shuttle.  Without knowing how, she knew who it was that opened the door of her cottage, and the tears were already falling as she laced her fingers into the warp to steady herself.

“So thou art come at last,” she said, and there was a bitterness to her voice she did not care to hide.

Aegnor stood in the doorway with his gloves clutched in his hands.  He looked chastised, knowing she had ample reason to feel as she did.  His gaze took in the single room in a glance, from where she sat at her loom, to the hearth in the opposite wall, and the few possessions she had inside.

“I thought to never see thee again,” she said, almost laughing as she stood from her weaving.  “I can barely see thee now, for my eyes have grown weak.”

He opened his mouth, but all the words he had practiced over and over on his journey felt like autumn leaves, lifeless and cold, and the wind blew them from his mouth.

“I see thy fire still,” she said, undaunted by his silence.  “Brighter than my candles, and just as apt to burn.  Come in, now that thou hast come at all.”

He closed the door behind himself and came to her.  When she could at last reach out and touch him, her tears fell all the more.

“I might have taken thee for a dream, a delusion in my old age, but for thy warmth beneath my hand,” she murmured.

Taking her hand, he first pressed his lips to it, then held it tenderly between his own.  “Not a dream,” he said, finding his voice at last.

“Or if it be, I do not wish to wake,” she said.

“Then dream still,” he whispered, brushing the salty offerings from her cheeks.  “Only let me dream it with thee.”

She leaned closer and inhaled the sweet scent of him.  “I never withheld aught from thee, my Flame.  Though there be little enough left of me, I will not turn thee away even now.”

He drew her into his arms, his cheek resting against the coarse gray of her hair, hands sliding across her back as he breathed her in.  She pushed further into his embrace, face to his chest. 

“Thy friendship might justly be withheld, for how I’ve injured thee,” he murmured.  “I almost wondered if I would be welcome at all.”

She huffed softly and pulled out of his arms.  “Think not that my life is naught but injury.  I wept, yes, but more did I love.  More did I live than merely the loss of thee.”

He took his chastisement again, following to where she sat on a low bench near the fire to kneel at her feet.

“I cannot give thee back the years I withheld,” he said softly, “the years I denied us both.  But I am here now.”

“Once I would have traded all to be thine for even a day,” she said, her thoughts reaching back long years to their first meeting.  “Once I would have followed thee to the ends of the earth for even a single taste of thy love.”

“And now?” he prompted, afraid of her answer.  But she gave him a sad smile and pressed her palm to his cheek.

“I would not burden thee,” she said.  “My body is old and my beauty withered.  What have I left to offer?”

“Withered?  It is not so.  Thou art as beautiful to me as summer.”  He rose up to cup her face, gazing into her eyes, and though they were full of age they were no less full of wisdom and life and love.  “Nay, more - for summer fades; autumn claims its bounty and winter gnaws its bones.  Thou art unfailing.”

“Fine sentiments,” she said.  “Such may serve to woo a maiden, but they ring hollow in my age.”

“Not so!  They are as true as ever they have been.  Is the ancient tree less beautiful?  Do we yet tire of turning our faces to the rising sun?”  Bringing their heads to rest against one another, he spoke from his heart. “Thou art beautiful, Andreth.  Never moreso.”

“And lo, thou hast remained young,” she said.  “And whether thou art young or I be beautiful, I must leave thee ere long.”

“Yet I will go before thee,” he whispered, as if pronouncing his own doom.  For he felt it like a weight, knowing not the moment but feeling it draw ever nearer.  “So my brother hath told thee.”

“Our fates are not so fixed,” she said, for all the earnestness of Finrod’s words, she could not then believe it could be true.  “Though perhaps we differ in this as well.”

“Our fates are different,” he agreed.  “Would that I had the power to alter it, for I would follow thee to whatever end, even to nothingness, for what would eternity be without thee?”

Andreth pulled away, shaking her head slightly.  “Would that thou had come before,” she said.  “I might have had some strength left for thee.”

“I cannot ask for thy forgiveness,” he said, closing his eyes, “though the greatest fool I have been.”

“As thou sayest,” she replied, and he laughed miserably. 

“A fool and a coward,” he agreed, taking her hand in his once again.  “But never have I ceased loving thee.”

“And yet soon thou shalt leave me, and for that we neither of us have any recourse,” she said, and her tears renewed themselves, and she silently rebuked her own weakness for it.  “Why didst thou come now only to be parted again?  To thus hasten me to my end?”

He was silent for a time at that, for he knew his reasons and yet in the face of her he could barely bring himself to speak them; selfish, perhaps even cruel.  Though he thought on her a great deal, in this he had perhaps thought only of his own longing.

The crack of the fire and the wind whining at the shutters stretched the seconds out as he grasped for some way to explain his thoughts.  The leagues between the fortress and Ladros had not felt so distant as did the breath between them now.  But at last he could not bear the weight of her expectation.

“Upon a time I made a choice,” he said.  “And suffered we both for it.  But now, as I draw near the very edge of doom, I look back upon my life and wonder that of all my bitter choices, one alone fills me with regret I cannot endure.”

As he spoke he had reached into his pouch and drawn out a small item wrapped in cloth.  “Say I am a coward and a fool, and I will agree, and more.  I am not worthy of the love thou hast borne for me these long years, but I would make my love known at last.”

Unwrapping the cloth, then, he held out a gleaming band, fashioned in the manner of a ring of leaves with bright gems set among them.  “I can offer thee nothing more than myself,” he said.  “But that I give without reservation.”

She lifted the ring, gazing at it as a jumble of thoughts flooded her mind.

“Fate may part us,” he said into the silence.  “But I find I cannot rely upon the hope my brother holds.  I pray to the Allfather that there is a restoration beyond Arda, but if there be nothing, then I would be joined to thee now.  Even if only for a day.”

The ring felt warm in her palm, though light as a feather, and she trembled at the force of her feelings.

“Wilt thou have me?” he whispered at last, and held his breath for her answer.

“Will I have thee?” she echoed, and this time when she laughed it was bright and full of life.  “My Flame, wilt thou have me?  I have been thine since first I saw thee, and would go to my grave knowing no other.”

“As I have been thine,” he said.  “Will I have thee?  If it be given, I will take it, but no more than that.”

Andreth put the ring upon her finger, and cupped his face.  “I give thee all,” she said, her voice now soft and warm, all bitterness and sorrow fled.  “Take what thou wilt, for it has always been for thee alone.”

Then without waiting for him (truly she had waited long enough, for he clearly had no sense of time, while she felt each second more keenly than the last) she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.

His mouth tasted sweeter than honey, and his touch, gentler than a butterfly’s wing.  The aching of her joints and the chill of her bones fled as his fire surrounded her.

No part of her did he shy from; knobby fingers and wrinkled skin, sagging breasts and rough knees, coarse hair and stretch lines - he poured his love over every inch of her until she lay wrapped in his arms, utterly emptied and yet never so fulfilled.

All through the night he held her, caressed her, gazed upon her as she slept.  Though he might so easily fall into blaming himself over and over for those years he had kept them apart, he would rather spend these few hours on committing to memory every glorious second that they were together.

If my fate is to linger in Mandos, forever apart from thee, let thy memory at least remain with me.  But though he would deny it, he did cling to the hope his brother had offered, however scant it might be: that there was something for them beyond the breaking of the world.