Until the final flicker of life’s embers by Quente

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Here with you so close to me

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Gwingwiril came into their sights on a clear day in early autumn, a seagull perched smugly on its mast. She was indeed a fine ship, and Dior itched to know more about her, from the pale wood that formed her, to the indigo sails, to the stylized foamy waves painted in blue upon her prow. He felt a sense of anticipation bubbling through him, and could hardly contain himself as he stood waiting to greet them upon Elwing’s dock.

Tuor dropped anchor near Elwing’s cove, and lowered a little rowboat down to row them the rest of the way in.

When they clambered onto the dock to greet Elwing and Dior, Tuor took a long look at Dior and removed the pipe from his mouth. He was bearded as men became in age; the hair that fell in a golden braid over his shoulder was streaked with silver, but he otherwise looked wiry and hale as sailors did.

Tuor was tongue-tied, and remained silent while Idril gave her greeting. Finally he said, “No wonder my son’s note was so carefully worded. One so fair as you must be the son of Lúthien.”

“Atar!” Elwing said, clapping her hands over her ears.

Idril laughed at Elwing’s embarrassment, at Dior’s chagrined expression, and her husband’s blush. Idril’s hair was golden, and her expression was as open and kindly as Eärendil’s. Below the ankle her feet were wrought of a silvery metal strapped to her legs with leather cuffs, and she wore no shoes. “Forgive Tuor, please! He cannot help himself around a certain sort of elf. But – Dior Eluchil, did you stride into Aman like Tuor did, assuming that all would be well?”

“My path was stranger than that,” Dior admitted, and told them of it as they walked to Elwing’s abode.

“So that’s what it’s like,” Tuor said, recovered from his bout of shyness, after he learned of the Halls of Men. “There are times when I have wished for it – the peace of knowing that there’s nothing more I can do in this world, so I might as well close my eyes and wait for the end.”

Dior nodded his understanding, and said, “I felt a peace beyond peace there – as if our kin had all earned their oblivion, and sank into it gratefully.”

“And yet – I would miss my beloved Idril, and Gwingwiril, and my friend Voronwë, and my son, and watching the moon rise over the waves on fair nights,” Tuor said. “For that alone, I will keep to this life.”

“I see where Eärendil falls on your list,” Elwing said with a toss of her silver hair, and Tuor laughed.

That night, after their meal, they watched as Eärendil wandered his way around the distant east. “I have always wondered if the Valar provide him with a plotted chart, or if he adventures at will,” Tuor said, squinting into the distance. “I can never figure where he will go next, and I’ve spent many a year staring at him.”

“He is given a course,” Elwing said, “but it makes little sense to me. I suppose he is pulled where hope is needed most in Middle-earth.”

Dior finally found some resolve and spoke, for he had also felt shy to express his heart’s desire. “I admit that I asked to meet for two purposes, and not simply to greet you. The first is this – since I emerged from the Halls of Men and saw the dark western sea in all her stormy temper, I have longed to learn more of sailing. Would you teach me, Tuor? I would apprentice myself to you for a time, if you are not adverse.” He bowed his head, feeling a blush cross his face.

“Of course,” Idril said immediately, her expression thoughtful, and then looked to Tuor. “Ah – I mean. I should not answer for Gwingwiril’s captain, eh? But in Gondolin, any who desired an apprenticeship with as much fervor as you’ve expressed was given one.”

Tuor prodded Idril in the side, making her squirm away, batting at his hands. “She likely wants better company than her old husband,” he said, laughing. “And who else but the lovely son of the loveliest of elves?”

“Cease!” Elwing protested, covering her face with both hands.

Dior blushed further. “I am not slow to learn,” he protested. “I will not simply be on your ship for company’s sake, I wish to work!” Many had made the mistake of thinking Dior indolent due to his mother’s stamp on him, and it took all the gentleness of his father’s character to temper the desire to blow them into the void with a Song. Well, little matter, if Tuor gave him a chance to sail.

“I am teasing you, Dior, and teasing myself most of all,” Tuor said, looking sheepish. “I would be glad to have you, very glad, despite your dauntingly fair form.”

“Tuor,” Idril said, tone reproachful. She reached out and tugged firmly on his beard. “You will see Voronwë soon enough, you incorrigible man! Treat fairly with Dior.”

“Aye, I will, I will,” Tuor said, laughing as he took her up in his arms. “But you said you had two things to ask, law-brother?”

Dior’s heart ached to see the playfulness between the two – he felt it in the throb of his dormant marriage bond, and he dropped his gaze for a moment. “I hope that someday, Nimloth will choose to emerge from the Halls of Mandos,” he said quietly. “And when she does, I would have a cottage prepared for her near our children. Something small, but sound. Would you help me plan it, Idril?”

“Now that I will agree to gladly,” Idril said, “although I sense I soon will be longing for all the tools we had in Gondolin.”

~

Tuor and Idril tarried with them a span of time, through autumn and into winter and spring again. Sometimes they turned their attention to Nimloth’s cottage – quarrying stones, digging the foundation, and working the timbers.

Idril often looked rueful as she worked her lathe. “It is a shame that you are hiding away here – if you knew how my folk have made mechanisms that aid in lumber production, you would never again wish to shape a beam by hand.”

“I wish I did not need to hide either, Idril,” Dior said. “Nimloth deserves to dwell in my uncle’s castle as a princess of the Teleri, but I fear I cannot offer it to her while I hide away from the great powers.”

“Will they not know, the moment she steps forth, that you are here? They will feel it in the tug of her heart.”

“My mother has woven a spell about me for concealment,” Dior said. “As to how well it will work and for how long – we’ll see.”

They also spent long days on Gwingwiril, and those were some of the happiest moments that Dior had experienced so far in Aman. Tuor was a patient teacher, and taught him much of the craft of sailing that he’d learned from Círdan himself during their days in Sirion.

Tuor spoke to him of many things while they labored together on Gwingwiril – of his companionship with Ulmo; of his first view of the great sea from the western shore and how it made him late for his quest because of his love for it; and of his time in the city of Gondolin.

“I hear that Menegroth had similar workings. We had cogged machines that ran on wind and water, so that many of the worst necessities of a city were done by invisible hands,” Tuor said, standing beside Dior as he taught him knots. “There, pull that end through the loop. This is a type of knot that moves if you want it to.”

“Like this?” Dior showed him, concentrating. “Ah – Menegroth was powered by the might of Melian, and after she faded, by the Silmaril. Perhaps not all the stone’s workings were ill, for it allowed me to wake our city to greatness again, if only for a little while.”

“I suppose that Turgon had to use wind and water for lack of that power,” Tuor said, adjusting the knot a little, and showing Dior how it moved. “He made do! I wish you could have seen it. The city is still in my heart, for all that I had to ask him over and over again to leave it.”

“It is hard to let go of anything created by your own hands,” Dior agreed, staring down at the knot he’d just worked. And then he realized he could have been speaking of any of the Golodhrim, including the one who had made the Silmaril. He made a face.

“Did you swallow a gnat?”

“Ah,” Dior said, “I just felt compassion for the ones that slew me, for a moment.”

Idril nodded, her expression rueful. “It’s harder to square in your heart when your worst foes could have been your friends, isn’t it?”

~

When Midwinter came, Dior’s mood grew bleak with his memories. He spent the day wandering alone on the long strand, picking up shells from the shallows and letting the sound of Belegaer’s waves wash away the darkness in his mind.

Dior was thinking of Elúred and Elurín, and the last time he’d seen them. They’d been dressed in white and crowned with red berries for the midwinter celebration, and played together in the snow below the great tree Helevorn. How cold it had been, that day!

How cold they would have been in Neldoreth that night.

When the sun dropped behind the Pelóri at dusk, Dior found Tuor walking to meet him along the sand. Tuor did not speak, but turned to stand with him and face the sea.

“I do not understand it,” Dior said at last. “Why my sons cannot be found amid the living or the dead.”

“Perhaps, beyond all hope, they live in Middle-earth still. Let us go there someday, Dior – let us go and find them.”

Dior smiled then, his imagination captured by the thought of going on a quest that would be the equal of anything his parents had done, leaving the undying lands in a ship to return to Middle-earth and wander there until he found his lost children…

“It would be reckless and wild, my brother,” Dior said, laughing. “With no certainty of return for either of us. And I await Nimloth’s return.”

“But you have not said no, have you?” Tuor’s smile was broad.

“Tuor! We shall see.”

But it was in a much better mood that Dior returned with him to Elwing’s house.

~

One morning in spring, they were on the roof of the little hut laying slates when Dior felt a burst of something so vivid and joyous that he staggered sideways, nearly tumbling off the side.

“Ho, elig nin – be careful,” Tuor said, catching his wrist. “Sit. What is it? Are you ill?”

“Nimloth!” Dior gasped, and looked to the north and west, where the Halls of Mandos opened onto a slope that looked out over the coast of Araman. “I must –”

“First, get off the roof, will you?”

“Is it she? Has she Returned?” Idril called from below. “I’ll go saddle your ponies!”

Dior clambered down and concentrated, feeling the glow of the bond between them swell into a bright harmony. Nimloth, he thought toward her. I will come for you!

Dior! I felt you, the moment I emerged. Came the reply. How?

Do not speak of me to anyone! The tale is long – I will find you there.

~

Dior and Elwing hastened forth on the ponies, leaving to Idril calling after them, “We’ll finish up the cottage! It’ll be sound and ready when you return.”

And then they were off on the journey north along the coast. The weather was chancy with rain, but Dior carved their way through the gusts with quick notes from his pipe. No rain fell on them, and the cobbled road was remarkably free from slippery mud, although Elwing shook her head and asked in pointed terms if he intended to call attention to them with his song.

Dior reveled in the renewed connection to Nimloth all that day, sending her his story in bursts, and hearing of her time in Mandos’s Halls in return.

She spoke of long years of introspection, and speaking to others within the Halls, and healing.

What finally enticed you to leave, my heart? Dior asked.

There are things I would put right with my daughter. And I want to meet my grandson!

I saw our other grandson in the Halls of Men…

Nimloth was silent for a while. I regret most that our life together was so short. Would that I had met him, ere he passed.

But we live again, together, for however long I can be with you!

Elwing smiled at her father’s silence along the way, and kept them on track when his conversation led him astray. And when they came near the small village at the base of the mountain where the Returned were housed while they awaited their family, she clapped him on the back to pull his attention outward.

“Ada, we are here!”

And there, sitting cross-legged and barefoot beneath a tree, clad in the silver of the Returned, was Nimloth. She was eating an apple, staring at it with rapt attention while chewing, and only blinked away from it when Dior knelt before her.

“I haven’t eaten in a century,” Nimloth said, wonderingly. “The apples of Aman are sweet!”

“To think, I am spurned for an apple,” Dior chuckled, and leaned close to kiss the juice of it off of her lips.

Nimloth’s kiss was fierce in return, but her mood turned to tears before long. She tugged Dior closer to her and gripped his cloak with both fists.

I never thought I would see you again while Arda remained!

They held each other for a long, blessed moment, Dior delighting just as much in the strength and sturdiness of Nimloth’s form as he did in the warm glow of home from her spirit.

And then Nimloth pulled away and stood, looking up to see the fierce warrior Elwing had become. Elwing came to her, then, and took her hands.

“You know,” Elwing said, hesitantly. “I could not remember you. Daeron told me stories of you, of how you’d always wander in the woods and return with your hair full of burrs. But I could not imagine you, and what you were like.”

“And you,” Nimloth said, touching Elwing’s face. “When I last held you, I could balance you on my hip. Elwing, I want to know who you are now.”

At this, Elwing’s expression crumbled, and she embraced her mother. Dior could not stand to watch it, and put his arms around them both, holding them against his heart.

~

Tuor and Idril stayed long enough to greet Nimloth, and pulled Elwing away to sail with them out into the islands for the night. It was a thoughtfulness Dior had not asked for, but he resolved to repay their kindness as best he could the next day.

Dior showed Nimloth the cottage, which was outfitted with a bed, and table, and benches with storage beneath along the sides of the room, and with running water that Idril insisted upon engineering herself. It was sound, and outfitted in a spare and tidy way like the cabin of Tuor’s ship. “I built this alongside Idril and Tuor, in the hopes that you would be comfortable here with me, for a while. It is not what you are used to…”

Nimloth put her finger to Dior’s lips. “Wherever you are is home enough for me, and I thought never to see you again, so this is a richness beyond measure,” she said, and her smile was bright.

They fell together then, Dior’s kisses turning fiercer in his longing – and in the slide of their living flesh, he felt more at peace than he’d felt since midwinter’s day in Doriath, so long ago.

Later, lying together beneath the soft blankets gifted by Olue, Nimloth kissed his tears away as he wept silently into her hair.

“One thing I learned, in the Halls of Mandos,” Nimloth said. “Is that despite the best effort of darkness to overwhelm and swallow all the realms that we create, we are stubborn enough to keep creating in the face of it all. I learned this from the weaver Míriel, who was tasked to weave the story of her son and his line.”

“That seems like an unfair torment for one who had never chosen to do their deeds,” Dior said.

“And yet, Míriel would not allow any other to weave her family’s story. Even their darkness, although it spelled our doom, was hers to tell. And for Míriel, telling the story was her form of defiance. She made sure everyone knew the joy, as well as the sorrow, of it.”

Dior was silent for a moment, sighing. “It seems that in this time I’ve stolen back from death, fate is conspiring to make me develop sympathy for our murderers.”

Nimloth laughed, and kissed his nose. “You don’t have to go as far as sympathy,” she said. “Perhaps just – some measure of understanding. But you are here, and that is worth everything else, for me. And – maybe – we should keep telling our own story, and the story of all that we lost.”

Her body was sturdy and sleek and strong against his, her hair was a silver silken pillow, and her smile was wide – and their souls, where they nestled together, glowed with a warmer fire than the Silmaril.

“We have time,” Nimloth said, and kissed him softly. Then she pushed him onto his back, and rolled to cover him in a curtain of her hair. “But for now, I would learn the new form of this Teleri lord that I have apparently married.”

~

The next evening, out of thanks to Tuor and Idril, and for Elwing’s constant hospitality, Dior drew upon the power of his lineage and danced for them. He did it rarely, but Lúthien’s blood ran true in him, and his body knew the shape of the dance before he performed it, as if it was there beneath the surface of his mind, just waiting for him to take up.

They stood on the sand, with the slow rhythm of Belegaer beside them. Nimloth and Elwing sang to accompany his steps – wordless twining harmonies in the manner of the people of Doriath. And out of love for his family, and his trust in them, he allowed himself to reveal the true power of his Maia form.

Dior let his body fray at the edges, and allowed the energy that always lived beneath his skin to come forth. He danced with the elements around him, part wind and part water, forming himself into shapes of the world he loved – a bird on the wind, a wind on the wave, the salt spray rising high toward the stars.

He danced his gratefulness that he had his body, using his elven form to spin again and again over the sand, leaping high for the sheer joy of it.

And finally, Dior took up Idril’s hand, and they all danced in a line together with him on the edge of the sand, singing.

When they tired, finally, in the darkness of the pre-dawn, they sat and watched the brightness of Eärendil as he sailed on the far horizon. Tuor leaned his shoulder against Dior’s. “I think we have half a chance, elig nin, whenever you want to go on that small trip we talked about,” he said. “Your power might even keep us from certain death.”

“Not without your wives, even if you are beloved of Ulmo,” Idril said, tugging Tuor’s beard again.

“Or your children,” Elwing added. “Eärendil would be most upset if he was left out of a chance to visit Elrond.”

But Dior was silent, looking at Nimloth, who folded her hands over her stomach and smiled at him in return.

“Our journey, if we take it, will be delayed a while,” Dior said. “Perhaps sixty years, if the Valar allow it.”

In their night together, Nimloth had decided upon her own act of creation and rebellion. Within her, Dior could feel the tiny spark of a new Fëa, nestled deep.

~

Time passed. Tuor and Idril visited, and went wandering again, and Eärendil too.

Nimloth swelled with the growing life within her that they had all taken to calling Elenas. The child’s Fëa was bright – without any trace of mortal blood, the babe’s nature would be more like Lúthien’s than Elwing’s. Already, Dior helped to sustain Elenas’ rapidly growing spirit with his own.

Before long, Nimloth’s time was nigh, and they sent Eärendil to fetch Lúthien from the fields of Nessa to be with them for the birth. Lúthien’s reunion with Nimloth was sweet, but Idril laughed until she fell over at Tuor’s stunned expression when he saw her for the first time.

“I have been told I have this effect upon the race of men, for whatever reason,” Lúthien said wryly. “I beg your pardon, Idril.”

“Nay, Luthien – Apologize to your in-law, Tuor! You haven’t made this much of a fool of yourself since you first met my father,” Idril said to Tuor, tugging his braid firmly, and he bowed, laughing at himself.

“I see. I understand it now,” Tuor said. “Poor Beren had no choice but to go and find the Silmarils, did he?”

But when the day of Elenas’ birth came, there were other, less welcome visitors gathering slowly outside of their cottage – forming themselves from the mist and wind and sea – and Dior knew that they had felt it: the Maiar felt the impending birth of one of their own.

Dior set Tuor and Eärendil to guard their door, coming forth himself to politely request that the lesser powers wait until the birth was entirely complete for an explanation. Eärendil stood with the Silmaril bound to his brow, in case any should decide they would not abide by Dior’s word.

Idril, Elwing, and Lúthien attended upon Nimloth – Idril taking care of the physical elements of the birth, and Lúthien gently binding the babe’s spirit within the elven form. Elwing sang the songs of birth taught to her in Sirion, one with a driving, screaming refrain that Nimloth joined fervently.

This is how to take a shape, Lúthien showed the little spirit, This is how to be a person of our nature.

When Elenas was born, the loud wail of the new little being caused the mingled Maiar to quiver and murmur to one another, approaching closer to the door.

Dior, who had been holding Nimloth’s hand, glanced at his mother, who made a face.

“I’d best go face my fate, then,” Dior said. His heart ached, for he knew he was finally exposed, and he set Elenas gently against Nimloth’s breast.

Outside, Dior noticed that all of the Maiar were paused, their faces upturned, north and east toward the Halls of Mandos. He turned, and saw an enormous shape form on the high hills of the Pelóri.

Mandos swelled until he was taller in the sky than the mountains, and in a few long strides he came to stand outside of the cottage door, shrinking down and down and down as he came.

Tuor bowed first, recognizing Mandos in his most elven form.

“Get me up,” Nimloth said, feeling the atmosphere outside of the cottage change to one of tense waiting. She gritted her teeth against the ache in her body. “I will be with Dior when judgment falls.”

Elwing and Idril helped Nimloth hobble outside, draped in a blanket with Elenas still against her breast, to stand at Dior’s side.

“This gathering is strange indeed,” Mandos said, observing them, his voice the rumble of a rock-slide, or a tree’s fall in a storm. “Dior, you have surprised even the Lord of the Dead, this day. Not only are you and your mother still in the Halls of Men by my understanding of it – but somehow you are also here outside of it, separated wholly from your mortal nature. How did this come to pass?”

“I am not sure how we achieved it except that it was possible, so we did. And given that we were awake, alone of all our kin, can you fault us?” Dior asked. “My first life in Arda was as swift as the blink of your eyes, and in death, my spirit awoke and longed for my wife, and to live once again. Can you fault me for going where it felt natural to go?”

“I could fault you,” Mandos said, frowning. “For there are many that are dead that might deserve life. And I granted your parents grace once before – and Lúthien agreed thereafter to remain within the Halls of Men.”

“You do not have a place that can properly hold those of of us with mingled nature,” Dior said. He’d been anticipating this conversation since they left the Halls, and now that it was here, he could not name his emotion, save the calm certainty of doom. “But how do I trouble the world, as I am now?”

Dior stood there, in front of his little hut, the prince of nothing but the emptiness between the mountains and sea. “What have I done to trouble Arda? I rule no-one, I have nothing now but what you see. I have my family, and I exist for little more than to stand beside them and take pleasure in my love of them, and of this world that you helped create. My greatest wish is a humble one: it is for just a little more time.”

Mandos opened his mouth, and Dior could see the objection forming. He could even hear it before it was spoken. So all mortals say, and who are you to ask for that which they cannot have? – and before he had to let the bitter words settle into his ears and mind, he raised his final argument.

“My mother Lúthien was not mortal, although you allowed my mother to borrow mortality, the better to live with my father. But after death, our mingled natures did not allow us to rest, and it would not have been a ‘gift’ to trap us in that place when we could not – and I have seen those who have taken this gift, and taken it gladly. We are not they!”

“Besides,” Eärendil said, Silmaril shining on his brow like a reminder of all the Valar owed their family, “Did Dior not bear this jewel, and Lúthien too? Grace should be granted all of the peredhel to choose as we will, as my sons and I had. We have all done much in your service to ensure that this jewel is safe. And remember, mighty lord, that Elwing and I serve you still.”

Mandos was silent after that, considering.

“It is true that your line has been burdened far beyond most with the weight of the Silmaril,” Mandos said, “and equally true that your natures are not suited fully to one or the other fate. And now…” Mandos looked at Elenas. “Now you have created someone that should not exist, and yet, this little power does exist – I hear them calling out to me, in a voice of song, fed by your spirits. Newly born as they are, I know that this one will do mighty work one day.”

“Please,” Dior said, “If you can see into my heart, you can perceive that I have bound myself to Arda – by one more tie, today – and it would be no gift at all to sever me from it.” If need be, Dior would get to his knees. He would beg, to remain here, alive, by the side of his wife and children.

There was a silence, then, as dreadful and deep as doom. They all bowed their heads before Mandos, and all the assembled Maia, and waited for judgment.

Finally, the great voice spoke again.

“Your arguments are sound, and I grant it. But one doom only I cannot take away – you and your mother must enter the Halls of Men one last time at the very end of days, and rejoin your mortal forms – that, we cannot undo. At the end of all things, when your family of men awaken, you must take part in the final battle with them. Will you agree to do this thing, when the time comes?”

“I will have more questions when the end of time is nearer,” Dior said, but his heart began to rise toward hope. “Of course I accept, if until then I can remain with those I love. But.”

“You have a condition?” The voice of Mandos sounded halfway between amused and something else, a quiet purr of thunder on the far horizon.

“Elwing and Eärendil – let them rest! Serving the Silmaril until the end of Arda is a hard fate beyond that which burdens many here on Arda. Surely there are some of my kin,” Dior looked at the assembled Maiar, “who could share in it?”

The silence then was longer, but thoughtful. “I will search for others who might serve,” Mandos said finally, and Eärendil made a nearly silent noise, like a long exhale or sigh, and Elwing touched Dior’s hand.

“And you, little dancer?” Mandos said to Lúthien.

Lúthien smiled at him, bowing her head. “My time to return is nearer than my son’s, for my beloved slumbers there and I will dream with him ere long. When that time nears, I will visit you in your halls, and you can escort me yourself.”

“So be it,” Mandos said, and the proclamation rolled over them all with a power that made every hair on Dior’s body rise. Elenas cried out in their mother’s arms, and Mandos smiled.

“This one will sing songs that will raze and build cities, one day,” Mandos said. “I am eager to hear them.” And then, in the manner that clouds dissipate after a storm, he dissolved his body in a mighty gust of wind, and departed.

They were silent for a moment, and the gathered Maia began to disperse too, leaving a much quieter energy behind.

“I am allowed to remain here with you, Nimloth, Elwing,” Dior said, feeling the knowledge course through him like a gulp of heady wine. He tasted the salt of his tears as he spoke. “I have been given more time. Time enough to do everything that I’ve planned – every part of it.”

Dior shut his eyes and felt his hopes swirl around him. He would bring his family to Alqualondë to visit their uncle, and see Uilon and Líson again. He could meet with the Golodh and work through the pain of their history. He could set sail with Tuor – he could go anywhere with him on Gwingwiril – to Tol Eressëa, or around to the dark waters of Ekkaia, or even to Middle-earth. Anywhere, everywhere. And he could see his mother’s dance in honor of his fallen country.

Dior opened his eyes again, watching the tossing waves of Belegaer surging against the shore.

He had enough time to mourn.

And he could tell his story now – the story of the Silmaril, and how it came to them, and how it drove them to their actions – and maybe even the Golodh would finally understand that Thingol’s heirs had been trapped as much as they had by the tale of their time.

Nimloth put Elenas into his arms, and the babe nestled against him. It was time for him to feed their spirit, and he was jolted from his thoughts by the pressing, urgent reality of their hunger.

“I think I’m going to go lie back down,” Nimloth said, wincing.

Dior kissed her, and carried Elenas toward the sea.

 

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Chapter End Notes

Much like my story about Elúred and Elurín, the title of this one also comes from Bossa Nova. This one is from Jobim’s Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars. There’s something about the bittersweetness of Bossa Nova, about choosing to celebrate small moments amid the inevitability of life’s hard tragedies, that I feel absolutely suits the people of Doriath.

Quiet nights of quiet stars
Quiet chords from my guitar
Floating on the silence that surrounds us

Quiet thoughts and quiet dreams
Quiet walks by quiet streams
And a window looking on the mountains and the sea
How lovely

This is where I want to be
Here with you so close to me
Until the final flicker of life's ember.

I was lost and lonely
Believing life was only
A bitter tragic joke, I’ve found with you
The meaning of existence, oh my love.