“Another,” begs the child.  ‘Another, Legolas, please, another!”

“Patience, Eldarion,” I answer as I search for one more piece of bark discarded by the tree.

He dances on the river bank, watching the small fleet sail away as my questing fingers find a long curling piece.  Swiftly I twist the ends more tightly, tying them with a yellowed blade of grass, and then edge in two small twigs to hold open our boat.

“Here.”

 I offer it to my small companion who, with his father’s air of command, stands over me.  A smile graces me in return and then he is down dabbling in the mud at the river’s edge.  All concentration he waits for a suitable river eddy, for a steady gust of wind, then pushes the delicate craft out into the river’s flow.  With a quick stride, I am beside him, holding the tails of his coat as he stretches out.  Aragorn will simply laugh if I return his son wet and muddy – but Arwen will wish to bring up every foolish deed of my youth.

Together we watch the last of our flotilla out of sight, watch as it vanishes among sun ripples and little wind-ruffled waves.  Eldarion leans back against me, his head against my hip.

“They are going to the sea, aren’t they, Legolas?”

I nod, though he cannot see me.

“Yes, they will ride the river all the way to the coast where the gulls curl ropes in the sky and cry like lost souls, to where pale sand holds shells and bones of old, forgotten ships, down to the great salty sea where white waves and dolphins ride the green curls of water they will go…”

The old ache of sea-longing cuts through me and I stop.  The child turns to look at me and I see his father’s farsight in his eyes.  He hugs my leg.

“Tell me more – about the sea and where they go and about the sailors that see them.  Tell me again about the land over the sea.”

I lift him up, this child that I will never have, and walk back to the bank.  We sit there, on grass bitten short by rabbit and sheep, and I tell him the stories that haunt my dreams.  They will never be nightmares to this child of two worlds; his roots grow firmly here in the land of his father.