Never would she forget the eyes of the future King of Men when she announced that soon she would be joining her mother in the Uttermost West. Aragorn, son of Arathorn, had always watched her from afar, hardly ever to dare to approach the daughter of Elrond for the unworthiness he felt of her. Yes, he was a son of the mightiest Kings ever to have been given to the Secondborn but she was a daughter of one of the mightiest of the Elven Lords who still walked the earth.

Who was he to be worthy of the hand of the daughter of Elrond Peredhil?

Still upon the day she had announced her intentions, she saw a shadow of grief pass over his eyes. It was a grief of a love he would never know now, or so she had come to suspect during the months that followed before her departure to the Grey Havens.

The seasons of Aragorn’s stay in Imladris was usually so short as he would leave them to go out to walk the world as a Ranger of the North, seeking to fight the growing darkness wherever it was found. But after Arwen’s announced intentions, Aragorn had remained within the borders of the Elven refuge and if asked why he would reply, ‘I shall be part of the Lady’s farewell escort when the time arrives.’

Arwen never approached him during all the months that followed and so on the first morning of Spring, a group of heavily armed Elven warriors set out from Imladris to see the daughter of Elrond to the grey ship that would carry her into the waiting arms of her mother.

The journey would last only a few months until the Elves reaches shores of the Sundering Seas, and once there all would witness a tender farewell between father and daughter. Aragorn would say his own goodbye as Arwen’s foster brother and that would be that. He would watch her board the ship and then watch it sail slowly away forever from the shores of Middle-earth.

But when the morning came for her to board the ship, Aragorn found that he could no longer keep his silence, and he spoke for all to hear of his love for Elrond’s daughter.

Elrond endured two betrayals that day from the daughter and the son he each loved more than anything in all of Arda, for Arwen Undómiel forsook her Elven heritage to pledge her love for Aragorn son of Arathorn on the shores of the Sundering Seas.

And from that day forward neither would forget the untamed grief that they saw in their father’s eyes, even though Elrond had been departed for Valinor these last 100 years of Men.

FIN