The voices were fainter now.

As Arod’s fleet steps carried them farther beneath the eaves of the Golden Wood, Legolas could not help but notice the desolation that now characterized it, though it was still beautiful.  They had passed the southern border woods and now entered the realm of the mellyrn, but still the distinctive air that had made Lórien itself was gone.  The age of the Rings was over.

Again they had missed the Spring, he lamented to himself, but several faded golden blossoms yet clung to the boughs and not all the golden carpet of spent leaves had gone.  He marked it well as Arod carried them deeper, for he doubted he would see it again before its final fading.

“Edhil o Lórien!” he called to them, not wishing to seem an intruder, though the woodland aisles were sadly emptied.  “Galadhrim!”

“Shy, are they not?” Gimli murmured when they received no answer.

“Few,” Legolas corrected.  “They are silent because they are few.  They did not escape the hand of war.  And many are stationed still in the east, while others follow their Lord and Lady still on the western roads.  There are few left to hear.”

Still Arod picked his way over the woodland paths unchallenged.  The Sun above was just beginning her westward descent in the mid-afternoon, touching the yellow leaves and blooms with richer color.  They continued on at a brisk pace, for after two days of hard riding over the plains north of Rohan with only the meager provisions that remained, even Legolas had to admit he was hungry.  Gimli had endured their brief fast with relatively good grace, but was beginning to grump.

It was only when they neared the very capital itself, Caras Galadhon, that they came upon groups of any number.  “Hail, people of Lórien!” Legolas greeted them graciously in their own tongue, right hand raised in courteous sign of goodwill as Arod pranced about in place and tossing his mane proudly.

“Hail, Legolas of Lasgalen!” they returned brightly in kind, recognizing him immediately.  “We indeed hoped to receive you again, now that our realms live in harmony!  Well met, and welcome!”

Legolas dismounted to accept their warm silvan embraces.  Gimli slid down of his own accord behind him, quite willing to stretch his legs after so long astride.  The Galadhrim gladly led them toward their city amid the trees, full of questions regarding the Lord and the Lady and the goings-on in the south.  Legolas answered all as best he could until they were met by another familiar figure.

“My Lord Legolas!”

“Haldir!  Mae govannen, mellon!”

These two pulled one another into an indecorous fraternal embrace, never mind protocol.  Even if Lórien was no longer protected, it was no longer oppressed by fear of the Shadow, enough to brighten any Elf who remained still young at heart.

“Come, come!” Haldir beckoned.  “The Galadhrim are scattered far and wide, and in Caras Galadhon there is room aplenty.  You would not do us the dishonor of quitting our company after you have only just arrived.”

“I would not think of it,” Legolas smiled.  “I only fear to impose upon you.”

“Nonsense!” Haldir insisted.  “You are more than welcome, my lord.  The privilege is ours to receive you, and you as well, Master Gimli.”

Arod was taken in hand by others of the Galadhrim as Haldir led them into the city.  It was as breathtaking as they remembered, these dwellings amid the trees, but sparsely populated now.

“I missed you in Gondor, my friend,” Legolas said at last, as he followed Haldir up the long spiral staircase winding round an enormous mallorn.  “I kept the company of your brethren, and wondered that you came not with them.”

“What of Orophin?” Haldir asked, concern written on his brow.  “He fared well to your eyes?”

“Yes,” Legolas answered simply, dimly aware of Gimli’s heavy tread on the stair behind him.  “Should he not have been?”

“It went ill with him in the battle,” Haldir explained.  “He is long recovered, but he worries me still.”

The stairway was long and a considerable climb, but Legolas deemed every step to be well worth it, walking as they did through arbors of gold and silver bathed in sunlight, such a wood as would not again be seen in mortal lands.  Birds flitted freely amid the stately boughs, the air alive with their lighthearted songs heralding the waning days of summer ere autumn came again.

“Here you are,” Haldir said at last, as they climbed up into a spacious and elegant talan built amid the great branches.  It was well lit through many windows, comfortably furnished and adorned with draperies, other chambers branching away beyond, joined by arboreal walkways.  “I know the Lord Celeborn will inquire on his return how we kept you, and I should incur his displeasure if I provided any less.  Indeed, he left definite instruction for us should your ways lead you again to Lórien.”

“You will convey my gratitude when he does return,” Legolas said, turning aimlessly about he center of the hall and taking in the surrounds at a glance.  “He needn’t have gone to such trouble on my account.”

“Nay, it is worse,” Haldir smiled.  “This is itself Lord Celeborn’s own retreat.  He bade me say that you are more at home here than himself, and that all that is here is yours.”

Legolas laughed softly to himself.  “A giver of gifts beyond the power of kings, the Lady said.  So it seems.  Now I regret even more the rift that arose between our houses.”

Haldir agreed.  “I thank the Valar it is healed at last," he said.  "The name of Thranduil is now upon many lips, and not without love.  It seems almost that he and Celeborn endeavor now to outdo one another in benevolence, strife of a more agreeable nature.”

Gimli wandered critically about their new quarters as the others spoke, experimentally feeling this, cautiously sniffing at that.  Noticing him, the Elves could not help smiling, for at that moment he resembled more an inquisitive dog than a Dwarf.

“You must find him amusing,” Haldir said in subdued Sindarin.

“You have no idea,” Legolas returned with a glint in his eye.

“In any event,” the other went on then in Common for Gimli’s benefit, “if it please you, you may spend a few restful days here and then return with me to East Lórien, as Southern Greenwood is now named.  I shall take you across the river.”

Legolas turned back and lay a fond hand on his shoulder.  “My thanks to you, friend Haldir.  It is more than I would have asked.”

Bowing appreciatively, the Nandorin lieutenant then withdrew, leaving the Sindarin prince and his Dwarvish friend to themselves, his light footfalls soon gone.  With a sigh, Legolas gladly rid himself of his burden of bow and quiver, letting them slide smoothly from his shoulder into his hands.  Leaving them at the side, he sank down into the soft depths of the couch beside the open window, leaning contentedly on the sill, watching the fresh breeze drift peacefully through the aureate leaves.

“I never thought I would live to say it,” Gimli said then, “but it is good to be back.”  He likewise began to lay his axes and helmet aside, glad to relax at last.  Pulling off his gauntlets he cracked his thick knuckles with a careless air, making Legolas cringe.  “I see there are more than a few distinct advantages to traveling with you,” he joked, taking in the royal quarters with a wave of his hand.

“I must confess I have noticed that,” Legolas said, rising and turning then to the wardrobe.  He was almost reluctant to take such liberties, though he had been invited to.  First Glorfindel, now Celeborn.  It would be a relief to at last find a change of clothes that belonged to him.

After a light meal, the first order of business on Legolas’ mind was a much needed bath.  That was what he deemed the foremost disadvantage to long travels, and he had made a point to exploit the appropriate opportunity whenever it presented itself.

Descending from their massive tree with hair unbound and a bundle of towels and clean clothes under one arm, he searched out that other secluded retreat of the Silver Lord which Celeborn had again placed at his disposal through Haldir.  It lay there in the far reaches of Galadriel’s gardens, a natural spring that gathered into a deep pool at the foot of another great mallorn before joining a stream, generously shaded by a ring of dogwood trees.  None would disturb him here.

He found the water to be cool but not cold.  Sinking deep into the dark current, he indulged in a few idle moments of pure pleasure as he felt the dust and sweat of Rohan washed away, the water’s surface around him dappled lazily with the fallen gold of the mellyrn.

There he stayed for a long time, letting the gentle current drift through his hair, his mind wandering.  Gimli had achieved acceptance by the Elves of Lórien easily enough, but that had been through his devotion to their Golden Lady, something Legolas did not expect to influence Thranduil’s mind.  It would require some other virtue to win the regard of the severe Golden Lord, not so powerful as the Lady of the West, but every bit as proud, and with reason.  In this he would be asking much of his father in addition to his request to quit the realm entirely for an outpost of his own.

A spent mallorn leaf came falling silently from the tree above, landing with gentle ripples on the water beside him, the ends curled upward remarkably like a ship.  He watched as it sailed aimlessly past his eyes, then caught it in his fingers with a strange twinge of reluctance to see it go.  But he loosed again, remembering he could not deny the choice he had made, or rather the choice that had been thrust upon him.  As the current swept it away, Legolas thought sullenly that there would never cease to be reminders now.  He had turned his heart east, but the West would not be forgotten.

Later, he sat still by the pool side in the lap of the mallorn, clothed in the soft grey and white of Celeborn’s more casual apparel, feeling wonderfully clean and refreshed but still a bit downhearted.  Dwell upon what lies ahead, Glorfindel had said; but he was not yet ready to renounce all that he must.  Remember the face of your mother; but even that was a torment, for he was then torn between his mother and his father, both of whom he loved more than life itself, a choice he had not the strength to make alone.  If Thranduil bid him stay, it could very well break his heart.

A stab of guilt took him then as he considered leaving his father.  Thranduil had been deeply wounded by the death of his queen, his noble heart cruelly rent between love and duty.  For a time Legolas believed he had truly lost the will to live, consumed by the desire to follow her.  His heroic façade had been just that, a charade he had managed for the sake of his people during those first awful years of loneliness and bleak warfare, his suffering finding eloquent expression through his sword as he drove the enemy for a while a safe distance from his borders.  Legolas alone had seen the furthest depths of his initial misery, a misery they had shared.  And from that time on, each had become the deepest center of the other’s life, about which even the fate of Lasgalen itself seemed woven.  It was for Legolas’ sake more than his crown that Thranduil had so stubbornly held his own against the wiles of the Necromancer.  Legolas knew his father well enough to know he would have tried to go on even if his son had been lost to him, but he wondered whether such a blow would not indeed have crushed even Thranduil.  

Legolas was loath to crown his father’s longsuffering victory with another loss.  He felt he was changed, that he had aged more in the last year than he had in the previous twenty.  It reminded him of what his mother had once told him of the change that had come over Thranduil when he had returned from the Last Alliance.  Seven years in Mordor had burned a black scar on his heart that only she had been able to soothe, she who had shared the other desolate wounds they had suffered together in the tumultuous fall of the First Age.  Legolas knew it was something of a different nature that had found its way into his heart now, and he was alone.  Gimli could never understand, and sought only to ignore it.  Glorfindel had tried, though he was of different race, and his mind followed other paths.  Celeborn was striving against the throes of the same call in one he loved, but therefore against what he did not comprehend. 

Would his father understand?  Or had Thranduil finally forgotten the hypnotic crash of waves on the shore?  How could he ever bear to stand before him and bereave him of the only thing he cared for now?  It was unthinkable that his father should survive the malice of the greatest Foe in Middle-earth, and it should fall now to the one he loved most to inflict the fatal wound.

Golden petals fell around him like tears from the heavens, soft and silent, glowing in the early sunset.  He was suspended in a world of half-measures, neither of the Light, nor of the Dark.  Why could he not have been born of the Moredhil indeed, and not have to reconcile the conflict of his Sindarin blood with his Nandorin upbringing?

Angrily he cast an idle stone into the water with a sharp splash, sending agitated and sparkling ripples throughout like a shattering of diamonds, destroying for a moment the reflections of the trees above and of himself.  But the moment passed then as swiftly as it had come, and the shimmering surface steadied itself before him, forgiving his ill-temper.  He could never despise his parents, and he was their legacy.  He knew those last thoughts would have grieved his father greatly if he had known them.  Not all is rational in the grip of the sealonging, Glorfindel has said as well, and that at least was indisputable. 

Soft footsteps came then around the shade trees, and Legolas glanced up to see Haldir round them presently, though he had guessed it.  The other looked at him strangely for a moment, then gave him a wan smile.

“How do you fare, Legolas?” he asked plainly.  “Hardly I dare say it, but I see behind your eyes the same shadow that afflicts the Lady.”

Legolas regarded him quietly for a few moments, then loosed a shallow sigh.  “Yes, I know,” he said, rather dejectedly.  “It is a specter that haunts my steps now, and has chosen this moment to draw near again.  But it will pass.  It always does.”

The pale Nando came to sit beside him, still at a respectful distance but near enough to be amiable.  With a gesture he inquired after Legolas’ permission, and it was duly given.

“Somehow I sense the hand of war fell heavily upon you, friend Haldir,” Legolas said then, turning the subject.  “Thankfully you now seem none the worse for wear.”

The other grunted, reclined against the great roots of the mallorn.  “Perceptive as ever, my lord,” he said, running a hand over his long-healed chest.  “Yes, I fear I walked the knife’s edge for a time, returned only by grace.”

“Care to tell?” Legolas smiled.

Haldir coughed discreetly, and for a moment seemed loath to say.  “Have I my lord's pledge to refrain from gratuitous laughter if I confess to have . . . fallen from a tree?”

Legolas would have laughed, but smothered it.  However he could not help the grin, and much of the healthy gleam returned to his eyes.  Haldir seemed a bit disconcerted, but Legolas shook his head.

“Fear not,” he assured him, “for you are in good company.  Would it ease your shame to know His Reckless Majesty Thranduil fell also from a tree?”

Haldir’s brows shot up, and indeed he brightened considerably.  “Did he!”

“I am told he did,” Legolas said, pulling his knees up to his chest where he sat.  “Fell through a tree, to be precise; though the herald who brought this to my attention could answer me little with certainty, for he had not seen it.  The tale goes that he was in a mortal struggle with a one of the winged Ulaer.”  At this he paused and sobered.  “Many times I have pled with him to give greater heed to his own peril, but he forgets himself on the field.  Nor did he deign even to make mention of it himself when he wrote to me!”

Haldir shuddered willfully, as though shaking himself free of the foul memory, tossing his hair back over his shoulder.  “Ulaer,” he hissed.  “Thank the Valar they at last have gone, and I must say I preferred to meet them mounted upon horseback than circling about our wood like carrion birds.  It was indeed one of them that was my undoing.”  He sighed, then shook his head as though to banish past regrets.  “And what of yourself, my intrepid friend of Mirkwood?  You came through battle and death, siege and Mordor, unscathed?”

Legolas laughed wryly, his tone light but humorless.  “Many will say that,” he said, gazing idly into the crystalline surface of the pond.  “But my wounds are simply of another kind than yours.  Bloodless, but unhealing.”

Haldir nodded, his gaze distant, turning a fallen leaf in his fingers.  “I know of what you speak, but still I do not understand it,” he said.  “Our own Orophin walked with death for a time; called, they said, by the peace of the West.  I fear the West.  The very name of Valinor means heartbreak and torn homes to us of Middle-earth.  What paradise is so great that so many would seek once to leave it?  I fear to pass a threshold from which there is now no return.”

Legolas listened patiently as Haldir echoed sentiments he had once shared, sentiments he could feel even now.  Again, it seemed providence had brought another voice in due time to oppose the seduction of the sea.  But his plight was made none the easier by the renewed conflict.

“I regret to see the same affliction beset the house of the Lord,” Haldir continued, with a rueful curl of his lip.  “They hide much from us, those two, but we are not blind.  The Lady Galadriel would now return to the land of her birth, and the Lord Celeborn will not follow.  She bids him come; he bids her stay.  It is bitter to see the rift between them, and all who attend them walk as though upon ice.  Their love is strong still, but it would break your heart to see how at times they wish it was not.”

Legolas stared bleakly at the rippling of the pool under the falling lamentation of Lórien’s mallorn blossoms.  Kinsman Celeborn had not been dinner table conversation in Thranduil’s household over the long years, but despite the cool relations they shared, Thranduil had never resented his cousin.  Indeed by his tale he retained more kindred affection for him than Oropher had, borne of fond memories of his childhood.  But always he had warned that such a marriage of Sinda and Noldo would in the end bring naught but grief upon them, that the chasm between was too wide and too deep to be forgotten or forgiven once for all.  And now it seemed he was right.  Any ties of kindred blood between Thranduil and Galadriel had been willfully disregarded by both long ago.  They came from very different worlds.

Haldir slid his fingers then around a pale bloom of niphredil, taking care not to pluck it.  “The Lord and I are very like to this, I suppose,” he said.  “And the Lady to these of her making.”  He took in the other hand a fallen flower of gold from above, adrift and anchored to nothing.  He tossed it into the water, where the subtle current soon carried it out to the branching stream.  “It is simple for her to go on her path appointed, but we cling still to this earth.  We are not ready to face the fading of our time.”

Legolas looked on sympathetically, for the image was a vivid one.  With a twist of a branch, he plucked one of the last remaining dogwood blossoms, still flowering longer in Lórien despite its waning.  “And I am like to this,” he said, letting Haldir observe for a moment each white petal marred with a dark but characteristic reddish scar.  “We too may be stricken, and so wounded we must go.” 

He tossed it, too, into the gleaming pool to follow that which had gone before.  “The world fades, Haldir,” he said resignedly.  “And we are powerless to help it.  As she said, we have together fought nothing but a long defeat; we have won our places only to relinquish them, spent ourselves only to buy a tomorrow we shall never see.”

Haldir looked at him incredulously.

“My father once spoke to me of the Westcall, long ago, when my mother was lost to us,” Legolas went on.  “We speak not of it now, but there was a time when he understood it as Lord Celeborn does not.  As the world wears on toward its unfathomable end, there will come a time when it will no longer be a home for us, but become rather a prison.  For some this moment is difficult to reach, while others find it thrust upon them without warning.  But it is a path we all must take when our time comes, a door as inescapable to us as Death to those of mortal race.” 

He paused with a sigh, bowing his head a moment; and when he looked up his deep eyes had assumed a fey gleam, distant, as one who foresees his own end.  “I feel my time is fast approaching me, Haldir.  Yesterday Middle-earth held promise of everything; today it holds near nothing to my eyes.  I hear the Sea in my dreams, though never have I beheld it in waking life.  I fear to learn to hate all that I once loved, to be bound by what was once a blessing.”  He closed his eyes against the hideous distortions the sealonging-unanswered would eventually make of everything.  

“Ai, Legolas,” Haldir agreed.  “It is difficult to be the ones left to see the end.  The whole world fading; what a time to meet a friend!”

At this Legolas cracked a smile, cheered beyond hope.  “Do not despair yet,” he said.  “It will not go overnight.  Whilst Elessar lives I shall stay.  And even as fair Lórien is diminished, he has set a new task before us in Ithilien.  There, it seems, will endure the last of the Elven realms, for I do not expect it to fade at once when I no longer rule it.  Wherever my name is held in any regard, there you will always be welcome.”

“Thank you,” Haldir said, with sincerity shining in his eyes.  “When one’s home begins to wane around him, it is comforting to know there is yet another hearth to which he may turn.”

“Many,” Legolas assured him.  “Just as the Lasgalenath are welcomed in the South, so the Galadhrim will be a glad sight in the North.  We may all gather at the fire with a glass of Dorwinion to spin tales and laugh while we still have the time.” 

"Perhaps we may," Haldir agreed.  “Regardless, I would be honored if you and your endearing companion would join me this evening for dinner.  Affairs will call us away all too soon, and I would enjoy your company while I may.”

“And we yours,” Legolas accepted graciously, as they began walking back toward the heart of the silvan city. 

“Gimli!” Legolas called upon climbing up into their royal flet after a brisk flight up the stairs.  Now that his heart was beating strongly again he had willfully all but forgotten the woes of the West and returned to life as he had known it.  Optimism and pessimism shall come and go like the tides, Glorfindel had said.  “Gimli?”

The full rays of sunset streamed in through the many windows and lattice work on one wall from which the curtains had been drawn away, its effect a beautiful elvish pattern of golden dapples upon the floor.  Shadows had begun to lengthen and mingle, the breeze evoking the soft music of silver bells upon the drapery tassels.  The Dwarf had left his helmet and hauberk behind with his gauntlets and axes, so he could not be far.

Receiving no answer, Legolas merely shrugged, and after a moment managed to locate a comb.  Standing briefly before the crystal mirror and idly humming to himself, he brushed the assorted tangles out his hair, clean and bright again after their field trip through Rohan.  But soon the momentary distraction faded, giving way to calm reflection, and only then did he realize what he was humming.

To the Sea, to the Sea; the white gulls are crying . . .

Slapping the comb down upon the table, he regarded himself earnestly in the mirror, face to face.  Just how complete was that change in him that all seemed to notice?  Was he himself blind to it?  He did not think he was so very different, for it was the same reflection that stared earnestly back at him.  But after a moment he conceded that there was indeed something, something yet unnamed.  With a will, he searched out the depths of his own eyes, struggling to see how and why their light had changed.

But a nervous grumbling outside reft him from his moment of introspection.  “Gimli?” he called again as he drew back and blinked, the short grey mantle swirling behind him as he turned.  Walking over to the side door leading out to a fair bridge woven of grey hithlain joining one flet to another, he at last found his errant friend.  Gimli was inching his careful and perilous way back toward their own tree as his arboreal path swayed gently in the breeze, looking extremely out of place.

“What are you doing?” Legolas asked, smothering a laugh.

A burst of mild swearing answered him.  “It was easy enough before the wind blew!”

With almost a paternal air, Legolas strode easily out onto the ropewalk to meet Gimli halfway, took his hands in his own to steady him, and led him slowly back toward more solid footing with a reassuring smile. 

“Look at me.  No, do not look down; look at me.  Come now.”

Legolas knew a thing or two about feral fear, and his unwavering gaze held Gimli’s captivated even as he would have blindfolded a shy horse, his backward tread on the rope unerring until at last they had reached the floor of the flet where they passed from the glare of the sunset again into soft shadow.

Standing again on something substantial, Gimli was released from his momentary rapture as Legolas let him go and turned away.  He shuddered, for he remembered very little of the return walk once the Elf had taken him in hand, only the gentle intensity of those eyes.

He shook his head as if to clear it.  “Legolas!  Do not do that to me!”

“I beg your pardon?” Legolas asked, turning back then, honest confusion in his voice.

“I have heard of such tricks by the Elves of old, and I wager the Lady could do such if she had a mind.  But I would not expect it of you.”

“I assure you, I did nothing,” Legolas insisted, wondering at all the fuss the Dwarf made of it.

Gimli pursed his lips and planted his hands on his hips, long-standing suspicions coming to a head at last.  “I weary of learning all things by circumstance,” he said firmly, looking askance at the enigmatic Elf.  “What are you, Legolas?  Tell me now.  Are you no more than you would seem, one of the silvan folk of the North?  Or do you indeed wield the eldritch craft of the Ancients, to whom I understand you are akin?”

Legolas hesitated a moment, a solemn change coming over him.  “I know not what you would mean by it,” he answered at last, his voice deepening somewhat, the subtle veil of youth withdrawn; “for I am ancient myself to your eyes.  But yes, I am born of the Sindarin Ar-Edhil and endowed with some power of my own, though it cannot compare to those who have seen the Light I have not.”

They regarded one another for a time, the nettled Dwarf and the regal Elvenlord, a chasm of centuries yawning between them. 

“But I assure you,” Legolas said then, sinking onto the couch and falling back into his light and innocent ways, his eyes pleading for the Dwarf’s trust like a dog that had been kicked aside, “I employed nothing of the sort.  You were not ensorceled, if that is what you fear.”

Gimli seemed to breathe a bit easier then, assured that he had not been violated, though the brief glimpses of the real Legolas he was shown from time to time were unsettling.  By rights he supposed that was what Legolas should be, as the son of a King and the kin of Lords.  But he was glad the Elf more often than not wore his more pleasant and befriending demeanor.  Like all Dwarves, to him the thought of being enthralled by elven magic, even if only for a moment, was insufferable. 

“Am I pardoned?” Legolas asked then, inquiring after his thoughts.

“Why?” Gimli snorted.  “For what?  It is I, seemingly, who must ask your pardon.”

Legolas smiled.  “Then it is duly granted and gladly forgotten,” he said at once.  “Haldir has invited us to dinner.  You will come?”

“Gladly!” Gimli echoed, his rugged face brightening immeasurably.  “I expect you think yourself in fine form now that you have indulged in the luxuries of your kind.”

Legolas gave his stout friend a superior glance.  “I do think you would enjoy a bath just as much as I,” he said, sidling round the point he endeavored to make.  “There is no shame in it now and again.”

“Bah,” Gimli dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand.  “It will suit some.  But come; I feel I am starving!”

That night the silver moon rode high over Lórien.  The quiet mellyrn were bathed in his light, their leaves rustling in the sighing wind.  The flet itself was silent, the darkness of midnight ameliorated by the soft blue glow of moon and starlight.  Even Gimli slept soundly, his breathing deep and regular in the stillness.

Legolas lay awake in his own bed for a time, looking upon the stars from his bedside window.  After several days in the untamed wood and on the barren plains, it was a comfort again to lie on a real bed with a pillow and clean white sheets, beside him the silver-white window curtains gently adrift in the breeze amid the treetops.

This was what he remembered and treasured about Lasgalen, the first Lasgalen, the Galadhremmen Lasgalen of Oropher, that idyllic city in the shadow of the mountains.  Not all the homes had been built among the trees, but on a whim the palace had been, set among several tall and stately beeches.  He remembered drifting to sleep to the sound of trees rustling, moonlight on the leaves.  But that city had perished long ago, and with it the brightest years of his life.

But he would build again.  He vowed to himself that in Ithilien he would once again sleep to the music of the trees in spite of the one who had once shattered their lives.  To stand in evergreen laughter, Gandalf had said.  The last laugh.

They had endured a living martyrdom, but the last laugh would be theirs.