Disclaimer: I don’t own them and I’ll put then back when I’m done!

Author’s Note: Well, it’s been a nice, long haul hasn’t it? A little over two years I’ve been writing this story, and now it’s done. Thank you all for sticking with me through thick and thin, and for putting up with the long pauses between updates. Hopefully my next story won’t take so long to complete! Title from Byron.

Epilogue: Start Not-Nor Deem My Spirit Fled

“I still think that you could have told the rest of us.”

Eowyn smiled and sipped her drink, something fruity and surprisingly nonalcoholic. Arwen had been unsurprisingly grumpy about the way things had turned, with just Pippin and Eowyn breaking the last mirror. “Anti-climactic”, she had called it. “Bloody brilliant” was what Merry had termed it. Aragorn had just smiled and expressed his relief that the whole escapade was over.

“I wonder what else the Citadel is hiding,” Arwen mused, playing with her necklace. “So much of it has been unused for so long.”

“Somehow I doubt it will stay that way forever,” Eowyn remarked.

Earlier in the evening, she had passed through the portrait gallery, wondering if there would be a change worked in it now that the final mirror had been destroyed. There had been. Bergil and a group of children, most likely those of the servants, had been chasing each other back and forth, shrieking and laughing. The gloom that had hung in the air of the long corridor had vanished and late afternoon sunlight streamed through the open windows. Those same children were now running about the great hall, bright beacons dressed in green and gold and scarlet-Elves, they said, although there were fey folk and even a dragon mixed in. Aragorn, once again breaking with tradition, had invited children to this last masquerade.

“What did you do with the shards?” Arwen asked, and Eowyn turned away from gazing at a little girl smiling shyly up at Galadriel, as whom she was dressed.

“What? Oh, we buried them out on the Pelennor,” Eowyn replied. “Near where the Fell Beast was burned. It…seemed fitting, I suppose you could say.”

“Yes,” Arwen replied. “Good.”

Later, Eowyn drifted over to the window and looked out, down towards the brightly lit pavilions further down in the city, where the people were dancing and laughing and eating. She had a gentle underlying suspicion that the Citadel had not yet yielded up all of its secrets; that it would be years before it had completely. Strangely, she found that she did not mind. She welcomed the adventure it would bring. As if in agreement with her, a slight sea breeze gently blew her long hair about her face. What other mysteries would come to light in this ancient city?

An arm slid around her waist.

“You are not dancing, my love,” murmured Faramir. “Will the Lady of the Shield Arm dance with me?”

For now, Eowyn decided, smiling up at her fiancé, they could wait. Just for a little while.
*****

In his crowded office in the Great Library, the Librarian reached for an old leather tome. Smiling slightly, he opened it to a page with a single line of spidery cursive writing.

Alatarial and the Mirrors.

Dipping his quill in the inkpot, the Librarian drew a thin line through the words. Then he moved the ribbon marking the page to a new place, closed the book, and set it to one side. Soon. It would be needed again soon.

Fin.