It has been much too long since I have last updated this. I have thought long and hard about how to continue...but find that, sadly, our story must come to a close. Let us then see, oh gentle reader, what fate has befallen our maiden and her prince?

"Arianel...come...we musn't be late." Legolas stood, a little wearily, at the base of the stairs as he waited for his wife to join him. "In Elbereth's name what is taking you so long?"

Above him, in the room they had shared at the inn, Arianell wiped the tears from her eyes and stirred the water in the basin "Thank you" she whispered to the stars that disappeared with the ripple "Though I will miss him Varda." sighing she pulled her cloak around her shoulders and exited the room.

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Gimli tried to hide his sorrow at leaving his own wife in his impatient grunts towards the elves.

"If I could I would stay..."

"Don't even speak it Legolas." Arianell's face shone brightly, she wouldn't let him see that she was already fading. Varda's gift of light given in her chambers helping her. She did not want him to remember her the way she was but they way she had been for what seemed millenia together.

"You should go" she gestured towards the ocean "Ulumo shall not wait forever...may he grant you safe passage to the western shores."

Softly she kissed him before he wrapped his arms around her waist, the pendant he gave her at their engagement pressed between them.

"I love you...Meleth"

Arianell sighed, the tears almost breaking through her barrier "And I you."

As he boarded the ship and they set off she stood, on the shore. Her right hand raised in farewell.

"Namarie...Legolas..." A single tear slid down her cheek to catch the prismed light of the sun "Namarie"

Manwe carried her farewell as music to the figured standing at the railing...watching his star set in the East.

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Do not thus think that our story ends here. Rather it continues on. For Arianell's essence waits still. For the passing of this world into the next. When she and her husband will once again be reunited furthur than far and beyond the western shores. In the halls of stone and cold marble to live their days in peace.

And when you are walking at night beneath the bright light of Elbereth's stars through the forests of evergreen remember the gift of Eru to all mortals...remember the gift of love.

Fin