Heartbeats

"I never checked."

Arwen stirs a little, in the cool spring air warmed with their lovemaking.  Dusk drapes its shadows over their long forms entangled in silk sheets the colour of mist; Elessar, the king, Strider, her Aragorn, her husband, had bought them for her, as a tactile memory of her home, and she hadn't the heart to tell him that to elfin eyes they bore no semblance.  For all he had learned since the great Council fifteen years past, he still would not understand that each thread of those sheets held, in the love and care of their choosing, something far more precious.

Crocuses

Death's doorstep bloomed white with crocuses. He had expected to die, of course. It is not man's lot to live forever. Neither did it surprise him to die in failure. In forty years (no, forty-one, somewhere in the violent dark of Moria) he'd paid little thought to himself, but at least now he knew his mettle – tarnished, base and brittle.

But he had not expected crocuses.

No One Remembered

He would not mourn her.

Hers had been a heroic death, all told – valiant and selfless, if hardly picturesque. Two out of three wasn't bad. But he would not mourn her. He would not grant her such an early death; he would not let her go so easily, nor lie so heavy on his conscience. He would keep her exhausted and beautiful, radiantly defiant, not angry but joyous in her epiphany, denying him. He would not mourn her.

After all, he had no power over her.