She fought her grief. 

Oh she fought it. With everything she was, she fought it, even as the years slipped and slid away. Her memory remained perfect, crystalline in its clarity – and therein lay the great cruelty of it. Only a few short days to know him, a few short and terrible days – but she was doomed to remember them as though they had happened only moments ago. 

All her efforts were defeated by the perfect, pitiless precision of Elven memory.

(She told herself, I will not be one of those tragic Elf-maids, wasting away to nothing all for lost love.) 

(She told herself, I am a warrior and a Captain and a guard, I am a Silvan Elf of the Greenwood.)

(She told herself, I will fight. I will fight.) 

(She told herself, when did I allow my pain to become greater than myself?)

(She told herself, I should like to see a Fire-moon.)

She fought her grief. Oh she fought it. She took her knives and her bow, and sought out evil and struck it down. Even as her grief ate away at her (a worm in the core of an apple) she cleaned whole swathes of the Forest of the spiders. She opened up the trees to the starlight, took down the webs of shadow. 

She took her bow and her knives and crossed into the plains south of the great forest, and there she made slow stealthy war upon the Orcs’ outposts. She fought them, and she fought her grief, and she fought them, and she fought her grief. 

(She told herself, I will fight.) 

(She did not say, until I cannot.)

She rarely returned to the Elvenking’s Halls over the years. 

Legolas watched her with worried eyes. Thranduil’s eyes were far too knowing – and sad.

She grew spare and pinched, her eyes dulled. Not even the stars sang in her ears now, and their light could be seen through her flesh.  

She took her knives and her bow, and strapped a sword to her back.  Evil still stood untouched in the south. She had felt it, seeping cold and foul, cloaked in shadows once more. She could not stand by. This was her fight.

(Her grief was now a chain around her neck, around her arms and chest, strangling her tight, trapping her entirely – but oh how she fought it.)

(This was her fight.)

She crept away, as was her custom. Legolas watched her steal away with worried eyes. In the spaces between her steps, he knew and became aware of what she meant to do. And he took her hand and wept.

“I will go with you,” he said.

She smiled at him, gently, gently. “No. Your fight will come.”

He wept as she kissed his brow, and wept still as she melted away into the trees for the final time: an ephemera under moon and bough.

She fought, oh how she fought. Within and without she waged her war. Fought the dragging of her steps, fought her perfect memory, fought the distance and the shadows and the sluggish beating of her heart. 

Her sword still fitted smoothly in her palm, and there was evil before her. The citadel was reeking, it glowed with malice. She charged, and it scattered before her blade. The darkness itself quailed before her: blood-child, star-child, dying Elf with righteous battle in her heart and grief in her veins and a stone in her hand.

The Hill of Sorcery wrapped itself around her, like the chain of her sorrow. And with her sword in hand, she struck a last blow at the foot of the tower with all her fading strength. This was her fight. 

She would never see a fire-moon. 

The tower was black at the core, rotted through. Orcs and worse screamed in terror as she brought the northern tower down upon them. She could not move fast enough, not anymore. 

The great slabs fell, one by one, and pinned her under the dark earth. Her hand held a sword. Her hand held a stone. There was no song of starlight, no whisper of wind or tree. Her chains tightened.

(She told herself, I know what it means, now.)

(She told herself, it is memory, precious and pure.)

(She told herself, I promise.)

(And then she told no more.)