How I Leave You

Evenstar

 I cannot believe that it has been fifty years.

Fifty years since half of our company fell. Since Fili died at the hand of Azog's spawn, and the rest of the Durin bloodline almost spilled onto the snow, lost to history forever.

Fifty years since I got the scar on my throat.

Now, half a century later, we stand gathered by the mountain, facing what was once the battlefield of five armies. Looking down at it from our platform, I can still see it so vividly: the Mirkwood elves positioned in calculated formations, ready to follow Thranduil's order even if it would be their death; the small battalion of men, fighting with everything they had left from the fire. Gandalf. Bilbo. Neither of them are here today, though I cannot blame them, for the journey is far, and the winter is treacherous.

In their place, hundreds, if not thousands of people have shown up. Dwarves from near and far, coming to commemorate their lost brothers and sisters, who died fighting for our freedom.

Humans from Esgaroth, bowing their heads in respect, for, to some, this is the first they see of the stories that their grandparents have told them. So fragile, the life of a man. So short it is. Some of those who fought in the battle are no longer with us, not because of illness, but because of age.

Elves, too, are among the faces of the mourners, their hoods drawn up all as one. They are beautiful, even in their grief.

Thorin places his hand on top of mine on the railing. A gentle breeze blows against us. Such a beautiful night, how the Moon has let her stars out just for us.

"Look," Soldís says from the other side of Thorin. "It's them."

She points up to the sky, to the little lights that glisten there. The tears fill my eyes as I realize what she means.

Once, many years ago, she and Thrór approached us with a serious expression on their little faces. Thorin and I shared a look, one of those wondering what trouble they had managed to get themselves into now, but instead, our son said:

"Where do the dead go when they die?"

They had been so young, then. No more than half a decade, and already they wondered about life and that which follows it. Such curiosity.

Thorin bent down to their height, kneeling before them so that he might take them into his arms.

"They go to the eternal lands," he answered, doing so as kindly as he could.

But while this seemed to satisfy Thrór's curiosity, Soldís still hungered for more.

"So do they never come back to us?" she asked, her big eyes wide with concern.

By the gods, I could not bear it. For I remembered wondering the same thing after losing my parents. Wondering if I might have seen my mother in the white dove that visited me one morning, or my father in the eyes of the bear whose life I chose to spare.

So I told her that they were in the stars.

"And when you see them blink for us, it means they are thinking of you, too."

"But what about when it gets cloudy?" my daughter asked.

"Just because you cannot see them," I said, bending down next to my husband, "does not mean that they are not there."

As we stand there on the ledge of the mountain, surrounded by the people I have come to know as my family, as my own, I cannot help looking up at the stars.

Thrór takes my hand on the other side of me, though his face, too, is turned to the sky. And maybe it is ridiculous, but when I notice two stars shining particularly brightly down at me, I know. I know that those two lights are my parents, and that they are watching over me. That they have been watching over me for the centuries I thought myself alone. I was never alone, not even at the peak of my solitude. I see that now.