Wanderer

9 - Wanderer

Elwing

A shadow crosses the moon and the waters are darkened. The path across the waters vanishes as if it had never existed.

The sand is so soft that it feels like silk. I sift it though my fingers, and it whispers as it falls back down onto the beach. Except for the lapping of the gentle waves at my feet, all is quiet.

 I hate the sea because of Ëarendil’s love for it; I fear it because of the pain it could so easily cause me, and I am drawn to it because Ëarendil is. Tonight, my hate and fear have left me empty, so here I am, alone by the sea.

I can remember the first time I ever felt this fear. It had been two weeks after our marriage. I had just turned seventeen, almost two years ago now, and I woke up one night and he was gone. I waited and listened, but finally I went looking for him. I can’t describe the gut-wrenching terror that gripped me.

Ëarendil had been just too good to be true. I’d feared losing him ever since I first saw him, since I first looked into his big dark eyes and felt myself falling. When he asked me to marry him, I didn’t believe it at first. And when his arms went around me on our wedding night, my only thought was that I didn’t want it to end.

But I finally pieced it together that night when I saw the empty wharf.

 Too cold and too awake to go back to bed, I ended up sitting on the edge of the dock with my feet in the water. I waited half-mad with worry until Ëarendil and his boat appeared on the horizon. I broke down the minute I was in his arms and cried. Ëarendil promised me then that he’d never sail at night again, and he hasn’t yet. But that still doesn’t keep him from coming home ‘the long way’, or taking long walks to appear just as I begin to worry.

He’s still a wanderer. Nothing will ever change that; not my love, not his love of me, not even his promises. He still wanders, and I still worry.