The plot progresses (slightly)
It was difficult to tell where things used to be. It had been a long time (and it had, hadn’t it? So very long and yet, as the land turned green and good, as the hills were etched with streams, as willows and aspens bent to kiss the water - it did not seem so long at all), and the land had changed so much. Gone were the familiar landmarks of the ages of hobbits and dwarves, elves and men. Gone were the ruins, gone were the stones that had laid there. But gone too was the acrid soil that had lain over the land for so long, and gone was the dust that had choked her throat and settled on her eyelashes and painted her hair.
“Where, oh, where has the Old Forest gone? Whispering trees, laughing brooks, Old Man Willow and his crooked look? Where did fauntlings once adventurously stray? Where did Old Tom and Goldberry lay their home and bowls of lilies?”
“Why, Tom! You’ve married?! When can I meet her?”
He had smiled, eyes crinkling under his new feathered hat - a gift from her. “She comes now - can you hear her singing? Moonlight’s child, as you can see. Watch her dance along the stream; my beautiful Goldberry.”
“Oh, Tom.” She had gripped his arm and grinned so widely her cheeks had hurt. “I am so very happy for you.”
He had been so in love, gathering the lilies for Goldberry every day as the stars began to fade away.
But where was he now? Where was the whole damn forest, for that matter? She had not seen it fade, and had lost track of just where in Arda she was, over the years. And yet… she couldn’t help but feel that she was close to the right place. The plains stretched before her - muddy (dust mixed with rain tended to have that effect) and arid - and behind her, covered in flowers and streams that spread beside her as she walked across the land.
Somewhere, far ahead and deep under the earth, so, so very deep that even the human’s diggers and general pervasive muck couldn’t reach it - she heard the faded song of enchanted tree roots and bewitching streams, and smiled (and it did not ache the way it had a few days ago, now that she had been doing more in a few days than in thousands of years). Finally, a tip in the right direction.
*****
She walked all through the day and, as the night fell, she sang a copse of trees by the river, and sat down at the base of an aspen. She could see the river from where she sat, glinting softly under a sky filling with stars - brighter than they had been in thousands of years, since before pollution and electricity dimmed the skies. It was beautiful. As the sun faded to a shaded glow in the west, she felt that all-too-familiar longing that stabbed her in the chest sometimes, but it was sharper now - a finely sharpened knife that slipped between her fourth and fifth ribs, not a dull thud to her stomach.
In her years of dull and lonely wandering, where her senses had dimmed and her mind blurred, she had been too consumed by hopelessness to remember everything that she had lost. There had been nothing to remind her of peaceful evenings spent watching the same stars that shone on her now, nothing to torment her with memories of other streams and waterfalls (the ones that had flowed past the gardens, and had sounded in every corner of the valley - a soothing whisper), nothing to tell her that even the stars that shone in the sky were nothing compared to the reflections she had seen in her eyes. Or to the way she had smiled, or to the feeling of that beautiful hair - smooth as silk, running through her fingers. And she had not been able to miss her as she should have, not wanted her to be walking there (for she had not wish the dusty hell that this land had been on anyone).
And here, surrounded by the beauty that she knows that she (‘her love…’ the whispers echo in her mind) would have loved… She does not push away the hurt, nor the memories. It had been so long, so very long since she had thought of her. Of her smile. Of the way that her lip had twitched before she laughed. Of the freckle beneath her left ear, and the way she had blushed when it was kissed. Of her laughter. Of everything. And she was ashamed.
In her defence, no one had warned her. Sure, she had made an ass of herself, but was it really a surprise when she came face to face with the most beautiful creature she had ever seen (and she had seen many), and no one had thought to tell her in advance. So, if she had let her jaw drop a little, if she had gazed open-eyed at the vision of perfection in front of her and turned an embarrassing shade of red - well, then. It wasn’t really, entirely her fault.
‘Not that that matters now,’ she had thought bitterly, staring at her new bedroom as she leaned against the door she had just dashed through, and fought to hide her blush from the empty room. ‘Oh, god,’ she slapped her hand over her eyes, ‘What must Arwen think of me?’
She looked at the stars above (“Oh, my Evenstar, you are more precious to me than any in the sky.” “Then come with me.” “You know I cannot,”) as a tear cut a cleaner track on her still-dusty cheek. But while she wept, she smiled at the twinkling sky above, and watched the land bathe in silver light