The rumor reached me as embers often do — small, bright, and unwanted. They said she lives still. They said she rules a forest of moonlit water and silver leaves, that her people call her Sovereign of Taur Im Duinath, Lady of the Living Rivers, Keeper of the Moonwell.. no longer the Black Swan of Alqualondë..

And they said more. That the Woodland King, proud Thranduil of the Greenwood, has sought her hand — not for love alone, but for the merging of borders, the joining of rivers. Fire and water, root and tide.

At first, I laughed. The sound startled even me. Then I stopped working, and the forge went cold.

For days, I could not think of steel or star-light. Only of her — the way the sea once glimmered against her throat, the way she had looked at me that last time, before the ships burned.

Now I walk alone along the blackened shores of her realm. The wind carries the scent of pine, salt, and lavender. Somewhere within the trees, her people sing in a tongue I do not know — one she built from survival.

And I see her. Not as memory, not as dream — but standing upon the moonlit banks in a gown of pale river silk, crowned with a circuit of birch branches and light. Her pale blonde hair glimmering in the moonlight. Older now, untouched by time. The sea’s daughter, made Sovereign of the Forest Between Rivers.

I cannot speak. For the first time in centuries, I do not know whether I have come seeking forgiveness — or merely proof that she still remembers my name.