tauriel on the banks of the anduin, bidding goodbye to legolas (this is as far as he would come, too afraid to further defy his father)
tauriel stopping for rest in rivendell, and being welcomed by arwen undomiel herself, feeling very young and clumsy and wild around her noldor cousins. but there are men of the west there, and a child called estel whom admires the sheen of her hair and follows her like a pale shadow for days. she only draws him out with stories of spiders and dwarves and dragons, and he repays her by calling her naurfinel, the flame-hair, and making her feel less like a child herself.
(there is starlight on the bruinen when the lady arwen comes to her, and asks about the stone she carries. starlight is memory, the lady says, and tauriel feels an ache so deep her bones could shatter of it)
tauriel on the east-west road, staying again in bree—she likes the children of Men best, she discovers; something about their wild innocence, the untaught strength of them. (the elves of mirkwood have been at war too often, too long, for any children to have been born since legolas greenleaf came of age. watching bree’s children play in the street, tauriel mourns.)
tauriel first stepping in eriador, and thinking on the stories of the war of wrath, and how she walks in the lady galadriel’s footsteps.
tauriel coming to the dwarven stronghold in the blue mountains and pleading with the guard—dis the lady dis sister to the king under the mountain and mother of its princes I must speak with her I have sworn a promise.
tauriel told to wait, told that she may not enter without leave of the lady dis, and going to sit on a rocky outcropping—sitting there still as the stars come out above her, stars from the other side of the world, and she wonders if kili might have told her their dwarfish names, if it is not elwing’s wings and the anvil of feanor that he looked upon, if his had been an entirely different sky.
what do you call that cluster of stars, near the northstar? she asks, when a dwarf comes to sit beside her on the stone.
those are the seven fathers, the lady dis says. (she is of such a likeness to thorin oakenshield that she can be no other—but there is something soft about her mouth that reminds tauriel more of kili than his uncle.) why, what is your name for them, elf?
and tauriel holds the promise-stone, thinks of the starlight of other worlds and who walks in it now. says, we call them—we call them the tears of nienna.
she uncurls her hand, and offers out a stone.
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