"Maybe someday we'll figure something out."

       "For resurrection?" Rivka says. "That can be done?"

"Eventually everything is possible with our magic system. Just - very very slowly."

       "Well, if Elves think it's slow it must be really bad."

"Indeed."

"But we have forever, we'll just be more annoyed than the Elves are about using it."

Giggle. Kiss.

Kiss!

They tour the rest of the palace and then home she goes. Matt has emailed Cam enough details to conjure up the Athrabeth by.

And he conjures it up!

(an account of a Conversation between Finrod, son of Arafinwë, son of Finwë, and Andreth, sister of Bregor father of Barahir)

"I was," Finrod said, "grieved to hear of your uncle's death, and to be so reminded of the swift passing of your people. I know he lived a long time as Men count it, but I had known him too briefly; to me it was as yesterday that Bëor came over the mountains, and now he is dead, and his sons and their sons."

      "More than a hundred years, it's been," said Andreth, "and they all three lived past ninety. Death came even faster before we found these lands."

"Are you content, then?"

      "Content? We still die. But it's something, to have a little longer, to know that the shadow can lift a little."

"What do you mean by that?"

      "You know very well! When you were still in paradise the shadow we now beseige to the North encompassed the whole world -"

"I wasn't asking what shadow you spoke of, but what you meant when you said it could lift a little, and what the short lives of Men had to do with it. We hold, you know, that you are children of Eru, and your fate and nature are from him."

     "Yes," Andreth said, "that is the stance of the Elves, all we've met, that Men are meant to die. That we are brittle and brief while you are strong and lasting. 'Children of Eru', you say, but we are children to you, also: to be loved a little, maybe, and yet creatures of less worth, upon whom you may look down from the height of your power and knowledge and wisdom and bestow a smile, or pity, or a shaking of your pretty heads-"

"You speak truly enough of some, but not of me," Finrod said. "But when we call you children of Eru we name you kindred, closer kindred than all the birds and beasts of the world, and while we grieve their swift passing how much more we grieve yours! But if their short lives are natural, then so of course are yours - and all this we have been taught in the bliss and beauty of Valinor, where we could learn it from the Valar themselves. Yet I take it you think we err."

    "Yes, you err, and everyone who agrees with you errs," Andreth says, "and maybe the Enemy started it. And Men say all kinds of things, and most don't think of it much at all, but I say that Men are not born to die, and that our deaths are the work of evil in the world, and if the Enemy is the source of all evil then death is from him - being, you see, evil."

"I can believe that your bodies and fates have been Marred by Melkor," Finrod says, "as have ours - we find ourselves weaker in these lands than we should have been, though this may not clearly be revealed for many long years. And that's why your lives are longer here, in Beleriand, where the Enemy did not dwell for long -"

     "That's not what I'm talking about. You are ever of one mind, my lord: the Elves are the Elves, and Men are Men, and though they have a common Enemy, by whom both are injured, still the ordained interval remains between the lords and the humble, the firstcomers high and enduring, the followers lowly and of brief service. Nay, lord, the Wise among Men say: "We were not made for death, nor born ever to die. Death was imposed upon us, and is an evil in itself, perhaps the greatest."

Well, her logic is good, it's just the assumption that Eru isn't a huge asshole making the conversation sort of weird.

"These words are strange and terrible," Finrod reprimanded her, "And you speak with the bitterness of one whose pride has been humiliated, and seeks therefore to wound another. I can believe that you have suffered some great hurt. But not by my people, Andreth, nor by any of the Quendi. If we are as we are, and you are as we find you, that is not by any deed of ours, nor of our desire; and your sorrow does not rejoice us nor feed our pride. One only would say otherwise: that Enemy whom you do not name. And perhaps he spreads this lie to tempt you, to inspire Men to envy of Elves. But it is a lie, it has to be, because you speak of death and the Shadow as if they are one and the same, as if in escaping Melkor you would escape death. But death is Eru's invention, not Melkor's, and it seems evil because it is tainted, but untainted it would be good."

       "Says the Elf," said Andreth. "Who doesn't die."

"We die!" Finrod said. "My father's father was brutally murdered, and more after him, in the exile, on the Ice, on these plains. We have seen it and we risk it - to destroy the Shadow, Andreth, and we do not that to protect all the Children of Eru."

      "Oh," Andreth said, "I had heard it was over the family jewelry - but perhaps the son of Arafinwë is not of like mind with the house of Fëanor in that. But anyway, I say again - you don't die. For you it's temporary, it may be pain, it may be bitter, it may be a loss, but you know in dying that you do not leave the world, and that you'll return. Not for us. Dying we die, and we go out to no return. Death is an uttermost end, a loss irremediable. And it is abominable; for it is also a wrong that is done to us."

"By Melkor, you think."

     "Yes!"

"But if that were so, then our war would be hopeless indeed, and the power of the Enemy beyond what we could fathom - to twist the fate of a whole people in such a way - all the power of the Noldor is but presumption and folly - no, Valinor itself is built upon a foundation of sand!"

     "Elves!" Andreth said. "I told you that you didn't know death. Even glancing at it sideways you collapse at once into poetic despair. We see it face on, you know, and we know that the Shadow is the Lord of the World, and that war is fruitless -"

"No!" Finrod says, "No, no, you're coming close to saying something horrendous, you speak of the Shadow when speaking of Eru's designs, you confuse the One Above with Melkor, which is exactly what Melkor would like. Eru is Lord of this world, and Manwë his regent within it, and Melkor could not have done this, could not have imposed death upon your people. No one could have but Eru. So tell me, then, what Men did to anger Eru, if you think that it is a punishment -"

      "The legends of Men vary, my lord."

"But you have some."

       "I have some, which I will not share."

"Do you think that none know but Men? Don't you think the Valar know?"

      "The Valar!" said Andreth. "How should I know, or any Man? Your Valar do not trouble us with care or with instructions."

"What do you know of them?" said Finrod. "I have seen them and dwelt among them, and in the presence of Manwë and Varda, I have stood in the Light. Speak not of them so, nor of anything that is high above you. The Enemy planted these resentments. Have you ever considered, Andreth, that perhaps you placed yourselves beyond the reach of their help? Or even that you were not a matter that they could govern? For you were too great. Yes, I mean that: too great. Sole masters of yourselves within Arda, under the hand of the One. Perhaps for that reason they can offer you nothing, and yet you speak of them with resentment for it!"

       Andreth did not answer. 

"- but let's discuss this legend of yours, instead. It says that before death was imposed you were like Elves?"

      "Elves do not feature in our legends, my lord, for we hadn't met any yet. We considered only dying and not-dying, and not halls of Mandos and lives tied to the fate of the world."

" - oh. I'd been assuming that it was meeting Elves that inspired you to jealousy, and you told yourselves you'd been better - but you believed this before you met any Elves?"

      "Yes. We knew long before that. We should have been born to life everlasting, with no shadow of any end."

"A strange claim."

      "Is it."

"You are made of the matter of Arda, and yet imagine that you will live beyond it."

      "Imagine that we ought to, at least."

Yep, he would have liked Andreth.

It goes on a while longer, gets to the promised part where Andreth complains about Elf hypermonogamy. 

"...but to you I suppose that's little comfort," Finrod said.

                "I did not ask to be comforted."

"I know, you know - he is my brother, Aegnor, Aikanáro - and he loved you, not long ago, though then you were a young woman -"

               "And now my hair is gray. My lord, don't speak of this. Why should we love you, and why should you love us (if you do), and yet insist that the difference is momentous, is insurmountable -"

"We did not make the difference," Finrod said, "And we do not hold it over you, we pity you - I know you'll hate the word, but listen, there are two kinds of pity: one of kinship recognized, and near to love, and one of the difference in fortune perceived, and near to pride, and I speak of the first -"

            "Speak of neither!' said Andreth. "I want neither. I was young and I looked on his flame, and now I am old and lost. He was young and his flame leaped towards me, but he turned away, and he is young still. Do candles pity moths?"

"Or moths candles, when the wind blows them out?" said Finrod. "Andreth, I tell you, Aikanár the Sharp-flame loved you. For your sake now he will never take the hand of any bride of his own kindred, but live alone to the end, remembering the morning in the hills of Dorthonion."

           "I asked you not to talk about this," Andreth said. "That's - stupid -"

"He will die, soon. Elves have foresight in some things, though rarely in pleasant ones. He will die and he will not wish to return -"

           "Then," she said. "why didn't he go for it."

"I do not think the answer will satisfy you. Elves do not marry in wartime. If his heart had ruled him he would have wanted to take you far away from this danger, from this war, but he has duties here, and duty triumphed."

           "For one year," she said, "for one day, I would have risked it -"

"That he knew," Finrod said, "and thought that you would be bartering unwisely, and so he turned away. It would have been a cruel end."

           "The end is always cruel for Men. He could have left, you know, when I got old, and not pretty -"

"He wouldn't have left. But Andreth, the life and love of the Eldar dwells much in memory; and we would rather have a memory that is fair but unfinished than one that goes on to a grievous end. This way he will remember in the sun of morning, and that last evening by the water of Aeluin in which he saw your face mirrored with a star caught in thy hair —forever, until the end of Arda -"

          "And I, being dead, will remember nothing."

Finrod sighed and stood up. "I have no words to heal such thoughts," he said, "but do not believe yourself scorned, at least."

          "Ah huh."

"Do you wish that Elves and Men had never met?"

         "We could have met, and Elves been a little less - yourselves."

"We cannot be. But know that we love you."

         "Are you heading north to see him?"

"Yes."

         "Tell him not to be reckless."

"I'll tell him," Finrod said, "but it won't help. Maybe - maybe there's something for you, beyond the end of the world. Await us there - my brother, and me -"

         Andreth did not answer him.

It's such a pity Limbo didn't -

Maybe it did in some frustratingly magic way. Costs nothing to check.

Andreth is a sixty-year-old woman living in New York City.

What.

Tiny model Andreth is watering the plants on her windowsill. Overlooks Central Park. Very pretty.

What.

"Hey, if Andreth is a little old lady living in New York City I assume that's shenanigans, should I like, not go say hi, or is that not a useful shenanigan handling protocol."

"Well.

Something is definitely fucking with us but I suspect ignoring it wouldn't help much."

"Something. Gosh, I wonder what."

"I'm assuming Eru, but if not saying hi won't help anything I totally wanna go say hi."

"Not saying hi won't help anything. Want a fairy?"

"Yeah - there's a Fairyland-compiled list of who wants what, lemme find someone who wants material goods or to go to New York -" Check. Circle.

He finishes it.

"Hi! I wanna go to New York City, do you also wanna go to New York City?"

"You know it!" chirps the fairy.

"Awesome -" Detail work later, he and a wing-concealing snazzy leather coat and winter hat that covers his ears and forehead and hair for a reasonable amount of disguise are knocking on Andreth's door.

She opens it. "Uh, hello?"