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In ligaments of silvery blue, starlight shone upon the moon-speckled meadow through the veil of enchantment that separates the realm of Time from that of Eternity. A great configuration of invisible grey that mortal eyes cannot apprehend cascades ever so brightly in the Space between Matter and Beyond, shimmering with sparkles from distant stars that, having drifted from the material plane in lambent threads of light, have become one and the same with the susurrant incantations that codify the veil into existence.
It was through the thinning veil, on a moonless night of the likes you have not seen in eons, that he came to you.
You have been waiting blindly, for, even if you were to study the movements of planets and stars, as the elven sages tethered to Arda did, the whims of the forces at play could not be glimpsed at from outside the realm of Time. And while your gaze was more keen in piercing through the veil than that of most of your kin, and your patience has survived the passage of the seasons just outside your reach… At last, both of your spirits spirits felt the same gravitylike resonance stretching across the space between you.
Following the captive starlight, hairy feet opened a passage through the dark roots of hunched trees encircling the valley that you have made your garden, where buds of bluebells and blossoming apple thorns were forever in bloom, watered by the dew of the sun and the moon, which permeates in its fulgence all that is Hither. Thus, you saw him just as he saw you.
And both knew.
His steps halted, still underneath the cover of the trees, hesitating over the boundary between Matter and Beyond, the one that kept Time and Eternity apart. A dazed shine overtook the eyes peering up between pale, toussled locks of thick hair, which hid the red of his ears and cheeks from sight, but there was no stupefaction in that gaze. It was not the likelihood of this encounter that you saw him silently question, but his part in it.
You slid close. He did not step back. You towered over his head. From below your attentive gaze, he kept still, small and breathless as the vapors of your dress coiled round his arms. His features were soft and open; his gaze, clear. Simple was the cut of his clothes, and clean their hue; a pale sleeping shirt clung to his shoulders in a neat drap, and dark trousers tightly knitted around his waist slipped down his hips to brush at his calves.
"I've seen you…"
His voice was diaphanous, colored by the weightlessness radiating from the border between Hither and Thither.
"…In my dreams… In…"
"Memories," you completed, and his eyes widened, for you had given voice to what was in his mind, even if it refused to believe it. "Dreams of what was to transpire. Recollections of the future engendered at the time that you were born."
Wonder danced across his features. Like the flapping of butterfly wings, the ends of his lips tremored, and his long eyelashes fluttered, blinking over his cheeks as he drank in your next words. "Your soul remembers, for time is not endowed with linearity outside of the realm you have drifted from."
His chin tilted down as the boundary hummed underneath his feet; it was the dabbing melody of the figments of starlight caught in the untouchable veil, buzzing with ancient spellwork, enveloping with its hailing notes his senses. Thoughts of Earth and earthly matters crossed his face; fancies of time, and change, and restlessness, pulling at him from behind while the echo of the stars lured him forward. "My realm…"
"The place you departed from, and were you may return, only if you are to refuse this meeting."
Though you did not say it aloud, he heard it; his name, beckoned forth. And despite never having heard it, he knew yours as well.
Meriadoc looked up.
"Your voice… It is in my head. It has resided there for longer than I wanted to accept… For I did not know who it belonged to, or with what purpose it accompanied me during my longest hours, when my thoughts would have me think it was just a waking dream. I do not understand this Destiny… Or if the beating of my heart in this very moment can even be considered a product of destiny, and not one of lunacy."
You listened intently, then asnwered. "There is no definite purpose to the will of the powers that be. Nor is there a lack of purpose to it. It is simply the natural course towards all that which is existent flows. It is in our nature that your heart would answer to the pounding of mine."
"Do not worry for the direction in which your feet are being swept off to, as that is the trajectory that your steps shall rightfully follow. Let the call of the fates do what it will with you. Let that desire growing inside manifest. It is an echo of a higher design."
Meriadoc listened, but he did not move. You were speaking as if you could see underneath his skin, and read the runes making up his soul. It froze him in place. The unspoken truth was loud, anchored in the singing of the boundary, and he voiced it in apprehensive tones.
"If I take even a single step forward… I shall not return to the place and people that bore me…"
"Such is the case."
"And if I leave in this very moment, I should not expect to see you again?"
No words could deliver the answer better than the silence you replied with, but desperately, he insisted.
"Will I still hear your voice? Will you disappear? Will I ever remember?"
"I do not know."
His eyes dismayed as he heard you speak, and you retreated. "But it is not in the workings of this world to afford passage between one realm and another twice within a mortal lifetime."
"But," Meriadoc said. "it allowed us to meet in this very moment… To what end?"
You turned to face him once more, bearing yourself with solemnity.
"To the end in which love is consummated between those that listen to each other's calling, and see each other's presence from across the Boundary of the Realms."
Your stretched out your hand. He did not reject the touch of your fingertips, which brushed against the tactile, pliable skin that outlined his jaw and chin, so differently warm, and soft, unlike your own. With your cold touch, a shiver went down his form. In spite of themselves, his eyelids drooped, lulled by the errant magic sending sparks of warmth through his bloodstream.
"And of this new, unknown realm," you resumed, "Meriadoc, you would be the most cherished being. Neither decaying nor fading, and held by the way of all things that dwell where the shadow of Time does not dare trespass."
"The love of one of the fey…" he whispered to himself, gaze foggy with dreams of for-ever—and-ever—more. "Is that what would be bestowed upon me if I concede?"
The word 'fey' caught your attention, and you smiled at the terms mortals bandied amongst them when referring to your kind. Not even the Eldar spoke of you as such; in truth, they talked of you even less than mortals did, since your people, and your realm, was not a product of the melodious Song, but of its pauses, its interludes, its silences.
"Is that not enough?" you asked, while your fingers travelled high, and massaged the soft loops of golden hair coiling round his features, provoking blossoms of sweet williams to sprout from the ether and braid themselves atop his head in a crown of pure whites and rich reds. Their sweet fragrance lingered, tickling his nose in the same manner that your gestures stirred the tide of his emotions within his chest. "To be treasured beyond the measure of Time, past the foreseeable end of Matter. That is the fate that awaits you, if you would have it. If you would have us reach that end and start."
With one hand, you made that crown flower, while with the other, your palm pressed against his heart. You knew not of seduction, for it was needless to your kind; you knew only of your truth, which was what you spoke as you savored its fulfillment. Such honesty could not be concealed. It reverberated in his bones, and the notion of minutes and hours and days slipped off his conscious thought, as the seasons abandon the fields, akin to the last glimmer of twilight fading as the sleeping night stretched its cool fingers. Quietude and constancy filled his heart, the gifts of the realm of fey-like creatures. In his mind's eye, he envisioned you as an ever-present fragrance, a forever lingering balm, your affections and attentions a touch lavished solely upon him, the only one in your heart. For that was what he had always been, and always was. Lonely had been your dwellings before his arrival. And lonely would be the world of mortals be without you in it to illumine him. The faces he knew, the loves he once held dear—the notions of jolly times and kind deeds and good work—would be diminished in your absence, for his soul would always yearn, knowing not what it yearned for. If he were to lose the grace he found now, would he ever recover from it?
You could see the way such feverish thoughts contorted in his white face. Away, away was the mortal realm, fading swiftly the closer you came to him. Forgone was Brandy Hall, and a distant sigh of the wind was Buckland, flickering away from his memories, vanishing even the strength and will to remember them. His heart was pending purely from your hands, now, where it would be encasketed as your Eternal Divine.
That quietly-arriving choice was not uttered. It came through the way his eyelids faltered, and his body arched against yours, with his hands reclaiming the one you had over his chest while his eyes closed in wait.
There was a mutual exhale of relief as you shrank the distance and pressed a kiss charged with the perfume of thorn apple and the taste of bluebell to his lips. The boundary tremored, reshaping underneath you as the veil was cast aside, and for a moment, you were both suspended in the in-between, somewhere and nowhere at once. His breath grazed your face, warmth and a touch of laughter present in the curve of his mouth, and a s sense of mirth about him at the consummation of the inborn fate that flourished in the touch of your skin against his.
He took a step across the boundary, and then, another. Mortal light left his countenance, lit instead by the soft glow of all that belongs to the realm of Eternity, which does not cast shadow. The want for things of Matter no longer was reflected in his gaze, and what remained was the loveliness of his soul, pristine and unaltered by the loss of all that he ever knew.
"Let this be my promise," he said, holding up your hand, and brushing his lips against your knuckles in an amorous peck, "that I will give back tenfold for all the favor that I receive from thee, and that I will not renounce what has been gifted to me. That I am to be this Meriadoc of yours for all of time…" He paused, and his brows furrowed as he reconsidered. "…Or outside of it, I suppose?"
You laughed, and your laughter bounced through the meadow like moonlight on a mirror. Soon, he would not think anymore of what had been left behind. He would live like a creature that had always existed Hither instead of Thither, amidst the bluebells and thorn apples, forever doused by the caress of the moondust that wafted from Thither, and forever serenated into sleep by starlight. And the creatures of Hither would know him as their Lord, to whom they were to pay their respects to, from the smallest of frolicking butterflies to the beings unseen and unnamed and untought of by mortal minds. He would be Meriadoc, the merriest of all the inhabitants of the realm of Eternity and Beyond. Your Merry, merry outside of Time.