Standing at the very edge of the docks, he takes a deep breath. Thousands of names run through his mind as he walks further and further towards the bobbing white ship that will spirit him to safer shores, but only one stands out among the rest. Ithilwe. Calandil. The light of my life; my moon among the stars. Leaving behind his husband is the hardest thing that he has ever had to do--harder than losing his parents, his sister, his kin. Yet he knows that the time has come for him to leave Arda; the wounds on his hröa and fëa are far too damaging. The toll of the harbor bell resounds in his chest as he lets out a soft sigh.
Looking behind him as other elves, clad in white and bearing expressions of mourning, board the ship ahead of him, Amathlan takes a long, last look at the world which he had come to know. Long ago had Gondolin been sundered, had Eregion fell and Lindon and Imladris rose; long had he thought that he would be the stalwart protector of all that he had come to love. Now it is time for him to sunder, to fall, and to leave; to fade away into fond memory of those who remain, and those whom he hopes to see once again.
"Stay until the sun rises," he had begged Ithilwe once. Now, as he climbs up into the boat with the aid of the shipmaster, he could not even spare him the same. He spots familiar silver hair in the small gathering of those who remain, of those who are seeing off their loved ones--not for the last time, but for a time. On the chest of the silver-haired elf sits a beautiful azure bird brooch; on Amathlan's own wrist is borne a soft blue ribbon of remembrance.
We will meet again, my love.
