Mallossel takes in a deep breath and then exhales as she looks upwards to the sky. "Do you see them all there, the stars? Our kind has so much love for them."
Galtharian slowly looks up, sitting in silence for some time before answering her. “I shall not pretend I understand this love. It has been long- well, long in terms of my own years, that I have relished in that view.”
Mallossel spares a brief glance at him before looking back up at the sky. "Varda, Queen of the Valar, blessed our ancestors with them when they first awakened - they were the first sight they saw, and into them, she wove warnings and foretellings of doom, but also light, and hope."
Galtharian turns to look at her now, but stays completely quiet, waiting to see if she shall continue. She does.
“'After the First Age, Earendil and his ship, along with the Silmaril he bore, were sent out into the heavens to be a light to all of the Free Peoples.” Mallossel reaches for something on her neck, but she does not find it and lowers her hand. “I think, Galtharian, you are a light to your companions. 'But you do no one any favors by attempting to blot yourself out, or by refusing their own light.”
She says, “'Each bears hope, and each bears doom. That is the way of all life.”
Mallossel finally finishes speaking, and she holds his gaze whilst she does so. "I beg of you to think on Varda's gift. She blessed us with light when the world was new and awakening. So you bless others in their grief. Let them return the favor."
He thought so little of himself when they spoke. That he was undeserving of the same kindness and patience that he offered his friends. That he was unworthy of it. That he was bound to them by some loyalty or oath that he could not speak to her, but that they were not bound so unto him, and in that, he saw himself someone who could be left behind. Who could be abandoned.
She saw something in him that reminded her of Amathlan. Moreso, it reminded her of herself. It was the capability to make a decision to do something unforgivable for the sake of survival. The obscenity and the brutality of those who only wanted to heal things when they were young.
Galtharian waves a dismissive hand. “Please, there is no need for such formality, I am only an innkeeper, and far too young for such respectful language. Please feel free to call me Galtharian, or Gal as most do.” He hesitates before continuing, “I care for him more than I would dare show, lest he be burdened by this very loyalty.”
Mallossel pauses for a moment, ere she offers a smile and a nod. "Very well, Galtharian, if you shall offer me the same informality. Only those of my Company are required to refer to me with any title." She casts her gaze aside once more. "I assure you that companionship is not a burden. Those who favor isolation are either wild men or gods."
Galtharian looks at her once more. “Or they are in grief,” He offers plainly. “Many I have learned to hold dear seem to favor isolation once in pain. Though I cannot I can understand it, for I have been offered too much kindness from others to ever find the strength to leave their side.”
Mallossel takes a heavy breath, but when she releases it, it is much thinner. "Sometimes, it is easier to not wish your own grief as a burden on others. Some see it as a fight they must face alone. Others just do not have the ability to express what they feel in words, so it is easier to be silent. It takes extraordinary strength to bear grief alone, but that does not necessarily mean it should be borne alone."
Her gaze returns to him. "I am sure your company is welcome, and thanked, even if they do not say it. Grief is not a wound that can be healed by any medicine of elf or man, nor does time soothe it; it merely twists the knife further. But it is a wound that changes, and fades, like a scar. It never really leaves entirely. It leaves a memory. When grief becomes a memory, it becomes easier to share. You can blur the line between sadness, bitterness, and gladness."
She offers a long pause between her words. "But when the wound is still fresh... sometimes one needs aid to bind it."
There was much else she wanted to say to him, the young Silvan, on the subject of grief. Mallossel sat by herself now, on the edge of the landing they had stood upon hours before. Having thought back on their conversation now, she realized she had left much unsaid. Much that she wished she had known when she was young and the world was cold and full of strife around her. Things that she had learned of grief through ways she would not wish upon anyone else.
If she had only the presence of mind to speak it then. She would tell him that the greatest thing she had learned of grief was that it simply was love. It is all of the love that is pent up inside of you that you wanted to offer them but now you could not. It is a dire, broken love that blurs your vision with tears, and curls up deep inside of the hole that they left inside of you. Grief is love that has nowhere left to go.
"I said that grief was a wound, Galtharian, and one that was often worsened only by time ere it became less of a wound and more of a scar." She speaks softly now. "I spoke the truth when I said having another to bind it offers one a sense of relief, a moment of rest. Who are you grieving? Are they passed?" She pauses again, letting silence fall between them. "...Or do they live? For there is no greater pain than having to grieve the loss of one who still breathes."
Galtharian rejoins her on the platform, though he does not turn to look at her, biting his lip 'I do not know. One of them lives, or... One of them I have seen alive days prior yet I cannot say where he is now, or whether I shall see him again.'
I would tell him that to grieve those that still live is to love those who still live. To love dearly those who are apart from you, and not knowing if reconciliation or reunition is ever going to pass. That is the most painful love of all.
