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Sometimes there are good endings.
Beren lay in the sun dozing with his head in his wife’s lap and wondered a little, at how unprecedentedly perfect his ending was turning out to be.
“Dearest husband,” Luthien said, “My leg is falling asleep.”
Beren sighed. Almost perfect.
“I suppose it isn’t too much trouble to sit up,” he said, “It’s always a delight to see my beloved wife’s face from another angle.”
Luthien laughed.
“My hair is beginning to turn gray,” she said, “I think it is rather pretty.”
“You are the most beautiful creature in all of Arda,” Beren said, and meant it whole heartedly. He thought the world would have lost something immeasurably precious, had Luthien remained an elf. When immortally young, Luthien had been breathtakingly beautiful, awe-inspiringly so. But now she was something more, something deeper, and, he felt, more solid and real. He could not imagine a world bereft of a Luthien with eyes that crinkled at the corners, her face creased faintly with laughter-lines. A Luthien with white strands in her hair, shining like starlight in the black.
“I was worried, you know,” Luthien said, “That we wouldn’t have this, even when I did become mortal.”
Beren nodded, “I wasn’t so very young when we met,” he said, “Though dying seemed to fix that.”
“Yes,” Luthien said, “And I have grown older at just the same rate as any mortal woman. It is good to walk with you hand in hand in time, just as in everything else.”
“It is perfect,” Beren said, and kissed her.
