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There had been a belief once that elves did not age. Not among the elves, for they knew the truth of the matter. But among the men and dwarves that they interacted with. Maglor looked in the mirror and saw an elf far older than his father or grandfather had ever gotten the chance to be. A beard grew upon his chin, he kept it clean and well kept, humans had many products to do just that as they had no problems growing beards once they reached maturity. Finwe had never grown a beard. There had only been one elf that Maglor had been aware of who had a beard, Cirdan the Wise, who had been a friend to Maglor for many years before he’d finally felt the call to Valinor.

The longing, some called it. All elves heard it, eventually. The desire to go West to Valinor and dwell in the lands of the Valar. Some felt it urgently and some could put it off for years. Slowly the elves left Endore and went west until only a handful remained. Maglor did not feel the calling, not like the others did. He had talked about it many times over the eons of his life with other elves. To them it felt like a tugging pull, a place that they needed to go, a change in the melody of the song, a desire to go home. For Maglor the longing was something buried into his bones. He had been born in Valinor, grown up there, the only elf remaining in Endore to do so. It slept and would not be awoken until he was called back. 

Maglor had believed that would never happen. His crimes too great and numerous and unforgivable to be allowed back into the Blessed Lands. And yet something had changed recently in the way he heard the song, a desire to return home had overtaken him. 

He had felt a longing to return home before. A desire to see the place of his birth, where his mother still dwelt. The days of his youth. But this was stronger, more insistent. It was not nostalgia and a desire for the way things had been that drove him. 

Had the Valar finally decided that the long exile was finally over for the remaining son of Feanor?

Was he ready for it to be over?

An insistent rapping at his door pulled Maglor from his musings at the bathroom mirror. He turned, irritated at the disturbance, and walked out of the bathroom towards the door of his New York City apartment. He checked the time on his phone, 9:06, and shook his head. He didn’t have any tutoring sessions scheduled for this time on a Wednesday. Most of his students would be in their own schools. A few of his college aged students sometimes had tutoring sessions this early, but he hadn’t remembered scheduling any for today. 

“Hi, Maglor.” Pelilasdes stood at his door, waving enthusiastically at him as he stood in his doorway staring at her. She was far too chipper this early in the morning. Pelilasdes was a Silvian elf from a group that had remained in Endore over the years either not experiencing the longing or was able to ignore it better. Pelilasdes was extremely young, not even two centuries old, and she had only grown up in a world of men. She had adopted many of their mannerisms over the years and was often seen as more mannish than elven by their small community of remaining firstborn. 

“Good morning, Pelilsades,” Maglor said sedately. “Can I help you?”

“I wanted to bring back your lyre.” She held up the case that held one of Maglor’s most precious possessions. “My professors were all very interested in how I’d been able to get a Second Age instrument in such good condition.”

“It's from the First Age,” Maglor corrected as he took the lyre’s case from her and ushered her inside. Many spells of protection and preservation had been placed upon this lyre over the years. It was the last of its kind. A lyre made and given to him by his cousin Finrod. “And what did you tell them?”

“Hm?” Pelilsades glanced over from looking at the plane tickets that were stuck by a magnet to Maglor’s fridge. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”

“What did you tell them when they asked you how you got such an old lyre?”

“Oh,” She shrugged, “they were all so busy talking over each other and trying to get a better look, that I didn’t have an opportunity to answer.” She made herself at home, opening his fridge and pulling out some milk to make cereal. 

“Probably for the best,” Maglor mumbled to himself as he took the chair across the small wooden table and sat down across from her. Pelilsades had deemed herself his apprentice without asking him how he felt about the arrangement about a half century ago. She was deeply connected to the music and eager to learn all that Malgor knew. At first she had irritated him, but over the years of her companionship he had come to learn that she was kind and curious, she liked the Secondborn, and liked to be in their world and was better at interacting with them than any other elf currently dwelling still in Endore. The other Silvian elves like to live on the fringes of society, not directly interacting with the humans in their proximity. Maglor liked to live away from them and so he chose to interact with human society. 

“So why do you have plane tickets?” she asked, waving her cereal spoon around as she spoke. 

Maglor reached for the box of cereal that she had used and poured himself a bowl of cereal, taking the time that this distraction gave him to gather his thoughts. “I want to see some old places again. Wander a little bit,” he said, trying to go for a light tone. “I did a lot of wandering for a long time, and I get restless if I’ve settled down for too long.”

Pelilsades nodded, looking thoughtfully as she crunched on baked grain puffs. “Could I go with you?” she finally asked after several minutes. 

“Yes,” Maglor said, he had already guessed that she would want to come and had purchased tickets on her behalf. “It will be a good experience for you, you have hardly seen anything of the world. A musician of your skill needs to see the world, experience it to truly be able to make art.” Pelilsades flushed red at her compliment, perhaps Maglor didn’t give her enough of those. He meant to encourage her, but he knew sometimes his comments came out too gruff. 

“How long did you wander?” She asked eagerly. 

“I wandered for Ages,” Maglor said. “I watched kingdoms rise and fall, and you will too. You will not need to wander as I did, and I do not think you should. I have been an outcast among our people, but you need not be.”

“Will you wander with me?”

Maglor hummed slightly before responding. “For a time, then we will have to part ways.” Pelilasdes frowned at that response, but didn’t push for a further explanation. 

She crossed her arms and sat back in her seat. “Where do we go first?”

London was the first place on Maglor’s list. He had spent centuries in England and the rest of Europe, wandering as a bard and minstrel. He led Pelilasdes onto the Tube, hefting his lyre case onto his lap as they sat and traveled to Victoria Gardens. Pelilasdes’ guitar rested between her legs. A violin rested between Maglor’s legs, and strung across Pelilasdes’s chest was a lute. Maglor was sure the other riders thought they were quite a sight to behold with all their musical instruments. But Maglor liked to travel light on clothes and heavy on instruments, you never knew what instrument would be useful on a trip like this. 

Pelilasdes had questioned him thoroughly on the plane ride over about his travel plans. Where he wanted to go, how they were going to get there. But other than a few stops, Maglor had no plans but to wander. Pelilasdes had asked for a few stops on their journey, places that she was interested in seeing while they wander. That was fine with Maglor. 

Once they arrived at Victoria Gardens, Maglor began scoping out the best place to perform from. A place near where people would gather and spend time, but not so close they would be jostled about by crowds. Then Maglor pulled out the violin and Pelilasdes the lute and they began to tune them. No one seemed to notice them at first, but that was okay. If there was one thing Maglor knew how to do, it was build up a crowd. He had been doing that since the world was young. 

Once they were both satisfied that the instruments were tuned correctly, they set up the violin case to be the place for people to place money if they were so inclined. Maglor intended for the money they earned busking be what they used to travel with, though he did have plenty of money in his bank accounts if they had bad busking days. 

They started with some modern classics to draw in people’s attention, some Queens songs, Mr. Brightside by the Killers, a few Lady Gaga songs that Pelilasdes loved. Maglor played the violin while Pelilasdes sang. They were gathering a small crowd, decent size for having only been playing for about forty-five minutes and it was mid-morning. “I need to give my voice a break, but please stay and listen to my friend here,” Pelilasdes said as she finished Shallow. Maglor nodded to the crowd, and gently placed the violin on the bench beside him. 

“My friend Pali, here likes the modern classics,” he said with a smile as Pelilasdes took a sip from her water bottle. “However, I have a penchant for older songs.” He picked up the lute and began to strum an old song he had written many Ages ago after the fall of the First Age. He had taught it to a wandering group of small folk, and most would associate it with them, rather than the original elf who wrote it. “The sun is fast falling beneath trees of stone…” he sang, his hands falling into familiar patterns as he played and sang. 

Memories rose unbidden of many centuries of wandering. How his restlessness had taken him all over the world from Christendom, back when Europe was called that, down the silk road to the Persian Empire and into India. He had wandered and wandered, wondering what he was supposed to after the fall of everything he knew. He had enjoyed watching the happiness that his music and song brought to others, and knew that it was music he needed to keep pursuing. He was a master among elves, but humans had created so many new instruments that he had never seen or heard before. He learned from great masters, honing his skills over the years, until he had eventually had to leave before his agelessness was questioned. 

“...no comfort but song. Sing to me, sing to me, lands far away…”

He was excited to wander again. He had been enjoying his life in New York, teaching children music, tutoring college students who would go on to be the next musical sensation. But maybe this was what the yearning he had been feeling was about. His need to wander, to see the world and all the peoples in it. 

Their small crowd had grown a bit, people had pulled their phones out and were now recording the performance. Annoying. Yes. But part of today’s day and age. Everyone liked to record and tell people about their day, even if it was just watching a busker in the park. “... not all who wander or wonder are lost. No matter the sorrow, no matter the cost. That not all wander or wonder are lost.” 

The crowd clapped and cheered as the lute’s final note faded away. Pali beamed brightly at him. “You don’t sing enough anymore,” she commented. “It's nice to hear you sing again.” 

Maglor wanted to grumble that he sang plenty. But it was mostly in the service of his lessons to others, he wasn’t singing from his heart but singing to teach. There wasn’t anything wrong with that, only he had neglected to also sing for fun. Sing things that he wanted to sing. 

They played together, switching on and off who was singing for several hours until the heat of the sun drove a lot of their crowd away. “Want to go grab something to eat?” Maglor offered. Pelilasdes nodded. 

“The sun won’t be good for the instruments,” she said. “Do you have a place in mind?”

Maglor shook his head. “Let’s just let our feet take us to whatever looks good. That’s part of wandering. Not always having a plan and just going with it.”

They ended up at a pub a few blocks away, it had dark wood interior and comfortable booths that Maglor felt that he was sinking into when he sat down. A young man took drink orders and politely inquired about all of the instrument cases that were sitting with them in the booth. 

The meat pie was as good if not better than most he’d had the last time he’d lived in England… which was a few decades ago. Spices were more readily available now, and of course being able to keep ingredients at a stable cool temperature meant that you could keep them fresher longer, and don’t get Maglor started on food safety. He had seen too many die because of food poisoning and bad food prep. Of course they hadn’t really known any better back in the day. 

Pelilasdes got fish and chips. A bit stereotypical? Maybe. But Silvian elves didn’t really eat meat besides fish, they preferred vegetable, nuts, and food produced by plants rather than animals. The Noldor had never cared where their food came from, not even in Valinor, but especially not in the war against Morgoth. And then there were the lean years when he and Maedhros had been on the run. Elves didn’t haven’t to eat as frequently as humans, though Maglor had gotten into the habit of eating three meals of day when and keeping his pantry stocked so not to alarm his human visitors, but the years after they had been driven from their homes in Northern Beleriand, and Morgoth had started destroying the landscape with the plants and animals there had been some of the leanest in Maglor’s entire life. 

“So what’s next?” Pelilasdes asked after they had eaten for a few minutes. “Go back to performing?”

Maglor shrugged, “We can see some of London if you want. I think we got enough to cover doing some sightseeing.”

Pelilasdes looked thoughtful for a moment. “Yeah. See Parliament, Big Ben, the Eye, that would be cool. Where to afterwards?”

“Have you ever heard of the Callanish Stones?”

“No.”

Maglor nodded, few had, they were a First Age stone structure in Scotland, but their more famous cousin to the south, Stonehenge, overshadowed them. There was a lot of speculation on who built them by archeologists and historians. Some excavations had taken place a few decades ago. Maglor happened to know who built them, but none of the historians had come asking him. The Northern Sindarin had built stone circular structures in their worship of the Valar. Especially after the rising of the sun and the moon. Some of the structures also marked Eärendil’s travels with the Silmaril on his brow across the night sky. The Callanish Stones were built by Northern Sindarin who had lived in Thargelion, the lands that Caranthir had controlled, and was where Caranthir, Curufin, and Celegorm’s funeral pyres had rested after their deaths in Doriath. It was the only resting place left for any of his brothers. Amrod and Amras’ bodies had been burned on the shores of Sirion, and there hadn’t been a funeral pyre for Maedhros, he had made his own. 

Many times over the years Maglor had sojourned to Callanish to pay his respects to all of his brothers and not just the three who rested there. 

Maglor said nothing of this as he explained the stones to Pelilasdes, only that they were structures built by the Northern Sindarin that still remained from the First Age. He knew that alone would catch her fancy. 

“Sounds amazing,” Pelilasdes said. “How will we get there? Walk?”

“No,” Maglor shook his head. “We’ll take a train and then likely a car and a boat and then another car.”

“I thought walking everywhere was going to be part of your wanderer training.”

Maglor shook his head. “Times have changed, and it is no longer feasible to walk everywhere. Taking transportation can be a journey of its own.”

London was so different from the last time he had been there. Maglor had decided to move to America from England soon after the civil war there, wanting something different. It was a modern city now. Maglor wasn’t sure really why he thought it wouldn’t be, but in his mind’s eye he still always saw the London of the past rather than modern London when he thought of the city. Still there were structures he recognized, places he had been that were no longer now the place that he remembered. They walked the southern banks of the Themes, enjoying the late summer day. Pelilasdes wanted to see the London Eye and several other attractions in the area. She pointed out places of import as they walked through, acting as a tour guide for someone who had watched the city grow and turn into a modern cosmopolitan. Maglor enjoyed it anyway. He liked seeing Pelilasdes excited. She had been a lot quieter when she first showed up in New York, having just left her family and people behind wanting to learn and study music from the best. She had been afraid of him. Pelilasdes had never outright said that to Maglor, but he knew. He understood. 

Across from the Eye stood Parliament, giving a striking backdrop between the old and the new. Though Westminster was not that old in the grand scheme of London’s timeline. Well this current iteration. A palace had stood at that site for nearly a thousand years and Parliament had met there for nearly as long. Maglor had been in France when the kings had moved out, though during the reign of Edward II he had rooms in the palace, being a favorite troubadour to him. 

“You’re deep in thought,” Pelilasdes remarked. 

“Just thinking about all that I’ve seen here, and how much has changed,” Maglor replied. 

“Do you wish things didn’t change?”

Maglor thought for a moment about what she’d asked before answering her. “No, change is good and the way of things. Plus I think men are happy not to be dying of dysentery so much.” 

“Dark,” Pelilades commented. She turned back towards the Eye. “Well, shall we get on?”

They had a spectacular view of London, and Maglor almost hated it when they were back down on the ground again, once the experience was over. But they needed to find their hotel before their early train ride up to Glasgow tomorrow before driving the rest of the way to the Callanish Stones.

It was near sunset when Maglor pulled into the small parking lot. There were two other cars in the lot, but Maglor couldn’t see anyone else around in the area. They might have been at one of the other sites. “Wow,” Pelilasdes said as she saw them a few hundred feet away. “Look at the way the sun sets between the boulders.”

“It was built to be a way to worship the sun, moon, and stars,” Maglor said. “The elves who built this were farmers for the most part. Some of the Noldor looked down upon them as more primitive, but that was a simplistic way of viewing their culture. They taught us so much about how to survive Beleriand. In Valinor everything had been plenty, we had no idea what to do when crops failed.” Maglor shook his head. “They took us in after we were exiled, they supported us.”

Pelilasdes nodded. “Can we get closer?”

“Yes,” Maglor said. 

Pelilasdes moved in a motion that could only be described as flitting towards the simple wire fence that separated the site from the rest of the landscape. Peat surrounded the entire site, for centuries the stones had been covered in peat. Maglor had thought he might lose them to time and the environment, but people had always been intrigued by them, and decided to preserve them. She climbed over the fence, laughing to herself as she did so. Maglor watched her for a few minutes, amazed at how she could see the wonder in everything. Elrond and Elros had been much the same when they were boys. 

She didn’t see these stone circles as graves and memories, but as a place of wonder and magic. Why she hung around an archaic elf such as himself, he didn’t know. But he liked being around her, the sense of wonder that she brought, her youthfulness. 

Maglor followed her over the fence and walked to the middle of the circle. Had they come earlier in the day, there likely would have been crowds of people visiting, observing, wondering, but here at the end of the day it was just the two of them. Off in the distance there were a few people, wandering around the quite environment. But he had his privacy.

Pelilasdes watched him as he sat down in the middle of the big circle and pulled out six candles he had bought earlier that day when they stopped for lunch. “What are you doing?” she asked. 

“The Noldor had no rituals for death before we came to Beleriand,” Maglor said in way of an answer. “We adopted the Northern Sindarin’s traditions when we came. They burned their dead, the ground too hard to burry anyone in for part of the year, and we burned our dead because it was the fastest way to hold a funeral when you had the amount of dead that we had. If we were able to retrieve the bodies at all. The Sindarin would set up shrines in their homes to their dead loved ones, and burn candles and incense to help guide their way to Mandos. 

“I have never had the ability to set up a shrine to my brothers. Though once I had one for my father and grandfather. Instead, I come to this place where three of my brothers bodies were burned and I light a candle for them in hopes that they are not wandering this world and have found their way to Mandos.”

Pelilasdes let him talk, her face becoming solemn as he spoke, as she understood why they had come here to this out of the way place. “This place was once part of Beleriand?” she asked quietly, looking down at the ground below them as if it was sacred.

“Yes,” Maglor said as he lit the candles. “Not much of the continent remained after the War of the Wrath, but this area did, as did the area that would become Lindon, and a few islands further west. The land has changed much, there have been several sunderings since, but this place has remained.”

He pulled his lyre out of its case and began to tune it, taking in a deep breath of the late spring air. The world seemed much older here than it did back in his apartment in New York. There he could forget, the business  and the newer buildings, most younger than Pelilasdes, he could forget how old the world was, how old he was. But here sitting among weathered stone that he had remembered painted with Tengwar and decorations, prayers to the sun and the moon that had made the Northern Sindarin’s lives easier than when they had lived under the stars. 

“Let me show you,” Maglor said. He played a song of memory and heard Pelilasdes gasp as in her mind’s eye she saw what he had once saw. The way things had looked back then in Thargelion. The way the stones were more polished and painted in green and blue of prayers to the maiar and valar. The bonfires in the middle of the rings on the longest and shortest days of the years to celebrate their survival. The sounds of Sindarin and Quenya being mingled together as people spoke. The content Maglor had felt sitting between his brothers as they celebrated with their peoples. 

Then it changed slowly to memories of sorrow, of three bonfires side by side. Tyelko, Moryo, and Curvo. He had been so angry at their deaths. At them for dying when they weren’t supposed to; at Maedhros for leading them against the Doriath; at their father for swearing to them to a fools end oath that would lead them all to their doom; at the Valar for turning their back on the plight of the elves; and at himself for allowing this to happen. After the bonfire Maglor had gathered some of the ashes of his brothers, watching the wind scatter the rest.

The images slowly faded bringing them back to the present. 

“How did you do that?” Pelilasdes asked. 

“Ilúvitar created the world using song,” Maglor explained. “You can listen to that song, and use it to manipulate the world around you. I want to teach you how to do this, so that you can teach others.”

“You’ve already been teaching me to listen to the Song.”

“Yes,” Maglor agreed. “And I will teach you how to use it.” 

Pelilasdes nodded. She would have more questions later, Maglor was sure of it, but she was distracted by the magic of the stones and began to wander away from him to explore more as the sun sank deeper into the horizon. 

Maglor retuned his lyre a little and then began to strum again, a sorrow ringing from his instrument as he began to sing the Noldolantë, the story of his people, his family, his brothers.

As he sang he focused on the six flames in front of him, the memory they represented. One day, he would see them again. Not just his brothers, but his cousins as well, his father and mother, his grandfather. His family would be together. Maybe they wouldn’t be the same as they were during his childhood, in all likelihood not, but maybe they could heal together. Move forward together. 

He didn’t notice Pelilasdes coming up to sit across from him until he was done singing. She sat there, watching him with a frown on her face. “I’ve never heard you sing that song before,” she said. “I know of the song, its considered one of the most beautiful, tragic songs ever written, but I’ve never heard it before.”

“I don’t like to sing it,” Maglor said as he put his lyre back in its case. “Not anymore. I don’t need to constantly remind myself of what we did. It doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t change the facts of what happened, of what we did. It is our history- my history- and it should not be forgotten. But I will not constantly remind myself of what happened. I play it today to remember my brothers, the good and the bad.”

Pelilasdes nodded. “Its good to move forward,” she said simply as if that put the matter to rest. Then she laid back and looked up at the stars as they traversed the night sky above.

Maglor decided to perform while they were traveling back down to London to take the Eurostar to France. He used the time to teach Pelilasdes about the Song and how to manipulate it. Things he had learned from his tutors back in Valinor, from the maiar themselves, and things he had learned on his own over the course of his long life. They would stop at small villages and town while they drove through Scotland and England performing on street corners and at open mic nights at pubs and restaurants. What had only taken them several hours on their trip north took several weeks back south.

“So where to now?” Pelilasdes asked as Maglor returned from dropping off the rental at Kings Cross Station.

“The Eurostar,” Maglor said, holding up two tickets. “We’re going to see a castle.”

“Any particular castle, or whichever one catches our fancy?” She asked, grabbing one of the tickets from his hand. 

“Carcassonne,” Maglor said, “I have some history there, and would like to see it again.” 

Maglor sat and watched the French countryside roll by as the train chugged along the track. Pelilasdes sat beside him scribbling something on paper that looked like music but he wasn’t paying attention enough to be certain. Sometimes when he looked out he saw the modernity of France, but other times, it looked like he remembered from the many centuries he had spent there. He’d been in England when The Plague had hit Europe. He had seen sickness many times before then, humans were constantly dying of illness back then, but this time had been different. The amount of people dying was unlike anything Maglor had ever seen. He remembered the fear and grimness people had had during it. The part of it all that was crazy to Malgor now was that it was a perfectly curable disease. It was bacteria. That’s all it had been. And yet so many had died, across the world. Now almost no one died of it. 

Modernity was an interesting thing. So much in the past century had changed the way that people lived their lives, most never even thought twice about it. They didn’t think about the centuries and millennia of struggle that their ancestors had gone through all because they didn’t have access to the same technology level as their modern counterparts. 

“You are thinking rather hard,” Pelilasdes commented, she had put down her scribblings and was instead on her phone now. 

“I’m allowed to,” Maglor grumbled, turning back to look out the window again. Pelilasdes chuckled at Maglor’s response. Once all elves had been frightened of him. He had been one of the most feared elves of the Age, a kinslayer who had participated in four kinslayings! Now he was being laughed at by elves barely two centuries old. Times changed indeed.

He continued to watch the French countryside pass by them. The sun started to descend to the horizon as the day passed on. It’s rays hit a tree that was on a hill and turned them golden like a tree Maglor had been witness to when he was a much younger, carefree elf. Laurlin. Memories dredged up, memories that he hadn’t thought about or tried not to think about so he would not miss those halcyon days.

His grandfather had liked to hold banquets when Laurelin was at its brightest. He would wear deep golden colors, and all the windows would be thrown open to let Laurelin’s light inside the banquet hall. The room would glitter with golden light and would sparkle off the jewelry that all the elves wore showing off the might and wealth of the Noldor. Maglor remembered how the light would glint off of Fingon’s braids as he chatted with Maedhros and Maglor. The way that Arafinwë’s children’s hair seemed to glow in the light of Laurelin. Laughter rang in his ears, the sound of his father’s voice, his mother’s laughter. Being basked in gold and love. 

He should push away those memories, they brought him nothing but pain at remembering what he could not have anymore. But he allowed himself one final moment of golden memories of Valinor before pushing them away again.

The tree was gone. They had long since passed it. The sun was dipping below the horizon as daytime turned to night. They would arrive soon in Carcassonne and would need to find a place to spend the night. 

“Have you ever been married?” Pelilasdes suddenly asked.

Maglor violently jerked away from the window to look at her. “What?” He asked, surprised by the question. “No. Why would you ask that?”

“Well in some of the stories about you, its mentioned that you were married,” Pelilasdes said with a shrug. “You’ve never talked about being married, not even in passing. So I was curious?”

“Oh,” Maglor frowned and looked down at his lap. “I was almost married,” he said in way of explanation. “But it was not to be, and she is likely better off for it.” They both were. 

Pelilasdes put down her pencil and paper. “Is it true that your brother was in love with your cousin?”

“Half cousin,” Maglor corrected absentmindedly. Pelilasdes snorted at his response. “My eldest brother and the eldest son of Fingolfin had an ancient friendship. You may interpret that as you will, the rest of us certainly did.”

Pelilasdes continued to pepper him with questions as the train traveled along the countryside. Some questions were about his family and the stories that were told of him, some were about his time as a bard in France and other places he had gone to. “How did you end up in India?”

“I walked for the most part,” he said, amused at the sigh of frustration that she let out at his response. Then he shrugged. “There was more trade going on at that point between Europe and Asia, I just followed those routes again. I learned music theory not only in India, but in Iraq and Persia.”

“Why did you go back to Europe?”

Maglor shrugged again. “I got homesick, I guess. And it had been several decades of wandering. I wanted to go back to the familiar. I settled in southern France because that was where the boat landed, and then I got caught up for the next century in France’s conflict with Spain.”

The castle was not as Maglor remembered it. The restoration work that had been done in the nineteenth century made the castle feel off, like an old song barely remembered played in the wrong key. But the skeleton was there, and there was comfort in that. Carcassonne was a place full of happier memories for him. He had come back from his travels across the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent in the late fifteenth century, and settled in southern France due to the weather and where his boat on the Mediterranean had landed. At the time, Spain had just unified and was becoming a power player in Europe again, threatening France's power in the region. It had been a place of intrigue and excitement, especially for a troubadour and bard which were at times employed as spies. 

Maglor looked out at the surrounding countryside, it looked so different from how he remembered it. Everything did. Maybe this was why he rarely ventured to his old haunts anymore. The world had changed far faster than he was used to this past century. “Ce fut en mai,” he sang softly, “Au douz tens gai. Que la saisons este bele.” 

Pelilasdes stood beside him, listening to him sing. She smiled softly, pushing back her dark brown hair as it blew in the wind. “Joer m’alai. Lez une fontenele,” she sang alongside him. Maglor had taught her all his favorite songs including this pastorale. Ce fut en mai had always been one of his favorites to perform when he had lived here in Caracassonne. It had already been several centuries old at that point, but people still listened to it when he sang it. They had enjoyed the older courtly love poems that had dominated France and Europe about three centuries prior. 

He felt the eyes of other visitors to the castle watching them as they sang. How strange they must both look, signing randomly while looking over the French countryside. 

They continued to walk along the battlements, Maglor humming old songs as they walked. The afternoon sun caught his gaze, its golden rays warming his skin. He stood there gazing westward, feeling the sun on his face for a long time. “Maglor?” Pelilasdes asked, frowning. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” Maglor said defensively. “Why?”

“You’ve been gazing out into the distance for nearly fifteen minutes.”

Had he really just been standing there that long? It hadn’t felt so long, he just had been enjoying the sun on his face. He was losing track of time more. As he turned to follow Pelilasdes further down the battlements he felt a heavy weight on his chest, a desire to continue to look westward, a desire for home. 

He couldn’t go there. 

The longing though wasn’t rational, it didn’t care for the pronouncements of doom that was on him. It just reminded him that he didn’t belong here, that there was another place. He watched Pelilasdes interacting with a tour guide, making sure that they had seen all there was to see. She looked comfortable, her French fluid and graceful, her mannerisms extremely human. This was her world, for all that it felt alien to him.

Maybe this was it then. It was time for him to depart, to fade away and allow the past to finally be the past. 

Maglor wondered if he should feel more angry about it all. But he didn’t, he felt at peace. He had come back to some of his favorite places, he had said goodbye to his brothers, he had built a legacy with Pelilasdes and teaching her all that he knew both before and on this trip. He could fade away at peace with the world.

It would be time soon enough. But first he wanted to make the most of this trip. He had picked this destination, it was time to see if there was anywhere that Pelilasdes wanted to go before they returned home to New York. 

Pelilasdes sauntered back up to him, beaming. “She said she thought my French was very good, if a bit Canadian,” Pelilasdes said. 

“Well,” Maglor said, “your people live in Canada.”

“Some of us.”

Maglor gave her a flat look. Pelilasdes had grown up in Canada, the group of Silvian elves that she was a part of lived in the forests of British Columbia. She had Canadian citizenship, sure there were other groups of Silvian elves that lived elsewhere. They preferred heavily forested areas that hadn’t been touched by modernization. Some were like Maglor and Pelilasdes who preferred to live in more urban environments, but they were few and far between. 

“Did she have any advice on what we should see next?”

“She said that we had seen just about everything on the battlements and the castle. She recommended that if we wanted to, we could explore the city.”

Maglor shrugged. “Seems a reasonable option.”

They settled on traveling to Italy afterwards. Pelilasdes wanted to see Venice and the Tuscan coast, while Maglor had not spent a lot of time there after the third sacking of Rome, so it would be something new and different for him as well. Venice had not been much of a city then, just marsh and villages, and now it was something beautiful. Had been something beautiful, and one day would likely slip into the waves, overtaken by the change in climate and the sea.

“Ooo, oooo, turn up this song,” Pelilasdes said as she reached for the volume control knob in the car. It wasn’t a song Maglor recognized, but Pelilasdes obviously knew it from the way that she sang along. It was catchy with a nice synth in the background, and Maglor found himself nodding his head along with the beat. He laughed as he watched Pelilasdes sing and dance in the seat beside him. 

He was glad to have brought her along with him. She had made this trip more fun, and more than just a way for him to say goodbye to his past and the world. Before she’d knocked on his door a half-century ago, he hadn’t made any meaningful connections with anyone in centuries maybe millenia. Sure he had lived in the world of men, inserting himself into their issues and politics, but it had been surface level attachment, men lived such short lives, and Maglor had lived for so long it would have been alien to them. And Pelilasdes might be young and hadn’t seen nearly as much of the world as he had, but she understood to some degree of being an elf in the world of men. She had grown so much since he met her, and he was proud of her accomplishments. He wasn’t sure when he had begun to think of her like he did of Elrond and Elros, but he did. Another semi-adoption. At least he hadn’t kidnapped her.

He would have to tell her what was happening. 

Sooner rather than later.

Fading was not a quick process. She would know by the end what was happening to him. She would be hurt if he gave her no warning. 

They were stopped at a rest stop somewhere in the Italian Alps. They had gotten some food and wanted to stretch their legs before the rest of their journey. Pelilasdes was watching a family at a picnic bench nearby when Maglor made the decision to tell her. She needed to know, and he didn’t want to wait to tell her. 

“Pelilasdes,” Maglor said, she stopped her people watching to look at him. “I- I need to admit something to you.”

Her brows furrowed in confusion, “What?” 

“I am feeling the Longing,” he admitted, “I’ve been feeling it for sometime now. I haven’t wanted to tell you because I cannot go back, the Valar have not lifted my exile, and therefore I will diminish and fade away.”

“Fade away? When?”

“Sooner, I think, rather than later,” Maglor sighed as he looked over the rolling green hills. “Not too much longer. I don’t mind,” he smiled at Pelilasdes. “I have had the chance to see so much of the world, not just in distance but in time. I have met so many people, and done so many things. There is a weariness in my bones that I cannot shake, a tiredness in my step, I feel myself slowing down. That is why I decided to take this trip now, to see the world again, see my past once more before I leave it.”

“But you can’t,” Pelilasdes cried. “Who will teach me how to use the Music? Who will-” She cut herself off, wiping away tears from her eyes. “You have become a father to me, Maglor. More than my own father ever has. I don’t want to lose you.”

Maglor gave her a soft smile and let out a huff of amusement. “I seem very good at adopting wayward children. But you are grown now, Pali, and I have taught you all I can. Something I learned a long time ago, was that a part of being a parent is learning how to let go. You must let your children become themselves, and a part of being a child is letting your parent go too. You must grow your own wings, Pali, be your own person. 

“I am so proud of who you have become. And I know that you will continue to be a free-spirited niss , that you will continue with your music and see so much of the world, but I am the past. I am your past, or I soon will be. You must discover your future.”

“Did you make this trip to die?”

Maglor shook his head. “No.”

Pelilasdes turned to gaze out at the rolling hills of the Italian countryside, she bit her lip as if she was trying to hold something in. “Its not fair,” she said, turning to look at him again after a moment. 

“What’s not fair?” Maglor asked. “All things must come to an end in Arda marred. Things come and go. The seasons change, the world changes, and so too must all people, even the elves are not immune to change as much as we would like to pretend we are. Only in Valinor do things stay the same, and even there not really.”

“Why won’t they accept you back, why not relinquish your exile. It's been, what, ten thousand years? You’ve told me the stories, you’re not that person anymore.”

Maglor shook his head. “There are some things that time will not heal, some actions that are too evil to justify, and this is my punishment. I will never see my mother again, my cousins, my father, my brothers. I have ruined so many lives, and this is what I am due.”

“But we are reborn, in Mandos’ Halls.”

“Not all, not everyone heals enough to return, some prefer to dwell there, like my grandmother.”

He could see in Pelilasdes’ eyes that she wanted to continue arguing, but Maglor had no desire to continue. He had raged against the Valar for so long in his youth. He was tired now, and had long ago accepted his fate. The butcher’s bill was coming due, and he was okay with that. “Thank you for coming with me,” he said quietly. He watched as the fight seemed to deflate out of her. “I am grateful to be able to show you parts of my history, there’s so much more that has been lost to time, but I am grateful to show you what I could. After Venice and Tuscany, I think I’d like to return home.” Pelilasdes nodded.

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’m glad you brought me with you too.” She rubbed unshed tears from her eyes. Streaks from shed tears tracked down her face. Maglor half wondered to himself when the last time someone had shed tears for him was. 

Venice was beautiful. The day they spent there had blue skies and nice temperatures. Maglor had especially enjoyed riding in the gondolas up and down the canals of the city. Pelilasdes wanted to go to the library and see it as well. “It’ll be like Indiana Jones,” she said eagerly. Maglor wracked his brains trying to remember what she was referencing. Was that the sailor who liked spinach? Maglor couldn’t remember him going to Venice in any of the cartoons he’d seen of it. She rolled her eyes at his confusion and just dragged him into the Biblioteca Marciana, which as it turned out was not the library Pelilasdes wanted to see. Still it was an amazing place with medieval manuscripts and historic books. 

“My brother used to make these,” Maglor said as he looked down at an illuminated leaf that was behind glass on display. 

“Manuscripts?” Pelilasdes asked. Maglor nodded. 

“He loved books, so when we were exploring what craft we wanted to go into, he went into book making and binding. It became more of a hobby than an occupation once he went into politics with our uncle and grandfather.”

“Wow.”

After the library, Pelilasdes dragged Maglor into a gelato shop. Then they went on a tour of the Doge’s Palace. Maglor enjoyed the architecture and art in the palace itself. A display of the wealth Venice had once had and its place in the medieval world as a gateway between Western Europe and the East. He regretted not going to visit it back then, but there was always something else to do, somewhere else to see. 

 After the Doge’s Palace, Maglor found a park. He pulled out the violin from his backpack and began to tune it. He had a desire to play Vivaldi, one of the great composers to come out of Venice. It was hard to think of the city without thinking of him. Vivaldi’s Winter was very common when thinking of the city, but Maglor settled on Summer. He reached into the Song as he began to play creating the illusions of Venice during the Carnival celebrations with the elaborate costumes and masks around the park. To bystanders listening in they would see the illusion in their mind and just believe that his music was reminding them of it. They would hear his violin but also the other musicians in a string quartet. The best illusions were ones that people weren’t even aware of.

Pelilsades sat beside him and enjoyed the images he was conjuring. “I’ll miss this,” she said softly. “You showing off.”

Maglor couldn’t answer her, too busy playing, but he gave her a soft, reassuring smile and she returned it. She would be alright after he was gone, the pain would ease away with time.

After Maglor’s concert, they decided to make their way back to the rental car and find a hotel to stay in. They would be driving back across Italy to go to the Tuscan coast before flying back to New York.

Maglor had not been expecting the Chianti region in Tuscany to remind him so much of Formenos. The gentle hills rolling off of the Alps, the many verdant shades of green, the way that the air smelt. Had he ever visited this region before? Maglor couldn’t remember doing so, if he had, it hadn’t looked this picturesque at the time. He could almost imagine his father’s retreat in Formenos to be sitting just behind that hill over there. 

“You seem deep in thought,” Pelilasdes commented. They were sitting on the patio of a winery enjoying the scenery and some good wine. “Are you thinking about our trip home?”

Maglor shook his head. “The scenery reminds me of a place in Valinor that I used to go to a lot when I was growing up. A home away from Tirion that my father and mother used to retreat to when they wanted to get away from the politics and business of Tirion. My brothers and I would spend a lot of time there, bringing our cousins out sometimes. My father had a workshop and my mother a studio and they would just create.” 

Pelilasdes took a long sip of her wine. “It sounds beautiful. The stories don’t mention much of your childhood.”

Maglor shrugged. “Why would they? My family is the bogeymen of the elves, so to say.”

Pelilasdes let out a loud hearty laugh. “And you say that you aren’t influenced by modern men.”

“Bogeymen is a concept and term that predates you.” Pelilasdes would sometimes think that modern ideas were new, rather than something that had existed for centuries and had trickled its way into modern mythology, but were really ancient in origin. Maglor enjoyed teasingly reminding her of how old some ideas like bogeymen were. When they had first met and she had been naive about humans and their world it had baffled her, but now she just rolled her eyes at Maglor and changed topics. Or in this case, shifted the topic back to what it had been. 

“So what was this place in Valinor?”

“Formenos. I’m sure you’ve heard reference of it somewhere when telling of my father’s downfall and exile in Valinor.” 

Pelilasdes gave him a blank look.

“My father pulled a sword on Fingolfin during a disagreement and threatened to kill him. For that he was banished from Tirion for several years. My brothers and I, as well as our grandfather went with him. Which left Fingolfin in charge of Tirion, something I think made my father’s paranoia worse. We went to Formenos and lived there for a while.”

“Why was your father paranoid?”

The question caught Maglor off guard.

It was a question that had plagued him, a long time ago, that he’d had to learn to let go for he would never truly know the answer. “I don’t know for certain. But my father had a deep fear of being abandoned, it stemmed from my grandmother dying when he was born, and my grandfather remarrying soon after.” Maglor gave a frustrated sigh. “It doesn’t excuse anything he did. But I think that’s where it came from. And that paranoia spiraled towards the end. He began to see enemies everywhere. His world became very black and white, with him or against him. And he was so charismatic, it was hard to say no to him.”

“You also loved him.”

Some elves would have expected Maglor to disavow his father, to pretend he was the monster that everyone remembered him as. But never once in his life had Maglor ever been able to do that. “Yes. He was a good father once, and he encouraged my brothers and I. We saw the paranoia and looked past it because we loved him. We swore our oath because we loved him, could feel his pain with him. And maybe that’s foolish, but it’s the truth.”

Pelilasdes took another sip of her wine. She looked off into the countryside, and silence hung over them. It wasn’t a tense silence, but a pondering one. Both sat with their thoughts for a few minutes, sipping on the wine they had ordered. 

The ponderous silence between them was disrupted by a waiter coming over to make sure that everything was alright. With it broken, conversation flowed between them again though they did not breach the topic of Maglor’s family or life in Formenos again. They talked about plans when they got back to New York, other places that Pelilasdes wanted to see. 

They were just getting ready to flag down the waiter for the check when a blond man approached their table. He was taller than most men, with long wavy platinum blond hair, and blue eyes that sparkled with mischief. “You’re a hard man to find Maglor Feanorian,” the man said. Only as he said Maglor’s name it was as if a glamor had been removed, and suddenly Maglor recognized that this was no man at all but Finrod Fegalund. 

“Finrod?” Maglor asked in disbelief. “Why are you here?”

“It is time for you to go home.”