Sunshine

His eyes were blank as he waved his hand lazily through the visible radiance of sunshine that cascaded through the thick trees above, dappling the clearing that he didn't dare enter.  The light refracted through his hand, bending oddly, as if it were passing through water rather than flesh.  Not that his flesh could truly be called flesh anymore.

Macalaurë sighed and looked down at the shining green grass.  His silver gaze could detect no sign of a foreign, solid object obstructing the path of the light that was being thrown to the ground, lighting up the world around him in a way that appeared striking compared to the gray of everything else around him.  Even his pale shadow of a hand seemed brighter beneath the sunlight.

Even the sunshine can no longer see me.  This fact should have bothered him, should have brought him some sort of despair, but the elf didn't even twitch.  In fact, he was almost relieved that the end was nearing.

Twelve thousand years was a long time to spend alone.

And he truly was alone.  Humans were scattered all about him, flooding the coasts and cities with their noisiness, boats clogging and polluting the streams, monstrous machines cutting down the tallest, oldest trees.  Of course, Men could not hear the trees screaming when their limbs were hacked off, so it didn't bother them as much.

It didn't bother Macalaurë as much as it should have either.  But then, there wasn't much left that could bother him now but for his own aged, scattered thoughts.

None of those humans could hear him or see him.  None of them stopped to listen when he sat on the beach in the moonlight and played his lyre, nor when he stood on a windy bluff and allowed his misused voice to ring over the land.  It was as if he were an invisible creature, dead and gone to the world.  He was dead and gone to the world, just as dead and gone to the world as everything else he had known.  Nothing was the same.  The trees were not the same, the ocean was not the same, the humans were not the same… the whole of the world was not the same.  It was unrecognizable, though he'd been living in it for so long that memories before it were blurred.  He did remember golden light and tingling warmth on his flesh, though.

That was the only thing he could think of that was the same, the unchanging celestial cycle.  Ithil still erratically circled overhead, chasing after Anar, who rose each morning and set each evening still after all these years.  It was the only thing about this world that even remotely resembled anything he could recall from his fogged, muddled memory.  Only when the End came would this change.  But he would be gone by then.

I wonder… will they banish me to the Everlasting Darkness?  The Oath couldn't be taken back.  Even after all these years, he was still bound to it.  Were it not for the fact that all three Silmarilli were out of reach, he would still have been searching for them.

Staring at his transparent hand, he could barely make out the burn scars which had been embedded into his palm like his sins had been embedded into his soul.  Finally, though, he would have rest from this wandering, from this aloneness.

Part of him looked forward to seeing his family again someday, even if it was another twelve thousand years into the future or simply the next turn of the moon.  Or maybe he would never see them again.  It was hard to say these things.  So long had passed without them… He still felt grief over their deaths, of course, but his feelings had long dulled and dried up like dew caught into early morning sunshine.

Like this sunshine, he observed rather flatly.  Maybe it will dry up the rest of me like it dries up the dew on the flowers.   He wouldn't have minded feeling the warmth of the sun once more.  It had long ago lost its touch, though.  Macalaurë felt nothing, saw nothing but gray and heard only the crashing sea and the cacophony of the new, strange world Men had built for themselves.  The ache had receded to be replaced with… emptiness.

I just wish that I could have felt the sunshine one more time… Like when he used to sit beneath that old tree in Formenos playing his harp in Valinorë, beneath the golden rays of Laurelin whose single fruit had bourn fiery Anar.  But it was just a memory.  Even if he were to return to Valinorë now, things would never be the same after all that had happened.  Nothing was the same, but for the color of the light that beat down on the grass, brightening it to a blinding shade.

Just one last time… But the sunshine still passed through his pale hand, unseeing.  Closing his eyes, Macalaurë let his hand fall to his side, once more cast in shadows.