[Anguirel]

Would I stay? I am unsure. What of you, dearest friend? Could you live on? Could you forsake your Giledhel to live on with your friend and master, your Maglor?

Malris inwardly confessed himself surprised that Tasa seemed to be as undecided as he. Some part of him, he realised, had wanted to be pleaded with and remonstrated with, begged to either accept of reject the harp's offer, wooed with speeches and argument. But Tasa was at once too subtle and too true for that. She was, herself, unsure, and she said so. Unsure, like the dancing hue of the harp or of Tasa's own eyes, like the predicament that faced them.

"Aye, there's the rub," he said, speaking aloud though there was no need. "Could I bring myself to do this thing? Yet once I have done it, the Harp claims I shall care no more, that seven Ages shall pass without a day's effects falling upon me.

"We could walk to the Harp, Tasa, and touch those strings to play some trifling tune, and be consoled by the certainty that we had become utterly separate from past, future, remained as eternal recorders and guardians of the present. Aye, then, Tasa, if the Harp did not lie, I could forget my wife. And in any case, were I to go West, I have begun to despair of rebuilding the love that once gripped us so sharply. Not now, I fear, after so long..."

He stepped closer to the Harp again, marvelling at the storm-tossed ship that formed its shape. He took long breath and laid his hand at the top of the foam, feeling the contours of the metal wave. The strings hummed faintly, as if yearning to be taken in hand once more...

"All reason seems to tell me that accepting this offer would be wise. And it runs deeply in accordance with much of my desire. I have submitted to the Sea-longing and turned to the Lords of the West grudgingly...though sincerely. And now a chance to foil them all...to prove to my father that he was wrong to demand on my return after the War of Wrath...to march East to the side of the last Son of Feanor, not sail West to the laps of the Godlings..."

He paused, moving his touch now to the hull of the ship, solid and reassuring in its convex, shell-like appearance...

"And furthermore, Tasa, I do not believe that this Harp lies. It is no idle boaster, this instrument; it sung of the Noldolante nights ago, though Maglor composed that chanson after he abandoned Himring. Nay, I do believe it can do all it claims to do."

He took his palm from the hull and stretched it towards the strings. With his other hand he took Tasa's, his thoughts clear. Away from glance of hostile Elf or spirit, Malris and Tasa could there partake of another kind of love; dive into the frenzied ocean, the sweet well of delights dust and circumstance now denied them. At last he closed his eyes and whispered.

"Harp, harp, beautiful harp of my lost lord, you spun me a beautiful song. It is not, though, enough to make plain Malris one of your Vanishing Harpers. There is more honour to be found in the fulfilment of a humble promise on a castle wall one cold morning than in an eternity of loyal, but remote, service. I believe your creator, harp, who blessed my marriage, understands what I do now. If your mind, instrument, is his, then through you he will know that I love him as a dullard loves a star that shines his way. But I am of the people of the Elves, and I have cleft to Giledhel of the Noldor, whose pardon I will sail to beg."

Finished, he staggered like a drunkard back from the ship in its turbulent sea, surmounted by strings.

"Tasa, you need not be guided by me in this matter. Our hearts are as one and so I know you do not now seek the West. Here is a way to never fade, and to wander in the Lorien you love, and in Middle-earth, until it lasts. I shall often think of you, and I am arrogant enough," he smiled weakly, "to rather assume that you will think of me also."