EVENTUAL
By Your Cruise Director

I held him on the night of Boromir's death. Though he had kept too busy for grief during the day while we pursued the hobbits and their orc captors, his sorrow overcame him once he lay down to rest. Gimli fell asleep unknowing, but my ears could not help perceiving the man's suffering no matter how he tried to mourn in silence. So I went to him, and let him clutch his arms around my back and wet my chest with his tears, though the stench and sweat of men will always seem strange to me.

Like Boromir, he is a man, a mortal. One day, he will die. It is hard to imagine, looking at a face chiseled like the Argonath and a body shaped by years of hard labor. Yet already tiny lines shadow his eyes when he smiles. Someday his arms will lose their strength. Dark growths will mottle his skin. His eyes, bluer than the waters of the Anduin and alight with wit, will cloud over. His heart will begin to fail.

How do men find the courage to love one another, knowing the fate that awaits them?

It was I who pulled the arrows from Boromir's chest, for Aragorn had not to heart to do so after his dying friend forbade him to remove them. The holes in that pale skin will never heal. The stench of rot will grow until not even a lover could stand to be close to the remains.

I wish that I had not seen Boromir so, for I will never forget that image. I would rather remember the body of the man in fearless battle with orcs, or teaching the young hobbits to swing their blades. I would rather remember his face when he gazed upon Isildur's heir with the look he wore only when he knew the other man could not see him.

It makes me glad that Boromir forgave Aragorn his birthright, for it was I who told the warrior the true name of his liege. And it gladdens me that Aragorn was able to comfort Boromir before he died. I overheard the warrior's last words. Had mortal time been more cruel, he would never had had the chance to say them, nor Aragorn the chance to hear them.

How can men bear to know that their lives will end with so many words left unspoken, so many vows unfulfilled?

I am an elf, immortal. Our age may pass, yet I will pass through the Undying Lands to live forever. When I held Aragorn in the night, I came to understand the short cycle of his life. He burned in grief until sleep overcame him, but in that healing slumber his face softened and I knew that he would one day smile again. His muscles tensed and eased, his stomach growled with hunger. His manhood stiffened and pressed against my thigh. I would have embraced him even then, but it was not my name he murmured.

Like Boromir, he is a man, a mortal. One day, he will die. Lord Elrond believes that men are dangerous to elves, for they take more risks, they hurry their ambitions. They do not have an eternity to find their place. Their lives unfold before us like dreams, then are gone. It is said that men envy us.

Yet Lord Elrond's daughter would forsake immortality for a few short years with her love, the same man in my thoughts. Arwen does not wish to live forever, and I feel certain that if I asked him, Aragorn would say the same. His parents are gone. Boromir is gone. Would he feel the same keen sense of love for them were it not for their loss? Can an elf love as deeply as a man does only by loving a man?

I am an elf, immortal. Yet when I think of Aragorn, I am not certain that I wish to live forever. I want to hold him again, and know the sweat and dust and slow decay that are his rightful inheritance as much as the throne of Gondor. This is not love as I have known it in my long life. Though it brings deep pain, it promises great joy.

Lord Elrond is right that such ties to men are dangerous, or perhaps the danger lies only in such men as can bring such feelings to an elf. Aragorn has lost Boromir merely for a time -- a short time, compared to the span of an elf's life. For me such a loss would be eternal. Perhaps it would make me like the Nazgūl, starving forever for something that was never mine to hold.

Or perhaps, if I loved enough, I would die of a broken heart. I could bind him by my grief for all the ages left on Earth. There would be songs of my devotion, stories of my passion. If I cleaved truly to him, his name would never fade.

I wonder whether Aragorn would weep for me as he weeps for Boromir, but I think not. Like Boromir, he is a man, a mortal. I am an elf. Still, when he dies, I will mourn for him. And I will comfort myself knowing that I would keep him in my clasp forever, if he were mine to keep.