"unblemished" - glorfindel & ecthelion

silwritersguild challenge #24: favourite quote

love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds
or bends with the remover to remove
-from sonnet 116, william shakespeare

There was a time when he was beautiful but millennia of warfare and sorrow have taken their toll. He is scarred now, his hands are callused and no one would ever believe that he had had everything under control, if they were to see the scars on his back or his throat. He does not remember if he returned from Mandos unblemished. He thinks he did not.

He is welcomed into his lover’s arms, with scarcely a murmur of reproach for all that long lifetime spent apart because their love outlived them both.

He is told that he is beautiful.