[The shadows that cling to him, when his age settles across his shoulders and his breath slips, silent and unbidden, from his chest, are palpable. There is no apology she can give him that he would accept, nor one that she would offer honestly, and so she doesn't attempt to conjure anything. Rather, she turns her hand beneath his and silently holds his in return.

It is a rare gesture, but one she had offered his wife freely. It is her memory that clings to him and this simple motion is all she can think to do that might ease the pain of it.]

Thank you.

[But it is a meager reassurance, despite how readily she takes it to heart.

She cannot bring herself to admit the truth of things in Quenya; when she speaks again it is in common. The language is brutish and fleeting but well suited to such news.]

He does not intend to sail. [She is uncertain if Celeborn had said as much to his cousin, she had never asked.] In both our absences he will evacuate to Greenwood.

He would not consider leaving, not until the shadow had been driven from your woods, if at all.

Middle-earth is his home.