Letters to Bootsie

by warp_n_wolf

Summary:

Aragorn and Arwen's ageing daughter, Nimloth the Pilgrim, writes verses in her bereavement to her lost Núrnish love "Steel-boots", looking forward to the end of her mortal labours and their eventual reunion.

Notes:

These verses are supposed to have been composed between Nimloth's seventies and eleventies, before she laid down her burdens in Fo.A. 120 or 121.

O Bootsie, it is you must go, and I am bound to stay.
I’ve many years of work to do before I get away.
Your little birch’s roots are dry, though all her skies are grey –
But I can’t come home!

My work is done by Núrnen, but I’m wanted in the Town
To take the people’s counsel from the Cantons to the Crown.
I’d sneak away to meet you, but I mustn’t let you down,
So I can’t come home!

My mother is their Evening Star, my father is their King,
My brother’s wife is my best friend, she’s up to everything.
Their hearts would break to lose me, but my heart is on the wing –
And it’s not my home!

My father’s gone ahead and it’s the evening of the day:
It’s someone else’s shift now, and it’s time to take my pay.
So put the groats on, Bootsie, ‘cause the Pilgrim’s on her way –
And I’ll come straight home!

Notes:

Nimloth was perhaps the least susceptible to despair of all her indomitable kindred. We have a letter in which Peregrin Took compares her personality to Gandalf's, of all people's; but -

"Gandalf if he were made for peace and not for war, if you can understand me. They seemed all opposites, of course; but more like sheath and knife than chalk and cheese, somehow. You couldn't imagine losing heart around either of them, or not for very long. But I suppose I'm talking rot as usual!"

Nevertheless she was grievously aged in body and mind by her long labours in the harsh former lands of Mordor, and especially by the loss of her life-partner at the end of Steel-boots's more ordinary mortal lifespan. In these verses love and duty are withholding her, not from suicide in any usual sense, but from exercising her right to lay down her Dúnadaneth gift of supernatural longevity when it ceased to be a boon, following the example of Aragorn her father.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Birch-bark and Steel-boots