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~~~
After the funerals, after all the business of death is over and done with, Susan packs her belongings and moves to a small cottage on the coast. She watches the waves roll in, mourns her dead, and remembers when they all lived together in a shining castle by the sea.
One morning she walks along the shore and hears singing, in a language she doesn't know. This is strange, for in Narnia, every language she heard, she learned with ease. In England, she gained fluency in seven more.
She does not know the words but the loss and the grief she hears in the song are achingly familiar.
Susan rounds the dunes and sees the singer. He is tall, sad, and cradles a harp gently in burned hands.
~~~
Maglor has spent a millennia thinking of the oath he made, and the cursed things he did for the sake of that oath. He wanders the shores of the worlds, all the worlds, for ages uncounted. He sings of his great crimes, his great love, his great loss, and the great jewels that were never his to claim.
“You are singing of home,” Susan says.
“I am. I can never return.”
“Neither can I.”
~~~
“Would you teach me your song?” Susan asks, remembering for the first time in a long time what it is to hunger for something other than what she cannot have.
Maglor does. Though first, he teaches her the great languages of Arda for one cannot know the songs and stories of a land until one learns the language of the land. Susan learns the long-forgotten Quenya, Telerin, and Sindarin, the many dialects of Maglor’s kin, and the tongues of Dwarves and Ents.
In turn, Susan teaches the great Elf the languages she knew of a distant world also gone. Maglor learns lilting Calormene, guttural Telmarine, and even the stumbling speech of Giants. She teaches Maglor birdsong, the language of wolves, and the bubble of the mer-people.
And then by the sea, in the tongues of Narnia and Valinor, to the music of his harp and the thrum of this world’s ocean, they teach each other their songs. They sing the great songs of the great creators, Eru Ilúvatar and Aslan. They sing of the Trees, silver Telperion, golden Laurelin, and the Tree of Protection. Finally, when all the songs but one are sung, she sits at his feet and weeps as Maglor sings the terrible Noldolantë.
“Surely you hate me now,” he says as the last notes die on his harp.
For answer, Susan rises and takes his blackened hands in hers.
~~~
Susan opens for Maglor the box she could never bear to open before. She shows him the rings.
These are not rings of adamant, fire, air, gold, greed, or shadow. These are plain rings of bright yellow and green. Their magic is not one Maglor knows.
“Come with me,” she says.
“Where?” Maglor asks.
“Anywhere,” Susan replies.
~~~
They make no preparations. They will find what they need when they arrive where they are going.
Susan drops the green ring into her pocket. They join arms. She slides the yellow onto her finger and they are gone.