My choice is my own, and my choice is Tinuviel's: to love a mortal man and to be bound to him for his fleeting time-span. Yet I am not Tinuviel, though some have imagined me to be so. Like grass in the heat of the sun, the power of the elves has withered and lost its green strength. I cannot go with him to the tower of the dark lord, much diminished as he himself is from his former self and his former master. I cannot cast him into sleep with my song, or crumble strongholds to the ground.

For many lives of men I have caught a glimpse of my face in glass or still stream and have known that my beauty is like her beauty. But it is not her beauty, that of the children of Iluvatar when the world was young. My song is elven-song, but no more; my love as enduring as the stars, yet as unavailing as any mortal woman's when her beloved is in peril.

All about me is faded and worn, and our twilight has come. Men have risen about us, bright-burning like candle flames (yet even they are not what they once were) while we have taken on the soft, sad light of the gloaming, going down into darkness.

I love a mortal man, whom I saw in the tree-shadows and imagined for an instant to be Beren. But my love is not Beren. He will take a kingship, for there is no Silmaril to be had; but it is a kingship rightfully his, and likely to be given to him willingly when he makes himself known. He will fight against the dark lord, but with an army, not alone. I do not love him the less, but though all around us call us Beren and Luthien returned, I cannot do so.

The world changes around us, swifter with each passing year, and there will never again be a Beren, nor a Luthien; as there will never be another Silmaril, nor a swan-ship of Alqualonde, nor a world that has not known fear in the darkness. Such things have passed away, and are gone forever.

I make my choice of my own free will, not Luthien's choice though it be the same as hers. I love a mortal man, who took my heart in his own way; not as Beren took Luthien's, but as himself alone. And I know that he loves me for myself, and not for the shadow of Luthien that lies upon me.

And it is enough.