It was most certainly her. How he had not realized this immediately, he was forced to put up to time spent apart, for he should have known her by only her voice and the way she stood. The sight of her nearly knocked him off his feet. She looked just as she had in Rivendell, the day he and the hobbits had arrived. The same reddish-gold hair, the same piercing eyes, and the same shining smile that stole the air from his lungs and made him fall for her all over again each time it was directed at him.

He stepped toward her slowly, almost as though he would scare her if he moved too fast. As if any noise he made would break the spell, and she would be gone once again. He stopped in front of her, close enough that he would be able to to touch her with hardly a movement of his hand, but he could not bring himself to move. After so many nights of her haunting his dreams, he feared she would disappear into the breeze, and he would wake once again alone.

As always, she seemed to understand him without words, and raised her own hand. His heart seemed to malfunction as the calloused fingers gently touched the skin of his face, her hand gently tilting his head so that her eyes stared back into his. Her heart was open to him through those pools of blue, the love shining through and mirroring his own above all the other emotions their hearts could not make sense of.

She was real. She was real and alive and standing in front of him right now, in a place he had meant to deliver news of her death. She smiled that smile once again, and he returned it as he brushed the wild strands of hair that had fallen from her braids away from her face, before leaning towards her and connecting his lips with hers. He kissed her as though nothing else existed, her hair in his hands and her body held close to his own. Her arms around his neck and her lips on his own. All else faded away for one blissful moment, and his hope and joy rekindled as their hearts danced in unison.