Strangling: Galadriel and Celeborn in Doriath
He says, 'fall,' and she falls forward. He catches her in his arms. 'It's all right,' he says. 'It's all right. It's called trust.'
In the mornings she sits by the window watching the sun come up. She writes her memories on scraps of paper that she burns by evening time.
'Don't ask me to understand you,' she tells him one day. He doesn't know what she means.
At night she watches the stars. She counts them off in her head, one by one. She closes her eyes and sees them all there – glinting one, two, one, two back at her. She tells him how many she's counted.
'I'm thinking of cutting my hair,' she says. They're sitting beneath the trees. He's reading, hair falling silver around his shoulders. She holds a lock of her hair up to the sun. She pulls her hair tight back behind her ears. 'Do you like it?'
'Don't cut it,' he says.
'I should have,' she says. 'I should have long ago.'
She braids her hair with flowers and walks in the twilight among the birches. She does not cut it, and she does not fall.