AUTHOR: shoneaugen
EMAIL: cparkerho@hotmail.com
DISTRIBUTION: Ask and recieve.
FEEDBACK: Oooooh, please?
DISCLAIMER: Haldir et al belong to Tolkien. I just make them cry.
SUMMARY: Aragorn wasn't the first to love the evenstar.
NOTES: I'm getting lazy, I know. o.o I'm working on the next part of Memoir, really. Just.. really.. slowly. Heh. This is just a piece to knock me out of my writing-hiatus. Apologies for the crappy.. everything. (But yes, the tense changes are deliberate.)
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Once, Haldir of Lorien had been young, with all of youth's dubious charms.
The Firstborn had still laughed sometimes, then, their songs of joy as well as sorrow. The gold of sunlight had never yet been turned away by the silver leaves of Lorien, and the Wood had lay quiescent and bright under the Lord and Lady. Shadow had been a thing merely dreamt, the stuff of portents and elf-child dalliances, and Haldir - Haldir was a willing captive to his pride; he had been brash with what he didn't know and what he thought he knew; he had been more painfully in love with the daughter of Elrond than he had known possible.
It was an infatuation, Orophin had told him. It was an infatuation ill-fated and best forgotten, Rumil added. And Haldir had avoided the Lady of the Wood for weeks after the Evenstar came back to Caras Galadhon from Imladris, unwilling to look into Galadriel's eyes to see what he already knew reflected there.
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He found her once at the heights of the mellyrn, outstanding in folds of Imladris's russet and gold among silver-barked trees and leaves' verdigris. She turned toward him as he stepped onto the talan behind her, and he would have sworn her eyes kindled love's light as she looked on him.
He descended to the ground again alone, leaving his once-blinded, now-shattered hopes within the heights where Arwen remained. Three days and nights he sat on the edge of his talan until Orophin and Rumil ceased their pleas for him to rest and left him to his solitude, and he let his thoughts drift beyond the trenchant scores in his heart and conceit. To the past, wherein dwelled the minds of most elfkind; to the future, everything he strived for; and ultimately to the present, where Arwen lay her heart, and where he could not retreat to reach it.
The fourth day found him at Galadriel's mirror, silent beseech in his eyes and the sting of newfound humility in his mind. And she only smiled at him, beckoned him to the still waters of the pool - within it, he saw the present: Arwen, grave and beautiful, eyes dazzled not by him but by another of the present.
And of the future, he saw nothing, as clouds eclipsed the sun overhead and blurred the pool into rippling shadows.
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Now, he watches, haughty again in his vigilance. Aragorn, he thinks, is deserving of Arwen; and Haldir knows that the Man can give his evenstar the present that she seeks. When she looks to Aragorn, Haldir can again see the spark of love-light in her eyes that he once took for himself. And so he forestalls the future for the moment, placing on Aragorn the unseen wreath of his respect and his hopes.
But when he sees Arwen, he drops his eyes still, and whether that is in pain or respect he neither knows nor cares.
