A fanfic reinventing the story of Celebrían, since I can't stand how her story ends. And of course there's lots of Elrond, because A) he's Celebrían's husband and B) he has awesome eyebrows in the movie.
My neck could no longer support my head and thunked into my calculus textbook. There is too much random junk in there, I bet. That must be why my head feels so heavy. It was three in the afternoon, and while I usually feel a little tired at that time, it was nothing compared to how I felt. Staying up all last night watching LOTR interviews and deleted scenes probably hadn't helped either, although I couldn't remember ever being this tired. I let my eyelids close.
In my closed eyes, a white light began to glow, whiter and whiter, bigger and bigger, until it filled my vision. I thrashed around, blinking in an attempt to clear my eyes. I have been at risk for juvenile glaucoma all my life, and now I feared that it was finally coming to get me. Never mind that I had no idea what the symptoms of glaucoma were…
I heard voices speaking in a flowing, lovely tongue. Oh no! I thought, Now I'm hearing things! Someone put a cool cloth on my head as the whiteness slowly faded away. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly. My brain was obviously too full of random math gibberish to properly function, because I didn't register that there was a person who had not been there previously and there were voices speaking in a flowing foreign language.
I opened my eyes slowly, expecting a hospital and my anxious parents. Another burst of the language I didn't get seemed to indicate that everyone had been waiting for me to wake up. I took stock of my surroundings—definitely not a hospital. From my comfortable spot in a very clean, perfectly made bed, I could see that the room was open to the outside, where a forest was enjoying summer. Intricately decorated columns supported the ceiling, and people wove in and out, talking in quiet voices. And such people! They were dressed in flowing robes of many tasteful colors, and their long, perfectly straight hair hung loose. They had pointed ears and rather angular features.
Wait.
What kind of people has pointed ears?
Wait a minute! This isn't—no it can't be. I'm among elves! So that foreign language is Elvish. Whether they spoke Sidarin or Quenya I didn't know. I wasn't (and still am not) much of a language person. I tried to sit upright, but merely flopped around uselessly. A garble of tangled sound burbled from my mouth.
One of them hastened to my bedside, tucking me back into the bedclothes and singing softly. Some of them left the room, returning later with another one—this one with the most magnificently frightening eyebrows known to mankind. He looked very stern upon entering the room, but then only looked concerned (and thus an iota less frightening) as he came close to me. He said something in Elvish, obviously expecting a response. I stared at him blankly.
"Um, hi. Do you speak English?" I ventured.
It was his turn to stare at me.
Before he replied, I realized that English in Middle Earth was Common Tongue, and that Elrond—for that was the only character with crazy eyebrows—was speaking Common Tongue at the Council of Elrond, which was my second favorite scene in the entire trilogy. "I don't mean to be disrespectful or anything, but are you Elrond?"
He smiled sadly. "Of course I'm Elrond."
I bit my lip, unsure of what to say. He had obviously been expecting me to say something else. "Um… so I guess this is Rivendell…" At this point anything I said would make everything even worse. Being an awkward idiot, I didn't keep my mouth shut.
He drew a deep breath, as if summoning strength from deep inside him, and smiled encouragingly. "Yes, we are in Imladris. Do you know who you are, meleth nin?"
"Sure I do. I'm Aspen Chen, from Anderson, South Carolina." With horror, I remembered the calculus test I'd been studying for. "And I have a calc test today!" Looking back, it was a very odd set of priorities. Being magically teleported to Rivendell got a weaker reaction from me than my calc test. I suppose I should have been happy to get out of it. At that time, I clung to the pieces of my memory that I knew were sane.
Elrond looked stricken.
I hope too much. When I saw Celebrían finally awake, I dared to hope that everything would be as it was. Everything would be wonderful and golden again, just like before she was captured.
But as she stared at me with blank eyes of a stranger, I thought, Perhaps it would be better if she had been killed.
No. That is a terrible, terrible thing to think.
"It'll be a while before she fully remembers everything, my lord Elrond. You're a healer; you know these things. She at least recognizes you." said Erestor, one of my chief advisors.
Elrond silently handed me a small mirror. Confused, I took it from him, and looked at my reflection.
"What the—" I spluttered. My unkempt black ponytail had been usurped by flowing, elvishly perfect silver hair. My skin was several tones lighter than it should have been and perfectly flawless. My ears were pointed. The mirror version of me was too perfect, too elvish. I was an elf.
And then it hit me. I didn't know much Elvish, but I was fairly certain "Meleth nin" meant "my love". I'd read enough fanfics and wiki articles to know that Elrond's wife was Celebrían, daughter of Galadriel.
"Oh no. Please don't tell me you think I'm Celebrían." I didn't look at Elrond. Poor guy. Other than being a really powerful elf, he has nothing going for him. And his beloved daughter will marry a human and be separated from him FOREVER. I hope that hasn't happened yet in the story.
At this horrible moment, two really similar elves—Elrond's twin sons—came into the room. "Naneth!" They clasped my hands. I gulped and extricated myself from them.
"I know this really sucks for all of us, but I'm not anybody's mother."
They looked even more horror-stricken than Elrond did. I winced. There was probably a better way to break the news to them. "But… mother…" one of them stammered.