Summary: Galadriel at the end of the Third Age, and my take on the nature of her relationship with Celeborn.
Disclaimer: It's all Tolkien's, of course.
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World Enough and Time
Sauron is defeated. The great war of the Third Age is fought and won, and against all odds, all sound judgement and all hopes, we remain free, the Free Peoples have prevailed.
I have been breathless since it ended, as though walking in water. It crashed around me the moment that the One melted into the fires of Orodruin, and has not ceased to rush in my ears and fill my throat since.
It is cold as ice and heavy as deep silent stone, and grey as a vague fear in the small hours of the night.
Thus deserts me the power of Nenya. I am left shivering and dumbfounded. She has been too long with me, and I in her golden glow.
I would smile, if I could, for it is as you told me it would be. You were right, and I should have known.
Maybe you know no better than I about the forces, both good and evil, at work in this world. Maybe I know better than you about the skill and art of my people, and of Celebrimbor. But certainly you know me better than I do. And I should have known that your prediction would prove true.
I become too easily enamoured of power, and my love for it at times goes too deep. It is only natural that a loss of a power such as Nenya's should leave me thus bereft. I cannot change it now, as you could not change it then.
Although it was the one thing you ever truly asked of me. Not to accept Nenya when the man who loved me too, offered it to me.
I beg you, you said. It was the first time I ever heard you use that word, and the last.
But we always have tread each our own path, you and I, and all I said was, I am sorry. It was the one thing I felt I could not grant.
You smiled. Only that. There was never another word from you on that particular matter. I never saw that smile again, either.
And I wonder now, as sunlight sinks through the clouds again like gazes of some shy, startled creature: did you know, then?
Did you smile that way because you knew our future had been sealed in that moment?
No, you would say. No, it was sealed long before that. Years, centuries – and it is not fate that I am speaking of.
Perhaps I merely wish that it had been my decision that laid out our path and manufactured this ending. It would be easier to bear than this knowledge of finality. Of things set in stone.
Did you know of that, then?
In the quietness of your movements, the calmness of your thoughts, I believe I see the answer. You are more composed than I now, because, yes, you realized a long while ago what the magic of Nenya, her warmth and her vibrating power, feeling in my hand like life itself, hid from me.
We were never meant for eternity.
You were born in this land and I in Aman. You have your will and I mine, and although I would have given you, given for you, everything, and you for me, this we will not do.
We belong to places, you and I, and they are further apart than can be said with words. We were meant to change the fortunes of Arda Marred, and meant to do it together, but we were never meant for eternity.
There have always been things we did not face together. There were sorrows we chose to split in two.
I know now that eternity will be one of them.
There was never any other way. However much I believed otherwise.
The water begins to move around me, I feel the stagnation fade, and currents emerge and strengthen. It is time.
Immortal as I am, I suddenly can feel its passage. It was nothing a day ago, a faint notion an hour ago, a whisper just this past minute, and now it is a torrential river, and I cannot swim upstream any longer.
Our time is running out.
And I know now that our parting will be as final as a parting can be while the world remains as it is. However often we may speak of meeting again.
We have some weeks, some days, some hours left until good-bye.
Fin.