The next appointment for Celebrían came a day later, and with an even heavier file in tow, I made my way up to her study. I reached the doorway before she noticed I was there, and I saw her sitting in an armchair Elrond had placed by the window. She gazed outside listlessly, her expression blank- bored, almost- as though she were seeing nothing at all.
I knocked gently on the door jamb. "Celebrían?"
Slowly, she stirred from her lassitude. "Oh, Rhodri, hello," she murmured. "Come in."
I entered, closing the door behind me, and took a seat near her. "How are you?"
She gave me a torpid smile and shook her head gently. "I don't even know where I am any more, let alone how I am." Noticing my enquiring look, Celebrían elaborated. "Nothing feels the same any more. This cannot be the place I have called home all these yén. There is no warmth to it, no life, no… appeal."
"What remains of it, then?" I asked as I took out my notes and scribbled a few words down.
"I do not know," she whispered, glancing at me fearfully. "It is so empty here. It looks the same, but is bereft of everything."
"What happens when you think of happy memories here?"
Celebrían cocked her head to the side a little and stared off into the distance as she said, "I know intellectually that they are happy, but the feeling is just out of my reach."
"Have you felt any happiness since you woke up here? Any at all?"
"None," she admitted in a monotone, eyes still fixed on the nothingness to my right.
"How about feeling upset?"
"Mmm… not unless I think about what happened."
"What happens then?"
She winced. "It becomes unbearable. I relive it all."
It seemed, at this point, that a diagnosis of severe post-traumatic stress disorder was on the cards.
"How often do you have these moments where you relive the experience, Celebrían?" I asked.
"Many times a day. And in the night, too, but in dreams- when I actually manage to sleep, that is."
"Not getting much rest, huh?" I murmured back. She shook her head.
"Almost none. I am exhausted, but too terrified to fall asleep." The tiredness was plain: her head was leaning on the side of the armchair, as though she were too weak to hold it up, and the rest of her body was so languidly sprawled that she gave the impression of having melted where she sat.
"Are you getting up to much during the day?" I asked as I made notes about her posture.
Celebrían declined. "I am afraid to be outside. Sometimes I walk in the corridors here, or stroll around the room when I have a little energy, but I don't want to be near things that remind me of it, and it seems that reminders are everywhere." She let out a miserable sigh, rubbing her brow a little.
"Everywhere?"
"Yes. I cannot read books, because I do not want to see maps or mentions of Lothlorien, or of Orcs, or of anything to do with journeys or torture. But those are inescapable. I cannot go outside, because the outdoors is where I was kept captive. I hate water now. I cannot stand the gardens, even." She heaved a dry sob that was like a stab to my gut to hear, and gently hit the armrest of her chair with a closed fist. "It all fills me with fright and misery."
"What about seeing or hearing things that aren't there? Anything like that happening?" I asked, anxious to finish the assessment to spare her the pain of reviewing all this.
"No, nothing like that," she confirmed.
"I see. Well, from what you've told me, it seems that you're experiencing some rather severe post-traumatic stress. Those moments where you relive the horrific moments are called 'flashbacks,' and they're very common in this kind of disorder. There are a lot of different therapeutic exercises we can do to try and manage how often the flashbacks crop up, and that will make it easier for you to do the things you started to avoid because of how they reminded you of the bad memories- and enjoy them, too, what's more. Are you interested in giving it a go?"
Celebrían gave me a small, resigned smile. "I have my doubts that this will improve, Rhodri."
"What make you say that?" I asked, my confusion apparent.
She said nothing for a moment as she closed her eyes and shook her head sadly.
"Celebrían," I said quietly as I shifted my chair a little closer to hers, "You can tell me about your doubts. The therapy I've used to help people deal with traumatic events has been very effective in the past, and it's important that you don't enter therapy with any misconceptions. This process won't be instant, but I do really think you will feel the benefit after a while."
"It isn't about that, Rhodri," she murmured.
"What is it about, then?"
She opened her mouth a little like she had planned on saying something, but then closed it.
"Celebrían?" I prompted.
Celebrían looked at me with weary affection. "Never mind," she said. "Let's try the therapy and see if it helps a little."
I nodded quickly. "Absolutely. Do you have the wherewithal to start today?"
"As much as I ever will, I think," she answered with a hint of glum wryness to it.
"In that case, let's get started," I said with a smile.
Phase one of therapy for Celebrían, I decided, should focus on getting good sleep. Even though Elves' need for sleep was fairly low (read: 2-3 hours a night), she was probably getting that much in a week, and it showed on her face and in her movements. She would not be able to concentrate as well on other therapies with such a paucity of time spent at rest. What was holding her back from a decent night's slumber, it seemed, was the issue of recurrent nightmares, much like the ones Glorfindel experienced- vivid re-enactments of what had happened.
As with Glorfindel's problem, I started Celebrían on imagery rehearsal therapy, and for the rest of the session, we wrote out the synopses of her various nightmares and thought up alternative endings for them. We were at it for about 3 hours, after which I said, "Well, we've spent an awfully long time fleshing this stuff out. I think we should call it a day for now. Before you go to bed, start reading the alternative endings. Read them so that you drift off to sleep thinking about them. Try it for a couple of days and see if it doesn't improve your sleep, all right? Make some notes when you wake up and we'll keep track of it."
She briefly perused the list of alternate dream endings we'd recorded together and nodded, looking somewhat unconvinced. I frowned inwardly. It wasn't like Celebrían to be so sceptical of things, but so much of how she behaved was unlike her now that it just seemed like another thing to throw on the pile.
Even so, though, I couldn't help but dwell on her doubts when I left after Elrond had come in to sit with her. I tried to disabuse myself of the idea that there was anything more behind it than simple tiredness, but it didn't seem to work. Something about her seemed confident that therapy wouldn't cut it.
After pacing the halls agitatedly for an hour as I chewed it over, I decided I would leave it be for a month and wait for the first signs of progress to emerge before I mentioned it to Celebrían again.
By the time that month had passed, though, the expected signs still hadn't even shown the vaguest inkling of existing, or even planning to exist.
"There hasn't been any reduction in nightmare quantity or scariness, it seems," I murmured to her as I looked through her month-long sleep journal.
Celebrían shook her head in a jagged fashion, like there was a glitch in her system. "No, there has not," she confirmed. "I sleep as poorly and fitfully as ever."
I tapped my face with my pencil. "It's not wholly impossible that it will take a little longer to work, but I tell you what, how about we start incorporating some other techniques into the programme?"
"What did you have in mind?" she asked.
"Well, you've had a hard time doing things you used to enjoy because they invariably remind you of your kidnapping, so we could look at ways to stop you from associating those happy things with your trauma."
As if right on cue, her face was almost expressionless except for a slight twitch of her eyebrows- that same doubting look as before. She seemed to catch herself, though, and shook her head a little, like she was trying to physically dislodge the thought.
"Tell me what you're thinking about," I said.
"It was nothing," Celebrían mumbled.
"It didn't seem like nothing," I replied with a knowing smile, raising my eyebrow a little.
"I… feel wounded still," she confessed.
"Do you mean in a non-physical sense?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Tell me about it?"
Celebrían sighed. "I don't think I can."
"Do you mean you are unable to because you lack the ability to elaborate, or because you do not wish to?" I probed.
She shook her head firmly, indicating that that part of the discussion was over. "Tell me more about what you had in mind for this therapy programme," she requested.
"Well," I said thoughtfully, "perhaps we could work on that scared feeling you get when you try doing things you used to enjoy. We'd use a technique called 'prolonged exposure therapy.' Essentially, we gradually build you up so that you can confront what is causing you anxiety. We'd start with you retelling the story of your kidnapping a number of times, and then later on we would work up to things like reading books with references to things that set you off, and then on to going outside. Eventually we might even try making a trip to Lothlorien."
Celebrían was silent for a while, her gleamless grey eyes uneasily switching between me and the window to my right. I sat and waited for her to process her thoughts, and eventually, she reluctantly murmured, "Very well."
I frowned a little. "We don't have to do anything you don't want to, Celebrían. I do think that this can help you, but you won't have much benefit at all, if any, if you're doing this against your will."
"No, I want to try it," she said half-heartedly.
"It is a very emotionally demanding process, and that can seem quite intimidating from the outset, but you set the pace, and we'll take as many breaks as you need throughout. You won't be pushed into the deep end, all right? And if you decide it's too much, we can try plenty of other therapy techniques."
Another slow nod.
"What do you say we leave it here for now, and we'll get started on this tomorrow?" I asked her.
"All right," she assented quietly.
She was still afraid to be left on her own, so we stayed in the room, me strumming the trusty guitar until Elrond arrived.
In the middle of all the stress with Celebrían's seemingly progress-bereft treatments, there was also a lot of work to contend with as Elrond's advisor. Numerous trade deals had been disrupted as our key partners in Rohan and Gondor anticipated invasion shortly from the Easterlings, a group living to the east of Mordor who were apparently fairly chummy with Sauron et al. A sign, in short, that at best, our wheat and tomato supplies were about to dwindle, and at worst, that Sauron had yet more bullshit in store for us.
As I lay awake in bed that night, my mind was racing with thoughts about Celebrían's mysterious ambivalence and the idea that with a sudden drop in supplies, that an emergency pizza could soon be out of my reach. So far as I could see, my attempts to maintain a sense of normalcy amidst all this chaos were futile. And then it hit me: perhaps that was where I was going wrong. Perhaps I ought to have been carving out a new normal rather than trying to cling onto the shreds of what remained. At that moment, an idea hit me.
"Are you awake, Glorfindel?" I whispered urgently, my eyes huge as I stared up at the ceiling.
"Mmm," he confirmed quietly. "I can't seem to fall asleep."
I rolled over quickly and faced him. "Let's do something wild," I said excitedly.
He propped himself up on one elbow and watched me with a slightly amused expression. "What did you have in mind?"
"Trampoline diving," I said with conviction.
His eyes widened in the dimness, and I could have sworn I saw them sparkle.
"Oh, yes," he enthused, smiling from ear to ear.
Without another word, we threw off the blankets, snatched up the hammock, and ran downstairs and out to the pools. We hadn't even bothered to change out of our pyjamas or put on shoes.
When we reached the pools, there wasn't a soul around. We quickly put on some swim suits and made our way to the biggest, deepest pool- about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, and around ten metres deep. Just right for the shenanigans I had in mind.
"Now, where's a good tree…" I mumbled to myself as I scanned the perimeter of the pool.
"How about this one?" called Glorfindel from over by a mighty oak tree.
"Well spotted," I said jovially as I marched over and tied one end to a strong but bendy looking branch that was close by the water.
"You ready for an exciting time?" I asked Glorfindel. I gestured grandly at the now-ready trampoline with my free hand, my other one clutching the other end of the hammock.
Glorfindel grinned and one graceful jump later, he was in the middle of the trampoline, bouncing smoothly.
"How high do you want to go?" I shouted to him as I rhythmically flicked my end up to launch him skywards. He slowly climbed in altitude with each successive jump.
"How high can you send me?" he yelled back, a wild look lighting up his features.
"Don't ask the Maia of Tulkas how far they can launch you, beloved!" I hollered with a laugh.
"A fair point," he loudly conceded. "How about up to the top of the tree?"
"Consider it done!"
Instead of flicking the hammock upwards, pulled it up toward me so that Glorfindel shot outwards instead of straight up, and he managed to execute two and a half twists before landing in the water. I whooped and clapped and stomped my feet as he bobbed to the surface, swam to the edge, and climbed out. His long hair stuck to him like a gold morph suit, shining bright in the moonlight, and he was beaming at me excitedly.
"That was amazing," he exclaimed, gesticulating animatedly. "We should do this all night!"
I raised an eyebrow. "I'm up for it if you are," I said with a wicked smile.
It was only when the sun came up that we realised we had to make a dash for the indoors again, lest earlybird Elrond catch us skulking around his nice, wholesome halls, wet as shags and in our pyjamas. Times were strange enough already.
