What is the real reason that you're choosing to sacrifice your immortality?
Arwen had stopped running, out of breath, and had dropped down to sit by the edge of Luthien's fountain depicting the instant of her discovery by Beren. Her head was spinning, her mind confused. Perhaps Keille was still chasing her; perhaps not. Arwen did not know, and in fact, did not care.
What is the real reason you're choosing to sacrifice your immortality?
She had avoided that question before, but now she knew she could no longer do so. She would have to face it.
Keille's voice spoke in her mind again. What is the real—
Not for love of Aragorn. Keille would never accept that answer, Arwen knew without having to ask her. Keille most likely, in her place, would never even have fooled herself into thinking that to begin with.
But if not for love of Aragorn, then why? Why had she accepted that answer, when Keille would not? Why had she been ready to—
Arwen closed her eyes and drew a deep breath to steady herself. She opened her eyes in the moonlight, calm, and took in the serene, quiet, placid, ordered vista before her—each plant, flower, and blade of grass in its place, growing where she had planted it, for now and forever. Quiet. Perfect. Unchanging.
She turned to look at the statue of Luthien behind her, cool and perfect in its marble gleaming. She remembered again that Luthien's stone-carved, immobile face was an exact duplicate of her own, that her father had had it made in her likeness to surprise her and delight her. It had, three hundred years ago.
It did not now.
She reached out, dizzily, to touch the statue, seeing her own hand white on Luthien's white arm; there was, in the moonlight, no difference between the two shades. Flesh and marble; marble and flesh. Her hand was warm where Luthien's white arm was cold, but give it time, she thought giddily, only time was necessary. Another thousand years, two thousand years….how long before no one could tell the two of them apart? Her father was halfway there already.
I can't stand it.
The realization came to her not as a revelation, but as a simple remembering of something she already knew was true. It was true. She could not stand staying, living, until the marble weight of years settled around her heart and chilled her to the bone, until she was truly dead in all but name. As her father was. Life, she knew from watching her plants, meant growth, change, both flowering and withering; the only things that did not continue to change over time were lifeless objects—rocks, stones….and Elves. Others, as that short Seanchan daughter of Men would call them, she thought, remembering Keille.
I can't stand it, she thought again, and drew in breath at the thought, for that was the answer to her question. That was why she had chosen as she did. Not for love of Aragorn, she realized as she turned her gaze to the depths of her soul, but for despair over her own fate. For in Aragorn, she had seen, or hoped to, a fire, a passion and courage that could warm her cold bones, chase the creeping immobility of years from her blood. That could save her from the fate of becoming an animate statue, no longer capable of learning or growing or changing in any meaningful way. Had she seen another way, she would have taken that way, for she had no wish to die. But even more than death did she fear being trapped, trapped in a prison of years….and of love.
Father would never have let me go any other way, she realized now; the veil over her eyes had come down and she was seeing the truth. I could not have brought myself to leave him any other way; that is as just, for they are one and the same. But Luthien….my ancestress….she went before me. She showed me how to do it. Father could not object, for I was simply exercising my birthright. I wonder, Luthien, she thought crazily, looking up at her face in marble, in the moonlight. The songs always said it was for love, but I wonder, Luthien, if you did not feel as I do….if you did not fear, as I do….
And is that fire really there, Aragorn? Is that fire really strong enough to save me from the chill? Or did Father merely think he saw, and I leap to believe what I desperately needed to believe?
Oh, Father….
Arwen bowed her head to her hands and began to weep, shedding tears of confusion and exhaustion joined. She wept so long and so hard that she did not hear the other approach until a gentle voice spoke.
"Why do you cry, little one?"
Arwen sucked in her breath in fear and looked up; the voice that had spoken had been oddly familiar, though it had been laden with the slurred sounds of the Seanchan.
The woman who stood before her, looking down at her, was tall—almost too tall for a raken-rider, though she wore the armor of one. Her features were indistinct, thrown into shadow by the rim of her Seanchan helmet. For all that Arwen could not make out her face, however, she almost felt that there was something familiar about the woman.
"Who—who are you?" she faltered.
"My name is Briande Duchen Paendrag, Supreme Der'Morat'Raken of the High Lady Suroth's Expeditionary Force of the Ever Victorious Army of Seanchan," the other responded calmly, reciting her title as if speaking about the weather.
"Briande….I know you," Arwen realized. "Keille Sar has spoken of you—"
"Keille Sar is my backrider," the der'morat acknowledged. "She told me all about you as well, Arwen Undomiel of the Others."
"D-did she?"
"Yes." Briande shifted slightly; a flash of moonlight illuminated her features almost to the point of recognizability, and then was gone. "She told me that you have a choice before you."
"She—she did?"
"Yes, and that you have chosen death—you have chosen to forfeit that which is rightfully yours, for the love of a mortal man, rather than to live out the rest of your rightful lifespan." The raken-rider looked down at her.
Arwen bowed her head. "I—I did, but…." she managed, and then fell silent.
"But?" Briande's voice was gentle.
Arwen was silent, unable to speak what came next; she suddenly looked up at Briande and asked, "Keille told me that you were an—an Elf? An Other?"
Briande nodded. "That's right. I am one of the Others, as our kind is known in Seanchan."
"Would—would you take such a choice?" she asked, appealing to those shadowed features.
Briande's response was immediate. "No," she answered firmly, then modified it, her voice gentle. "Not unless I was very unhappy where I was."
Arwen swallowed and nodded, looking down. "I see."
"Are you unhappy, little one?"
Little one… Nobody had called her "little one" except her mother, gone five hundred years ago across the sea. The sound of it brought tears to her eyes; for a moment she was afraid she might start weeping again.
"I….I…."
"Yes?"
"I don't know," she whispered miserably.
"You don't?"
"No….I…."
"Then why are you weeping?" Again, the voice was gentle and soft, an invitation rather than an order.
"I….Because…." She broke off, unable to speak for a moment, wondering whether she should even confide her thoughts to this stranger; then, unable to control herself any longer, burst out, "Because I can see time passing and leaving me behind, unchanged. Because I can see the world around me growing, changing, making itself new again from year to year, while I only grow older and lose hope, while I remain among my kinsmen who are dead in all but name, until I die too like the rest of them, from the heart."
"Your father—"
"My father can't see. He won't see. The rest of my kinsmen are just the same. The purpose of life is to learn and grow—what do you call it when you no longer learn and grow?" she asked in anguish. "I do not wish to die, not physically, but if the only other course that is left to me is to be nothing but the Evenstar forever, then I might as well be dead, don't you see?"
"I do," Briande responded thoughtfully. Arwen was suddenly struck with an idea.
"In Seanchan….Are there Elves—Others—in Seanchan?"
"Some. A few. Not as many as there are here."
"Do they—do you—live as we do here, trapped in the same life forever, thinking the same thoughts, doing the same things, throughout eternity?"
Arwen thought the other Elflady smiled in the shadow of her helmet. "No. Seanchan is very large, and there are very few of us compared with the numbers of mortals surrounding us. We cannot withdraw among our own kind as you do here; we are forced to go among mortals and live with them in their world. It works well…it keeps us young."
"And you? Were you always a—a—a Supreme Der'Morat'Raken?"
"I? No," Briande said, and this time Arwen was sure she smiled. "I was not always. I started out…." Her voice grew distant as if she were remembering. "I started out….very low indeed, but through a great deal of very hard work and learning, I eventually rose to become first morat'raken, then der'morat, and now Supreme Der'Morat. Nor will I be Supreme Der'Morat forever. I might," she mused quietly, "go higher yet, with luck….And if I do not, well, I am not yet bored with being Der'Morat'Raken, but when I do become bored with it….Seanchan is a vast realm. There are many lives within it, waiting to be explored—and as an Other—an Elf—I have all the time in the world. I just might get the chance, in time, to explore every one of them."
Arwen sat, silent, for a moment, envisioning what Briande had said. An entire realm—a world full of possibilities—it sounded wonderful, beyond wonderful. The very idea took her breath away. "I would….like to see it," she breathed wistfully.
Briande tilted her head and looked at Arwen very seriously. "Would you really?" she asked quietly.
Arwen drew in her breath sharply, guessing at what Briande was asking her. She did not hesitate for a moment, however, before lifting her head and meeting Briande's eyes in the shadow of her helmet. "More than anything," she replied, her voice firm.
Briande was silent for a long time, directing a calm, evaluative stare at Arwen, the other Elfmaiden did her best not to flinch under it. At last, Briande asked, "But what about Aragorn? Your father?"
Arwen hung her head. "Aragorn is a good man," she began heavily, "but he….I think the only reason I loved him is because he was another path. Even now, I am not sure if the qualities I thought I loved him for were real, or if I only saw them because….because my father did, and because I desperately needed to find an escape. And as for my father….My father hasn't had a new idea in over a thousand years—"
"I know," Briande murmured softly, but Arwen paid her no heed.
"—and he doesn't understand this. He could never understand this. I want…I…I can't be the Evenstar for eternity," she said, tipping back her head and looking up at Briande wildly. "I can't. If I have to die for it, I can't."
She thought Briande would say something at this point, but the other Elflady only looked at her for a long time. At last she spoke, and when she spoke, her words were so unexpected they caught Arwen by surprise. "Arwen," she said gently, "do you know who I am?"
"I—" Arwen blinked in confusion. "What do you mean?"
In answer, the der'morat before her reached up and unbuckled her helmet strap. Slowly, she lowered it from her head, throwing her features into the full light of the moon.
Arwen froze. She could not move. Her breath caught in her throat; she was silenced, the power of speech having been taken from her, as she stared at the mother she had not seen in five hundred years. Celebrian watched her for a long moment too, her eyes perhaps a little too bright; Arwen's own eyes stung and watered with emotion that she could not speak to express.
"Well, daughter?" Celebrian asked tenderly after a time. "Have you nothing to say to me after all these years?"
Arwen swallowed, her lips trembling, then finally managed to whisper, "M—Mother…" She stared at her mother in shock for a long moment, wondering if she was dreaming, then whispered, "Is….is it really you?"
In answer, her mother smiled warmly and held out her arms. And then at that moment, her paralysis broke; Arwen did not hesitate, but went to that embrace, throwing her own arms around her mother's leather-armored body and clinging to her as if she never wanted to let go. "Oh, Mother…." She was on the edge of tears; her mind was reeling from the joy of the reunion, and from the sheer incongruity of her mother turning up here, in the form of a der'morat'raken. "Oh, Mother—how?" she brought out at last blinking back tears and looking up at her. "How—did this happen? What are you doing here? I—"
Celebrian smiled again, and Arwen saw at that moment a single silvery line of moisture reflecting light from her mother's face. "That is a long story, my daughter, too long for me to relate to you now—though perhaps someday I will tell you the full tale." She squeezed her only daughter tightly again. "Suffice it to say," she continued, collecting herself, "that I am here now, and that I have come to offer you a choice."
"A—a choice?" Arwen faltered, though her heart already knew what it would be—and what she would say.
"Yes." Celebrian released her and stepped back, looking at her with compassion. "This is that choice: You may remain with your father, and with Aragorn if that is what you so desire. If that is what you wish, then that is well. Or, you may come with me, with the Ever Victorious Army to start, as we continue on toward Mordor. Once we have overthrown Sauron, then you can return with us to Seanchan and we will see about finding you a life there—if you want, perhaps we can even see that you are accepted as an apprentice morat'raken. It is your choice entirely. Just know, my daughter, that whichever way you choose I am proud of you and love you." And she smiled again at Arwen, her eyes warm.
Arwen did not even need to think; her response was instant. "Take me with you," she said at once. "Take me with you to be a morat'raken. Take me away from here, to Seanchan, where nobody knows that I am the Evenstar. Where I can be whatever I wish, unfettered by the weight of the past. Take me with you."
Her mother looked at her seriously now. "Are you sure, Arwen?" she asked, holding her with an eye. "Seanchan is very different from Middle-Earth, and once you have gone there, you will not be able to return, at least not unchanged. I will not take you unless you are absolutely sure."
"Yes. I am sure," she said at once. "I am sure that this is what I want—I think I have been sure since the moment I met Keille. But—" She paused now, looking worried. "What of Father?"
"I spoke to your father. He is not happy with the situation, but I think he will acquiesce. I am prepared to take you with us. If, that is," she said again, "you are sure—"
"I already said I was, Mother," Arwen responded, meeting her mother's—Celebrian's—Briande's eyes squarely. "I want to go with you, to be a morat'raken—to be anything that will allow me to grow and change and live as it seems mortals do—"
A sudden outpouring of emotion rose up in her, causing her eyes to well up again; feeling suddenly too small to contain her emotions, she embraced her mother again, clasping her hard. Her mother embraced her in return, smiling down at her. So caught up was she that she did not hear the running footsteps announcing Keille Sar's arrival onto the scene.
"Arwen! Arwen! Do you ever run fast, girl!" the short human woman gasped, skidding to a halt as she entered the clearing. "Arwen, are you all right? After you went running off like that I thought—wait—" She stopped as she caught sight of Arwen and her mother together, and frowned. "Am I interrupting something?"
Arwen released her mother and turned toward the daughter of Men she had befriended. "Hello, Keille," she said with a trembling smile. "I am well—I thank you for your concern. I believe I have found the answer to your question, as well."
"My….question….what—Briande!" she said, her eyes moving to the tall figure of the der'morat'raken behind her. "Briande, what are you doing here?"
And Briande smiled and put one hand on Arwen's shoulder. "Why shouldn't I be here?" she asked. "I am Arwen's mother."
Keille stared for a moment, then snapped her fingers. "I knew it!" she said triumphantly. "That was why you were so concerned about returning here, wasn't it? That was why you were so interested in Arwen, and why you've been acting weird around the other Others. I knew it all along!"
The young human's enthusiasm was so infectious that it brought a smile to Arwen's face as well; she gathered her courage and said, "And there is more, Keille." At the human's questioning look, she glanced up at her mother for reassurance, then said, "Mother has just offered to bring me with the Ever Victorious Army when they go back to Seanchan and…and I have agreed. Keille, I—" She faltered, then drew on her courage. "I am going with you. I have chosen the path—I will be a morat'raken."
Keille stared at Arwen for a long moment, then a slow smile spread across her features. "A morat'raken," she said, grinning. "Imagine that! Briande, does this count as a recruiting bonus for me?" she asked, her eyes twinkling.
"I don't think so," Briande replied with a hint of amusement in her tone, "given that I was the one who convinced her to join."
"A morat'raken. Well. Now I've heard it all." Still smiling, she reached out and grasped Arwen's hand, shaking it firmly. "Welcome aboard, Arwen of the Others—Arwen Undomiel?"
"No," Arwen replied. "Simply Arwen….Arwen of the Others," she added with a glance at her mother.
"Arwen of the Others then. Arwen, apprentice morat'raken. That sounds good to me," she said warmly.
Arwen smiled back. "Me too."
"Come on, Briande," Keille said then, grinning up at her der'morat. "Let's go get this new apprentice shaped up."
"Of course," Briande replied. The three women set off then, heading down the stone brick path to the Seanchan encampment.
Elrond sat, still and unmoving, on the terrace where he had spoken with Celebrian—Briande, he corrected himself bitterly. He did not—could not—move. To move would be to move forward, to take some action, to acknowledge and accept what had just happened. To acknowledge the loss of his wife; the impending loss of his daughter—and not to Aragorn, as he had thought. That loss, he had come to terms with; it would be easier to lose her to Aragorn than in this fashion. Aragorn, for all that he was human, was at least part of the world he knew and understood.
You say "my daughter" as you would say "my sword" or "my horse"….Perhaps your desire that she remain as she is is why she chose a mortal life.
The words. The words that Celebrian—Briande, it was Briande, for Celebrian was dead—had thrown at him. They had cut him deeply, and he was assuredly bleeding. Perhaps even to his own death. He could begin, dimly, to see now why some humans considered death to be a mercy. This was something he had never known before. Another new thing to consider, and again, he had the Seanchan to thank for it. So many new things, in such a short time.
He heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to the terrace, and did not bother to turn his head; he knew that they were Aragorn's, for all that they were slow and dragging. He had time to wonder, with black humor, what shock Aragorn had received at the hands of the Seanchan, before the man of the Dunedain entered his sight. His appearance matched Elrond's own inward state; the Doom of Men sat clearly on his shoulders. Elrond could see it in his face; he looked as if he had aged ten years over the course of the last night. Aragorn lifted his eyes, looked at Elrond, and must have received some sort of indication of the Elf's own internal state; he took a seat across from him silently, lowered his eyes to the cracked stones of the terrace, and said nothing.
For a time they sat there, unmoving, unspeaking, as the wind of the night drifted around them, bringing the distant sounds of the Seanchan encampment to their ears. Elrond himself might have gone on sitting so forever, but Aragorn, for all his valor, was only a Man; he was made of lesser stuff. He shifted at last, and spoke, his voice ashes.
"The Ring is destroyed."
Elrond nodded; he had expected nothing else. "How?" he asked, without real interest. "Not in the Cracks of Doom, I take it."
He did not see Aragorn shake his head. "No. The Seanchan used those terrible chained women again….damane, I believe the chained ones are called; the others are—are sul'dam…. Their chief sul'dam—she brought up several damane who 'had very good control with Earth,' whatever that means, as well as 'an affinity for metals.' It was on the North Terrace. It…was not without cost," he said, but did not elaborate in response to Elrond's questioning look. "There was an explosion—"
"The smoke, I would guess," Elrond said grimly, thinking back to a column of smoke he had seen earlier that evening, rising to the north of the grounds.
Aragorn nodded and swallowed. "Two of them were killed in the attempt. But the Ring, the One Ring, it— I—I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it." He ran out of words then, and lapsed into silence.
Elrond shrugged internally. After the destruction of Isengard, nothing that the Seanchan did could surprise him anymore. If High Lady Suroth asserted that they could pull down the sun, he would have believed her. Isengard. Celebrian. Arwen. Imladris. And then, the Ring. The nexus of power that had been a constant presence in his thoughts and plans, that had driven every action he and Galadriel and Gandalf had taken for the past three thousand years, gone in less than a moment, by the actions of these Seanchan—reduced to just one more item in a list of things they had destroyed.
Now Aragorn gave a shuddering sigh and passed a hand over his eyes. "Boromir will go with them," he said in a voice that was slightly unsteady, although it could have been just from fatigue.
Elrond could not summon the energy to speak, but he gave Aragorn a questioning look.
"When they leave for Mordor. Which they will do tomorrow, or the next day at the very latest," Aragorn explained. "They cannot use their doorway until it is a little closer, so High Lady Suroth is making arrangements to move the army. Boromir is with their—their—Ground Captain right now, helping him to organize the move. He was full of wild talk about how—how strong the Seanchan were, and how he was sure now, after having seen them fight at Isengard, that they would be able to accomplish what the Men of Gondor had not been able to for centuries, that they would overthrow Sauron, take Barad-Dur for their own…." He trailed off uselessly, staring down at his hands.
Elrond shrugged again. For something to say, he said, "Perhaps it is for the best. He may be able to fulfill his ambitions there. These Seanchan—they seem to have scope for those afflicted with the curse of Men," he added, and was somewhat troubled, even as he spoke, by the level of bitterness in his voice. And perhaps …it would not be the first time—in the history of Seanchan—that a former da'covale has…become…Empress….
He saw that Aragorn was looking at him strangely, and made some effort to rouse himself from his thoughts. "Are you well?" the man of the Dunedain asked.
"More or less. Perhaps less rather than more," he added bleakly, but did not elaborate in response to the man's questioning look. This pain was too deep, too personal and too strong; there was no way that a Man could understand what it meant to him, to know that his wife was now and forever, truly lost to him.
Or perhaps one could, he mused, for now Aragorn closed his eyes and leaned forward, resting his forehead against his clasped hands. From that position he said stiffly, "Arwen is gone," and then fell silent, his shoulders trembling as he fought for control. Elrond watched him in both sympathy and horror—sympathy, for he could understand what Aragorn felt, and horror, for if Aragorn started weeping Elrond did not know how he himself would be able to hold back from the release of tears.
To forestall this, he said, his voice rough with urgency, "How do you mean, 'gone?' How is she gone?" He knew the answer, or suspected he did, but he had to say something. And—perhaps—he needed or wished to hear the truth, himself, and it would be easier to hear it first not from her but from someone who had loved her as much as he did.
"Gone." Aragorn shrugged helplessly. "I—I met her on the path leading down to the Seanchan encampment," he explained, and as he spoke, it was with the voice of the night, the winds; his words came slowly, haltingly, with long pauses between each as he struggled to find the balance between control and loss. "She had—she had a young Seanchan with her, one of the riders of their flying beasts—two Seanchan, actually, one short, one tall." Elrond winced inwardly, for he could guess who the tall one was. "I spoke to her, demanded to know what she was doing, where she was going with those soldiers, but she would not speak to me; she only looked at me strangely—something had changed in her eyes, I know not what—it was almost as if she—had never seen me before, or something of that sort. I asked her again, and she—she said she was—was going with the Seanchan; I asked her what of us, of our love, and she replied only that she was sorry, but it was over. I couldn't believe it, I….I asked to know why, and she replied—" Here he broke off, apparently too hurt by the memory of her reply to speak further.
"What?"
"She replied," he said now, looking up at Elrond, "that she did not think she had ever truly loved me, but only the idea of what I was; she said….that she thought that with the Seanchan she could find that idea within herself. Do you understand this?"
Elrond only shook his head, slowly. The Seanchan. Again, the Seanchan.
Aragorn looked up at Elrond now, his helplessness revealed in his eyes. "What do we do?" he asked, his voice almost a whisper. "What can we do?"
Elrond could only shake his head. "I do not know," he admitted.
And he did not. He was accounted wise, but his wisdom contained nothing to help him deal with this, with these Seanchan who were so different, so strange from everything he had ever known.
"They will take everything that we have," Aragorn said now, looking at him. "They have taken your daughter, my wife—"
"My wife as well," Elrond murmured and looked away before Aragorn could catch his eye to question him.
"They bring change. They have changed….everything."
Everything….
Five hundred years. He had anticipated his reunion with Celebrian for five hundred years, he mused dimly; had spent the past five centuries looking forward toward the moment when, together at last in the Undying Lands, he would be able to take his wife in his arms again. He had thought of their reunion so often, had imagined it so often—he could even see the details of the dress she wore in his dreams, her long blonde hair streaming unfettered down her back, the enchanting smile that she reserved for him and him alone. In his dreams she was just as she had been when he had last seen her—when they had first met, unchanged, beautiful; he would take her in his arms, and it would be as if no time had passed between them, as if they had never been separated at all.
He had thought—if he had thought at all, he realized bitterly—that he would have her back unchanged—or if anything, changed for the better, with the pain and sorrow brought to her by the orc-dens healed at last. So it had been in his imaginings.
It had never occurred to him that anything else could be the result, he realized now, and was surprised to find himself shocked at his own folly. He had simply assumed that she was waiting for him in the Undying Lands, as static and unmoving as a garden statue. As if she could be reduced to a single image, a single moment frozen in his mind and held that way forever. He had never stopped to think that—that she could, even over the course of five hundred years in a strange new world—forge a life for herself apart from him. And yet she had. Briande Duchen Paendrag had, and so his five hundred years of waiting, enduring, longing, were now worth nothing at all, and all his previous imaginings suddenly seemed to him now nothing more than the pathetic delusions of a weak, misguided fool.
He might have wept, if he had had the strength. But the night had drained his energy and so he could only sit, numbly pondering the wreckage of his hopes.
Perhaps it was for the best, he thought with an inward shrug, and tried to make himself believe it. He could not see how that might be right now, but perhaps….perhaps….He sighed heavily.
"Mordor will fall," he said with a shrug. "There is that at least."
"At least…."
Neither of them could think of anything else to say. The two of them remained, sitting on the cold marble benches in the carefully tended and shaped gardens that Arwen had created three hundred years ago, as the first sliver of the sun crept above the horizon. As a new day dawned over Imladris.
Scissors moved and closed, and with the metallic snip of the shears, a long curl of hair fell away, midnight-black and gleaming and as soft as the finest silk.
"You're going to hate it at first," Keille's voice came from behind Arwen's head; her tone was very matter-of-fact. "That's a guarantee. You're going to absolutely hate it your first year and wonder what in the world ever possessed you to join up; you'll probably cry yourself to sleep every night and dream of getting yourself wounded or injured somehow so that you can honorably get out. I know I did." Another snip, and another lock of hair, added to the growing pile. "Just remember you're supposed to hate it; that's the whole point of the first year. Your der'morats are trying to weed out the ones who are serious and who have what it takes from the silly girls who are just playing at being raken-riders because they like the image. Remember that you're supposed to hate it, that everyone goes through it, and that if you can just hang on through the first year, things get all kinds of better the second year. I used to tell myself, 'The der'morats can intimidate me, they can make me upset, they can even make me cry, but they can't make me quit. Only I can do that.'"
Arwen absorbed this information in pale silence as the scissors moved, shearing her hair away; she had already traded her simple white gown for a spare set of Briande's old flying leathers. She watched the mirror in front of her gravely, as Keille and Briande moved around each other in the interior of Briande's tent; she watched as Keille's scissors moved, transforming her reflected image from that of Arwen Undomiel, the Evenstar of Imladris, into Arwen, Apprentice Morat'Raken of the Ever Victorious Army.
"It may seem too much to absorb at first," said her mother—Briande, Arwen reminded herself, then changed that with a wrench of her mind to Supreme Der'Morat'Raken Briande Duchen Paendrag, her mother's new name with its full title. Briande was gathering up the strands of hair as they fell from Keille's scissors, pulling them idly through her hands. "You can learn it all though, if you work hard and try; the der'morats will never set you a task that is undoable. Others can do it, and you can as well; I managed to learn most of what you will in the first year without any formal lessons, and I was da'covale the whole time. You should save these," she added, her fingers deftly braiding the strands of hair together. "Get a box and keep them; I still have mine somewhere."
"And I," Keille added.
Arwen started to nod, then thought better of it as Keille's scissors snipped again, underneath her left ear.
"They're going to tell you you can't do it," Keille said, remembering. "That was always the hardest part for me, hearing my der'morats tell me they didn't think I could do it. I just told myself that it was my choice and that I chose to prove them wrong. Then when I graduated and was made full morat," she added, grinning at the memory, "Der'morat'raken Henna Tisrek came up to me, shook my hand, and told me that I had been the most promising apprentice morat that she had seen in ten years. That felt really good."
"Will you be with me?" Arwen asked suddenly, turning to look up at Keille and Briande.
The two women stopped and looked at each other, as if caught off guard by the question, then shook their heads slowly. "I am sorry, Arwen," Briande said gently, "but no. The der'morat in charge of all the apprentice morats is Lalei Sin; she will be the one who guides most of your training."
"The whole point," Keille added gently as Arwen dropped her eyes, "is for you to sever any connections to your previous life; that way you can get used to the idea that you are now morat'raken more quickly. I wasn't in contact with my recruiting morat either when I first joined. If the der'morats or the older morats are coming down on you too hard, you can go to Lalei," she offered. "That's what she's there for—it's part of her job, even if she'll never say it to you in so many words. But try not to go to her unless you really have to."
Arwen was silent, her eyes downcast; Keille's scissors moved again, and another long midnight tress fell to the floor. Keille and Briande looked at each other.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Briande asked now, taking her hands and looking directly into her eyes. "You're not enlisted yet, you know. You can still back out if you want to. I'm sure that your father would love to have you back. Aragorn too. It's not too late—just say the word."
Arwen closed her eyes. She was afraid; there was no doubt about that. She had no idea what she was getting into, and she knew that she had no idea. The confines of Middle-Earth were known and safe; her father, her brothers, her gardens, Aragorn; this new world of Seanchan and rakens could be anything.
Known. Safe. Yes, the confines of her life in Middle-Earth were known and safe—and ultimately imprisoning. She saw herself as she had seen herself, going on and on, aging but not growing—content to pile year upon year upon decade upon century, time passing and nothing changing, with tomorrow's tomorrow always and only the same as yesterday's yesterday. She saw herself stiffening, the boundaries of her mind hardening and growing impermeable, thickening year by year until she became like her father—so rigid, so set in her ways that she could not even conceive of doing something that had not been done before. She saw the walls of Imladris closing in on her, the world shrinking to the size of a garden, a house, a room; what was beyond, unknown. If indeed anything was beyond; perhaps after another thousand years or so she would cease even to believe that the outside world existed.
She had been willing to accept death to free herself from that fate. Whatever it was, to be a morat'raken, at least it was not that. Not death.
She swallowed and raised her chin, as Keille sheared the last lock free. Her voice was strong and clear as she spoke.
"I am ready."
Keille and Briande looked at each other; then Briande nodded. "Good. Let's go find Der'Morat Lalei."
FINIS
"My mind's too full of memories, too old to hear new chimes
I'm a part of what was Dublin in the Rare Ould Times…."
-Flogging Molly, "Rare Ould Times," on Drunken Lullabies
