Chapter 2
It was late, now. Through the eastern window, she could see the dark outlines of the mountains , silhouetted against a sky full of stars that shone brighter than she had ever dared to imagine before.
She did not even experience a hint of tiredness, though. It was another difference with her old life, in which a sleepless night spent in the scriptorium would always require payment the following day. Even her own body seemed alien here, be it more powerfull and enduring, but alien nevertheless. The changes wrought upon her mind and body by the proximity of the Powers in this land still frightened her.
With a sigh, she bent over the blank scroll in front of her once more. The task at hand was a difficult one, and she wanted to make at least a beginning with it before retiring. Her husband had come in to check on her earlier, but he had immediately recognised the mood she was in now, and left her to her own devices with only the information in which room he would be sleeping. There would be a warm bed waiting when she decided to come out of her melancholic isolation. She did not dare admit to herself how much comfort that was.
Even the beginning was difficult. Where had it all begun? It seemed egocentric to start a story with one's own birth, but then, she could think of no other point in time to make a coherent start with her story. And so she wrote:
'I was born in Imladris, many years after the siege of the Dark Land had come to its dramatic end. My parents were an exceptional pair in many ways, but according to what I've been told, they were also exceptionally happy. My father is very old. Born a Noldor in First-Age Gondolin, he managed to survive not only the fall of that city, but also the sack of the Havens, the War of Wrath and, much later, Dagorlad. In the court of Lindon, he came to be a close friend and, later, advisor to Lord Elrond, and thus entered the Peredhels service after the tragic fall of his King.
My mother was much younger. Born and raised in Ost-in-Edhil, to a partially Sindar family, she was a student of my fathers when they fell in love. A student at the school of the Word-Smiths, that is. Both my parents were scholars, in those days, though my father was, and still is, pretty much of a warrior too, be it not of his own volition. My mother has never had any love for or interest in the trade of arms. She came to rue that afterwards.
I will not speak here of my family's suffering at the fall of Eregion, or their decision, after the War, to live in the Hidden Valley, in Lord Elronds service. Not because it would be irrelevant, but because I feel it is a story better told by themselves.
I have very little memories of my early childhood now, and at the time when the main part of this story took place, I had next to none. I later reconstructed parts of the puzzle that is my childhood from stories of others, and the reacquaintance with once familiar surroundings. But it took the recent reunion with my mother to wrap it all up. In those days, my mother befriended the Lady Celebrian, wife of Lord Elrond. Had Imladris been a proper court, one might have considered my mother a lady-in-waiting. She often rode out with her, and, one winter day, about two hundred years after the birth of the Lady Arwen, Lady Celebrian decided, as she did often, to visit her homeland, the woods of Lothlorien. My mother and several other ladies of Imladris were invited along, and were happy to oblige, for the woodland was renowned for its beauty, even in winter, and my mother had Sindarin relatives of her own to visit there. More in particular, she wanted to introduce her ten-year-old daughter to them for the first time. My father was not to come along, for he was to assist Lord Elrond in matters of state.
I have been told that it was a merry party that left Imladris that fatefull morning, in spite of Lord Elronds feeling of foreboding. There were many nissi and elflings among them. Too many, it would turn out. There is no need for me to recount the events of that trip. You know them all too well. Again, I have no firsthand memories from it, although some came back to haunt my dreams later on. Let me tell you wath the search parties, from both Lothlorien and Imladris, found on the pass. The bodies of all travellers, save Lady Celebrians and those of three female elflings. The neri had all died in the battle, the male elflings had simply been finished off, and most nissi, including my mother, had died in the particular way that is unimaginable to those here in Aman. As I said, the Lady was not among them. She was later rescued from the Orc den. Of the Elflings, there was no trace.
What happened to us in the first three months after the attack, I do not know. I must have been taken across the mountains and the great river, to end up on the slave market of Nurnen. By which route and why, are still mysteries. The most likely course of events is that the attack on the Elvish company was carried out by a combined force of men from Dunland and Orcs. The Dunlandings were slave traders, and it is not unlikely that I have been sold a couple of times over my strange trajectory. I do not remember what happened to my unlucky companions. Whether we were separated by our new owners first, or they simply faded and died where I did not, I do not know. Neither do I know why it was me who had to survive that dark ordeal. Maybe because I was the only one too young to understand the facts of the matter, and still childlike enough to be pampered by some wild woman .'
She laid down the pen, and read the text over. It seemed written by another hand. Impersonal and devoid of emotion. She imagined the reactions of her future Valinorean public to it. Compassion was the only thing that sprung to mind. She felt the urge to add something to counter that emotion. Sad tales from the east were told here in such abundance that some elves of Western birth had taken to treating the new arrivals as if they were made of porcelain. She did not desire such patronising form the elves who were to be her fellow scholars here.
'I have since been told many times, and by many Elves, that all would have been better had I followed both other elflings to Nàmo's Halls. The remark has always greatly angered me. It was an evil deed, and much grief has come from it, but also many good things, and in hindsight, I am certain that I do not regret the course of events. My life would have been lesser without them.'
She smiled at the thought of sparking controverse with that remark. The idea that anything worthy of remembrance could come from contact with the Secondborn was still rather revolutionary here, even after Lord Elronds arrival with the tales of the War of the Ring. Perhaps even this would help his sake, be it a little.
Outside, first light had crept into what was visible of the eastern sky. It was of a transparant pale blue that reminded her very much of Imladris. She would be able to sleep with this image in mind, she thought. Not even bothering to straw sand on the drying manuscript, she rose swiflty and walked through the awakening house, her mind filled with consoling images of blue light on mountaintops, and the warm body of her husband in a soft bed.