"Once you meet someone, you never really forget them." --Zeniba, Spirited Away

Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Rings or any characters and/or places thereof

The sky darkened. Thick clouds of steel hung across the moon, obscuring the light, yet I saw all. Imladris was quiet. Not a breath of air disturbed the trees, but they did move themselves, venturing forth to whisper to one another, wondering at the presence. I felt it, too, heavy and oppressive, like a chill humidity. Rumors rose as a fine mist from the streams and rivers. Something was coming.

The howl of a wolf split the night in two. I raised my voice to the heavens in respond, crying that I felt an evil inescapable, and saw my death. Before I spoke the words I could not have called them truth. My hackles rose, and I bared my teeth. It approached. Something in the night, the decreasing temperature or the thickening fog, made me yap and whine.

I broke into a run. Suddenly, without warning or thought, I leapt, and on all fours raced through the forest. I was not human but wolf-kind, bounding on shaggy paws, my tongue dripping saliva from between my jaws. In a clearing I paused, and turned to look behind me. My fur stood on end. A great gust of wind blew the clouds from the moon, shedding blinding light over the world, and then I saw it, coming ever closer, and knew I could not escape. I turned and ran anyway, refusing to succumb, putting forth all my strength. Leaves and twigs flew past me.

I dared a look back, and saw that my doom only half a wingbeat behind me. Even as I ran, a gush of air told me how close the predator came. I felt its claws bury themselves in my flesh, warm blood seeping from beneath my skin to mat my fur. There was a snap as of bone breaking, and flashes of color brighter than the sun filled my vision...

"No!" With a gasp I awoke and sat bolt upright, clutching the quilt to my chest as though cloth alone would save me from the evil and fear already fading from my mind. A thick layer of sweat coated my body. My shift was soaked through, and stuck like clay to my skin. The sheets, too, had been drenched. For a moment, the looks of things made me wonder if I had not wet the bed. 'No,' I reminded myself, 'that is something I have not done in decades!' Nevertheless, I inhaled deeply to be certain. Only the smell of sweat tickled my nose.

I rose and went to the window. Beads of condensed sweat from my shift rain down my legs, a blissful cool in the blistering night. I threw open the window and thrust my head into the night, experiencing not a rush of cold but one of thick tendrils of oppression clamping themselves around my body. The trees hardly moved in the still night, and this frightened me some, although the stars were clear and I knew not to expect wind. Summer was come again to Imladris.

I was seventeen years old at the time, but had never experienced any need, any competitive drive, to act older than my years. Therefore I had no second thoughts on tiptoeing from my cell and down the corridor to my parents' room. More fear gripped me than embarrassment. I wanted my parents to drive away the nightmare, as only they could.

Yet I could not wake them. In all their years together my parents slept in the same bed. I observed them at seventeen years, asleep, wound about one another. They held each other, their heads side by side on the pillow, gold and ebony mingling together. In her sleep, Celebrían's smile danced. Her eyes were dull, but not fearfully, not dull for anything but a lack of expression. Elrond smiled not, but nor did he frown. He simply was.

The lack of expression in Nana's eyes parted way to a senseless happiness, as a little girl may giggle as she watches her feet imitating pendulums. Nana took to happiness as a fish to water. Ada, however, is by default not happy. This is not to say that he is unhappy. My father's happiness has always been somewhat subdued: he will smile, and laugh, and oft times does for little or no reason, but happiness does not overwhelm him. He is contained, as one encased in ice is contained, in peace and calm. In a way, they are perfect for one another, Ada and Nana. She feels happiness as an ocean within her, bottomless and powerful. He feels sorrow as the blood pumping in his veins, an intrinsic and delicate balance. Ada sinks in his ocean, and sometimes it seems only Nana can save him with her buoyancy.

I leaned against the doorjamb, watching the light fall gently over my sleeping parents. The rhythmic rise and fall of their chests, the basic sign of life, soothed my soul to observe, and I found myself smiling so light a smile it might have walked on air. I tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear and brushed a bead of sweat from its tickling position in a trap of flesh on my knee, all the while keeping my eyes upon the graceful forms from which, I realized without a doubt, I was sprung. I imagined Elladan or Elrohir coming, felt their warm touch upon my shoulder and shared the moment of peace and love with them. No one came. After a time Nana shifted in her sleep, and Ada's icy peace melted in favor of turmoil, and I slipped away.

..

I found Glorfindel in the stables later that day, and stood silently until he acknowledged my presence. The day was young and the sun shone brightly. All around me the air was heavy with the sweat and manure of horses. Glorfindel raked a pitchfork across the wood shavings in an empty stall, cleaning it. He seemed quite the quaint farmer when observed at this task, not the clean-and-prim politician I often saw.

"What do you seek?" he asked without so much as looking at me.

"Only answers," I replied, "if I may request them." He duly agreed. I took a deep breath to calm my butterfly-heart and scrape together my courage. Fear coursed like a serpent through my belly, and I wondered if I feared the questions or their answers more. "Why do you not like me?" I asked at last.

"Arwen--"

"No." I covered my mouth, embarrassed. I should not have interrupted him, but his tone was one of mollifying resignation. "Please. How may a person improve when kept in darkness to his flaws? Help me grow, Glorfindel."

He paused for a moment, and I held my breath. Mercies let him answer honestly! I thought. Glorfindel turned and regarded me calmly. For all my earlier preparations, I felt naked and insufficient. Likely Glorfindel saw the effort put into the conservative choice of garments and braids, the pathetic hope raw in my eyes. "You were always something of a flittery child, stubborn only in your refusal to study. Your disrespect for the ancient heroes irked me."

He respected those heroes greatly: I heard it in his tone. I did not disrespect them, I thought, and wished to say, then I realized that I had: in oft pronouncing their stories boring and agèd to a point of uselessness, I had greatly disrespected Glorfindel's heroes. I bit my tongue and endured his further criticism.

"As you grew into something of an immoral woman, hardly one step below a chit, you cast a very poor reflection upon your parents. This in particular bothered me. They brought you into this world and you all but slandered their names."

Tears welled in my eyes and I wanted to cry that it was a lie, I had never done such a thing! But how could I say this when I knew that Glorfindel spoke the truth and I had cast such a reflection upon my parents. Therefore I bit my tongue again and banked my tears.

"Then you tried to kill yourself." No one had ever spoken to me so bluntly before. I felt salt tears biting the soft flesh of my eyes, and could not stop them. Glorfindel continued, "After that...there was no forgiveness in my heart. " I loved him; I hated him. "You were not just a bad person, you were not only disrespecting your family, you were spitting on your customs. You offended every Elf living or no." I wanted to explain, make him understand that I never meant to die, but I bit my lip. Still Glorfindel spoke on, "Truth to be told, Arwen, by that point I had given up on you. You showed no promise, no goodness. I believed, truly saw, whence Orcs came."

I cried, in private, because I knew he spoke the truth. The words of Glorfindel's speech were also in my heart, which made them each more painful than any lie. When I finished crying, I dried my eyes and looked at the shadows. I was nearly late meeting Elladan, and my repost needed work.

For the next year I worked harder than ever. I emptied my heart and soul, channeled everything inside of me and bent my mind to work. With uncanny dedication I learned to darn and embroider, to sew a straight stream and tat rediculously delicate lace. I progressed in the warriors' arts, learned to bend and string a bow, and though I would never equal Elladan or Elrohir in skill my marksmanship improved. My blocks and lunges grew more meaningful. And, as my skills improved, I thought better of myself. Day by day, week by week, I found myself more able to hold up my head.

One day, as the snows fell, Celebrían took my hands in hers. "Darling, I do not know what has happened to you," she said, "but you are changed."

"Nana, say that I am changed for the better!" I cried, needed to know that she was pleased.

"I am so proud of you," she said. Celebrían understood everything.

Yet something stirred ill in my heart, some door yet open to let in every wild beast. At night I lay awake in bed and searched, but could not find that door. I felt I held the key in my palm, and it seared my flesh. In time I came to accept the pain, and grew accustomed to my door. Then one day in late spring, quite by chance, that door was blown wide open, and at last I knew.

He came to visit my brothers. I watched them embrace, a sloppy gesture, then race off and disappear, wrestling and tossling, into the trees. My eyes lingered on the swinging branches, disrupted by three rowdy elf-boys one would never know for adults, and Celebrían wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "I..." Swallowing, I pushed a tear away from my eye and bent to work. "I haven't the time for such antics, anyway."

"Some of us, darling, simply were not made for happiness."

"What?" I looked in wonder to my mother, who looked with a wistful sort of docile pout to the horizon. "Nana, what are you talking about?"

She shook her head. "I never understood until you...My mother once said to me, that some of us were not made for happiness. I had asked her why she cried at night--and she did, often as not. Such was her answer."

Honestly, I answered, "You are for happiness, Nana."

"Yes, but yours is not such a temperament."

For a long while we continued in silence. At first I was angry with her, wondering why she had to go and do that, tear us apart so just when--I felt- -we were beginning to understand each other. Just when we started to truly know each other. Could she possibly have missed the happiness of the past few months, the incredible wonder of...of being mother and daughter? I enjoyed every second of it, every agony. Yet it seemed Celebrían had not noticed at all!

My imagination may have saved me, but in later years I came to consider it a gift from the Lady. I saw my mother as a young girl, trying terribly hard to be unhappy and defeated. She struggled to be like her mother, wishing more than anything to be loved. She was loved, though, and she knew it. It wasn't enough. Why, she asked herself, can I not take this love for what it is? Why can I not be pleased and simply return it? That moment, she was truly defeated. She hated it so! She raged against it in a tumult of smiles, jokes and laughter. She refused to be unhappy! Celebrían accepted that she was not like to her mother, and set herself free.

"The greatest gift is peace, and you can only give it to yourself."

I am uncertain which of us said this, but I know that it is true.

Approaching Legolas, I was not afraid. I knew what I had to do, and preferred to work towards a friendship with him or accept a refined enmity than to be so uncertain. Therefore it was not courage so much as...is there any word in this clumsy tongue? Nay, there is none but crude insufficiencies. They say brass, sand, balls, and none means, truly, that deep-down feeling of being filled by emptiness to attack an enemy without caring the result of the battle.

I frightened him, I think, in laying out the set so blatantly. "This cannot continue, this eyes-sliding-over-each-other, this formal-and-public relationship. I seek to make amends for the past. Accept my apology or do not, and let it all be done."

He stared at me, wide-eyed. I had cornered him in a corridor, not the best of locations, but rarely had I any chance to see him in private, and so jumped at the privilege. "Arwen..." He bought time for himself. "Must we decide this now?"

"Yes."

Sadly he shook his head. "You cannot force friendship, Arwen."

I nodded, not agreeing but accepting. "Then let us agree that we are not friends."

We shook hands, and the deed was done. Over the next few centuries we did build something of an acceptance for one another, but neither of us called it friendship, and neither took the next step to forming a true camaraderie. That quiet, secret evening in the corridor was a stolen ending and the beginning of a true freedom.

To be continued