Disclaimer: All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.

Great thanks to Nemis for beta-reading.

The Courtship

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Two

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For a long time, she was endless and empty, and her eyes held only the reflections of passing clouds. A low gentle sound washed over her, a constant crooning of innumerable voices, or perhaps of one voice only. She knew naught but a vast, slow peace.

Gradually, she realized that her eyes were open. She was staring at something above, immense and very, very far away. It was transparent, and blue.

Blue. Perfectly, burningly blue. Infinitely blue.

The sky.

All around her--the low voices, calling, flowing, cradling. It was the sound of the breeze amid leaves and branches.

It was the sound of her breath.

She was lying on her back, arms outspread, the ground tender and fragrant beneath her. With an effort, she shifted slightly, turning her head. The tips of her fingers closed upon the small delicate things that were brushing so softly against her hand. Blades of grass, and tiny white flowers.

And suddenly, in a blazing instant, the sunlight burst into wild conflagrations in every direction, and her pulse turned to a pounding storm. A gasping cry clenched at her throat. The air, blindingly bright, shattered about her like glass. Struggling, she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her body shook and would not stop shaking. Heedless of both the chill of the wind on her skin and the new, terrifying sensation of her own weight, she braced her arms against the green earth, and scrambled madly to her feet.

Almost immediately, her knees turned to water. She swayed, lost her balance. But at that moment a pair of hands, previously unseen, reached out to her and caught her under the arms.

"Do not be afraid."

The voice was soothing in her ears, and though she still shivered, the world slowly stopped spinning. She found herself staring into a face beautiful as the dawn, framed in deep falling gold. A pair of grey eyes met her gaze, and took her heart, for they were brimming with tears--tears of grief, yet also flashing with a fierce, powerful joy.

"There, there, my child...Put your hands on my arms..."

A cloak was thrown around her bare shoulders. Half-leaning against the other woman, she stood steady at last. A patch of sun ringed them upon the fair grass, and a circle of trees with upswept, blossom-clad boughs.

"Thank--you," she managed, after some difficulty.

Tears gleamed in lovely grey eyes, and the golden-haired woman pulled her closer. She was trembling a little.

"Dear child." The whispered words came like caresses. "Celebrían..."

She caught a breath at the sound of the last word. "Celebrían..." she repeated slowly. It felt right. It felt like some warm glowing thing within her. Celebrían. Celebrían.

"That is...my name?"

Yet even as the words were on her lips, it seemed to her that the ground was again slipping under her feet. Her name, and--nothing. She was clinging onto the glimmering word. But beyond the small flicker of light there was only black space.

"Yes, yes, Celebrían, it is your name, it is you..."

The beautiful lady smiled, touching her face lightly. The day was brilliant all around them, and somehow the fear began to recede. Together, they walked out from the sun-drenched meadow, and passed through the woods along a grassy, winding path, until at last they came to the shore of a great lake, bright-scaled and calm, and a fair house set upon the shore amid fountains and murmuring groves. There, she was clad in fresh white raiments, and a gentle dark-headed maiden brought her food and drink. She discovered that she was ravenous. The lady with golden hair remained with her, and never, not for even an instant, did the gaze of those grey eyes leave her face. Grateful, Celebrían reached up and caught her by the hand.

"My lady..."

She left the questions to the air. The other woman drew in a quick breath, hesitant and seemingly struggling with some suppressed emotion, and for a brief moment a strange sensation of lightness fell upon Celebrían, a faint stirring of something far away and familiar, of swift rivers beneath a canopy of shining trees, and a young voice laughing. Yet in the space of a single breath, it was gone, and there was nothing but roiling emptiness once again. Abruptly, her heart twisted with shame, and she lowered her eyes. But then she felt the touch of lips upon her brow, as loving as all the dreams and memories that could have been, all the wonders lost to the shadows.

"My name is Galadriel," said the golden-haired woman softly.

In the days that followed, Celebrían walked upon the sands along the lake's edge, and through the gardens in the light of the morning. She looked at the green vines tangled against the walls and the gates of the house, and at the intricate ever-shifting foliage against the spring sky. She looked at the open waters and at the myriad stars of the night. She looked at the gaping gulf between the living, burgeoning air of the present and the blankness of her past--for surely, surely there must have been a past--and a restless fear welled up within her.

At times, she was suspended over that gulf, the vertiginous abyss, and vast cold distances opened up beneath her. At other times, she was filled with a strange, bubbling gladness that ran warm and clear like a stream through the blood of her body. At times it seemed that the waves would part, and there would be a brief impression, a possibility of remembrance, a moment of sorrow. Towards these shimmering things she would stretch out her hands, only to watch them slip between her fingers and vanish once more into the depths. But not always. Once, she found herself clasping close the taste of a berry, fresh and sweet out of another day in another land--out of her youth. Once, it was the touch of cool, smooth fabric against the skin of her arms, but though she racked her mind she could not find out whence it had come. A snatch of song. An ephemeral minute of childhood. She hoarded the precious flotsam as if they were jewels.

She stood before the mirror, and saw a tall slender woman with fair features and strong, lithe limbs; long silver hair lay like glistening water on her shoulders. Her eyes were blue. And all of a sudden her heart was heavy with a tremendous ache, for the incompleteness of it all, for the unknown something missing in the image, the something--someone?--missing in her. She leaned close into the mirror, staring and searching hard, but the reflection had no more answers than she.

In a room of the house there stood a harp. Tentatively, she put her hands on it, and her fingers remembered the strings. She plucked a note, then another. The sound was like the movement of a gentle breeze, and out of the breeze a chord lingered with her. Slowly, there emerged the beginning of a melody, a lone voice that stirred and wavered, rising just a few steps, then turning in melancholy, dipping low. But it ended there, a key for which she had no door. For several days, she played the phrase again and again, though the next one never followed.

In the malinornë forest behind the house, the clustered flowers were a ceiling of pale gold, and the leaves fell like rain. She stood in the rain, as an impossible happiness descended upon her, and she began to run, weaving among the majestic grey trunks, through the dappling shade. She was a small child running through a different forest of malinorni, and well-loved voices were calling out to her.

The silent gardens, the lowering twilight. Fleetingly it seemed that she caught sight of another little girl with hair as dark as the deep evening, smiling radiantly, skipping down the steps. It was both a memory and a sweet, clear vision. She longed to go to that child, but the mirage soon faded, and without knowing why, tears started in her eyes.

Often, Galadriel walked with her, or sat with her in the sleepless nights. They spoke of the names of trees and flowers, or of the flying birds and the constellations. More than once, Celebrían caught herself struggling with the questions that clamoured on the tip of her tongue, of who she had been, what had happened to her, of the glinting shards of her own self and the wide-torn gaps, yet she spoke no word, though her chest constricted with the terror of asking and the frustration of not knowing. But these feelings would pass as she looked into the older woman's eyes, for there was a light in them that comforted her, and told her there was no need to fear now, and hope in waiting.

One day, she went alone from the house and wandered through the forest, arriving at last to a narrow inlet of the lake, secluded among the green shadows. Sitting on the shore, she watched the afternoon light lengthen over the lapping waves. And as the sun was just setting, it seemed that before her eyes the inlet widened out to an endless expanse, and a memory stole upon her, to carry her across an age of the world.

She had been a young Elf-girl of twenty, and it was her first visit to the sea. Her parents walked hand in hand along the beach, but she sprinted on ahead upon the snowy sand.

"Don't run out of sight, Celebrían!"

She spun around, laughing, and waved at the white-clad figures far behind, down the beach.

"I won't, Naneth!"

The clouds raced across the open sky. She kept on running, racing with them, while the strong rhythmic breakers embraced her feet...

When she returned again, she was smiling. The dusk had long since passed, and moonlight was rippling on the waters. Rising to her feet, she turned quietly away from the lake, and began to retrace her steps up the path, back to the house. The smile remained on her face as she went, and her gaze was pensive.

Halfway through the woods, there was a small stream lying across the trail, singing softly beneath the stars. As Celebrían stepped onto the little footbridge over the stream, she stopped abruptly.

Something was different; someone was there across the stream, though she could not yet see him. A presence was reaching out to her from the shadows, inexplicable, like a long low note, the phrase of music that she could not recall. She stood there on the bridge, absolutely still, peering into the darkness, and her heart leapt like a wild doe.