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

With great thanks to Nemis for beta-reading.

The Courtship

Three

"You are hungry," said Estë, pushing a plate across the table towards him.

He was, Elrond realized. But food was out of the question.

On the terrace, the breeze fluttered through the overhanging branches, and a sprinkling of pink petals lay at their feet. He sat outwardly calm, trying to comprehend the words that seemed to flow in the air around his head. The world had, more or less, pieced itself back together, but the minutes still passed with leaden sluggishness.

"The memories will come but gradually, for they have a long passage of years to travel." Estë's words were as gentle raindrops. "The eyes that perceive them will not be the same, but they will come."

She stopped. Elrond felt a familiar stab from inside.

"All the memories," added Estë, in answer to a question he did not ask.

All the memories he had of a previous life. Would they help her? Would they help him? Despite all his controls, a part of his mind was already racing wild through the niphredil-sweet, moon-bright gardens. In their previous life, she would have already unerringly found his presence and answered his cries. But as had been pointed out to him, things were different now.

"Some of the paths, of the past and the present, she will walk with your hand in hers; some paths she will tread alone..."

"You--both of you--have waited long, suffered grief and fears; I will not tell you that you shall never encounter them again in the times to come..."

To one side, he saw Galadriel, who had so far said little, watching him intently, her gaze keen and thoughtful. He knew there were no words with which to reassure her.

"Her body has been newly remade, and it will be the mind that remembers the wounds..."

Body and mind, he repeated voicelessly. There was no speaking of the heart, or of the soul. Could it be possible, Celebrían, that you would love me again?

"The soul is and has always been the same, as it ever shall be," replied Estë, although again he had not asked the question. "But as to the heart I can offer you no advice."

"Yet you make it sound much too fearful, my lady." It was the Master of Dreams that spoken now. Elrond lifted his eyes, and found Irmo considering him kindly, with a half-quizzical expression on his face, and for the first time he caught a glimpse of the real depth of the other's eyes, unfathomable, unimaginable. Still he kept on looking into them.

"She'll be fine, Elrond," said the Vala with a smile. "As will you, I think."

"I would like to see her now." He kept the tremor out of his voice. Mostly.

Irmo grinned. Shifting slightly in his seat, he pointed to a corner of the garden. Looking over, Elrond saw a low gate in the hedge that he had not noticed before, half-open, half-hidden by the shadows, and the beginning of a path that led into the woods.

"She was walking by the lake earlier, I believe." The Vala turned to Estë, a gleam in his eyes. "Was she not, my dear?"

An unseen nightingale was warbling in the trees as Elrond began to make his way down the trail. The voice was soft and wavering, soon becoming lost behind him in the muffled breeze, but after a pause the song would start anew: another singer, trilling on another branch far in front. Perhaps it was the same bird, he thought, following his steps, or calling him on. He was glad of the distraction somehow.

He had been walking all night--or perhaps it had been only a short while--when he saw a pool of silvery-blue moonbeams from an opening in the forest, just ahead. The edge of the canopy revealed a sleepy little stream beneath the heavens, overarched by a tiny wooden bridge. For some reason, his feet slowed as he drew near, as if not yet ready to carry him from the darkness. The nightingale was gone. And then he saw her.

It were the same quick graceful steps, the same crown of moonlight upon her head. She was coming up the path across the stream, coming closer every step. Now he could see her face, the faint smile of her lips, same as he remembered, the brightness of her eyes, blue as he remembered. The pensive expression of those eyes. With an abrupt agitation he realized that he could not recall if that, too, was the same--

To his own shock, he took a step back deeper into the shadows. But at that same instant Celebrían stopped, suddenly and perfectly still. All the twinkling stars of the sky halted with her. Immediately, Elrond knew she was aware of him, as much as she was aware of the night's boundless silence. She must have heard his heart beating. Waiting no longer, he stepped out into the tremulous light.

Celebrían, he wanted to cry out. This moment I never thought would come.

She was standing there motionless, her hand on the railing of the bridge. At his approach, her eyes widened imperceptibly, and she drew in a sharp breath.

"Do not be startled, please," he said quickly.

Her gaze followed him as he stepped onto the bridge. Something passed in them, and he recognized it, with a low pang, as the fleeting cloud of confusion.

"Forgive me," she said at last. Her voice was also the same, except for the hesitation, which he never remembered. "I am afraid that things--do not come easily to me now. There is something that..." She struggled a little with the words. "Something in you, kind sir, that seems familiar to me, somehow. Did we, perhaps, know each other from...past times?"

She was only a few feet away. If he took another step forward he could have touched her. He was going to say it all, say everything, but in the end he could barely nod.

"Yes. We did. From past times. We knew each other."

Facing him, she flushed slightly, but did not look away.

"This is terribly forward of me, I fear. But you were...a friend?"

A friend, a mere friend. You were all of me, Celebrían. You were air and water, bliss, torment, hope, grace, guide. Oh Ríanna!

"Yes, a friend." He took a deep breath. "My name is Elrond," he said.

She smiled, the moonlight on her face both warm and a little unsure. Those blue eyes of hers, which were infinitely familiar and a complete stranger's eyes, were still focused on his face.

"Elrond," she repeated slowly, almost inaudibly. Or maybe she had not really whispered the name, and it had been his imagination only. "And my name--but my name you know already, of course."

He nodded again.

"It is Celebrían," she added anyway.

A pause followed, awkward and complicated. It came to Elrond that despite everything he had no idea what to say next. She could disappear like a dream again. But no. She was here in front of his eyes, in the middle of this forest, in the depth of this luminous night. They were staring at each other like tongue-tied children. With the practice of five hundred years and more, he thrust back the ache.

"My lady. Celebrían." He had to pronounce that name no matter how badly his voice betrayed him. "We were friends in the past, and all my heart wishes that we shall be, again. If you will allow me."

"I am glad of that, lord," she said gently.

Oh, the eyes. The light of her eyes was definitely the same as he remembered.

"It is late." He knew he was trying to smile, and this time, he thought that he managed it. "We should get back."

"Oh, yes, of course." Celebrían, too, seemed to come out of her reverie. As they stepped away from the bridge, out of instinct or kindness or perhaps mere courtesy, she laid her hand lightly on his arm.

The touch was like lightning, and for a moment his overwhelming and only impulse was to pull her into his arms. It was so simple and so obvious a thing. He could not have counted the times...But at his sudden tension Celebrían pulled back slightly, embarrassed, breaking the contact. With a swift movement he caught her hand.

"Please," he murmured.

She glanced up, meeting his gaze, and for the rest of the walk back to the house her hand remained warm on his arm, and his hand on top of hers. They did not exchange many words, but the silence softened and filled out between them, without either of them fully noticing it. Soon, the dim and dappled woods gave way to the gardens, then to the lamps of the house. At the door of her room, Celebrían turned to bid him good night.

But at that same instant, as she looked upon Elrond the mingled light of moon and candles fell across his face, and something made her heart rise suddenly to her throat. For a breath-time, she sensed the clamouring pressure of countless words, just beyond her reach, and he was stunningly and marvellously close. She almost cried out, despite that she knew not how, but in another heartbeat the feeling faded, and the man before her was simply not quite a stranger again.

"Thank you. Good night," she whispered, taking a small step back into the room, trying to regain her composure.

"Good night, my lady," Elrond replied, voice nearly as low as hers. Slowly, he turned away.

Varda's stars, as brilliant as hope and more numerous than tears, set the firmament ablaze. There were no more voices in the garden, not from the shadows, nor the flickering fountains, nor the nightingales hidden on green-quilted boughs. But the voices of memory rose and called and multiplied a thousandfold, as a son of Middle-earth wandered upon the edge of agony and exultation, in the night fragrant with niphredil and early lilies, Valinor's blessed night.

He watched the house, counting the windows, careful to keep hers--there, third from the left, that would be hers, with the wide balcony and the tangle of creepers--always within sight. It was unlit now, but he felt that she, too, must still be awake. It was she, Celebrían, with that glance, that smile, that way she turned her head, that way her hand touched his arm. He recognized everything and nothing at all. How could anything possibly remain? How could she possibly ever be the same, after such a count of days, nights, years, shadows? After such a death as that she had endured?

But she would remember, wouldn't she? She would, maybe, come to remember him, and remember that time, just before the War, when they had stood holding hands for so much longer than they had known. Remember--maybe, maybe--those words that she had spoken, that time, which had burned so deeply into him that they went down to his bones. He could repeat them now, but she could not. And the embraces, the not-yet-one age of bliss, Elladan and Elrohir, and...Arwen.

And then she would remember the end. The stench of orcs and the firebrands. The jagged, black-bladed knives. And the blood. She had been so alone.

And then...

The night mellowed, enveloping the world in deep velvet draperies. The forest and the lake slept; the house slept. But the stars, the profuse and insistent stars all kept on asking, asking, asking the same questions, to which the over-brimming soul, though long accounted wise and by many, had not a single reply to offer.

Note: The term ríanna is a Quenya cognate of the Sindarin rían due to Vicente Velasco. ("Ríanna" by Vicente Velasco, Ardalambion.)