With great thanks to Nemis, and also my very deep apologies for the long delay.
The Courtship
Nine
They were draped with new sunbeams, and the morning dew was in their hair. They seemed as young and innocent as children to Galadriel's eyes as she rose to greet them, yet it could have only been a trick of the light.
"Will you let me speak to Elrond for a while, dearest?"
Celebrían hesitated, but only for an almost imperceptible instant.
"About me, Naneth?" she asked lightly, seemingly in jest. But Galadriel could not help noticing that she had taken another step forward, as if by instinct, and was now standing between Elrond and her mother.
"Sell-nîn, please," began Galadriel.
"Celebrían--"
"Elrond has been nothing but extraordinarily generous in all his words and deeds," said Celebrían quickly, remaining in the same spot. "And though we talked of many things he has told me nothing that--"
"It's all right, Celebrían," murmured Elrond needlessly.
"Nothing that my heart was unprepared to receive."
Elrond drew in a sharp breath. Something in her daughter's words caught Galadriel by surprise, though it never should have. The revelation of what must have been spoken between them in the night flashed upon her--with a twinge of fear, despite herself.
"I have known Elrond since well before your birth, you know, and I will not eat him," she said with a grin. "I will return him to you soon and completely unharmed, I promise."
Celebrían's gaze went from one of them to the other. She did not laugh.
"What happened at my death?" she asked. The question was out of nowhere but in an even voice, addressed to both. "What was it, that you need to tread so cautiously around me?"
"You remember it?"
"That I died? It is clear, is it not?" Celebrían spun to face Elrond. But it took only a moment for her to relent; his eyes looked frankly stricken. "I do not remember it--not the thing itself, not yet. But I know. I know that it must have been in a lightless place. I know that I must have been in pain." Her voice grew softer. "But I do not think that I am such a fragile thing. Not anymore."
Galadriel felt something twisting within her breast, a little more tightly with each of her daughter's words. But she had to hold her ground.
"I do not believe it was you that grew fragile, my child."
Slowly, Celebrían let out a long breath, almost a sigh. She nodded.
"I'll be nearby, Naneth," she said.
She reached to Elrond and touched him lightly on the arm, to all appearances nothing more than what would have been unremarkable between mere friends. Then she came over and embraced her mother, her arms tightening for several breaths as if trying to prove how solid and real she was. Galadriel wanted to hold on and never let go again, but the moment passed, and Celebrían pulled away gently. She paused as if about to speak, but then appeared to have thought the better of it. She walked away from them toward the house.
By now the garden was already flooded over with white sunlight. Elrond crossed to the fountain, and they sat down next to each other. He waited for her to begin.
"It's happening too fast."
It was not quite the opening that she had prepared. Patiently, he kept waiting.
"Her sojourn in Mandos was not a long one, given the...way of her death."
Elrond glanced up at her sharply.
"Do you mean that she was not ready?"
"If she has returned then she must have been ready. Or so I have been told," said Galadriel. Yet even as she was repeating Irmo's words she was once more troubled by them. A Vala's logic indeed. "Yet I cannot but wish that she be fully fortified with life before the knowledge of torment and death returns to her also." She debated with herself for an instant, then added, "And I cannot but wish that I knew how to keep her heart from breaking."
Elrond did not reply immediately, staring away into the distance. Finally he said, very quietly,
"It was not her heart that was broken."
"No, ion-nîn, not her heart." For the first time in a long, long while, she found herself struggling for words. "But what of yours?"
Elrond could not answer her, but he did not need to. Although neither spoke of it both of them recalled her first question to him, back when he had just arrived at the Gardens.
"You are the one for whom I fear, ion-nîn."
"It is not only for me you fear." His voice was matter-of-fact and still very quiet. "For all the memories of Elvendom there are no foregone conclusions. For all the love in Arda our own demons are still too precious to let go. You see the path before her, as dangerous as back when she was young and just beginning to take notice of a man who was too guarded, too solitary, too heavy in the soul. More dangerous than ever."
What could she say to him that had not already been said in the last three yéni and half, while the clouds gathered over Middle-earth and the storm broke? Only that there could come a day when they would sit together by Lake Lórellin, speaking in such paltry and halting words of Celebrían, who was so near that they--both of them--could sense her presence, barely beyond the consciousness of their minds. So she only answered honestly, "Yes."
For a while neither of the two spoke. The light of Valinor fell dancing before Galadriel's eyes, brilliant and pure and grown so unfamiliar since the time of her own youth. The air was utterly still except for the distant whispering of the waters.
"I don't know how to do this."
Elrond turned his head and studied her face hard, brows furrowed, but if he was startled by the confession he did not show it otherwise. Something about his countenance reminded Galadriel suddenly of the first time she'd seen him, on the Isle of Balar at the end of the First Age. He had been little more than a boy at the time, yet she had been struck by the look of his eyes, how watchful and wary they had seemed.
"My lady, once upon a time many years ago, you told me something of Celebrían." She could tell he was choosing each word with care. "You told me that she would carry burdens meant for others, for that was the way of her heart. Yet you rued the thought that it might have been decreed to her by fate also."
Yes, that had been many years ago, after the first war in Eregion, after Imladris. Without warning, there flashed across Galadriel's mind an image of her daughter, maidenly and aglow, in flawless detail down to the strand of glinting hair fluttering against her face in the sea-wind. The day was fading over Edhellond in a last bloom of rosy twilight, but out on the balcony Celebrían, engrossed in her writing, had lit no lamps. The nib of her quill scratching the thick sheaf of parchment in soundless concentration. She stopped awhile, biting her lips in thought, then dipped the quill into the inkwell to begin yet another fresh page. A letter, even back then Galadriel knew right away, though she stood gazing at her daughter across the beach. The courier was to depart for Imladris in the morning.
"And I recall my own reply at the time," continued Elrond with a short, half-hearted laugh. Though the vision was fleeting he must have caught a glimpse of it too, through her eyes. "I promised you--promised her--all of Endorë and all of Aman, and then the Two Trees and each one of Varda's own stars into the bargain. I spoke every kind of wild words, yet I spoke nothing but the mere truth. I want to repeat all those promises to you right now, this very moment, but how can I, when I have already failed them? I want to simply tell you that all her pain and sorrows are gone and in the past, and that I will bring her nothing but joy, but how I, after all that has happened? How can it be that--"
"Elrond," said Galadriel, laying a hand lightly on his arm. He stopped in mid-sentence, and for the space of a single heartbeat it was again the wary-eyed youth from Balar who met her gaze. "There was a time when I wished to hear all the reassuring words from you. But now I see her..." She shook her head, not saying whether that time had been an age and half ago or this morning. "I see now truly that it is in her own strength that we must trust. You do not need to give me assurances. Not any more."
Elrond let out a slow breath. He did not look away.
"Well, good." Another short laugh, but his voice was not quite in jest. "Because I cannot give you any. Not really."
"Forgive me. Ever since I came here I have felt so--weak." She left the rest of her confession to the glimmering silence of the air. "I would have trusted you with the fate the world," she said at last.
"I know." Elrond grinned, though only faintly. Then after a pause, "You did."
Off in the sky, a lark began to trill, its flight of notes as glorious as the day. Galadriel felt a moment of wordless rapport pass between them, and her heart lifted, if only for a brief while. As if of its own accord, her mind returned to the years flowing like sand, three ages of Endorë with all their weights and shadows. But everything was different now.
"At times, Elrond, it appears to me that the weight of time has fallen from her, and she is again as young as the girl that once ran upon the silver edge of the sea, before my very eyes. It is only an illusion, isn't it?"
Elrond shook his head without answering in words. Perhaps there was the trace of a smile flickering about his eyes.
"You speak of joy, but she has joy to bring to you also," said Galadriel gently as she rose. "Be young with her, ion-nîn."
Turning away from his thoughts, she walked across the garden and back to the house. She crossed the columned corridor, wrapt in her own musings, then halted at one of the arched doorways.
Her daughter stood alone across the room, motionless by the silent harp. She held her back straight, a hand laid across the forgotten instrument, fingers curled around the painted arch. Galadriel could not see her face, nor did Celebrían seem aware that her mother stood in the doorway, watching her. There was a tension in her still form, as if she had been long lost in thought, or perhaps lost in other unreachable places, far away from all the rest of the warm, living world.
One ocean and five hundred nineteen years away from Imladris. No great distance after all, thought Galadriel, nothing but the blink of an eye, a faint, shimmering veil of time as impalpable as that between one spring and another autumn. The autumn had turned to winter so soon that year.
She had let the children cry against her shoulders until their tears were exhausted. She had kept her arms around her husband each night, when the memories of their child's life came and went and flickered in the darkness, and the weight of their echoes grew beyond bearing. She had held Elrond's hands in the rain, forced him to meet her eyes and told him to keep on living. She had tended to the wounded and comforted the grieving, for Celebrían had not been the only one loved in Imladris and lost in the ambush. She had not been able to weep.
One day, she and Celeborn had found Arwen in Celebrían's study, standing before the desk spread with papers and books--just the same as her mother had left it. Their granddaughter held a scrambled sheaf of loose pages in her hands, although she was not looking at them, but was staring away fixedly at the walls. She started at the sudden awareness of her grandparents' presence, but then attempted a small, brave smile.
"I thought...perhaps I should put away some of Naneth's things. I saw that Ada--"
Her voice faded. For a moment, the silence about the walls of the room was as palpable as Celebrían's absence.
"I don't understand it," said Arwen. She stopped, tried to reassure them with another smile, although it came out as a tired little grimace. Then she repeated the same words, and then again, "I don't understand it. I don't understand it."
They comforted her with hugs and soft words, and once more the litany of platitudes that had seemed to flow so constantly, those days. That no parting was eternal, and that time would heal all grief. That there was no more torment where Celebrían had gone. That it was up to the living to continue...
Arwen was her mother and father's child. She returned her grandparents' gaze, a light deep in her eyes but not that of tears. She had heard these things many times already but it was good to hear them again. They could see her gathering her inward strength once more, as drawing a quick breath, willing it back. Gently, they began to guide her toward the door. As Arwen stepped away from the desk, the forgotten sheets of paper slipped from her hands and dropped to the ground. Galadriel picked them up and glanced down.
The top page was in her daughter's hand, written right to left for music. Two themes for a single harp, the first phrase gentle and slow, searching and dipping downwards, while the second voice entered in response, the two gradually twining into one. The lines had been penned swiftly, the writing almost rough, apparently a first draft but without corrections. The ink had already started to fade from time. But Celebrían must have revisited it recently, if only by chance, for here and there along the margins she had scribbled a few phrases and lines, the writing still nearly fresh, apparently from just before her departure this autumn. Something about the harvest...Asters brim the fields now, and the new dew has begun to grow pale with the moon...Various inconsequential, daily things, nothing more than absent-minded notes. In Lórinand the mellyrn must have not yet turned to gold...
The pages fluttered out of Galadriel's fingers, and then abruptly she sat down on the floor. The air had turned colder than the Helcaraxë. She braced her hands against the ground and tried to get to her feet again, but the grain of the wooden floor kept on swirling and dissolving before her eyes. It was no use. Nothing was solid anymore.
She did not hear Arwen cry out, kneeling next to her, nor Celeborn's voice, quietly asking their granddaughter to step outside and close the door. She did not hear any of his words, though his arms had closed around her tightly. The only thing she could see was a pale body torn with many wounds, and she saw it with an infinite and hopeless clarity even though it lay underground and there was no light, not a trace of light. The cuts and gashes were upon her own body, and the lifeless broken thing was her own blood and bones. Down there on the floor, she shook and shivered in her husband's embrace, rocking rhythmlessly, her fingers clawing at his shoulders in silence. But still the tears never came.