Disclaimer: All of Arda belong to Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.
With great thanks to Nemis, both for beta-reading and for inspiring such a great part of my thoughts about this story.
The Courtship
Ten
Lórellin trembled with twilight as far as eyes could see, a field of living gold gradually dimming to pearls. Everywhere along the shore, the forest was aflush, tinted with dusky summer clouds. The boughs whispered and sighed, their lustrous leaves laced in intricate patterns upon the waters, ever weaving, ever shifting.
After she had kept perfectly still for a long while, the ripples, too, stilled their motion. The lake was no longer transparent, but seemed to deepen to infinity, both receding and swelling up toward her at the same time. One by one, the scattering of young stars flashed their last, then went out like candles burnt to the end. There was no wind now.
Sitting upon a wide boulder that jutted out from the bank, Celebrían peered down, holding her breath. Her own reflection had disappeared, as had all the shimmering lights of the sky, and the only sound left was the steady beating of her own heart. The water was crowded over with inky shadows.
The noise of grating metal, barely audible and thick with echoes as if out of a distant underground cave, but coming closer. The air had turned chilly, almost freezing. Across the stagnant black surface, all the way down in the chasm's fathomless depths, she glimpsed movement, fitful and blurred by the dim glow of torches. A sudden cacophony of laughter mingled with the clanging of iron, harsh and contemptuous. It, too, was coming closer.
The water was rising. A moment ago it had been level with the edge of her perch, but now the murky rivulets were brimming over, snaking toward her and widening, joining into pools, soaking her clothes. Already the coldness covered her legs and was creeping up to her waist, slowly, inexorably, then she could no longer feel it. She could no longer feel anything.
Celebrían's fingernails dug into the flesh of her palms. She forced herself to stay motionless, not looking away and hardly breathing. Now there were faces in the eddies, yellow eyes glinting. Guttural growls like a rumbling in the ground, and a rattle of bones. There were so many of them. A stench of decomposition stung her nostrils. The nearest one snarled, baring its teeth. They were stained with raw blood.
Exhaling shakily, she braced her hand against the rock and tried to push herself up to her feet, but swirling currents were wrapped around her legs, keeping her down like tentacles. As she struggled once more to stand, a hand touched her shoulder. It felt warm and solid.
"Listen. Listen to the nightingale," whispered a voice next to her ear.
Overhead on a hanging branch, an evening bird was warbling; its melody pierced the hush like a luminous needle. Leaning forward rapidly, Celebrían touched the water's surface. A flash of argent flames burst upon the lake, spreading out from her fingertips in swift widening circles, reaching the horizon in a single instant. The crisp air brushed her face. A pale sliver of moon had risen high into the heavens, and the world was awash with starlight.
The sound of her own heartbeat reverberated, as loud as a drum, but she was breathing again. Turning her head, Celebrían saw Elrond's face, eyes quietly anxious.
"Lady Estë told me I would find you by the lake," he said.
In her relief, Celebrían only managed a small grin. But before she could find a suitable reply Elrond asked, voice quick and gentle, "What did you see?"
With a beating of wings, the nightingale took flight for a more secret perch. A splash of shadow fluttered across the waves.
"Shapes," she said, then paused. "Blades, clashing iron. Teeth and claws. I have not seen them so clearly before, nor so close."
She did not continue, but it was obvious that he'd understood her meaning right away, from his face. At the same moment both of them realized how near they were, she still in a sitting position upon the ledge, Elrond kneeling before her, the breeze touching his dark hair. With a sudden awkwardness he drew back slightly, and for a while stared without a word past her shoulders at the lake; she could see its light mirrored in his eyes.
"I have not thought that the waters of Lórien would reflect such sights."
"Actually, I don't think it is the waters," said Celebrían.
Her glance met his, and almost immediately Elrond turned away again. He did not smile.
"You used to always make light of the strangest things." There was a curious tightness in his voice.
"Oh. Did I?" Once more, Celebrían was not sure of what to say, and again the silence lengthened, stretching out between them. Perhaps she only wanted to explain the strange compulsion to herself.
"It has been growing more difficult of late, yet each time I find that I must look, no shying away nor shutting of the eyes, right down there--" with one hand she gestured at the now shining expanse next to them, "--down into the darkness. I must steel myself for what will follow. I must know. It is the only way."
For a time, Elrond did not speak. When the response finally came it was very quiet, and surprised her utterly.
"I am afraid, Celebrían."
At the last instant, she suppressed the urge to reach over to him, though the space between them was only a foot or so. But it was she who lowered her gaze now.
"Don't be," she whispered.
"What will you see?" he asked after another pause. The question was unanswerable, of course, and she was not even sure that he was really asking it of her, nevertheless she considered it in earnest.
"What will you have me see?"
"It is not for me to say," replied Elrond. Yet he was no longer averting his eyes, and briefly Celebrían caught something in them that belied the words.
"If I seek not the shadows then they will seek me," she answered, furrowing her brows. Her voice was slow and measured, as if reciting lines that had been long buried deeply within. "And the shadows are not all that I seek, though I go into the abyss--"
She rose to her feet, and held out a hand down to Elrond, this time without wavering.
"Those words I remember, because once upon a time you wrote them to me," she said.
Elrond took her hand, rising also, so that they stood face to face in the moonlight. When she did not let go he hesitated for a single heartbeat, then his fingers wrapped around hers.
"How grievous to me, then, that only my mind and spirit shall follow you into the abyss." The sound of his reply, too, was soft, yet it echoed to her across the days and years of Middle-earth, as clearly as if she had known it all along. "Yet though I chafe at my lot, I will await you. I will await you through the midnight and the storm and the dawn. When you return, I will be here. Those words I remember."
Faint upon the wind, there came an intermittent sparkle of notes from hidden places: the night singer was already far away. The feeling that was welling up inside her was like new sunlight pooling down to earth through clouds in the wind. It was different--so different--from the fear she knew, just the same it made her body shiver and her heart race.
For fifteen hundred years they had seen each other but infrequently. Celebrían had been the one to write first. At the very beginning the letters had been carefully, acutely no more than courteous, as befitting two people who had known each other just a short while, but then they had grown halting and tentative, then they had grown longer and longer. How amazing that now, after all those volumes, it was such a struggle to form even one right word.
"I must thank you," was the only thing she could find to say. "For helping me back just now."
Elrond smiled, shaking his head. But she needed to go on.
"I must thank you, my lord," she stumbled a little but kept trying. How did it go? Yes. Indeed she had known it all along. "For your kindness to me and to my parents. After the ruins of Eriador the beauty of the deep-cleft valley gladdened my heart, although such a statement from a young, naïve girl must appear hopelessly simple-minded to you. Do you recall? That was--"
"Soon after you left Imladris," murmured Elrond. "Only a few lines. But I was so startled that I could write nothing in return, except that it was merely my duty."
She had travelled across Middle-earth with her parents, following Anduin and her mother's restlessness. Even then it had seemed that she beheld the forests and the rivers and the seasons with changed eyes.
"We shall depart again in the morning--this year we shall not see the mellyrn blossoms canopied over the land, miles after miles like brocade of gold upon pillars of snow." The clutching phantasms passed, and with each syllable she gained strength. The words no longer slipped from her, but flowed of their own accord, fifteen hundred years' worth of words falling into place. "For here the malinorni from the Blessed Land have already grown tall..."
"It was early spring, nearly two yéni later. You wrote from Lorínand; my answer reached you in Belfalas." Elrond, too, spoke from memory, the past fair as a dream in his voice, and as real as the warmth of his hand. "In my own youth they told me of the malinorni that had flourished on the plains near Gondolin, already lost to legend, yet once as mighty as the groves at the foot of the Pelóri. But Beleriand has fallen beneath the waves, and Aman lies distant across the sea. I do not know if I shall ever see the Blessed Land, nevertheless I shall ask you of the sea..."
"By the sea I watched, straining my gaze out to the farthest edge of sight, yet in my mind I cannot picture Valinor. Not after all that my mother has told me, but that it must be far more beautiful than I can imagine, more beautiful than the Middle-earth that I love. Men of the West--people of your kin--still come through the harbour, but these days few of them look upon us without fear in their eyes, and the shores of Númenórë have not seen an Elven ship in many of their generations..." When had that been? "Another two hundred years. We met again in Lindon, at the High King's court--"
"We barely found chance to talk. But one afternoon the two of us walked along the beach. The tide was ebbing..."
White breakers upon white sand, and the scent of salt caught in their clothes. By the sunset she had seen that the weight of the years had increased in his eyes. But he would never mention his burden in the letters.
"You told me of them, the people of your kin," whispered Celebrían. He had spoken to her at length about them that day. She had tried to think of something comforting to say and failed, then she had turned to him and laid her hand over his. But after a while--unlike now--he had pulled away, gently and with his emotions under firm control once more.
"My father's star rose, and you lifted your hand and pointed it out to me." Elrond's tone was hushed, cautious, as if he did not quite dare to pronounce the sentences. "And you asked me..."
"What must he think of us, down here in Middle-earth? What must the ones in Valinor think of us, they who dwell in unstained joy? That we are fools, perhaps? Stubborn? Proud?"
"I do not believe that they would find us foolish. I believe they would understand." It had been over three thousand years but the answer was exactly the same, down to the very phrases. "For what we love, they love also."
"And for this love I shall not turn aside from the blackest night, nor all the anguish it holds--"
"When you return, I will be here," repeated Elrond. It was the last letter she had written him in the Second Age, but she had said it to him, too, face to face and not knowing if he would in fact return. It had been in Imladris, with the sun brilliant upon the banners of the gathered armies, upon the swords and spears and the armour. She had made her way through the crowd and stood beside his horse; he had reached down and taken her hand in his. But this had been the only sentence she'd found time to utter, for the host had already begun to march, and they had to let go.
Celebrían looked up. The forest was aglimmer above them, fragrant with the tender music of leaves and branches. To the other side, the waters widened out to an endless horizon, and the silvery shadows melted away into the firmament, glorious with stars.
When she had been a girl she'd thought the very notion scantly possible, yet here they were. They had come to Valinor after all.