Author's note: I realize that the first part of the prologue made little or no sense in relation to what has been established as the plot line of this fic and I also figured that people would want to know what happened to Galadriel in Part I of the Prologue. So this is the explanation of sorts of what happens to her afterwards and what comes of her vision. And also, it attempts to draw a link between the events of the prologue and the rest of the plotline. I hope this clears things up and I hope everyone enjoys it. As for the Haldir thing, it's not listed anywhere when he was born so I took the poetic license to assume that he was alive in SA 1699. If anyone knows when he was born and I am incorrect, feel free to tell me, but please do so politely. Realize I have limited resources to work with and that this is, after all, an AU story anyway. Thanks for reading and please review.

Mornië Alantuva-Prologue, Part II:

Celeborn woke to find himself alone. Frowning, he got up and began to mentally search for his wife, who had never just disappeared during the night unless she had a good reason to do so, and on those occasions, she had always told him she was going through his dreams. He had had no such dreams that night. Having scanned the entire palace and the grove surrounding it and not having found her, he began to worry. His wife did not just disappear that way. He didn't bother to change into a fresh set of robes, he left his room and made his way through the palace and to the cluster of dwellings immediately outside. Then, he proceeded to clime right up to the Captain of the Gaurd, Haldir's talan and just walked in, completely unannounced. "Haldir," he called in a louder-that-necessary voice. The sleeping elf suddenly bolted awake and then stared up at Celeborn in bewilderment and confusion for several minutes before it occurred to him that the appropriate thing to do was to stand up. Doing so as gracefully as possibly, whilst simultaneously trying to figure out what in the Valar's names was happening that would cause Lord Celeborn himself to personally wake up Haldir in order to talk to him. It must have been something terrible because the king of Lothlórien did not even attempt to disguise the worry and agitation he felt.

"Yes, my Lord Celeborn," Haldir finally managed to say in a voice that could almost pass for normal, "what is the situation?" As he said this, the somewhat flustered Captain of the Guard straightened out his clothing and hair as best he could.

"My wife has disappeared and I was given no warning of it. I cannot locate her with my mind and therefore, I have want two things. First, I want to know if you saw her leaving the palace during the night. Second, if your answer is no, then I want you to find her."

Not even bothering to answer the first question, Haldir merely said, "I shall go assemble search parties, my Lord." He then bowed and with a nod of dismissal from the king, he went to assemble the Guard. He split them into a number of search parties and assigned each party a particular, specific area of the forest to search. As he set out with the last party, Haldir sighed. The forest of Lothlórien was enormous in geographical area. It was gong to be a long day.

It was almost dusk and none of the parties had found any sign of the queen. As he walked along the band of a river, Haldir contemplated the dilemma. What in Endor was he supposed to tell the king? That Lady Galadriel had simply vanished right out of the kingdom? That regardless of the fact that Celeborn himself had telepathically searched the palace and the grove surrounding it, regardless of the fact that every inch of the forest that the king had not checked had been scoured by the Guard, there had been no sign whatsoever of the queen? He paused a moment, sending the rest of his party ahead, and attempted to ease the tension he felt. And when he paused, he could have sworn he heard a whisper. Shaking his head to rid himself of that notion, he was about to rejoin the the group, when he heard the whisper once more. It was wordless, and yet it conveyed the command to follow. 'I must be going mad,' he thought to himself as he began heading in the direction he had sent the group, a direction that lead him away from the river. The further he got from the river, the less it seemed to whisper and after a distance it ceased all together. He walked for perhaps half a dozen paces after this, when suddenly a bird flew out of a tree and past him to a tree behind him. It had flown so close in passing that the tip of one of its wings had brushed across his cheek. Unnerved, he turned around and saw a white nightingale staring down at him from its perch on a tree branch with unusually aware eyes.

'Follow,' he heard another's voice speak in his head. He had the strangest impression that it had come from the bird. But that was absurd. Birds did not, as far as he knew, communicate telepathically. Then with a start he remembered that Melian, Galadriel's mentor, the one whose kingdom Lothlórien had been modeled after, had been said to sometimes take the for of a nightingale. 'Follow my Haldir of Lorien, if you wish to find your queen.' In amazement, he realized that he could not have imagined the voice this time. It was the voice of someone who had power and wisdom, who commanded respect and yet was gentle and kind, someone very much like the queen. The queen who was said to be so much like Melian. And he knew the voice was coming from the nightingale. So he followed it. The bird that was not really a nird lead him back to the river, which the followed back into the grove and along a pathway to what seemed to be a secluded area. The nightingale landed momentarily on a branch where Haldir could see it. 'Take cane of my confidant, Haldir of Lorien. I told her many things that must not be lost,' the now distinctly female voice commanded, 'She must not be lost or Lorien will fall just as Doriat did when I left it. She must not be lost.' Then the bird took to the sky and disappeared from sight.

Still dumbstruck, he entered the clearing of the grave to which the 'bird' had led him. It was the place where the queen's mirror was kept. He saw water in the basin, sparkling in the deep golden light of the falling sun, and he saw that sparkle reflected in the empty crystal pitcher. Then he saw it glint off something else, which just happened to be the stone set into Galadriel's mithril ring-band. The queen was lying with her eyes closed at the foot of a tree, unconscious. Her golden hair was splayed out all around her.

Quickly, he pulled a whistle off a hook on his belt and blew into it. A loud, high-pitched trill sounded through the forest as a result. It was a sound any of the elves in the forest could hear, and today it was used to signal that the queen had been found and was being brought to the palace.

Shortly after the whistle sounded, Celeborn strode into the room of healing, having had to restrain himself from breaking into a run in the corridors. Immediately, he was standing next to the bed his wife was lying in, demanding of the healer in attendance what had happened.

"All we know, My Lord, is that when Captain Haldir found her near her mirror, she was lying unconscious by the foot of a tree at the edge of the clearing. W have tried our best, but she will not wake." The elf answered as succinctly and with as much detail as he could. He did not completely understand what was going on, after all, he was only a healer's apprentice.

For four excruciatingly long days and three nights, all of Lorien held its breath fearfully as the queen's condition did not improve. Then finally on the fourth night, there was a change. The head healer, Aerien, was sitting by the bed alone, having finally managed somehow to convince Celeborn to retire to his own rooms for the night, praying to Elbereth that the kingdom's beloved ruler would wake and return to them. Knowing that it wouldn't help, but being unable to sit idly, the healer stood and checked once more that the queen was indeed still breathing. Then she reached out her hand, planning to make sure that her patient's already dangerously slow pulse had not slowed any further. Before she could put her fingers to the pale wrist of the ailing ruler, her own arm was suddenly grabbed in a vice-like grip. Aerien would have screamed, but the suddenly awake, though entranced, queen spoke out in a voice that was urgent and frightening,

"When the Dark One's servant has fallen

and the Dark One is cast out,

When the Gateway is discovered

and a rift through worlds been found,

When a foreign power stubles out of shadow

and tat power and a power of this land combine,

Then there will be a child born, who of two realms is.

When two worlds are shown two fated

and the child holds fate in its hands,

When the child by the Lord of Darkness is led

and the child's hands are bound,

When a child is born of two realms

and the gateway has been opened,

Then fear the wrath of the Dark One

and beware the child of two souls."

Galadriel's grip on the healer's arm relaxed and the golden-haired Lady collapsed back into the bed, unable to remain sitting any longer, and weak, but at last awake, she looked wearily up at the shocked elf beside the bed. "Write that down for me, Aerien. It must not be lost and I am so tired that I shall have forgotten it by dawn." And having given that one order, the exhausted queen fell into a deep, but normal and peaceful sleep.

After Celeborn had returned to watch over his wife, Aerien did as she had been told and, once the queen had recovered, given the scroll to her. Galadriel then hid the scroll somewhere she deemed safe and the only ones to know of the document's existence were Galadriel, Aerien, and perhaps Celeborn. Only Galadriel however, knew where it was hidden. And hidden it would remain for many long years, untouched, unread, and eventually thought of so infrequently that it was nearly forgotten. Until one day when an innocent question from the tongue of an innocent child would awaken the mind of a god long-thought dead.