The marriage celebration had been winding down for several hours since Aragorn and Arwen had retired for the night, and was now in its final throes. Only a small contingent of well-wishers remained: mostly elves and a few of the younger, hardier men and women.
And among them, one hobbit. All his companions had long since gone to bed, even Legolas, who had left when Gimili began to grow weary. But exhausted as he was, Pippin could not seem to pull himself away. It wasn't that he was enjoying himself too much to leave; in fact, he felt rather awkward and out of place. There was nobody left that he knew, at least not well enough for a conversation. True, he recognized a few people, such as Glorfindel, but he was hardly about to go up a lord of the high elves and ask him how his day was. But even lonely and bored as he was, something within him felt compelled to stay. He busied himself picking at the cheese at the refreshments table, which was now quite warm and beginning to dry at the corners, watching the large folk dancing and singing about him.
Someone at a nearby table, taking pity on him, called out to him.
"You must be Pippin! Come and sit with me a while."
Pippin didn't recognize him. He couldn't even tell if he was an elf or a man. He was dressed like the Rivendell elves and as fair as them, but there was a sturdiness to him and a grimness in his eyes that seemed very mannish. Pippin certainly couldn't picture him skipping and singing through the woods like Legolas. He seemed to have a good command of the common tongue at least, which was more than he could say for most of the elves there. Pippin clamored onto the chair opposite him.
"I have met most of your company, but not yet you. I am Elladan. How are you enjoying my sister's wedding?" Pippin realized he must be one of Elrond's sons. There was a wine-induced flush in his pale cheeks, though he was a long way from what Pippin would have called "over-drinked."
"I've never seen anything like it," Pippin answered. "I've been to parties in the Shire for couples after they went off together, but those are, well," he scrunched his brow, searched for the right word. Familiar? Less intimidating? "Smaller," he decided.
His companion laughed. "Yes, I imagine most things in the Shire are smaller." He sipped at his wine and looked out at the merry-makers. "For me, and for my family, it is a day of mixed feelings. I am happy for my sister, but sorrowful that she is choosing a fate I cannot follow her in."
"Cannot?" Pippin asked. "I don't know much about such things, and I can certainly understand not choosing it, but wouldn't you have the same choice as Arwen?"
"You are correct; perhaps 'cannot' was too strong a word. Could not, maybe? Though I feel much of my heart is with men, I know well the pain such a choice would cause my family, for it is the same pain I feel now for the loss of my sister. I could not cause them to lose another child." Elladan paused a moment, then to Pippin's surprise he smiled, almost playfully. For a moment the Mannish grimness seemed to fall from his eyes, and Pippin thought that perhaps he could picture him skipping through the woods after all. "There is, though, a certain relative that does not seem to fully trust me not to follow her example," he said.
"How do you mean?" Pippin asked.
"I will demonstrate." Elladan waved to a woman of Gondor nearby, inviting her to sit with them. She eagerly took the seat next to him.
"Good evening, or perhaps that should be good morning now," she laughed, one hand playfully twirling a ringlet of her rich brown hair. "I don't believe we've met."
"Quite correct," Elladan replied. "But our meeting must be short, as my grandfather is about to call for me."
On cue, a tall, silver-haired figure rose from the midst of a table of Lorien elves and called, "Elladan, tolo!"
Elladan shrugged apologetically. "Such is my fate. I leave the pleasure of further conversation to my companion here," he said and left.
The brown-haired woman looked disappointedly at the small figure remaining across the table. Pippin suddenly felt very shy.
"I should probably go too," he said, jumping down from the chair and scurrying out to the garden, leaving the bemused woman alone at the table.
From the garden, the music and voices of the party were little more than distant echos. The full moon was low in the west, and the small white sapling at the center of the yard gleamed in its light. Along the edge of the garden there was a low wall guarding a ledge that overlooked the city, and it was here that Pippin went, resting his chin on the smooth white stone and looking out over the dim rooftops of the city below.
A voice beside him pierced the silence. "Are they still singing that awful song?"
Pippin jumped like a cat under a downspout. A figure on the wall where it met the side of the hall cast aside her cloak, and Pippin saw the white figure of Galadriel sitting there. A glass of wine was in her hand, and a pitcher sat on the ground below her.
"I'm afraid I don't know what song you mean," Pippin answered. There had been music all night, and though Pippin had found it beautiful he hadn't much listened to the individual songs. Much of it had been in Elvish anyway.
"The one about Beren and Lúthien. I understand that it has certain parallels, but they've sung it at least half a dozen times now, and really I think that to be a bit excessive." She gestured forcefully with her glass as she spoke, but never quite allowed the contents to spill.
Pippin looked at her blankly.
"Of course, you probably haven't even noticed them singing it, have you? You don't speak Sindarin." Galadriel said. There was something strange in her speech that Pippin could not quite place at first. He realized with surprise that she was slurring her words slightly, though it was subtle, and hard to make out through her lilting accent. He wondered how much wine she had had. "Too much!" she said, reading the question in his mind "far too much. But still not enough to hear them sing of my brother's death again. " She raised the glass to her lips and took a slow, long swallow. "A Finrod dant ob i archaf," she sighed bitterly.
"Oh, I can see how that would be upsetting," Pippin said. He felt he should say something more, but wasn't really sure what one said in this sort of situation. How different the world must seem to an elf. To him, such tales were remote echos of ancient history. It would be another thing entirely to have them be about people you had once known personally. "I didn't realize you had a brother," he added, rather inadequately he thought.
"Three, at one point, but all are lost to me now. Only memories. So much is only memories now. And still time piles on more." She finished the last of her cup. "It is exhausting."
She refilled her glass and offered it to Pippin. He accepted. He didn't actually want more wine, but the way he saw it if he had the glass, Galadriel wouldn't, and while he didn't know much about how wine affects elves, he couldn't believe it was wise to drink quite so much so close to such a long drop. Then, to his dismay, she began to sip directly from the pitcher.
"What brings you out here?" Galadriel asked.
Pippin thought back to Elladan and the brown-haired woman. But no, that had only been the cumulation of it. He had been in a strange mood all night. "I don't know, truthfully. By all reason, I should have gone to bed hours ago. But I can't seem to pull myself away."
"I see." Galadriel replied.
It was silent a while. The white walls of the city shone silver in the moonlight, and a thin breeze blew from over the ledge.
"The end of a journey is no easy thing," Galadriel said softly. "With it, the tally is final, and one is forced to wonder if they have come out better in the end. Could the hurts and the losses possibly be balanced by their accomplishments?"
Pippin looked at her curiously. He wondered if she had seen that in his mind, but her gaze was fixed westward at the setting moon.
She continued, "And how far those accomplishments fall short of the dreams at the beginning, when the wide world was only glorious possibility rather than cold reality. Easier to draw it out, to cling to some false hope that something may happen that will make it clear it was all worth it in the end. But what joy can there be in this extra time when weariness eclipses all else? It is time to return home and take rest, and perhaps in time the hurts will fade and the triumphs will not seem so meager in comparison."
Pippin nodded. Yes, that was it. She was being a bit harsh perhaps, but it seemed to him that she understood him exactly.
She sighed, "But it will be so long ere Celeborn follows."
Pippin paused. Clearly he had missed something. "Lord Celeborn is coming to the Shire?"
Galadriel looked at him, surprised, as if she had forgotten he was there. "No, why-"
"Well you said-"
"I was not talking about you, Pippin," she said gently.
"Ah," Pippin said, feeling a little embarrassed. "Well that's a relief then. I mean, he'd be welcome to of course, but he's far too tall for my guest bed."
Galadriel chuckled in agreement.
Pippin continued. "It's strange though, up to that last part you managed to put into words exactly what it is that I've been feeling these last few weeks. Maybe it would be different if I could feel as if I had accomplished something, but I think this would have gone much the same without me."
"You think that?" Galadriel asked. "You are a knight of Gondor, standing here in the wake of the greatest victory of this age. Do you really feel you have accomplished nothing? Pippin, at the brink of calamity, you left the peace of your own land and ventured out into the unknown. How wild and dangerous it must have seemed, but you showed yourself equal to it. You should be proud of that."
Sudden realization passed over her and she laughed. "And if that is so for you, perhaps it is so for me as well. How much more clearly we see others than we do ourselves!"
"But couldn't I have done more? Frodo and Sam, well, everyone knows what they did. And Merry killed the Witch-king. Anything of importance I did was largely by accident."
"The accomplishments of others do not diminish your own," Galadriel told him. She paused, suddenly comprehending Pippin's words. "Did you say Merry killed the Witch-king?"
Pippin laughed at the incredulous look on her face. "Well, Éowyn did most of it, but Merry stabbed him in the leg. He took an awful sickness from it, but he's bounced back now."
Her eyes widened. "I must hear this tale."
"Of course," Pippin said. He began to pack his pipe, anticipating a long conversation.
Galadriel watched his actions curiously. "Gandalf is of a similar habit. I have always wondered, what is the purpose? It reminds me somewhat of the incense the Vanyar burn on festival days, but less pleasant of scent and taken to a most absurd extreme."
Pippin had never really thought about why one smoked a pipe. In the Shire, it was just something people did. "Well, it's pleasant enough I guess, and a nice way to pass the time on a free afternoon or to relax after a good meal."
"It brings you peace then?"
"I guess you could say that."
Galadriel watch studiously as Pippin lit the pipe, as an apprentice might watch a master silversmith at work. Clouds of smoke billowed about them, lingering in the still, pre-dawn air. Cautiously, she asked, "May I try?"
Pippin was surprised. He'd never seen an elf take any interest in smoking. "Certainly!" He instructed her briefly on the technique and handed her the pipe.
She held it delicately in her hands and carefully brought her lips to the stem. The burning pipeweed blazed red as she took in a breath.
Regret filled her face immediately as the smoke reached her throat. She pulled the pipe away from her face immediately and began to cough.
"Thaur!" was the only word she managed to get out between coughs. Pippin wasn't sure what it meant, but could tell it was not a compliment.
"It takes some getting used to," Pippin explained as Galadriel gasped and wheezed beside him.
"There is nothing that could possibly compel me to get used to that," she said between shuddering breaths, handing the pipe back to him.
"Sorry," Pippin said sheepishly.
"No, thank you for indulging my curiosity," she said, "though I am left more baffled by the practice than I was at the beginning."
Pippin laughed and coaxed the pipe back into flame. "Did you want to hear about Merry, then?" he asked.
Galadriel nodded, and Pippin told her about Dernhelm and how she had really been Éowyn, and how she had stood before the Nazgûl. He told her how they had killed it, and about the houses of healing after. He worried he wasn't telling it very well, he hadn't been there for most of it and there seemed to be an awful lot of background needed, but Galadriel seemed to follow both what he said and failed to say.
"Amazing!" she exclaimed as Pippin finished his tale, "it is little wonder you feel unaccomplished if that is what you compare yourself to. We had lesser Nazgûl at our borders. They were a terrible foe that we could do little against." Dread, and perhaps guilt Pippin thought, filled her face as she fiddled with the silver-white ring on her hand, lost for a time in some dark memory. Then she stirred and continued, "So there is really no shame in falling short of such a feat. And besides, I do not think this is the ending of your tale. Do not live so long in this chapter that you miss the rest of it." She leapt down from the wall, rather clumsily by elvish standards but still very gracefully by anyone else's. "And at that, I see the first glow of dawn in the east. Let me walk you to your room."
Pippin nodded. "Yes, I suppose it's time I got to bed. Well past it really."
Galadriel smiled. "Yes, but I am glad you stayed up. I enjoyed talking to you." She took him by the hand and led him to his room.
Merry stirred slightly as Pippin opened the door.
"You're up late," he murmured.
Pippin threw himself onto his bed, barely bothering to undress first.
"Not for long," Pippin replied, and he gave himself over to the soft touch of sleep.
tolo - come here
A Finrod dant ob i archaf - and Finrod fell before the throne
Thaur - foul