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The Watcher in the Night
Canticle of the Haunted: 2nd Chapter
"Secrets, silent, stony sit
in the dark palaces of both our hearts:
secrets weary of their tyranny:
tyrants willing to be dethroned.
-James Joyce
Author's note: Thanks for reading guys! I really appreciate it! I'm so eager to get through the exposition to the main action of the story but there are lots of little surprises in store so I don't want to give everything away at once.
Elysionia: Thank you! I'm so happy to hear that! I love these two so much and I'm glad you do too :)
Dayo: Thanks so much! I'm glad to be back too! I forgot how much work it is and how much time it takes to set up a story of this scale :p Took me much longer than expected.
"We have to move, don't we?" Galadriel asked as the sun began to dawn, sterile white light slipping through the leaves of the trees, the thick humidity of summer already rising in the air as the hum of cicadas crescendoed into a excited din and mist rose in thin wisps, evaporating from the shimmering lake. They had sat awake all night, keeping nervous vigil over their campsite, afraid that the unknown visitor would return, the fear too fresh in their minds to allow them to sleep even if they had wanted to.
Celeborn did not speak, she wasn't even able to discern what thoughts passed through his mind, and the only response he made was to nod, stiffly and slowly, his green eyes on the distant horizon, his thoughts residing in deep memories of the past. It had been many hours now since the shadow visitor had made his escape, but the fact that they were now gone did not mean they were gone forever and Galadriel was inclined to believe that whomever it was had every intention of returning. She was almost certain that Celeborn held the same ominous suspicion, but neither of them yet dared voice it.
She cracked a dry twig beneath her fingertips, the wood cool in her hand, and used it to idly rub at the dirt before her feet. Celeborn sighed and, from the corner of her eye, she saw him drop his head so that it rested between his knees and all she could see was a curtain of silver hair, matted and tangled. She could not help but recall the pride he had taken in his hair in Doriath, how well kept it had been, how he used to lace it with beads and ornaments of bone, plaiting it into intricate braids.
She took a deep breath, inhaling the last lingering crispness of the morning air before the humidity completely consumed it. Everything that had happened yesterday seemed to have taken on a new meaning in light of the mad chase through the trees during the night and, with the dawning of the sun, the idea had occurred to her that Celeborn's intent had most likely never been to force her to build the talan, and perhaps he did believe that he was doing it for her, but that the truth of the matter was most likely that he had been screaming for help in the only way he knew how, that in the wake of destruction he had needed to assure himself that he was still capable of creation.
"Well if we are going to go then hadn't we better be on our way?" Galadriel asked in what she hoped was a cheerful tone as she sprang to her feet and stretched. Celeborn raised his head and looked up at her, his expression indecipherable, but after a moment he rose as well.
"The boards…" he said, looking towards where the planks he had prepared lay, still covered in the dew of morning. "We'll never be able to carry them all. It would take me months to make their like again."
"Treebeard will bring them for us," Galadriel said, "and the other Ents as well." She smiled, reaching for her husband's hand and twining her fingers between his. "But in the meantime we can find a new home, find a new tree, prepare everything just so, so that when Treebeard does bring them to us we will be ready and we'll have the whole thing built sooner than you can imagine." She tugged gently on his hand and leaned forward to press a kiss to his cheek.
"You seem…" Celeborn shrugged, looking a bit ashamed, and Galadriel felt the remnants of last evening's argument rise to the surface of his mind, "different," he said, as if he couldn't quite think of whatever word it was that he was looking for. Galadriel squeezed his hand once more before she turned away, picking up the empty iron pot and stooping beside the lean-to to gather their meager possessions.
"Sometimes I just need a little time to consider things," she said, turning a smile to him, and she was pleased to see that after a moment, a small grin began to creep across his lips. "Although," she said, "I am absolutely not going to try to put that thing up without Treebeard present to help."
"No, no! Of course not!" Celeborn was quick to reassure her. He bent to help her pack up their wolfskin blankets, the tattered remnants of the packs they had brought from Doriath, their few clothes and their more numerable weapons. "Are you…still hurt?" He asked. "Your hand I mean?" He seemed unsure of how to approach the situation, still afraid he would cause offense, and it reminded Galadriel of how little they had fought in their long courtship.
"Oh yes, I mean no!" She said, pausing to display her palm to him, the angry red burn, bubbled with pus, and the painful scrape from the board that had slipped. "I mean, it does hurt, yes," she said, "but it doesn't matter so very much." Celeborn gently took her hand in his own, his eyes flickering across the wounds, assessing the damage. The pad of his thumb was rough and calloused from work as he brushed it across the heel of her hand, but it was the sweetest balm.
"Galadriel," he murmured, raising his eyes from her hand to meet her gaze, "I cannot even begin to apologize for…"
"You already have," she replied softly, interrupting him. "And I'll hear no more apologies from you, not today. Besides…I owe you apology enough for some of the things I said…"
Celeborn shook his head. "Consider them forgiven and forgotten," he told her. "The only thing that matters to me is that you are safe and happy."
Galadriel smiled, biting her bottom lip, feeling a current of warmth wash through her as their spirits rose in unison. "But," she whispered, her eyes flickering mischievously up to meet his, "I do seem to recall how yesterday you were so easily able to make all of my pains vanish and if you were to repeat such endeavors this evening to help me soothe the pain of my wounds then I would not be opposed."
"Ah," Celeborn said with a little laugh, a grin spreading across his lips, the faint tint of a blush staining his cheeks. It was such a rare occurrence that Galadriel stared for a moment, almost certain she must have imagined the flush in his face. "And here you were saying that I know nothing of healing," he said. "Well, mayhap I do not dabble in poultices and potions but I know a thing or two to put a smile on your face."
"That you do," Galadriel replied with a smile and her husband grinned back at her as he shouldered his pack.
"Then we had best find ourselves a new home," he said, his laugh rich and deep as he took her hand in his, his fingers firm and filled with promise against her own.
"It is strange," Celeborn remarked as they walked, his fingers lingering on the smooth silver bark of the willows, dancing across the paper-like white of the river birches, delving into the crevices of the oaks' gnarled branches. It was not a conscious action on his part, but an old habit, something that came to him as naturally as breathing did to other people. "They tell me nothing about him," he mused. "These trees are concealing him from me." A frown flickered across his face and Galadriel felt the slow moving current of his unrest pass through her.
"But these trees know you," she said, made uneasy herself by the thought.
"They know him too," Celeborn replied.
"Is he…" she almost dared not voice the thought from fear, but Celeborn had perceived the path of her question before she asked it.
"Asking the trees about us?" He said. "The answer is yes. I can sense the echo of his voice through their leaves, though his words themselves I cannot discern from a distance. But the trees reveal nothing of us to him; they will remain impartial in this dispute it seems."
Their hearts disquieted by the events of the previous evening and the implications of the silence of the trees, they strode onwards through the morning, pausing every now and again to admire the way that drops of dew had pooled so perfectly upon the tip of a leaf, or the wild upheaval of a fresh blossom as it turned its face towards the sun. In the afternoon they stopped beside a slow-running stream to drink from the fresh water and partake of the cured deer meat that they carried with them, but otherwise they carried on until dusk, when the gold burning disk of the summer sun had retired beyond the far off hills and twilight had begun to blossom in gentle shades of gray and lavender. The stars were still mere pinpricks, the moon a faintly glowing mirage shielded by soft lilac wisps of cloud, when at last they stopped.
"Is it safe here?" Galadriel asked, looking around the secluded glade, encircled by a thick ring of massive camphor trees, their thick green leaves dark in the twilight, and of willows, whose silvery boughs fell to trail across the surface of a little pond grown thick with waxy green lily pads and bouquets of white and yellow water lilies. Around the bank of the little pond, the silvery-violet moon lilies were beginning to open their petals to the moon while crickets and frogs chirped an evening chorus.
"Yes," Celeborn said, his voice soft as he pressed his palm against the bole of a particularly large camphor, his eyes upturned to the crown of the tree. Galadriel could see his lips moving silently as he conversed with the tree and then, momentarily, he sprang up into its branches, climbing higher and higher until she lost sight of him in the foliage.
With a sigh, Galadriel unloaded their meager belongings from the pack she had strung across her back, setting the cooking pot and the blankets down in the grass, unfurling their bed rolls, and for a moment she paused, wondering whether or not she should do it, but at last she opened her leather satchel and grasped the silver chain, pulling out the Elessar and letting it hang in the air, turning slowly this way and that in the evening breeze, the brilliant green of its stone flashing despite the dark, casting light into shadows. For a moment she allowed herself to remember things as they had been, and she imagined she could hear Lúthien's laugh in her mind, the cadence of Melian's voice, that she felt the coolness of silk upon her skin, that she could taste the richness of fresh cream, that she could see the glimmer in Finrod's eyes as he twiddled betwixt his fingers the likeness of a wolf carved in bone.
She let it drop back into the satchel. What use was dwelling on what could never be again? She knew she ought not look at it, that each time she did the happiness was fleeting and the pain lingering and yet, cut off in this world apart from the past, she sometimes yearned for some semblance of normalcy, some remembrance of the grandeur that had fallen into irrecoverable disrepair.
"This tree will do nicely," she heard Celeborn say, followed by the nearly imperceptible sound of him dropping to the ground from the branches, and turned to find him smiling at her. He patted the trunk of the tree gently, looking at it with great affection.
"For the talan?" She asked him with a smile, dropping the satchel into the pile with the rest of their belongings.
"Yes," Celeborn said. "Plenty of broad, horizontal branches higher up. It might even be better than the oak I had selected earlier, and this particular tree has already taken a liking to us. What is more, judging by the number of birds' nests it harbors in its upper branches, it seems quite fond of sheltering life, of providing homes for those who need them."
"Then shall we begin preparing the tree?" Galadriel asked him. "And then once Treebeard returns we can start the work on our home in earnest."
"Tomorrow we can begin preparing the tree," Celeborn said, "but tonight I have injuries to remedy…that is, unless you find yourself too weary from traveling."
"Oh no," Galadriel murmured with a smile, her eyes dancing with mischief as he drew her within the circle of his arms, his fingers laced loosely together behind her lower back as she reached up to smooth his silver hair back from his face. "I have suddenly just remembered how terribly my hand hurts."
A grin blossomed on Celeborn's face as he tightened his arms about her, moving one hand to tangle in her golden hair. "I have a remedy for that," he whispered against her lips before she felt the familiar warmth and pressure of his lips against her own, the taste of him as she opened her mouth to his.
Galadriel gasped, biting her bottom lip as his lips moved to the curve of her neck, gently plying the tender skin there. Her eyes fluttered shut at the feel of his hand making its way inside the open collar of her shirt, cupping her breast, the nipple caught between his thumb and forefinger while his other hand insinuated itself beneath the hem of her shirt, tugging it gently from her breeches, the warm roughness of his fingers ghosting across the soft skin of her stomach.
"You ought to be thankful," she murmured, unable to resist teasing him, her breath catching in her throat for a moment as he nipped at the tender skin just beneath the juncture of her jaw and her ear, "that I even allow you to touch me after that debacle of last evening."
"Should I?" Celeborn asked, as if he hadn't a care in the world. She could feel the muscles of his chest against her breasts, could feel the evidence of his desire pressed up against her and she swallowed hard, feeling as if her body was burning from within.
"Eru, you undo me, always," she growled, surrendering to sensation, a ferocity of her own taking over as she drew his face to hers and captured his lips in a fierce kiss. He complied readily, meeting her with equal fervor, and he tasted of salt and the musk of summer. The touch of his tongue against her own sent a shiver coursing down her spine and in moments they had fallen to the ground in the glade amidst the silvery blossoms bathed in moonlight, clothes discarded and forgotten.
Her eyes flickered to his, watching the world move in their depths, the unspoken tales of far off lands that she had never seen before mapped in the stars that glimmered in his eyes, green as the pines and dark as the night sky above. Her lips were already swollen with the ferocity of his kisses, her body quivering for him well before she first felt his fingers slowly breach her, the deep movement within but a foretaste of what was to come, and she gasped, her breath coming in quick pants, as she pushed her head back into the flowers.
"I love you, Galadriel," Celeborn whispered into the curve of her neck, his voice uncharacteristically tender though his fingers within her were demanding, coaxing long moans of pleasure from her so that, though she made every attempt to reciprocate the words he had said, she found herself unable to do so. Instead, she allowed the full force of her desire and love to flow freely into the bond that connected them, and heard Celeborn groan in response.
I need you, she murmured in his mind, her eyes fluttering open to meet his, and she felt an odd sense of emptiness as he withdrew his fingers from her and gently pressed them to her mouth. She parted her lips, drawing his fingers in, tasting the musk of herself as she gently licked them clean, and then he had tangled his fingers in her hair, his lips crushed to hers as the both of them gasped for breath.
Then came the strange and thrilling moment before he entered her, the same as it was each time, a mixture of fierce anticipation tinged with the mild ache of trepidation, not because she feared him, but because each time she found herself wondering how this could possibly be real and then, each time, as she felt the girth of him fill her, she was reminded of how very real it was.
He began to move deep within her and she arched her back, crying out as his hands found her hips and his hips rolled against her, pulling him deeper and deeper still until she felt his spirit flooding into her veins, pulsing through her heart, flowing in her blood, and she gasped at the unspeakable closeness of it. Panting, she pushed at his chest, tumbling him to the ground beneath her as she tossed her hair back over her shoulder, biting her lip at the sight of her husband beneath her.
Celeborn was beautiful she noted, not for the first time. Starlight complimented him best, the light of the moon paying absolute tribute to the immaculate lines of his body, the silver blossoms that speckled the grass a starry crown for the bright silver of his hair that fell long like a glistening river over the earth. The green of his dark eyes, half-lidded, caused her heart to leap in her chest as he gazed at her with that fierce intensity of his that made her blood crackle like lightening, as if he meant to claim every part of her. Dark eyes: eyes that had never seen the light of the trees, eyes that sometimes frightened her, made her heart skip a beat.
The warmth of his skin against hers in the humid night of the summer caused a trickle of sweat to run down her spine while, with lips that moved noiselessly in the silence of the evening, she saw him whisper the syllables of her name, one by one, savoring them, his fingers trembling ever so slightly while gripping tightly her hips that moved against his. She loved this, controlling the pace of things, watching him gradually descend into madness beneath her. She made a game of it; sometimes she even managed to make him beg her to move faster and she had to admit that she loved to hear him beg.
"Galadriel!" Her name was a strangled gasp on his lips as he pushed his head back, trembling hands falling to claw at the earth, his breath coming in quick gasps. She loved when he was like this, when she could make him slip just a little… His name escaped her lips in a gasp, her stomach fluttering in pleasure, throwing her head back too, feeling the now familiar tightening in her thighs. It was his cue and he took it eagerly.
He was all movement then, pulling her down against him, wrapping his arms about her. With a growl into the crux of her neck, he shifted and Galadriel laughed with joy as he tumbled her to the soft flowers, digging his fingers into her hips, pulling them along the curves of her thighs before he grasped her bottom and thrust deep once more. Lost in passion herself, enveloped in the feeling of sparks that seemed to be igniting in her abdomen, she wrapped her legs tightly about his waist, pulling him down to her, and he readily complied. She felt him grin against her mouth before he captured her lips and her moans in a deep kiss.
"What?" She gasped with a small laugh against his lips.
"You like tormenting me like that, don't you?" He laughed the words into her cheek. "You like making me wait for it."
"Patience is a virtue Celeborn," she panted into the skin of his neck.
"I'm not a patient man, Galadriel," he said with a grin, raising his eyes to meet hers, his gaze full of mischief, "nor a virtuous one."
"Is that so?" She asked, wrapping her legs about him tightly so that his movement was arrested and he grunted with a noise of passion restrained. But Galadriel could not help but burst into laughter at the frustrated look upon his face and thus he broke her hold on him, resuming his earlier pace. Her laughter soon turned to long moans as she found herself in the same position he had been in only a few minutes earlier, longing for release.
"I cannot last much longer," he whispered and Galadriel's lust hooded eyes flitted up to linger on his. His broad shoulders and chest glimmered in the starlight with a sheen of sweat, causing her to bite her lip with longing. No matter how much of him she had it never seemed to be enough. Gone were the early days of their marriage in which they had made love three, four, five times a day, but now, a few years later, the fire still burned hot enough within them that they could not go more than a couple of days without falling into each other's arms. After she had become a woman full grown, Eärwen had once laughed and said that passion would taper with age, but Galadriel never wanted the wanting to end.
She had never made love to anyone else of course and thus had nothing to compare it to but the intensity with which her husband made love to her inspired in her a private sort of pride, as if she had become the center of his world and he of hers so that what passed between them in these moments was some universe unique that no one else could ever experience. Of course, she mused, each couple must feel that way for themselves, must revel in these marvelous sensations and private worlds known to them and them only.
"Galadriel, you don't know the things you do to me," Celeborn's back arched as he bent to whisper into her ear, the heat of his breath tickling her. She liked so much when he was like this, so close that the words of love and passion which he usually kept closely guarded within his heart spilled forth freely, so close that nothing on earth could have forced her to tear her gaze from his where the black of his eyes had nearly absorbed the green completely in the heat of passion, so close that it seemed as if he would lose himself completely in her. And she wanted him. Oh, how she wanted him. She wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, her fingers slipping across the muscles of his back, her nails biting into his damp flesh. It was the closest they would ever get to becoming one, so close as to satisfy them for a short while, but just far enough that the thirst could never be quenched.
"Don't stop. Please, please don't stop. I need more," Galadriel begged, clutching at him, her heart pounding wildly in her chest as she thrust her hips up against his, tilting them, inviting him to move deeper. She felt his arms tighten around her, pulling her flush against him, the delicious weight of him nearly crushing her now as with his hips he pushed her legs open so that she found herself pinioned by his body, laid open to him completely.
I can't…he began to apologize to her in his thoughts as she shuddered from the full force of his passion that flowed through him and into her. She knew that he liked to make sure she had found her pleasure before he surrendered to his even though she had assured him many times that it wasn't quite the same for women, that as much as she liked the climax she still enjoyed herself nonetheless and took pleasure as well in knowing that she had brought pleasure.
Don't wait, she urged him, give yourself to me, all of yourself. "Please," she whispered aloud into his ear. It was enough to send him over the edge. She felt him tense suddenly, then gasp, shuddering for a moment in which his eyes, fixed on hers, seemed to almost go vacant, as if he were lost in some far off world. And then to her surprise, for she had not realized she was so close, the now familiar but no less extraordinary feeling as of a thousand warm flames tingling and licking at her skin overwhelmed her. Her mouth opened in a silent scream of pleasure as her fingernails dug tracks in his back, and then she was gasping his name over and over as the world exploded outward in a blinding flash of light, suspended for a moment in time, before they both fell back into the earth: limp, exhausted, laughing, breathing hard.
"You're heavy," she murmured at last with a smile, pushing gently on her lover's chest and he grinned, placing a dozen quick kisses on her lips before rolling away with a grunt and soft laughter. Celeborn propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at her, his dancing green eyes full of joy, and he tangled a hand in her hair, stroking her cheek with his thumb.
"Galadriel…" he let her name linger in the calm night air like a song and she felt a swell of happiness at the beauty of his voice. That name…at first she had despised it, seen it as an intrusion, and then as an unnecessary adornment, too gaudy to be practical. How strange indeed, she thought, that she now eagerly embraced the name, just as she now so eagerly embraced the man who had given it to her. And yet, when she truly thought about it, it was not strange at all, despite the prejudices she had brought with her to Middle Earth, for she and Celeborn were as two sides of the same coin, different, and yet of the same mettle. "I love you," he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face before he began to trace the curve of her shoulder, the line of her arm, his fingers lingering in the bend of her elbow, swooping down to admire the curve of a breast, dipping into the hollow of her stomach.
"Do you care to expound upon that?" She said in a teasing voice as he wrapped an arm about her waist, pulling her close to him. He rarely spoke in a romantic manner, which was perhaps why she took so much delight in it when he did.
"I love you more than the stars," he whispered, pressing a kiss into her neck, "and more than the moon."
"Is that so?" She asked with a grin of pleasure. "And what of the sun?"
"Speak not of the sun to me," Celeborn purred, pressing another kiss to her shoulder, "for there is no sun in my life save you, my wife."
"Lovemaking turns you into a fool, Celeborn," Galadriel laughed.
"A fool perhaps," he laughed, meeting her gaze, his fingers twined in her hair once more, "but a very happy one." Happy he was, a far cry from the broken and battered man who had fled Doriath, and yet Galadriel knew him so well as to be able to perceive that the pain was not gone, only buried deep within, hidden for a time in newfound happiness and a wanting to forget. She turned on her side, smiling at him, reaching out to run her fingers through the long silver hair that fell over his chest and wrapping the strands around them.
"Tell me something romantic," she murmured with a small smile, her eyes glittering with merriment though they were beginning to feel pleasantly heavy. Celeborn only laughed.
"What do you mean?" He asked.
"Say something beautiful," she implored him, brushing her lips against the warm skin of his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath her mouth, but whether or not he had said something beautiful she did not know, for the world of dreams had claimed her, drawing her deep into the past.
The water was filling her lungs, so unbearably cold that her body trembled with spasms, so painful that it felt as if each of her pores had been pricked through with needles. Her eyes opened slowly, foggily, staring up at a mirror in which she saw her own face reflected. It took her a moment to realize that it was not a mirror; it was ice. Terror shot through her keep as a lance, her eyes widening in horror as she opened her mouth to scream, a silent scream, her mouth filled with frigid seawater.
The Helcaraxë, she was in the Helcaraxë once more. Already knowing what she would see, she turned slowly to her right, her heart pounding a dull thud of horror in her chest and there, yes, there was Elenwë, her face still in death, the veins in the whites of her eyes gone purple, her hair floating like some eerie weed. Turgon – Turgon had brought her here to this place where she did not belong, like a fish on dry land. Turgon had brought her here to her death and for love of him she had died.
A tremor of fear ran down Galadriel's spine and she returned her efforts to the ice, more frantic than ever, pounding at the underside of it, the silence a mockery of her desperation. The water was filling her lungs, choking her. She could feel the weight of it in her chest, the strange feeling of her head growing light. Not here, not here, not beneath the ocean and ice. She did not belong here.
Her body was succumbing to exhaustion, to the elements, to death, her blows growing weaker, and then the ice shattered and hands, warm hands were grabbing her, pulling her up out of the water, onto the ice, and she was gasping, gasping with gratitude, with unspeakable relief, until she felt the cold steel of a knife at her throat and looked up with petrified horror into Celeborn's face, only his face was twisted in rage such as she had never seen.
"I saw we slit her open," he said. "If elves are killing elves now then why shouldn't we take our vengeance?"
"Galadriel?" Celeborn called, a frown creasing his brow as a current of terror not his own passed through him, leaving him rattled in its wake. His wife's visions seemed to have become fewer and more far between since the kinslaying, which was not what he would have expected, given the terror they had endured, and yet…perhaps it did make sense after all. He dared to briefly ponder his own reticence to entertain any thought of what had passed in Menegroth but found he could not long abide it and pushed the thoughts from his mind.
"Galadriel?" He called again, looking towards where she lay, pillowed atop the wolf pelts they used as blankets and the remnants of the bedrolls they had brought with them out of Doriath so many years ago. She did not appear to be in any great distress, her features placid and her body relaxed, but it worried him all the same and so he dropped his axe to the ground beside the boards that Treebeard had brought some weeks ago and stepped around the sandy fire pit, where he was roasting a hare he had caught earlier this morning, to approach her.
But just as he approached, his wife sat up, wiping sleep from her eyes. "Are you alright?" He asked her and Galadriel blinked at him for a moment before a tremor of fright surged through her eyes and then was gone.
"Oh…yes, yes, of course I am. Why shouldn't I be?" she said in the soft and worried voice of someone who has something to hide and he wondered, not for the first time, what she was keeping from him that she did not wish him to know. "I'm just…" she stood, stretching, a contrived smile upon her lips, "it was just a bad dream is all. But it has passed now."
He nodded in response. There was no sense in trying to force it out of her. He had long ago learned that such a strategy often had the opposite of the intended effect where his wife was concerned. They ate mostly in silence and the hare proved to be tougher to chew than anticipated, but it filled their bellies nonetheless, and Galadriel busied herself with memorizing the design for the talan that he had drawn in the soil while he worked to finish the few remaining boards.
Many of them had needed to be recut in order to fit the new tree, which had not been that laborious of a task, but there were still some that had had been unfinished and these he had needed to varnish, which had been the worst part of the whole ordeal. However; it would have been foolish to leave the wood unprotected against the elements and so, as much as he despised the task, he found himself this morning preparing the last of the varnish.
The most difficult part was over. That had been to grind oil from seeds the entwives had been kind enough to give him. A concave stone he had found, and a smooth one to use as a pestle of sorts, had done the trick, but left him with aching arms and shoulders so sore that it was days before he could lift anything again. He had spent those days picking the myriad remnants of seeds from the precious yellow oil he had obtained.
Treebeard had been kind enough some time ago to procure a set of copper bowls for him and he kept the oil in one of these, which he gently nudged now over the hot coals that remained from their morning fire. It was a while before the oil began to boil and in the meantime he contented himself with shaving the bark from a stick and using it to stir the resin he had collected from a stand of silver leaf pines, which he kept in another of the copper bowls. The entwives had been kind enough as well to give him the better part of a lemon tree and he had mixed the juice of the lemons in with the resin.
The oil began to boil at last, thick bubbles that rose in translucent little domes, forming on the slowly swimming golden surface before they burst, leaving an imprint of their shape before it was gradually absorbed by the glutinous oil. The litharge had been the most difficult element to obtain but at last he had found a stream bed in the south of the forest where the rocks had been caked with the soft red crystal, and he sprinkled the ground powder now into the boiling oil and stirred it with the stick. He only hoped he had managed to procure enough; without it the varnish would not harden.
He let the mixture boil until the coals cooled of their own accord and the oil mixture slowly stopped swimming. The bowl, he knew, would be too hot to touch for a while and so he stood and stretched, with perfect timing it seemed, for at that very moment he saw what looked like a forest ambling towards them.
"Fangorn!" He called, cupping his hands around his mouth, and heard the booming laughter of the Ents in response. The tallest of the branches, moving atop the rest of the forest, must be Walks With Clouds, a towering sycamore, he mused, and the rest had not yet come into sight. Galadriel had leapt to her feet as well and, presently, the Ents made their way into the clearing, Treebeard's bark crumpled into the familiar shape of a smile.
Treebeard had indeed brought Walks With Clouds with him, as well as Home for Birds, a wrinkly old oak, and two of the entwives, a supple young cherry named Spring Blossom, in whom Treebeard seemed to have taken a particular interest, and a mellow mannered beech with spreading branches who went by the name of Broad Leaves. And the Ents quickly, or as quickly as Ents could go in any case, set about to helping Celeborn to assemble the talan.
"You seem, hoom, out of sorts, Golden Garland," the young Entwife remarked to Galadriel as the supple cherry tree helped the she elf boost up yet another of the boards. The help of the Ents had indeed made the work go far more smoothly, not to mention happily as well, and yet Galadriel was unable to shake the nightmare that had plagued her, the vision of Celeborn holding a knife to her throat.
"Nothing really," Galadriel replied, wiping sweat from her brow as she shielded her eyes from the sun, watching as Celeborn moved about in the top of the camphor tree, assisted in his endeavors by Treebeard and Walks With Clouds. The talan was slowly taking shape and it was like nothing that Galadriel had ever seen before.
"Hm," the Entwife chortled, the bark around her eyes crinkling as she smiled, her leaves rustling in the breeze, "your Silver Tree seems quite pleased."
"Yes…yes he does seem that way doesn't he?" She said, but something in her voice must have betrayed her misgivings, the thoughts that had haunted her of late, that something had changed in Celeborn, something for the worse, and that the longer they stayed here the more that something was exacerbated.
"Hm, is it not so?" The Entwife said, turning her eyes to Galadriel.
"I…I don't know," Galadriel stammered, reluctant to share her private thoughts. But just then Celeborn called down for another of the boards and they helped to boost it up into Treebeard's capable hands.
"Is he unhappy?" Spring Blossom asked, and Galadriel silently cursed that the momentary distraction had not put the Entwife off the trace of the conversation.
"He…" she paused, debating with herself over whether to lie or tell the truth, but it seemed that the truth had wanted to come out for so long that she could not restrain it any more. "He misses them, his people I mean," she said. "They're such a part of him that without them he seems not himself." As soon as the words were out she wished that she had not said them at all. She felt as if she were standing before the Entwife in nothing but her skin.
"Have you, hoom, spoken to him…" the Entwife began, but Galadriel interrupted, which was no great feat, given how slowly the Ents spoke.
"No, no." She replied. It was as if she had said too much and yet nothing at all, for how would it ever be possible to describe the way that she felt, to put into words the persistent echo that though her cousins had not killed Celeborn in the bowels of Menegroth, some part of him had nevertheless died there and now lay moldering in that silent grave, never to be reclaimed, beyond her now until the end of time. "I don't think he even realizes it himself," she stammered. "But I'd rather not…"
"That's the last one! Send her up." She heard Celeborn call down and breathed a sigh of relief that the conversation had been brought to an end. A moment later she felt the lurch of vertigo as Treebeard scooped her up and took her soaring up through the forest canopy to gently deposit her upon the floor of the talan. It was only now that it was complete that she could see the symmetry of it, the elegant simplicity of its lines, the subtle pattern of the grain of the wood, the cunning genius of its design, the beautiful green roof that the canopy of the tree provided, and she turned about marveling at all of it, her darker thoughts of a moment earlier having faded.
"Do you like it?" She heard him ask, his hands capturing hers, and she raised her eyes to his, smiling. There was some boyish excitement in his voice that tugged gently at the bond between them, bitter, and sweet, and fresh as new leaves in spring.
"I adore it," she replied quietly, delighting in the joy in his eyes and the blossoming warmth that grew between their souls. And then she stepped forward to place a tender kiss upon his lips, feeling the light of the sun dancing across her closed eyes, caring not at all that the Ents were just below until Treebeard spoke.
"Two little lovebirds in a tree, hoom," the Ent boomed with a laugh.
"Two little lovebirds up a tree!" The gleeful shriek of the Fëanorian soldiers echoed in the chamber of her mind and she gasped, her vision cutting to black for an instant before it returned, and she pressed a hand over her chest, feeling the erratic beating of her heart, like a rabbit in a snare.
"Galadriel?" Celeborn had turned his eyes towards her once more, a flicker of worry in their depths as the beginnings of a frown creased his brow.
"It's nothing," she said, braving a smile, "just a bad dream is all." And Celeborn squeezed her hand for a brief moment, his thumb tight against her palm, before he moved to sit on the edge of the talan, eye to eye with Treebeard.
"At last I am as tall as you, Eldest," Celeborn said with a laugh and the bark around Treebeard's eyes crinkled with mirth.
"Indeed you are, but not as tall as I," Walks with Clouds said as he came to stand beside Treebeard, peering down at them from his great height. The great Sycamore chuckled, nearly dislodging a robin's nest in his upper branches.
"Hoom, in the old days, hm, Silver Tree was keen, hm, to be as tall as he could, hoom," Treebeard chortled. "I remember, yes, hm, when he was an elfling of but ten years, hoom, and already wishing that he might, hoom, grow to be as tall, hm, as his Uncle Thingol."
"On that count I fear that I have failed," Celeborn said. "Though I like to think that I came close to his height."
"Hoom, not quite! Not quite!" Treebeard laughed, a sound like the rumble of a waterfall into a gorge.
"Perhaps I shall have the last few boards ready in a few days," Celeborn told them and a look of contemplation slowly moved across Treebeard's face.
"Hoom," he Ent mused, "I am afraid to disappoint you, hm, but if you wish for our assistance once more then, hoom, you may have to wait a bit longer than that my friend."
"And by long do you mean long as an elf would or long as an Ent would?" Celeborn laughed and Treebeard smiled.
"As an elf perhaps," the Ent said. "We are going on a journey and it may be some weeks, hoom, or perhaps even months before we, hm, return to Nan Tathren."
"That is no matter, friend," Celeborn said. "What we have now is sufficient to last us a long while and I am in no longer in any great rush to finish this project."
"Then we shall see you when we return," Walks With Clouds said.
"Will you go so soon?" Celeborn asked, surprised, and the Ents nodded.
"First, hoom," Treebeard said, "there is an entmoot to be had, hm, and then after we will, hm, go."
"Where do you think they are going?" Celeborn asked her that night as she lay in his arms, his chin pressed to the top of her head, and Galadriel shifted uncomfortably, some foreboding tugging gently at her heart, though she could not place its cause.
"I imagine if it was our business he would have told us," she replied.
"Do you ever get the feeling that there's something Treebeard isn't telling us?" Celeborn asked and Galadriel turned to look at him, surprised.
"No, why?" She asked but Celeborn shrugged.
"Just a feeling," he told her before he closed his eyes, signaling the end of the conversation, and she felt some strange tension in him until at last sleep claimed her.
It was the full weight of Celeborn's body being uncautiously thrown upon her own that awoke Galadriel with a start and she lay immobile, wheezing for air, as her husband's arm shot out to grasp some unseen creature and he tumbled away from her. She heard a thud, a muffled curse, the sound of a punch finding purchase in flesh, and it took only a moment longer for her to realize that her husband was wrestling with someone and, eyes still blurred from sleep, she scrambled across the talan to grasp her spear, bringing it to bear, heart pounding frantically in her chest at the thought that someone or something had attempted to attack them in this place where they had thought they were safe.
But, by the time she had gathered her wits enough to press the blade of her spear up against the throat of the assailant, Celeborn already had the elf pressed face-down into the smooth wood of the talan, arms pinioned behind his back and a knee between the stranger's shoulder blades.
Galadriel was still breathing hard and exchanged a questioning look with her husband, but Celeborn merely shook his head, seeming as confused as she, even if he had been a bit more aware. The mysterious stranger shrieked, struggling briefly against Celeborn's grasp, but he was no match for the much stronger and much larger Sinda.
"Who are you!" Galadriel cried, jabbing the strange elf man with her spear. "And what business have you with us?" Her heart was racing in her chest, worry palpitating through her veins, the humming of fear echoing in her ears, and in her mind swam the not so distant memories of dark caverns soaked in blood and gore.
"Ai! Leave me be!" The stranger cried in perhaps the most uncouth sounding Sindarin Galadriel had ever heard. "I ain't meant no harm by it, honest! Just ain't ever seen nothing like that before is all!" But Celeborn only tightened his grip on this strange elf and Galadriel pressed the blade of her spear all the more closely to his neck.
She could see nothing of his face but he sounded like a young elf, his voice still having that awkward quality of youth, and she judged by the strange hairstyle he wore, some parts of his golden hair shaved while the rest hung in long, sloppily woven braids adorned with clay beads and ornaments of bone, that this was no Sinda, nor one of her own people.
"Are you an agent of Morgoth or of Fëanor's sons?" Galadriel asked, her voice low and tense, fraught with worry. Perhaps they had been discovered, perhaps they had sent others to finish what they had started. Her mind ran to a thousand horrific possibilities.
"Nay! I swear it," the younger elf cried, the thickness of his woodland accent indicating that it was likely he was telling the truth. Nevertheless, Galadriel did not release her grip on her spear, not now, not after she'd seen what people she had trusted had been willing to do to her. "I too am an elf. Surely you will not slay your kin? I beg of you!" The elf pleaded, choking for air against Celeborn's iron grip, growing desperate.
"I have seen kin slay kin too many times to believe the words of those who call me friend, much less so those who are unknown to me." Celeborn growled, and Galadriel agreed with his sentiment but was glad to see that the words had brought him back to his senses and he released his grip somewhat, bringing the knife away from the elf's neck.
"It is no light matter to touch the hair of another elf, even more so an elf who is the wife of another, most especially while she is asleep and has not given her consent!" Celeborn spat, his eyes livid, pressing down more firmly with his knee between the stranger's shoulder blades.
"Not all of us are holding with your fancy traditions!" The young elf retorted, trying to wiggle free again. "I ain't from your fancy folk! How should I know your rules?"
Celeborn sighed, glancing at Galadriel, and his hold on the elf lessened. "One of the Evair…" he muttered, turning the elf over, an Avarin lad. A handsome but decidedly unhappy face stared up at them, brows fixed in a frown over deep-set dark eyes and a nose that had obviously been broken more than once in the past, lips clenched in a thin line.
"You're from Doriath," the elf hurled the words at Celeborn as if they were an accusation, glaring at him.
"What's it matter to you?" Celeborn replied, seeming to have reasoned that it would be impossible to deny the accusation given his strong Doriathrin accent. "You had better speak, and do so quickly, for my patience is wearing thin and I would know who you are and what business you have here."
The younger elf shifted, clearly unhappy and having every reason to be so given the rather rough manner in which he had been restrained, casting a fierce eye upon Galadriel's spear before he shifted his eyes back to Celeborn. "Let go of me first," he snapped, "and then I might think about it."
Celeborn considered it for a moment but then at last he released the younger elf who leapt up in an instant, pacing back and forth for the span of a minute. "Tell her to stop pointing that long wretched thing at me!" He snorted, making a rude gesture in the direction of Galadriel's spear, which she lowered at a nod from Celeborn. The stranger reached up to scratch his messily braided golden head, glaring at the both of them and muttering some curse in a language Galadriel did not know but which had clearly contained the word 'Noldor' and she glared straight back at the young man.
"I didn't mean no harm," the younger elf protested once more, returning from his pacing to toss himself down on the talan in front to Celeborn, sitting cross-legged. "I was just curious is all. I'm an Avar, Hwindan is my name, and my people do some trade with the Ents." He scratched at his head again. "A few years ago they started asking for some odd things…a pot, bowls, cups…things Ents have no use for."
He shrugged. "My people, they don't like to be involved in other people's business but I thought it mighty curious, and what with the things that happened in Doriath I thought…well…maybe some of 'em is here, hiding or somewhat. And you are ain't you?" He looked at them curiously now, his anger of earlier now gone.
"I been trying to figure out who ye might me," he said, scratching at his head once again. "The older ones in my tribe don't like for us to know overly much about the different elves and the like, save the Green Elves. They say it's bad, makes us keen on things that pollute the spirit, makes us forget the ways of our people. But still, I been digging around for something or other and the Green Elves ain't mind telling me a thing or two."
He pushed his finger into the wood of the talan for a moment, seeming to ponder whether or not he ought to tell them, but his curiosity to discern whether his speculations would prove accurate seemed to get the better of him and his eyes flickered up to them, brightly inquisitive. "I think I know who you are…you must be Celeborn, the prince," he pointed, "and you must be his woman," he swept his arm over to point at Galadriel. "Because the Green Elves said the prince had a Noldorin woman. That's what you are isn't you? You're a Noldo. That's why you look so funny. I ain't never seen one of them before. I kept trying to puzzle out what ye were."
He stared at her wide-eyed as Galadriel and Celeborn exchanged glances. Whatever this youngster was, he was clearly not a threat. Celeborn sighed, his shoulders relaxing as he realized that Hwindan's only crime was an overabundance of curiosity, and Galadriel laid her spear aside, taking a seat on the floor of the talan beside the two men.
"Have you met Amdir?" Celeborn asked. "He's a friend of sorts."
"Oh aye, I met him a time or two," the lad replied, bright eyed. "Somber sort of fellow and not much fun. But my tribe is from further east, in Taur-im-Duinath."
"I didn't know there were any elves living there," Celeborn said, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
"Oh aye, it's not so bad if you know where the safer areas are. And besides, the wolves keep the orcs out." He laughed, a strange laugh like a dog barking, but not an unpleasant laugh at all, and pulled his knees up to his chest, rocking back and forth. Celeborn merely responded by raising an eyebrow but Hwindan seemed not to mind his audience's silence and continued on merrily with his tale.
"Ain't nowhere safe no more really," he said. "Doriath is overrun, Bauglir controls almost everything. Can't go nowhere no more. My father talks about going over the mountains sometimes but he'll never do it. My people are too stuck in their ways. But it gets old you know, sitting in the tents day after day." He kicked at the ground with his bare foot. "My father goes on and on about how these are our ancestral lands but what good is any of that if we have no freedom? And then there's people talking of war brewing," he shrugged. "All I know is I get awful bored. I want to see things, meet people…but all I ever do is stare at the same 20 faces every day, and half of 'em I ain't got no liking for anyway."
"They think you're all dead you know, all the others," he said, rattling eagerly on with his tale. "But I got curious. I heard the rumors. Somebody, one of my people, said they saw an elf with silver hair near the River Aros not long after Doriath fell," he flashed them a grin. "My people are keen on that sort of thing. We see things other people don't. And then I started hearing odd things about the Ents, about them asking for things they ain't got no use for, copper bowls and the like. Now see then I thought about it," he said with another grin, tapping his index finger to his temple. "And I thought, there's somebody in Nan Tathren. Ain't nothing else made no sense. If you'd been in Taur-im-Duinath I'd a known all about it because my people know all that's going on in there."
Galadriel thought she saw the corner of Celeborn's mouth quirk up at that and she had to admit herself that there was something very endearing about the young Avarin boy, about the way he spoke as if he was worldly beyond his years, about the wide eyed curiosity with which he looked at them. "But why are you here?" The young man's sandy blond brows dipped into a frown. "Your people are on Balar, don't you know?"
"We surmised as much," Celeborn replied. Hwindan was silent for a moment, contemplating the thought.
"Hiding from your own tribe?" The boy asked as if the idea perplexed him in the utmost. Celeborn merely shrugged as if he did not want to discuss the idea any further. "You folk are odd," Hwindan said, shaking his head.
"Come on then," Celeborn said, his mood suddenly souring. "You've said your piece and gotten your answer. Hadn't you better get home now? I'm sure you must have a mother who is worrying over you." He prodded at the boy with his foot, causing Hwindan to leap to his feet.
"Prickly fellow aren't you?" Hwindan said with a frown, glowering at Celeborn as he brushed off his posterior. "What if I don't want to go back?"
"Well you'll have to I'm afraid," Celeborn told him. "After all, we had better be going back to sleep and there's nothing for you to do here. If your curiosity is satisfied then I would beg you allow us get on with our night. After all, weren't you the one just now going on about how wrong it is to hide from one's own tribe?"
The young elf kicked at the floor of the talan, looking intently at his bare toes as he spread them and then squeezed them together once more. "Yes but…"
"Yes but, yes but," Celeborn replied, grabbing the young man by the shoulders and propelling him to the bole of the tree. "You can climb down from here. And don't come back. You nearly scared us half to death and you've no business being here. You might draw unwanted attention."
"I ain't meant no harm, honest!" Hwindan protested, struggling against Celeborn's restraining hands. "Just let me stay one night! I had to sneak out and if my father catches me coming back in the middle of the night he'll tan my hide!"
"Seems as if you understood well enough the possible consequences of your actions before you made the ill advised decision to sneak out," Celeborn retorted, placing a hand between the young man's shoulders and pushing, but Hwindan, in a frantic scramble that involved contorting his body in ways Galadriel would have never believed possible, somehow managed to squirm beneath Celeborn's arm and escape to the other side of the talan.
"Maybe we could let him stay, just for one night," Galadriel said with a sigh as Celeborn glared at Hwindan and the young elf stared back at him with the expression of a dog testing its boundaries.
Too dangerous, Celeborn replied in her mind. His people might come looking for him and we have no idea who they are or with whom they might associate. Not all of the Evair are good of heart. There are those who have been known to band with Bauglir. Galadriel nodded, though she was reluctant to do so. Celeborn's reasoning was sound and yet she found herself oddly fond of the curious young man.
"He's right," she appealed to Hwindan gently. "It would be better if you were to go."
Hwindan lowered his head again, morosely scuffing his toes against the wood of the talan. "Ain't meant no harm," he said softly once more.
"We know," Galadriel told him quietly and then sighed, proffering her hair. "Here," she said, "if you agree to go I'll let you touch it."
"Oh it's alright," Hwindan said, shaking his head, though Galadriel could see that he did not mean it. "I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings."
"Go ahead," she said, having caught the glimmer of hope in his eyes despite his words, and Hwindan reached out carefully, taking a deep breath as if he meant to plunge underwater, before he carefully wound his hand in the silken strands. He only released his breath when he stepped away empty handed. "Was it so very frightening?" Galadriel asked him with a kind laugh.
"Aye Lady it was," Hwindan said, rubbing his hands together, a nervous smile upon his face. "I ain't never knowed a sorceress before, much less touched one. My people say they have terrible power. I thought ye might mean to bewitch me."
"Well I'm not quite that," Galadriel remarked with a laugh and Hwindan ducked his head in an awkward bow before at last allowing Celeborn to lead him from the talan. Swinging over the edge, he neglected to use the rope ladder, but merely dropped to the ground below, nimble as a cat, and in the light of the moon they could see him skipping off into the trees, the tune he was whistling gradually fading until it disappeared entirely and only the gentle nocturnal hum of the cicadas remained.
