The Rescue of Celebrian

Galadriel herself carried a cup of welcome around the new arrivals. Consciously, carefully, with each new face, each offering of the cup, she lifted their cares, eased their troubled hearts, as much as was possible after the peril they’d escaped and the griefs they carried with them. She smiled when the little boy, called Veon, drank too greedily and brought the hiccups upon himself. Here was one like her Elrohir as a youngster; curious and as at home among strangers as he was in his father’s woods, or would have been, had he not taken the journey from the Greenwood to Lothlorien when he had. Even the elf child, hardly old enough to trace the passing of the seasons, carried a hunted look around his eyes. When she came, finally, to the woman that accompanied the boy, the gift of peace was harder to give; the woman expected it and set her spirit against the unburdening. Perplexed, Galadriel studied the woman a moment longer, dusting the forgetfulness of ages away as she did.

“You were among my uncle’s people, many years ago,” she said, finally, the cup all but forgotten. “I remember you from a lembas making before the great war.”

“This was so,” the woman replied. “I also remember you, niece of Fingolfin, my lady.” The Lady of Light stood silent, betraying her shock, as she studied the woman again. This woman, like herself, had known the Light of the Trees. She had crossed the sea and seen first hand the Kinstrife and the Doom that confined Galadriel within the Middle-earth. Here was one like her, and yet… not. This woman was not, primarily at least, a scholar, for her clothes were threadbare and her apron of heavy leather. Her hands were worn, the fingertips rough and calloused from frequent work with a difficult material. Fine lines marred the edges of her eyes and lips from peering closely at something in weak light. And her cunning showed through her gaze, more strongly even than the mark that accompanied those born beneath The Trees. But happy, this new guest was not, and to Galadriel’s mind it seemed had not been for a very long time.

“We were children together?” Galadriel asked.

“My father was your uncle’s master of hounds, and his fletcher.”

“And you have been this for Thranduil?” the Lady of Light asked, catching on.

“As you say,” the smaller woman said, bowing again.

“What are you called, that I may address you as befits one of my kin?”

“Nindé, my lady.” Finally, after their conversation, Nindé began to relax, though still kept her spirit some little withdrawn. It had been a long while, indeed, since she had felt happiness.

“We could speak more, if you care to do so, while you visit here,” Galadriel said. “I would be glad of the company.”

“As you say, my lady.”

And then, the youngster hiccupped again. “Pinch your earlobes,” Nindé said to the red-faced lad. “Then hold your breath, cross your eyes, jump up and down on one foot and count backwards from fifty.”

“Hic! Why, auntie- Hic!- Nin?”

“If they are not gone after that, I will be forced to dangle you by the feet until they desist,” Nindé insisted, struggling to maintain a straight face. Finally, Galadriel noted, a hint of joy.

“But why? Hic!” the lad asked again, attempting valiantly to follow her instructions while speaking.

“When one is upside down,” Galadriel offered, “he cannot, in fact, hic-up. To hic-down is far less noisy.”

“I thi-Hic!- you’re playing with me, my lady.”

“I think you are right, Veon. I think you are right.”

~*~

Rather than tempered by the arrival of so many unexpected and distressed travelers, the festivities that night seemed enhanced by them, as though the opportunity to shed their cares at the edge of the wood had struck extra brilliance into the eyes and hearts of Thranduil’s people. Circling round the center of it all was Celeborn, apart from the festivities not because he preferred to be, but because of the ruling pair, he less needed the companionship of others than his lady wife, and one of them should be attentive to potential problems, should something arise. He knew her well, his Lady of Light. Somehow, in her loneliest times, the times when even his presence and silent understanding brought only small comfort, someone always came to them: their daughter, their grandchildren, travelers from the other elvin realms. While she did not dance, Galadriel circled along the edges of the crowd, summoning a page with wine at one group, listening intently to the repairs needed to a widow’s talan at the next. And the more she spoke with their people, the more of them she touched, embraced, the brighter she grew. They had held that in common, he mused, his wife and daughter. Would his daughter’s delight in companionship, in meeting strangers and hearing new tales, come back to her? Or was her mind somehow trapped still in those caves beneath the mountains?

It was a trial, and a sore one besides, for a father to stand and look on unmoving at his child’s suffering. Worse, even, to know that the cause of it went free, feeling no remorse, no touch of justice for their wrongs. True, Elrhoir had told them all with chilling callousness how the raiding party had been dealt their deaths, but for all that… Celebrian should be there among the guests, circling opposite her mother as she always had, her focus on curiosity and enjoyment and inviting these new but not unfamiliar people into their home. To think of his daughter afraid of the shadows of her own hall…

The Dorwinian turned to vinegar in his mouth, and he handed his half full cup to a passing page. In all his long years, in all the battles he’d seen, Celeborn had never felt so helpless. His little girl deserved justice. More than that, she deserved vengeance.
Immediately following the darkness of that thought, Lord Celeborn felt the first jolt of attack in the vicinity of his shins, followed shortly thereafter by surprise.

It had been hundreds of years since a child had gone pell-mell into his feet, and both child and lord stared at each other in silent shock. Eventually, a chuckle broke their wide-eyed stare.

“I did not mean to swing you that hard,” Elrohir said, reaching for the child. “Are you all right, Veon?”

“Yes, my lord, fine. I landed on my bottom, not my head.”

But no sooner were the words past the lad’s lips than a dark haired shadow cut through the pack of revelers to swoop down at Celeborn’s feet and scoop the lad into her lap. “Are you hurt? What happened? Did your bandage loosen again? And apologize to Lord Celeborn immediately. You could both have been injured,” the woman fussed, checking carefully time and again at the wound on the child’s head.

“I believe I am sufficiently stable as to withstand small projectiles such as this,” Celeborn found breath to answer, “even when thrown by my formidable grandson. We are none the worse for the spill, my lady.”

“Perhaps a rest is advisable, though,” Elrohir said, dusting the knees of his trousers with a catlike expression about his eyes. “The four of us might sit for a while, to catch our breaths.”

“We have rested well since you brought us to the city, my lord. But my thanks go with you for entertaining the child,” the woman replied distractedly dusting off her young charge. At the familiar misconception, Elrohir smiled.

“That was my brother. I am Lord Elrond’s elder son. Elrohir Half-elvin at your service, my lady,” he explained, offering a reverence and his hand to help her off of the forest floor. She inclined her head in reply, but ignored the hand in favor of sweeping the child onto her hip as she stood, where he gladly, and sleepily, nestled into the hollow of her shoulder.

“She’s cold,” Elrohir thought to himself. “Or so she seems. But is it coldness, or is it caution? She has been hurt, and seen much.” Over the retreating lady’s head, he exchanged a curious glance with his grandfather.

“There’s something… familiar about her,” Celeborn said in a puzzled tone.

“I agree, and yet, she is not active in the pursuit of friends,” Elrohir added.

“But she has need of them,” Celeborn decided. “Hers are eyes that have seen the ages pass, and have done so alone. It is not good for one to go always alone.”

And Elrohir could but silently agree.

~*~

Long after everyone had gone to their rest, Elladan sat on the landing before the talan he shared with his brother, his pale bare feet dangling over the hundred foot drop to the forest floor. He could not pinpoint what troubled him, but some shapeless thing haunting the edges of his mind kept him from sleep. Irritatingly, the harder he looked, the more vague and misty the thing became, almost as though it did not wish to be found out. As he sat, frustrated and weary, his ears picked up the sound of footsteps far away. Too light to be a Warden on rounds; too slow to be a messenger, or someone sending for aid in the night. Someone else in the Golden Wood could not sleep, and from the sound of the steps, she— yes, it was a woman— was heading in his direction.

It was not until an unfamiliar dark shape passed beneath the neighboring mallorn and out of the inky black of shadows before Elladan realized that she sang in a voice so low he could not make out the words. But the tune he knew, and if it had not been changed by time and distance, it was the same song he had found himself humming when bad luck or chance took him past the bathing spring in Rivendell, about the journey of Earendil and his wife Elwing’s transformation into a great white bird. What bard had written it, Elladan did not know, and it seemed no one did, though since it was about his family, Elladan had learned it faithfully as a tiny piece of his inheritance from the Second Born, which his father found difficult to speak of. And who was this, then, singing that song so softly into the night, with great dark eyes turned up toward the stars? And why did she, so other-worldly beautiful in the light of the moon, walk about at night with tears streaking her face? When she passed beneath his perch, he recognized her as the craftswoman from the Greenwood party. She who had shown such reserve and inner steel during the day, it seemed, merely hid her grief for the night, and walked alone among the silent trees instead of seeking her bed. Not a fitting night for the guest of the Lady of Light and Lord Celeborn, Elladan decided. Even in Lothlorien, one should not go far at night unless one knows the way.

Very quietly, he folded his sinuous frame in half, tucked his heels onto the talan’s edge, and stood, padding quietly through the bedroom for his shoes before taking the stairs two at a time. The only two awake at this time in the Golden Wood should perhaps share their concerns together, or, barring that, at least he could offer to walk her to her quarters when the demons had been put to rest. But whatever the pesky, niggling thing at the periphery of his mind was, something else told him that he should not leave this woman alone.
~*~