Chapter Text
If you’re out there in the cold
I'll cover you in moonlight
If you’re a stranger to your soul
I'll bring you to your birthright
- “Never Look Away” by Vienna Teng
FA 20
Mereth Aderthad
The feast has certainly been a success, Galadriel thinks as she wanders through the pavilions and tents. The weather has been fine, and on this afternoon the sky is cloudless and the sun is bright. Flowers bloom in between the tents and along the banks of the Pools of Ivrin, bluebells and celandine, niphredil and dandelion. Followers of Fëanor’s sons mingle with those of her brothers and her cousins and uncle. It does seem notable, though, that only two of Fëanor’s seven sons have come. They are precisely the two she had expected, but Galadriel is not sure they, the House of Finwë, can call themselves all fully reunited with five of their princes still so pointedly missing.
She has seen Maglor several times at a distance, but not yet spoken to him. Maedhros has approached her once or twice, with fair and kind words of greeting. His body has healed, but he has changed; there is a fire in him that Galadriel does not recall seeing before. He moves with a certain grace, but it is not that of a dancer anymore, not as she had first seen him in Tirion long ago when she had been a small child and he a bright and buoyant youth. Now when she looks at him she thinks of a large cat, stalking through its hunting grounds. It makes her shiver, though she can think of no reason for it. The only creatures that need quail before Maedhros son of Fëanor are orcs.
“Artanis.” She turns to find Maglor approaching. He is clad in blue and silver, with ribbons in his hair and small diamonds glinting in his ears. He seems more like his old self than Maedhros does, but still there is something subdued about him; the darkness that clings to them all dampens even his bright spirit.
“Macalaurë,” Galadriel says. “It seems you have met your match in music.” Both he and Daeron of Doriath have held them all spellbound every evenings as they play, urging one another one to greater and mightier feats of song and music. For that alone Galadriel thinks it worth coming.
He laughs. “Perhaps I have,” he says, “but I like a challenge. How do you find Doriath?”
“I like it very much.”
“I have heard you gained an epessë there, and perhaps a husband to go with it.”
“Perhaps,” says Galadriel with a smile. “How do you find the eastern lands?”
His smile is sudden and bright. “Wide,” he said, “Ard-galen is a sea unto itself, and then the wind blows through the grass—it is breathtaking.” He had always liked open spaces in his youth, Galadriel remembers, had always been eager to leap into a saddle and take off across the plains outside of Tirion just for the joy of wind and speed.
Galadriel, too, had once been a child of open skies and wide spaces—she had grown up in Alqualondë, racing boats rather than horses, with the stars a bright spill of diamonds across the black velvet sky. Now, though, she is finding an ever-growing love for the deep woods and the shelter of trees, and the greenish hue of the afternoon sunlight as it filters gently through the boughs high above. The beeches of Neldoreth and the birches of Brethil are tall and fair, and the holly trees of Region lovely with their glossy leaves and bright red berries in wintertime.
“Do you think it will work?” she asks, nodding around them. “This reuniting, the leaguer our uncle wishes to establish?”
“The reuniting, yes, I think so,” says Maglor, also looking around, his smile slipping a little. “It must, if we are to work together. As for the rest—what else can we do but try?” He reaches into his pocket and draws out something that glints silver and gold in his palm. “I’ve missed you,” he says as he holds it out. “I wish—it is useless wishing, but I still wish it all had not unfolded as it did.”
Galadriel takes the gift, finding a bracelet nestled into her palm, of a delicate chain in the shape of malinornë leaves, in silver and emerald, and interspersed with golden flowers. She thinks of her first harp, still tucked away somewhere in her childhood home in Alqualondë far away, never to be played or seen again, and of the bright silver and golden days spent learning music under Maglor’s careful and kind tutelage, or of wandering through the groves of gold and silver in springtime. There are no such trees in Middle-earth. “Thank you,” she says, closing her fingers around it as she looks back up at him. “Take care of yourself, Macalaurë.”
“And you, Artanis.”
- -
SA 32
Lindon
Galadriel stood at the water’s edge, contemplating the stones. They were jagged and sharp-edged, newly broken, unused to the constant ebb and flow of ocean waves and tides. Once where she stood there had been a forest, ancient trees reaching skyward, glades of wildflowers and thick ferns, the air sweet-smelling and the sunlight tinged soft green. Now the sky was wide and open above and before her, and there was nothing of green—only the various shades of brown and grey of bare stone and disturbed earth. There were no seashells, but there was a great deal of driftwood—a forest’s worth, entire trees washed up on shore. Galadriel looked up to see a large group of Elves and Men dragging one such tree back toward what would, hopefully, become a city someday soon. For now it was a large and sprawling encampment, one of many scattered up and down the coast of Lindon, as new maps were being drawn and plains made.
Ships were being built, too. Elros the son of Eärendil the Blessed was now a king among the Edain, and he and his followers were busily preparing to depart for the island that the Valar had raised from the Sea for them, a land to call their very own, to dwell in peace and prosperity. Galadriel did not know either Elros or his brother Elrond well, for she had gone east with Celeborn before Doriath had fallen, and was only lately returned over the Ered Luin, but she had noticed that they kept slipping away, vanishing for days or weeks at a time. Perhaps it was the knowledge of their pending separation that spurred it—they sought as much time together as they could now, for once Elros departed, he would not return.
As though her thoughts were a summons, Elrond and Elros came walking up the shore toward her. They were so alike in face and bearing—so like Lúthien, it was sometimes hard to look at them—that Galadriel could not, to her chagrin, tell them apart except when they were dressed more formally, with Elros in his crown. Neither of them wore any ornaments now. “Lady Galadriel,” one of them said, as they both bowed.
“Sons of Eärendil,” Galadriel replied.
“We have heard it said that you have a mirror in which you can see many things,” said the second twin as they straightened. When he met her gaze it was with starlit grey eyes, clear as a cloudless evening. “That it is something you learned from Queen Melian of Doriath.”
“I did,” Galadriel agreed. “My mirror can show many things to whoever looks into it. What would you seek?”
“Maglor, son of Fëanor,” said the first twin. Galadriel’s shock must have shown on her face. “We have been searching for him since the war ended, but we have found no sign. There were—certain signs—we do not think Maedhros survived the upheaval of Beleriand’s sinking, but we have seen nothing to suggest that Maglor does not live.”
“I believe he does,” said the second. “I have dreamed of him—but we cannot find him. Can you help us?”
“Why do you wish to find him? Either of them?” Galadriel asked. After all they had done—and Sirion not the least—it seemed incredible that the sons of Elwing and Eärendil would wish to see them, that they would spend what precious time they had left together on the search.
“They raised us,” said the first twin quietly. “They loved us. Perhaps you find it hard to believe, but it’s true. If we are wrong and Maedhros too still lives, we would wish to find him also—to say farewell, at least, before I leave these lands.” He was Elros, then, and Elrond the other—the one who dreamed.
“I will look,” Galadriel said, “but I can make no promises. My mirror can be fickle.”
She led them away from the coastline, inland to where there were still woods and streams. Finding one that ran clear, falling noisily over a tumble of stony embankments, she filled an ewer, and in turn filled her silver basin, carried with her from Menegroth. It had been a gift from Melian, long ago. Elrond and Elros stood hand in hand and watched in silence as she set the basin upon a tree stump and filled it. She blew over the water, calling forth her power and focusing her intentions as Melian had taught her. She leaned over the water, letting her eyes unfocus as she turned her thoughts to her cousins, to Maedhros with his distant eyes and bright copper hair, and Maglor with his ringing voice and quick fingers.
The mirror was quick to show her Maedhros, his face twisted in pain as he clutched the Silmaril to his chest, its light escaping from between his fingers in brilliant, sharp rays. He took a step forward and vanished, fire leaping up before Galadriel’s eyes. Her breath caught in her throat, but she did not look away, as mists gathered before her, and faded only slowly—and there was Maglor, kneeling on the jagged, rocky shore. He gazed out at the sea, his eyes vacant but reddened from much weeping. Tears still slid down his cheeks, silent and unheeded. On his lap one of his hands rested, blistered and red with burns. There were no Silmarils to be seen, and Galadriel could not tell where he was.
A teardrop of her own hit the water, breaking the surface and dissolving the image. Galadriel straightened. “Maedhros is dead,” she said quietly. Elrond and Elros did not look surprised, but they bowed their heads. “Maglor lives, still. I have seen him by the shore, but where or even precisely when, I cannot say. The mirror shows many things—things that are, things that were, and some things that have not yet come to pass, and it is not always easy to tell which of them I am shown.”
“If he lives, then there is hope we may yet find him,” said Elrond. He was so young—they both were—but he spoke with such assurance that Galadriel very nearly believed him. “Thank you, Lady Galadriel.”
“What of Maedhros?” Elros asked. “Is there—he should be given a burial, if it is in our power.”
“There is no body to bury. He—he fell into one of the fiery rents that opened as Beleriand broke apart. I am sorry.”
Elros breathed a sigh; Elrond closed his eyes for a moment. “Thank you,” Elros said, echoing his brother. “We are sorry to have asked such a thing of you.”
“I hope that you find Maglor,” Galadriel said, “and I am glad to know that he did not fall so far that he could not care for you, or you for him.”
The twins left, falling into step beside one another, heads bent together as they discussed their next search—where to go, and when, and for how long. Galadriel had spoken truly: she did hope that they would find him. She did not, however, really believe that they would.
She did not believe she could find him either, but that did not stop her from making a search of her own. She declined Celeborn’s offer of company. He was needed where he was, as the Noldor and the Sindar and others all tried to figure out whether they would be able to come together as one people in this new age, and if so how. After Elrond and Elros departed, heading north, she made her way south, following the meandering and still unstable coastline. Parts of it were still in the process of breaking and of settling; the ground moved under her feet, and she watched an entire cliff break off and slip into the waves less than a mile ahead. How could Maglor be wandering the shores and expect to survive? Perhaps he had moved inland—but Galadriel did not think so. Her heart told her that if Maglor was to be found anywhere, it would be beside the sea. He had always loved the water, had often visited her parents’ home in Alqualondë just to spend hours on the beach listening to the waves whispering over the rainbow sands, or else wandering north or south along the coast to the wilder waters that crashed and pounded the rocky shores—though those waves were yet gentler than what assaulted the remnants of Beleriand now.
Galadriel stood upon a promontory, gazing out over the waters. The wind was cold out of the south, scented with salt and with coming rain as clouds gathered in the distance, dark and forbidding. She had found faint traces of someone in recent days, a footprint here, remnants of a small fire there. They could have belonged to anyone. As she turned to move inland the wind picked up again and she heard something upon it—something like the faint strains of a harp. Galadriel turned and listened hard, but did not hear it again. Instead of seeking shelter from the coming storm she quickened her pace south, straining to hear more.
There was nothing, only the sound of the sea pummeling the land, and the wind singing its own mournful songs.
Maglor did not reappear before the Edain set sail. Elros Tar-Minyatar was smiling as he boarded the flagship, but Galadriel had seen him weeping bitter tears the night before, both to say farewell to his brother and in mourning for the foster-fathers he would never meet again.