The wind blew from the East, as it had, steadily, unwavering, these last thirty days. But tonight the empty cleanness of it filled him with an ache of mingled exile and nostalgia.

He tightened the sail, drank a mouthful of warm, flat water from the barrel by the mast, wrapped himself more firmly in his cloak, and went back to sleep.

By the morning he was within sight of Valinor.

A grey ship came out of the harbour to meet him, and mariners, their dark hair swinging, leaned over the sides to hail him in a Teleri dialect he found almost incomprehensible - 'What news from Middle-earth? Where do you go? Who are you?'

The first would take a thousand days to answer. But to the second two questions he simply did not know what to reply. Who was he, after all, in this place? He cleared a voice made hoarse by a month of silence and shouted back, in Quenya "I am an elf of Ennor, and I ask leave to enter Valinor."

At that the captain came - a Teler with the light of the trees in her eyes, her face and thrawn arms brown from sun and weather. She parted her crew with the silence and authority with which her ship rode the waves. "Wretches," she said, "Back to your work. This is Celeborn, prince of the Sindar, whom we have been sent to meet. He is King Olw's kinsman by blood and King Finarfin's by marriage. Not to be interrogated by the likes of you!"

She balanced by the ship's curving prow as it came about, and for all she was an elf of Aman, she was not that different from one of Cirdan's folk, dressed in breeches and tunic, with a headscarf keeping the wind and salt from her hair. A small, heavy dread loosened in Celeborn then, seeing her. Not all was strange here. The sea and its people, at least, were the same on either shore.

The Captain shifted languages smoothly to a dialect of pure Iathrin Sindarin, such as had not been spoken in Middle earth since Doriath fell. The language of his youth. It hurt, in an odd, pleasant way, to hear it again in waking life. "You must forgive my men, Lord. You are not what they expected." She waved a hand at the shabby little boat, his drab working clothes, the rope burns on his hands, and the meagre bundle of possessions that lay lashed beneath a tarp in the stern, and he smiled, seeing what she meant. "If you'll follow us in there are those who wait to greet you."

It was disquieting to be seen once more through the eyes of strangers. There had for many centuries been little he could do to surprise anyone - so used his people had grown to him. He forced back a feeling of longing for the comfort of his Nandorin folk, now left behind. Tasted instead the firm and flowing shape of an old language on his tongue. "How many officials will I disappoint, arriving thus in meanness?"

She laughed. "None, my Lord. All such business has been smoothed away at the king's command, and the common folk have not been told of your coming. Doubtless they will not know who you are - so plain you seem."

"Good," said Celeborn quietly to himself. He did not think he could bear stepping from this solitude immediately into the office of a prince. He found himself disposed to like his great-uncle Olwë, if this was an example of that King's tact. Just landing here, knowing it was for eternity, would be enough of a trial, without any attempt at splendour.

Alqualond's harbour was wide and smooth as a mirror, lined with lamps of adamant. The buildings were of white stone and pearl, and pearls rolled, glinting coolly, in the white sands. It was spectacular, but oppressive, like Hithlum, and he could not help but wonder if it was here that Galadriel stood to slay her first elf. How long it had taken them to wash the blood from the beaches, how long the streets had echoed with lamentation and loss.

He tied the honest brown rope of Ennor to a ring of pale marble, put the small bag of his possessions on his shoulder and stepped, deliberately, onto the white quay. His heart fell, then steadied. There. It was done. He had arrived in Valinor, and there was now no going back.

On the other side of the harbour, reassuringly familiar, fisherfolk laughed and sang over their nets, but the road from the great warfs of the ocean going ships ran up into the town, and passed into the shadow of clifflike white towers. There, just where shade and daylight greeted one another, there stood two figures, watching him, and the bustle of the busy dawn broke about them like water about stone.

A man, and a woman. The man with hair of polished steel, the woman of starlight. Heretofore, he had been calm, a calmness carefully achieved by holding all of it away - watching himself as he might a play, seeing with curiosity what he would do, what he would think next. But now he could no longer sustain that separation. He forgot self-possession, dignity, and ran to them. They stepped forward out of the shadow, and early sunlight, fresh and gold, lay over both faces.

Then he felt as he had felt in the storm twenty days before, when his boat had teetered on each wave top and plummeted - weightless for an instant - till it crashed back into the angry sea. Even so he seemed now at once to fall and to fly, caught between agony and disbelief and joy. "Celebrian?"

She had been laid upon the ship with her eyes closed and her face sunken, unable to bear the light even to look upon her father's face as he said farewell. Now she smiled at him, radiant once more.

He turned, swallowed, looked up at the man. This face he had last seen beslimed with blood. He had bathed gore out of that blade-silver hair, out of what seemed a hundred gaping wounds. His hands remembered binding the brutal, heavy wounds of axe-blades in thigh and side, shoulder and neck - binding them and settling raiment over them; closing the open eyes that stared with fury and betrayal. He had made the corpse seemly, so that when his Queen looked upon it she would be spared some small distress. Now that knowledge coloured this meeting with an eerie terror. "Elu?"

"Welcome home, my nephew," said Thingol warmly, and the sound of his voice was exactly as Celeborn remembered it from the first age, from all those many millennia ago.

He dropped the bag he was carrying and fell to his knees. "Elu, my King!"

"Sssh." Thingol looked down at him with fondness and some pity. Bending, he took Celeborn's elbow and made him stand, drew him into a brief, warm hug. "You are late in arriving here, and overcome with strangeness. We will find you a quiet place where you can gather your thoughts."

Smiling still, Elu turned away, his gesture bringing a swarm of horses and servants apparently out of thin air. One or two of the harbour folk had stopped now, to gawp at this meeting of Sindar King and ragged newcomer. But they had the courtesy to do it from a distance, directing their questions to the the escort.

In the bustle, Celebrian slipped her hand into her father's grasp, and feeling it he believed for the first time that she was real. He turned and pulled her to him, desperately, breathed her in. She was real. She was his daughter, and she was alive, and she was smiling and real.

He tried not to sob. Managed it, just, the effort wracking his frame, making his chest ache. He pulled away, afraid to burst out crying and shame the King - The King! - but could not prevent himself from reaching out again to touch her unstained cheek and look into bright, happy eyes, until the vision of her swum with his unshed tears.

"Adar," she said, her own voice with a suspicious quaver to it, "How long were you alone in that little boat? A month?"

He nodded, overwhelmed.

"Then I'm glad I persuaded everyone else to wait. You would not have withstood so many as wanted to be here to greet you."

A servant pressed the reins of a great shadow-silver stallion into his hand, and he looked away in order to greet and thank both elf and horse. When he looked back his heart had finally found the words he wanted to say. "Your mother?"

"Ah," said Celebrian, and her face paled. She drew in a breath, let it out again, silently. It was Elu who turned back from the giving of orders to reply, with some anger.

"Galadriel is in Tirion. When you first set sail from Middle Earth, Ulmo gave her the news. I sent her an escort the same day, and they returned two weeks ago, without her. With no thanks, no message, no courtesy whatsoever. I am sorry, kinsman. She knows you are here. But she would not come."

Moonlight fell like a hoar frost over the harbour of Alqualondë. From the window of his chamber, in the tower of Olwë, Celeborn looked out and beheld ocean breakers far below flickering with a colour like ice; a chill beauty under a sky of pared pewter. Olwë's fortress home rose in many turreted peaks at the edge of a cliff where seagulls nested, and their white wings soared over it, snowy and silver. In the town beneath him lamps burned with lights of diamond and pearl, like nests of stars. The wind blew from the mainland now, a moving warmth that stroked his cold face and smelled of growing grass.

Though they had arrived at Olwë's citadel a little before noon, he had found himself too shaky to eat. Soaking in the baths for a long time, he had rid himself of the sea - the stiffness of salt in his hair, the aches of many nights spent without room to stretch out, head pillowed on ropes, awakening damp and chilled and many miles further from home. The excuse of tiredness, and of being too rudely dressed, had allowed him to snatch several more hours of solitude in which to try to understand what he felt, but moments ago the tailors had delivered him a set of princely garments; found him lying open eyed on his back, staring at the pale ceiling, unrested and with no answers.

Dressing - unable to put off his new life any further - he had looked for comfort to the stars. But even they were changed; so many unfamiliar constellations he could hardly tell north from south. Abruptly, he wished for Elwing's gift of flight - to hurl himself from the window and speed back over the endless waves to a land that had more need of him than this. There was an emptiness in his chest where there had been the song of stone, the roots, the elves, the Men, the trees of Middle-earth. He balled his fist and thought of driving it through the small glass panes - only to feel something else for a moment - but instead touched it gently to the frame, and rested his forehead on it. Even so, she must have felt, all the time she dwelled with me. Three Ages of the world.

Unlike his King, or his daughter, he was unsurprised that Galadriel had not come running at the news of his arrival. She had her pride, and of course she would want to punish him for arriving so tardily. By staying away so long he had said, in all but words, 'I do not need you.' So now she said in reply, 'no more do I need you.' It hurt - how could it not - but he supposed he deserved it. Their lives together had been a succession of partings and new starts, ruin and rebuilding. Had they been in Ennor he would have been confident of his strength to repair any breach between them. Galadriel was a challenge he knew he was more than adequate to meet.

At least, in Ennor.

The moon shone full into the chamber, and the pale silk hangings of the bed were like a mist of light. His white tunic and his loosened hair shimmered, and he felt that he himself was grown strange, and he no longer knew his own name. He hugged himself, surprised to find solid flesh, for he felt about as real as a corpse candle - without substance or ties to the land. Where was his strength; who was he, here?

"Adar?"

Celebrian came gently into the room, like daybreak after a night of pain. He looked at her with thanks, surprised again by her tall, straight, Queenly figure, the piled, starlit hair held back with combs that gleamed as fresh as beech leaves. Reality jarred with memory, for in his mind she was younger than this, still with an edge of uncertainty, a mischievous, playful air.

"Adar, you look so lost." Coming swiftly to his side, she sank gracefully to the floor beside him and rested her head and one arm against his knee, as she had in childhood, when they had poured together over the bright, illuminated bestiaries and histories of her schooling. "Is it Naneth? She will come around, you know it. She will seek you out if only to shout at you."

Shaking his head, he managed to smile at her. "It is not that, little one. What was it Elu said? I am overwhelmed with strangeness; that is all."

She looked at him, askance, unconvinced, but some of the liveliness he had missed so much came back into her gaze as she rose and patted her green and silver skirts into place. Her smile was radiant and a little fierce. "Well, I am come to make it worse, for you cannot skulk in here forever. If you are washed and rested you have many long lost relatives positively dying to meet you."

He reached for her hand - she was a blaze of reality in this ghostly place, and he needed to assure himself by touch that he dreamed not, that she was indeed here with him. "I do not know what needs to be done. Be my guide?"

"Gladly."

She lead him through many corridors and antechambers, nodding, now and then, to folk she knew. "I understand, a little," - her smile was the flick of sunshine on dew, a rare, surprising brilliance. "When I arrived I lay abed a long time, and folk tended to me and brought me all I needed. It was like being a newborn again. Nothing was expected of me until I was able to give it. You do not have that luxury, but people will still make allowances for you. You are one of the last to return - we have got rather good at this by now."

"It gets easier?"

Celebrian stopped. The hall about her was mosaic; white and blue and silver, fresh but chill. "It does," she said, and opened the beaten gold door of the audience chamber of Olwë, King of the Teleri of Aman, ushering him inside.

The chamber was long and pale. A wall of crystal let moonlight and the ever changing dusk silver of the sea through to play upon the marble. The craftsmanship was masterly, and very Noldor - there were no living things within the room other than the people. Celeborn tried not to shiver, felt again that combination of joy and wrongness when Elu Thingol levered himself away from the wall where he had been lounging and fell into step beside them. But the gesture of support was welcome, even from a dead man.

Olwë was white haired, and had the distant gaze of one who searches out far horizons. From an almost vanished youth, Celeborn remembered him. But he had not had the light of the two trees in his blue eyes in those days, nor their sheen playing over his face. How odd, to see that he had become Calaquendi.

"Welcome home, kinsman," he said. "You have been longer lost to Arda Marred than any of my family. I am glad to see you have made it here at last."

It was hard to think of an answer to that. 'I wish I had not,' did not seem appropriate. He compromised with a safer truth. "I must thank you for smoothing my arrival at the dock - it was appreciated."

Certainly Olwë noticed his lack of enthusiasm. He leaned back thoughtfully, and Celeborn felt - again - as though he had arrived in some archaic culture that no longer belonged to him. It had been so long since he was the petitioner, and another the Lord, looking down on him. Though he had not thought he would care about loss of power, of status, still it was strange to have his life back in the hands of others, rather than his own.

"If you are anything like my brothers," said the King, kindly, "you will wish to know where you fit, in this new world."

"I do, Lord. It is among the most pressing of my concerns."

"Well then," Olwë smiled - and the sea had so tanned his face that his eyes and mouth crinkled into Man-like folds at the edges. "You are my great-nephew by blood and my grandson by marriage, which is more than enough for my people to accept you as one of their own. If Alqualondë and the sea are to your liking I have many fiefs which have great need of more direct governance."

Despite his emptiness, Celeborn was amused. Yes, he liked Olwë - the king shared much of his older brother's directness; as straightforward and welcome as an anchor in a harbourless sea. "You put much trust on our kinship, lord - I may be a poor ruler."

"Nonsense!" his uncle grinned, "you forget you have been proceeded to these shores by folk of every realm you have ever husbanded. I have had reports."

Beside him Elu tutted, smiling. "He is not a half day here and you are poaching him already? You know he will come with me, and be prince of my realm as he was of old. That is not under discussion."

Here was a remnant of the past that stole inside Celeborn's numbness like the scent of apple blossom to a man imprisoned. For how many millennia had he regretted the fall of his country, yearning for drowned Doriath - for the caves and the stars, the trees, and the peace of it. A place to walk - for day on empty day - and sing under the stars, without responsibility or care. Was it possible that, like Thingol himself, that beloved and long missed place had been reborn, here? A small stirring of life, of hope, took root in that thought, like a blade of grass in a concrete car park.

"He may not want to." Olwë descended from his throne to stand nose to nose with his brother, in a mock staring contest that made Celebrian giggle, and then try very hard to look ladylike, while her eyes welled with laughter.

Elu folded his arms and straightened, looking down from his impressive height; smugly certain. "He will."

And he could at least marvel at the frivolity. He, for whom the last centuries had been one long grind of destruction and loss, had forgotten that kings could laugh. It seemed churlish to resent the fact that Elu was so sure he was right - when he was.

***

At the evening meal, they sat him between his parents, as if to emphasize that not only had he lost his crown, but even his autonomy as an adult. He tried to be pleased - indeed there was a part of him, a small part, buried under tens of thousands of years, which rejoiced to see them again. Galadhon, dark haired but with the flame of tree-light in his green eyes, and Nimwen, his mother, whom he had last seen dying. He had clung to her arm, sobbing, screaming for her to return - the blood flowing over his small hands - as Elmo and Galadhon took on the orcs, and his brother Galathil stood over him, bow drawn, but his eyes too dazzled with tears to shoot.

It was hard to know what to feel; seeing them alive again, as though the whole of his life from that point on had been some kind of lie.

"I had to leave," Galadhon said, guiltily, as if he thought Celeborn might still bear him resentment for going West - for choosing to follow his wife rather than remain with his sons. "That or die of grief, and I did not want you to live through another death. Can you forgive me?"

"So long ago," he studied the calloused, adult hands that lay on the table before him. It was too hard to look up into this stranger's hopeful gaze. I found a new father. You became unimportant to me. "I don't see that any of it matters any more."

Silence fell, and it occurred to him, slowly, that his parents did not deserve less courtesy than he would show to a new acquaintance, simply because they should mean more to him. He had not intended to begin his life in Valinor by causing pain. "Of course I forgive you." he said, less grudgingly, "I have known what it is to be overmastered by agony, to leave kin behind because I could not... could not carry on."

Indeed, he felt a little like that now - the same squashed, airless dread which had driven him out of Beleriand ere Sirion fell, so that he was not there for the children of Elwing. A cowardice or injury in him which had condemned Elrond and Elros to their life with the kinslayers. Perhaps I could have done something. But I had no strength left.

"It is too late for me to be your child," he said slowly, consious of effort, "But I will gladly be your friend, if you can bear me."

Looking up, trying to smile, he saw Elu: Dead Elu, and Celebrian, poisoned; Galadhon fled. His dead mother. His brother, Galathil, murdered long ago, now laughing at a jest from his equally dead wife. Memory supplied the wounds, the blood and limp stillness. And of a sudden he saw himself as the only living person in the realm of Arda. Nausea and terror came over him. The desire to hide from it all was ravenous, and instinctively he let go of the illusion that was his physical form, becoming invisible.

Galadhon's chair hit the floor as he scrambled away from the table. "No!" cried Galathil and Olwë together. Even Celebrian had her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide and frightened. They gazed at his empty chair and he gazed at their dead faces with equal, superstitious horror.

I want to go home, he thought; not too old for childish simplicities after all. I just want to go home.

"He is completely faded!" Galathil leaned out of the window as though he needed to breathe. Moonlight haloed him and he gleamed - pale skin and silver hair limned in whey-blue light. Seeing him, a leaner, more gentle version of her father - his face slightly softer, a scholar's look to his grey eyes - Celebrian remembered how it had been when she first met him: her uncle, slain an age before she was born. The barrier of delirium had been something of a mercy in truth - when it faded, the strangeness of what was left was easily bearable by comparison.

"How could he stay so long, once he felt it begin? How could he allow it?"

Nimwen coughed, looking from king to king for reassurance - there was little to be found, both Elu and Olwë were as startled as all. "Should we be speaking thus of him?" she asked, "As though he was not here. He may be with us even now, listening beyond our sight."

"Those in the spirit world can still be sensed," Olwë chided her, gently, "As we know well from the Powers, and folk - like yourself - returned from Mandos. We would be aware of the light within him, were he visible or not."

"Besides," Celebrian broke in, annoyed that her grandmother - who knew nothing about him, after all - should be making such assumptions. "Father wouldn't do that. I think he just had enough of company and wanted to be alone. He is..." She berated herself for not noticing sooner. She should have seen it in his forsaken look - the empty, haunted gaze - and not forced him into places where he was not ready to go. Elrond will have few complements for me on my healing skills. "He is more injured than we thought."

"'Injured?!'" Galadhon scoffed; horror still in his eyes, his pretence of humour only a defence, "How much worse can it get than this? He is altogether faded!"

And all at once she felt she too would like to storm out of the room, slam the door behind her and go back home, to Elrond's House, where folk had been through more, and did not immediately react to change with fear. "What of it? Is not fading our destiny; all of us? We delay it, and dread it, and do not even speak of it in polite company, yet it will come to all in the end. Even here in Aman, though the wearing is slower."

"I mind me," Elu put a hand on Galadhon's shoulder, either to reassure or restrain, "that Celeborn was ever willing to dare new things. Elmo's stewardship; my return. The Moon; the coming of the Noldor. I wager he has taken to fading in the same way, reasoning that the inevitable might as well be faced at once. And doubtless he has found advantages in it - such as not having to be here, listening to us all flapping like startled sparrows."

Celebrian smiled at her distant uncle with gratitude. At times the Amanyar seemed to do nothing but talk, exhaustively discussing a subject before they acted, but Elu had retained the more swift decisiveness of Middle-earth. He at least seemed to have understood her urgency. "Before we get too deeply into the metaphysics of this," he said, "had we not better discuss what can be done for our kinsman's comfort?"

"You know he may stay here as long as he wishes," Olwë made a half-hitch in a lock of his long, white hair. "Surely to be among his family will..."

Catching Elu's look, Celebrian knew he thought as she did. To be among his own folk would doubtless do her father good, but these - however close in blood - were not Celeborn's family. They were, to him, little more than ghosts of a loss so early in his life he had no words for it. Strangers, who wanted more of him than he was able to give. She had felt the same herself, at first. But she had never said so, and did not now; her mother's empathy at work in her. "I think Adar needs to get away from the sea," she said instead, "He told me a long time ago that it holds nothing for him but sorrow. He looks on it and sees Beleriand sunk under the waves. Mother's sea-longing. Your leaving," she smiled at Galadhon to take the sting from the words, "and my own. Amroth drowning in the bay of Belfalas..."

Shaking her head, she tried to dislodge the memory thus carelessly called up. But it remained, sharp as new experience, replaying the swell of black devouring grief she had felt at the news of her brother's death. Her chest hurt again at the stupid tragedy of it. Though there was balm in knowing that he lived once more, it did not make the memory less bitter. And that was but one loss on her father's list. She breathed in shakily; no wonder he hated the ocean!

"Perhaps now it reminds him of Ennor, which he deeply loves, and the people he has left behind."

Once she had had time to recover from the shock of seeing her father slide into the spirit world with as much ease as a Nazgul; once her heart had begun to beat again and her mind to clear, she believed it was less the fading that troubled her than the fact that he had run away. Even from the presence of the risen dead she would not have expected her father to hide. He was the bulwark of strength in her family. In Eregion, she and her mother and brother had fled from Sauron revealed, but Celeborn had stayed. Immovable, even to facing down the Dark Lord. How could he have run from his own relatives, if he had not come to the utter end of his strength and endurance? The thrill of the uncanny wore off at the realization, being replaced by a closer, more painful dread. "Fading, we will all come to in time, but I fear he is very close to lying down and dying from sorrow."

And I could not bear that! she thought, with a catch of panic in her throat. We have waited so long, almost given up hope that he would ever come. Nana did give up hope. I could not bear it if he was to arrive, only to die and be gone from us for another hundred thousand years! She looked at Elu, whom she had adopted as something of a surrogate father here in Aman - so like he was in many ways to her own. Please!

Thingol stood up, offering her his hand to help her rise. He nodded, acknowledging both thought and words. "We must get him among the trees at once."

The ship rolled and pitched on the sunlit waves, and Celeborn watched his daughter and younger grandson enjoy the spray and salt. The air was faintly luminous, and so clear, he felt he could see to the edge of this world. Did Aman have an edge still? So old-fashioned it seemed, with its pure wind and sparkling water, that it might be too disturbingly modern for the Valar to have made Aman round too. What if it was flat, and the seas poured endlessly away into space in a glimmering starlit cascade? Or was it a platter, bounded by mountains, from whose peaks one could dive out into the airless void? That might almost be worth seeing.

"Ossë is playful today," Elrohir came to lean on the ship's railing beside him, and smile in a good approximation of his normal cheer.

Last night, returned from a solitary walk along the cliffs to his bare stone room, Celeborn had found his grandson waiting for him, sitting in a chair by the fire. The younger elf had an alder flute in his hands and was playing one of the lullabies his mother had sung to him, all those years ago in Imladris. Seeing him, Celeborn had drawn on visibility as easily as he might don his cloak, making the boy start and laugh. "Mother told me you had acquired this new skill, Daeradar. It's rather a surprise to see it."

Here was a reunion untainted by the memory of torment or death. He had counselled the twins when their time of choice ran out, and watched them sail, hale and well, as though they went only to another country. "Daerion!" There had been nothing of the eerie about their embrace, and if Elrohir thought it strange that his grandfather should cling to him as a lost child clings, reunited with its parents, the sheen of tears in his moonlight-grey eyes did not betray it.

"Yes," Celeborn said now, "I got to know him a little, on my voyage." He kept his mouth closed on the fact that Ossë had spent much of the time alternately furious and sulking. The storm he had barely weathered half way through was Ossë's doing - making it plain that the Maia did not appreciate the loss of another of his quendi to the West, when he had not wanted and still did not want any of them to leave. If the Lord of Waves was cheerful now, it was doubtless because he had seen Celeborn's unhappiness, and desired to have it noticed that he had been right all along.

"Strange friends you have, daeradar." Elrohir smiled again, more genuinely this time. The long years had refined him, for now he reminded his grandfather a little of Dior Aranel, last king of the Sindar. And Dior will also be here, he remembered, with a surge of disorientation as distressing as sea-sickness.

"No more strange than anything else in this place."

"You grow used to it," Elrohir smiled reassuringly. He turned his back to the railing and leaned on his elbows, looking up to the pennant on the topmast. A flight of swans soared overhead, dazzling against the azure sky, the whirr of their wings as tuned as music. "There is so much to see and explore. Do you not want to know what I have been doing all this time? And Elladan. What Father has been doing, and Daernaneth; Galathil and Nimloth, Elwing and her husband. Did you know that Oropher is among us again, and has been embroiled in a three way feud with Amdir and Thranduil for a century, over some insult which no one else can now remember. Do you not want to know what young Legolas has been up to, or the adventures of the dwarf that he brought with him? I have many eyewitnesses eager to tell you that story."

At the beginning of Elrohir's recitation, Celeborn felt overwhelmed, but as it went on the sheer load of reminiscence began to strike him as funny. He snorted. Poor Gimli! Alone in this place, surrounded by elves, separated for his whole life from his own folk. He wondered if Gimli had not found it in the end something of a barren honour.

But if the culture shock did not kill the dwarf, I am certain I can endure it also. "I am minded of Master Gamgee," he said, "Who, when a story finished 'and they all lived happily ever after,' would reply, 'aye, but where did they live? That's what I always wonder.' I do not see Oropher settling down peacefully in a land generously donated to him by the Noldor. So many dead! Where are you putting them all?"

"Ah," Elu Thingol made his way along the deck, harp in one hand, goblet of wine in the other, and came to stand beside the two of them. Seeing the spray, he bundled the delicate instrument into his cloak, protecting it from the water, and handed the wine to Celeborn. It had been quenched with hot stones, and smoked with fragrant heat, making him aware for the first time that the wind was cold and the dew of the sparkling white wavetops chill against his face. "You will see."

Elu's smile was youthful, and there was that about him which reminded Celeborn of the twice-born Glorfindel - what had become of him? - an eagerness and a joy he had not had in Beleriand since the first rising of the Sun. Death sat lightly on him, restoring a majesty the world had stolen from him, when it took his daughter. Luthien, like Arwen, forever lost. Neither would come, over the sea or through the Halls of Mandos, ever again. And at that thought, for the first time, Celeborn saw Elu's new life not as something uncanny, to be feared, but rather as a wrong finally put right. He was not created to die. He should never have died, and now that mistake of history had at last been corrected. Would that it could be so for Elu's daughter, for Celeborn's grandchild.

"You are beginning to ask questions, Muindorion. I am encouraged. We had thought that as you were now transparent you must also be as fragile as glass."

The irony made him laugh again - the small 'hmn' to which his laughter had been reduced over the millenia. "In body, say not glass, but diamond. I am become like a Silmaril - impervious to harm. There is now no physical force capable of slaying, or even wounding me." Their looks of surprise made him feel, yet again, too angry to belong in Valinor. Had the Valar not told them? "That is all 'fading' is," he insisted. "The completion of our immortality. It is common now in Ennor. Almost all of my people are thus. Indeed, we pity those who have not yet reached the end of the process."

He heard what he had said; 'My people.' But they were no longer his people. He had abandoned them, leaving the youngsters alone, in a world where those born in the fourth age were now considered ancient. Children, left to watch as one forest after another fell to the chainsaws of Mankind. All at once, such peace as he had begun to find seemed self-indulgent. Contemptible. He turned his face to the East, and strained his eyes, but he could see no end to the realm of Arda. I should have endured longer. I should have stayed.

"Yet the spirits of the Silmarils could still suffer," said Elu gently. "How it cried out to me! How it lamented that it was locked away in loneliness, doing no good. After last night, do not try to tell me your own fëa is as strong as ever it was. I have seen one of my children die of grief. Do not make me suffer it a second time."

Bizarre though it was to have someone looking after him, after all these years, it was a strangeness which made him want to weep. He smiled instead. "It is true. My body is unbreakable as adamant, yet I feel frail as a soap bubble, blown about on the wind. I am helpless and I tremble with every blast."

Elrohir frowned and looked down, to hide the pain and uncertainty in his eyes. Elu exchanged a glance, heavy with meaning, with Celebrian, as though his words confirmed a thought they had discussed between them in private.

Celebrian's face was white and troubled, and he grieved to think he had done this to her. It might have been better, perhaps, to die. To spend some aeons in Mandos, and enter Aman healed - ready to embrace his future with glad enthusiasm, rather than to come thus marred to Valinor, bringing his taint to dim his family's joy.

The ship moved out of the coastal waters, leaving the last of Tol Eressea's white harbours behind. Ahead was the swell of open sea - a moving bewilderment of green and azure and silver. Dolphins - his friends from the voyage among them - leapt by the snowy curve of the ship's bow, and seabirds trailed in its wake like a pennant. For one brief, wonderful moment, he thought they sailed to Ennor, but then, in a long arc of foam, the course changed and they drove North-East. Away from Aman, away from Eressea, out to where there should be nothing but waves and clouds, lifeless and beautiful. Like Mandos, perhaps, a place where he could yearn to be.

But his daughter clearly had other thoughts. "Naneth should be here!" she burst out at last, half in sorrow and half anger. "I care not what slight she thinks she's suffered. She should be here for you!"

"No." Celeborn wiped the spray from his face with both hands. "No. Your mother is..." he recalled saying the same to Galadriel, and the explosion of wrath that had followed, "Is not the easiest woman in the world to live with. I am... glad... she is not here." Alone, he had recovered from the fall of Doriath, while she was in Greenwood. Alone, he had healed, after the destruction of Eregion, while she was in Lorien. Alone, he would mend in Aman, and only when he was ready would he come to her once more. It was the pattern of things. "I have not the strength to face her at present."

"Tell me what happened, Daeradar," Elrohir said, softly, "What has worn you out so?"

He looked at the worried faces and did not know where to start. With the hubris and blasphemy of the last king of Gondor, who had declared himself the equal of Iluvatar? With the Age of Ice which had come, it seemed, as punishment for that deed, leaving the world of Men utterly shattered. The lineage of Arwen, of Luthien, robbed of royalty and heritage, sent wandering among the caves and steppes with no memory of what they once had been? The flood that had followed, reshaping the lands, wiping out the ancient kingdoms of the Eldar with one stroke?

Or should he begin nearer at hand, with the wholesale adoption of Saruman's machines by Mankind? Watching children born to toil amid coal and steam, dwelling in cities cramped, squalid and flowerless as Mordor, and not being able to do anything to relieve their misery. Tell tales, perhaps, to one or two: Make sure the eyes of the mind were not altogether sewn shut on beauty and hope... But what was that, in the face of such ruin? Only a cruelty, maybe, to keep alive a dream of what they could no longer see in waking life.

It had been the factories, the grimed windows and stinking canals, the bent backs and closed, hopeless faces of the children, that had at last driven Thranduil out of Ennor, little less than two hundred years ago. No wonder he had anger to spare in quarrelling with his father. 'We should kill them all,' he had said, ere he and his folk had taken ship. 'It would be kinder than what they do to one another. At least then they would leave the land in peace.'

And - oh - the land! Thranduil had been wise to leave when he did. Wise to spare himself the deforestation, the road building, the concrete and the cars. Wise to avoid the acid rain, the nuclear fall out and power-plant leaks. Dust and poison on the wind; the screaming and choked pleading of dying woodlands, and the day after day misery of trying to heal the growing things of the world, and failing.

But I should not have given up.

Sorrow overcame him. He turned his face into the wind and struggled not to shed the tears that came, scalding as blame, to his eyes. "Too long a story," he said, "And too sad. Ennor needs us, more grievously now than ever. I am ashamed to leave it. Only the time came when I knew it was a choice between dying of grief and coming West." He breathed in, held the breath, and then sighed the chaos of emotions away. "For my family's sake, I chose to come West."

"I am glad you did," Elrohir's fleeting touch grazed along his arm; an offered connection to this new world. "Adar said his household was become too Noldor without you. I have no doubt, one day you will sing the Tale of Ennor in the great Hall of my father's House, and its sadness will make it all the more beautiful, so that folk will weep and be glad. I will wait to hear it then."

It was a good thought, but it seemed to Celeborn that the beauty of elvish melody could never adequately express the defilement of the Earth. Nor could he expose the peace of Elrond's house to the dissonance and rage of mortal music. That tale would have to be told, not sung. In time. When he had achieved enough distance from it. "So Elrond has reverted to living among the Golodhrim, has he?" he said instead. "I am disappointed."

However poor the attempt at flippancy had been, it at least lifted the mood out of mourning. Elu gave him a look of immense smugness. Celebrian bristled comically, "All are welcome in my home," she said, "And all come - Vanyar, Noldor, Teleri, Sindar. Wood-elves, water-elves, deep-elves, light-elves, and the many who are a blend of all. See..." She turned and pointed forwards, past the bowed white sails.

There, at the very edge of elvish sight, Celeborn saw with surprise the dim azure and purple bulks of a far country. Nearer, a steep sloped island rose out of a tranquil sea; water tumbling in small falls down its granite sides, where bracken grew, and fluttering alders clung. Inland were pine forests, and beech groves, and on its peak a great House sprawled and basked in sunlight like a weary dragon. "The Half-way House," said Celebrian, proudly. "I built it, while I was waiting for Elrond, and gave it to him as a present on the day he first arrived. What do you think?"

Like and yet unlike Imladris, it must have welcomed his son-in-law both with the excitement of the new and the reassurance of coming home. Looking down into his daughter's face, seeing the wisdom and practical craft of her spirit, and the generosity of such a gift, he was filled by a welling of pride in her. He brushed the errant tendrils of star-bright hair from her face and kissed her forehead. "It is as fair as its maker. If its spirit is also as compassionate, it must be a fine place to dwell. Is that where we're headed?"

The ship itself answered him, sweeping past the narrow coves, raising wings of spray. On the main jetty there stood the brightly coloured forms of many elves, and the sun glittered on the silver circlet of Elrond Half-Elven as he raised a hand in greeting. Celebrian and Elrohir laughed and waved, and even Celeborn grinned as the wind gusted and sped them past, flying towards the further shore. It was good to see his marriage-son once more, even at such a distance and speed. At some time in the future he must make a less fleeting visit.

"No." It was Elu's turn to point. He did so with the gesture of a craftsman, indicating the further shore, which at their great pace had now begun to show as a continent to rival Aman itself. They passed a harbour town all of silvery stone, with roofs of red tile, gilded with gold, festooned with honeysuckle and climbing roses. The grey ships of Cirdan rocked at anchor there, and mariners from the Falas, from Mithlond and Edhellond, swarmed up the masts to watch them pass, shouting out in many dialects; brilliant and noisy as a rainforest full of parrots.

Beyond the sea-side city the land rose in soft arcs of heavy-wooded green. The wind smelled of clean new leaves, and leaf-mould, dark and rich. He could scent linden flowers and birch sap, honey and pine; hear, and feel in the trembling air, the voices of many rivers. Young brooks laughed, and rivers ran stately and silent beneath the overwhelming, sheltering canopy of trees. Only mountains broke that long swell of rustling life, their peaks gleaming with snow, circled about with eagles, but here and there, meres and meadows lay, pristine. The bare expanse of lakes, the grass and nodding meadow-flowers beautified the encircling forest.

"What is this?" Celeborn asked. The smell - oh the smell of it was like freedom; like miles and miles of emptiness and wonder. Like Beleriand, sanctified by memory and love, returned to him unstained. "How?" he said, scarcely able to breathe for the beauty of it. "This is on no map of Aman I know. What...?"

Elu looked immensely self-satisfied, pleased with his reaction. "When I came forth from Mandos," he said, smiling, "Olwë offered up his throne to me, as the rightful king of all the Teleri. But I had no wish to take what was his, and I am no lover of the Sea. I was no longer of one mind with the Teleri. So I refused.

"There were at that time many Sindar - many of the Lindar of all countries of Middle-earth - released with me or before, who felt alike uncomfortable in the cities of the Noldor. In the streets which only Calaquendi had trod before."

He frowned, hiding some grief. "There was... ill feeling, on both sides."

And the pride returned full force; as gleeful as Elladan after a successful orc-hunt. "So, Melian and I went to Aulë and Yavanna, entreating their help, and we made this. She and I and our people."

"You made a continent?!"

Elu's grin grew wider. "Yes. It is not altogether finished. I have needed your skill with forestry - there is something wrong or missing, in the pattern and distribution of trees, which I cannot quite put my finger on. I would have your advice. And there is room aplenty for you to create your own principality - a place for the Galadhrim, where you may be king once more. If it is your desire. Celebrian is talented with islands, as you've seen. Thranduil too has chosen to found his own country, and rules his people there." He gave a sidelong look, both amused and implacable. "I grew weary of Fingolfin flaunting his many pointed banner at me and insisting on being called 'High King'. So now Dior reigns on Eressea, and Amdir in Dor-Brethilion, Oropher in Eryn Calen... And I call myself 'High King of the Ennorim', just to see the look on his face." There were echoes of old rivalry, now worn smooth with age, in his laugh. But it was merry.

"Yet I would wish," he finished, kindly, "at least for a while, that you would dwell at my court, and that things might be as they were of old. I have been a little nostalgic of late."

Reluctant as a swan coming down from flight, the ship slowed, her snowy sails furling. The crew put out a small grey boat, for there was no harbour here, only a narrow cleft in the cliffs, and the mouth of a young river pouring out from walls where ferns trembled and rock-swallows nested, peeping and reeling on the air above.

As he leapt down into the boat, Celeborn felt as dizzy as the birds. It was too much - too much glory, too much hope, too many possibilities. Even the hint that old grudges still simmered here was reassuring; for where would be the spice of a relationship without the occasional burst of fury? He shook his head, and clutched the bag he had brought with him from Middle-earth against himself. It was all the more valuable now.

This was too good, he thought. Too easy to accept, too easy to forget that the land he had sworn to protect was still dying, in more torment every day, and his own weal would not save it. "I am not yet fit either to rule or advise," he said, torn once more between anger and sobbing, "Is there not some abandoned talan where I could dwell in obscurity for a while? I need..." he wasn't sure what he needed, other than space and peace. To accept that desertion was justified? That running away was not the act of a coward? "I need to think."

A little up the river the cliffs drew down to banks of reed and iris where moorhens and otters swam. There were many pebbled beaches, formed where the roots of oaks had thrust out into the water and made it swirl. He put a hand out and grazed his fingers through grass, over earth, feeling the song of Yavanna, the might of Aulë, and over it the tough, intractable spirit of the moriquendi, and the innocent rejoicing of living things which knew they were loved. The trees welcomed him with the wholeheartedness of creatures who had never yet been hurt, and he found himself shaken with a fierce, primal urge to cherish them and make sure they never were.

"So I thought," Celebrian said, briskly practical. "And you are not the only one. Not all of those returned from Mandos desired to seek out the royalty they had left behind, but chose to live a simple, uncluttered life away from fame. It is to one such house we bring you now; far from lordship and rule. I hope... I hope it will do you good."

The current swept about a bank of silver birch and brought them, suddenly, to the base of a smooth, round hill. On its crest a mighty beech rose towering, and in its spread boughs there swayed a pale talan, large enough for an elven-king's hall - if he be the king of fair Lothlorien.

Beneath its shade, his golden hair gleaming, his eyes alight with pride, stood Celeborn's son, Amroth. The brightness of the re-born was on him, and his face was all joy. "Father!"

"Ah!" Celeborn made a noise somewhere between weeping and laughter, and hid his face, overcome. But the dark-haired maiden, who stood beside Amroth, pulled the covering hand away and held it. Frail, she seemed, but he knew the Silvan delicacy of her beauty covered a core of steel. Her voice evoked many eerie memories of the brook which bore her name. Nimrodel.

"I am glad you came," she said, "For we have great need of experienced hands, and a parent's wisdom."

He clambered out of the boat, trying not to tremble like an aspen leaf, and embraced them both, awed by the solidity, by the reality of them. Folk had told him his son had drowned. But they saw him swimming, not dead, and there had been no body to bury, and for many years he had started awake at the sound of Amroth's voice, blown up from the sea, and wondered if his son yet lived, trapped, calling to him, wondering why he did not care enough to come. "O Araw! O Elbereth! ...Amroth, my son! My son!"

"I would have come to greet you, Adar," Amroth laughed through tears, "But ...it was not a good time. See." Leaning down, he took a swathed bundle from the large basket that lay by his feet. "He also arrived last night."

And carefully, with an unpractised, frightened gentleness, he placed Celeborn's youngest grandchild into his father's arms.

'Muindorion' = 'Brother-son'

On 'Fading'. What Celeborn says here about 'fading' is taken from the essay 'Laws and Customs of the Eldar', which can be found in the book 'Morgoth's Ring'.

"As ages passed, the dominance of their [elves'] fëar ever increased, 'consuming' their bodies... The end of this process is their 'fading', as Men have called it; for the body becomes at last, as it were, a mere memory held by the fëa; and that end has already been achieved in many regions of Middle-earth, so that the Elves are indeed deathless and may not be destroyed or changed.

how, it may be asked, shall a mortal distinguish between the kinds? On the one hand, the Houseless, rebels [dead elves, who don't have a body]..; on the other, the Lingerers, whose bodily forms may no longer be seen by us mortals, or seen only dimly and fitfully. Yet the answer is not in truth difficult...the Lingerers [the elves who remain in Middle-earth nowardays] are not houseless,[bodiless] though they may seem to be... they do not seek converse with Men at all, save maybe rarely, either for the doing of some good, or because they percieve in a Man's spirit some love of things ancient and fair. Then they may reveal to him their forms..and he will behold them in their beauty. Of such he may have no fear, though he may feel awe of them."

In other words, 'faded' elves might be invisible, but they still have a body, and it is one which cannot be destroyed and changed.

========

Thingol and Celebrian left the next day, going home to their own lands and their spouses. Elrohir, blushing, departed for distant Valimar, where he intended to stay with his betrothed until their wedding some five years hence. But Celeborn stayed many months in Daerbronwe, as Amroth's house was known. There, he made himself a bow and stone-tipped arrows and hunted small game in the forest, walking far and solitary. He listened for the council of the new land, and hoped in its silences to discern the voice of his own heart.

Working together with his son, he cleared the ground for a small orchard, and sang the young trees into sturdiness. Taking solace in the company and the simple, useful task, they laid a hedge of hornbeam to enclose and shelter the field where Nimrodel would tend the shining lembas corn. Amroth spoke little - such a change from his boyhood prattle - but his smile rarely faltered, and his contentment was a balm in itself. It was enough to labour side by side, to lie in the noon sun and watch clouds, eat and drink, in quiet companionship, and then return to work. By the time the hedge was putting forth crinkled, beech-green leaves, and the honeysuckle and dog-roses had twined its length in sweetness, Celeborn had begun to feel both happier and more restless, and Amroth's joy was increased at the knowledge that his father was beginning to heal.

At times Celeborn would take care of young Celebdir, while Nimrodel wove or baked. Then she would tell them both tales of her long wanderings in Middle-earth, when she journeyed - lost, seeking for Amroth - into the hot South. There she strayed, where the stars were strange and the Men scarlet-clad, proud, lovers of splendour and music. Many strange and wondrous things she had seen there, searching for her lover and unable to find him.

"But then they began to whisper against me," she said, "fearing that I was an uncanny creature, who remained ever young while they withered. I was come, they said, to suck the life out of their villages, out of their corn and cattle. And at the last, when I came to the edge of the great desert, the people there stoned me and drove me away."

She beat a line of glimmering hithlain into place with one hand, caught the shuttle with the other, and smiled at the memory of her own death. "I wept so, for the cruelty of life, for my bones were broken, and I dared not come back out of the barren sand to seek for water. It seemed to me then that I would never find my love, nor tell him how I regretted taking him away from everything he desired. It was my quest for safety which had brought me to that hard end, and I railed at fate, at the Valar, and at myself most of all."

"Bad Men!" said Celebdir in sympathy, his round, toothless face fierce. "Bad Men to hurt Nana!"

At the protest, Nimrodel laughed, as merrily as a brook tumbling, leaf flecked under sunshine. "It proved a blessing in the end, my little Celbeg. For your Ada had long waited in Mandos for me, refusing a new life until we could live it together. He was all my healing and my help in that place." She smiled warmly at her husband's father, "Then I knew that, though I deserved him not, I would be a fool to put further conditions on our union. We were married the same day we were returned to our hroa. And that is not long ago now, though it seems we have always been wed." Her dark hair had slithered out from beneath her cap of lace and hung among the threads of the loom. She wound it up once more and tucked it back, where it gleamed like crow's feathers against the stitched pearls.

"It is as though all our lives before were taken up into our union - as though it worked backwards, into the past, so that we had never been separate..." Laughing again, she turned back to her work, "Alas, I wax nonsensical, as all lovers do. No doubt the giddiness wears off in time?"

Celeborn peeled and cored an apple, and - fetching a mortar - let his little grandson help him to mash it to a paste that the elfling was supposed to eat, but would doubtless just rub into his mop of silken, silver hair. Nimrodel's words stirred a carefully warded ache and hollowness in him, making him think of his own wife - of how, once he had first seen her, his life before Galadriel seemed suddenly to have been merely a long preparation for her arrival. "It does not," he said, "Only it grows deeper and quieter, like a great lake, so that those longest married speak about it least - for they can no longer imagine what it would be like to be alone."

"Yet you are apart."

"But not severed. Her soul and mine are still united, for Iluvatar made it so, and it cannot be undone."

True to expectation, young Celbeg ate a spoonful of apple, and then painted the floor with the rest. Nimrodel laughed again and added a shuttle of dusk-green silk to the weave. Deep in thought, Celeborn helped the boy trace out the cirth for his name in the mess before cleaning it away.

With the weight and wriggling vitality of a child in his arms the simple knowledge of indivisible union no longer seemed quite enough. Marriage was unbreakable, true, but its joy was so enhanced by presence, by touch, that he was almost ready to take the risk of being together once more. Perhaps he and Galadriel would discover that there was no more between them but an oath - love having worn away in too much distance and time. Yet he was no longer quite tired enough, quite weak enough, not to take the chance that something salvageable remained. It was time, maybe, to take his life in hand, and - if he could not rule a country, at least to rule himself.

Evening lay steel and turquoise over the rustling canopy of the talan when Celeborn returned from a successful hunt, with a deer lying limply over his shoulders and a back that - had it not been under his conscious control - would have been aching from bearing too much weight. He dropped the prize onto the foot of Daerbronwe's round hill, and put his hands to his mouth, calling up to the talan's occupants to come down and help him with the meat. But Amroth answered his hail with one of his own, turned, silhouetted in grace against the sunset, to point into the darkening sky.

Looking up, following the gesture, Celeborn beheld a great eagle come soaring out of the glimmering clouds. The sinking sun outlined each feather in gold, and seemed to dwell, captured, in the wild, fierce eyes. Greater than Landroval or Thorondur, greater than Gwaihir the Windlord himself, the blast of its wings flattened the meadow grass, made, for one moment, even the hurrying stream stand smooth as glass. As it swept overhead - a shadow, dark as a dragon's scudding beneath it - he saw on its back two elves, clinging, wide eyed with speed and danger, their faces - though many years apart in wisdom and lordship - alight with identical grins.

It banked, the huge wings tensed, driving it back now as it slowed. Feet like a cage of scythes spread and grasped the ground, and with a silent rush, a disproportionate lightness, the enormous eagle landed next to him. It folded its wings, raised its gilded, fearsome beak to the sky and cried aloud in triumph. It was as tall as he at the shoulder, and had to bend and angle its proud, bronze-feathered head, to look him in the eye.

"I am Aglarhir, son of Gelluidur," said the harsh, metallic voice. "Friend of Elladan of Tol Aduial. You are the one my friend seeks?"

"I am Celeborn of Ennor. Be welcome here, Aglarhir, friend of my grandson." He did not look beyond the boiling orange eye to see the elves who now slid down from their airy seat - he knew the prickly temper of eagles better than that. "I know not whether Elladan seeks me, or Amroth, but he will find both of us here, and both equally delighted to see him."

"It is well." Aglarhir's head cocked, tilting from side to side so that he could fix first one eye, then the other, on the carcass of the deer. His beak snicked open, and he ruffed his feathers thoughtfully.

Celeborn smiled, "By happy chance I may at least repay you for your long journey with a meal - take it with our thanks."

The eagle's curved neck arched down, and Aglarhir blinked, thin eyelid white and snake-like over his mad gold eye. There was a cold, magnanimous laughter in the depths of its alien glare. "Your eyrie is a little flimsy for me, and elvish stomachs too weak to dine beside my table manners. I will return later. Await me."

He took the stag easily in both claws and gathering himself burst upwards, rising heavily into the sky and wheeling away. Then Elladan and Amdir embraced Celeborn one by one, and they laughed together over eagle-pride, and reunion, and new life.

This time, holding Amdir by the shoulders, looking into a face he had not seen since the Last Alliance, Celeborn barely recalled the watery grave in which his kinsman's last body lay. He could not help but wonder if Amdir's fair face and his shining, pewter-dark hair floated still in the Dead Marshes, twisted over by corpse light. But now the memory had less power than the reality, and he did not recoil from it. Indeed, it was a reminder of victory - for Sauron was fallen, but Amdir was returned. "Come in!" he said, "Come and have supper, though I cannot offer you venison."

"I will not apologize for him," Elladan chuckled, taking off the circlet that now perched precariously on wind-blown hair and neatening himself, "He was the youngest fledgeling of his clutch, and so always hungry. Indeed, that is how we became friends - I stumbled upon their nest while climbing in the Pelori, and as his parents were over stretched, finding meat for three, I hunted for him."

"One might consider the gift of flight cheaply bought at the price," said Amdir, his cheeks aglow from the wind, and his charcoal-grey eyes alight with enjoyment, "Though the price be a lifetime of loyalty and responsibility."

"He is my friend, not my steed," Elladan bristled for a moment before he relented and punched the King of Lorinand teasingly in the arm, "Though I admit we travel often far together, and he will take me where I wish to go, if he deems it interesting enough."

"And now the mountains of the Pelori are infested with young elves, hoping to make the same bargain?" Celeborn asked, amused and perhaps a little envious - such freedom must be a wondrous thing.

Elladan laughed, and hugged his grandfather once more, as if to be sure he was indeed solid. "Gelluidur complains that the youngsters these days are so taken up with their eldar friends they know not how to hunt for themselves," he said, and grinned, "But such are the sentiments of all fathers. I have heard my own say many a similar thing in his time."

Amdir led the way to the great talan with the familiarity of one who is at home, running lightly up the ladder and being received with the warmth and lack of ceremony of one of the family. As a close friend of Celeborn's he had always stood as something of a second father to Amroth. Being, it seemed, permanently unwed, it had not been a surprise when - as King of Lorien - he named Celeborn's son as his heir, and Amroth - who at that time had been called Galadon - took a new epessë to reflect the gift.

Now Amdir marvelled at young Celebdir as at his own grandson, and beamed on hearing the name so carefully chosen to honour them both. Leaving him space to meet the child, to question the eager parents on the minute details of infant achievements and glory, Elladan and Celeborn stood quietly together to one side, and basked in reflected happiness.

"How is Elrond?"

"He was well, when I left him," Elladan hooked a foot around a nearby stool and pulled it close to sit on. He had a wry look, and was leaner, more athletic than he had been when he left Ennor. "But that was some months ago now. Just before the day of your arrival, in fact. For it occurred to me then that Daeraneth might have regretted so summarily dismissing Thingol's escort, and changed her mind. She might, I thought, be now wishing that she could come to meet you after all. And so Aglarhir and I flew to Tirion to carry her to Alqualondë, if she so desired."

"She did not."

"No," Elladan took the glass of wine his grandfather offered and shook his head in disbelief. Anger and humour warred in his eyes, as though he could not decide whether his grandmother was truly serious in this, or merely jested in poor taste. Seeing that the news was bad, Celeborn folded himself to his knees on the hard deck and relaxed as best he could to take the blow.

"She felt that as you had left her to build a new life alone, and did not come to her in her need, it was only justice that you suffer the same. 'I have lost count,' she said, 'of the years I spent praying that this day would bring his ship; the nights of disappointment and the stubborn hope for the morrow. But at length my patience wore out, and my grief became anger, and my loneliness solace. He has made it clear that he wants no further part in my life, and I am now resigned to that. I will not go to him. Nor will I receive him now, even were he to lower himself to come to me.'"

Bitter words, and hurtful. Unlike Elladan, he had no doubt she meant every one. And yet some part of him was reassured, strengthened by her haughty tone, her implacable anger. This was not the weary, saddened woman who had left him, so long ago. No, judging from this statement, Galadriel too was healed, her pride and power restored. He was glad she had regained her self, even at such a cost.

"She sent you to tell me this?"

Elladan grimaced, "Not in so many words, but I did not conceal from her where I was next headed. It may be I am her messenger. I did not mean to bring you grief, additional to what you suffer at leaving your land. Forgive me?"

The expression of sympathy awoke once more a familiar pain in Celeborn's heart - it did not grow easier to open and hear, instead of the ancient, varied and troubled song of Ennor, this innocent symphony of the new world. But he turned his thoughts from it as he had learned to do of late, and faced a closer fear as he asked, heart pounding in his ears. "By what name is she known?"

"Her own," said Elladan, without understanding, his eyes downcast. "Galadriel, as always."

Celeborn sighed, relieved, and reached out to touch his grandson's shoulder reassuringly. "Then there is hope. Thank you, Daerion, for bringing me her words. It is good to hear more than silence from her. When I visit, I will be sure to mention it."

"She will not see you! Did you not hear me say so?"

The sound of platters being brought out of their bench, and the moving of furniture brought their attention back to the scene within. Preparations were being made for the evening meal, and though there were three kings and no servants in the room still the table was laid swiftly and with good humour. There was jugged hare, bullrush roots and hot chestnuts, white bread and butter, hazelnuts and honey, and a mound of small, intensely sweet, wild strawberries. There was wine, traded from the settlements upriver, and home-made perry to drink, though Nimrodel chose fresh, cold water from the stream.

"Nevertheless, I will visit," said Celeborn, and felt himself stir awake once more at the thought of this challenge, "And she will see me. I must just plan my tactics first."

"Ah," Amdir laughed, "Now I am minded of the Second Age. I had thought this was your strategy, as you did then in Imladris, to stay here and wait til she comes to you."

"This was but a pause in the game, ere the match began anew," Celeborn smiled in return and reached over to relieve Celbeg of a chestnut that looked dangerously large for his small throat. "Nor can I use the same manoeuvre a second time - she will have expected and planned for it."

"But if I know mother," Amroth buttered a piece of bread while he thought, "She may have issued this warning, intending that it will provoke you to go to her."

"Then, when you do go," Nimrodel put in, with some small enthusiasm, "She will send you away again, unseen and humiliated. That's what I would do - to pay you back for not following me in the first place."

Amroth looked rather startled at this, and then relaxed, taking his wife's hand and gazing at her fondly, as both remembered that he had indeed followed, giving up everything else to do so. She reached up and smoothed a lock of his golden hair, with such an expression of adoration that everyone else at the table looked away, fearful of intruding on so private a moment.

"Yes," Celeborn agreed, breaking the silence. "That is probably her plan, and I must counter it somehow. I will give it some thought, ere I act."

"I am glad you are here at last, my friend," Amdir laughed, "If only because watching this courtship will give our folk something better to talk about than the Troubles. The more I think on them, the more my heart begins to truly misgive me."

At Celeborn's sharp glance of curiosity, his face clouded in surprise and regret. "I had forgotten you would not already know. Forgive me, I did not wish to trouble the serenity of your retreat."

"Ah, do not treat me like a flower that will wilt under too much rain!" He could not help being annoyed, though doubtless Amdir had been justly warned of his fragility from those who had seen it at its worst. That time was past. "What goes forth?"

"It is nothing," said Amroth, dismissively, "Fools, who cannot let the past go."

"Father says," Elladan contradicted his great uncle with polite uncertainty, but no real doubt in his eyes, "That those born in Aman need more challenge than they find here. The making of Ardh-in-Eledhil kept us occupied for many Long years, but now that it nears completion we do not know what to do with ourselves."

"There has been fighting between Noldor and Sindar in Alqualondë, and in Cirdan's havens at Calenlond," Amdir summarized. "There were riots in Tirion - some of my folk and Oropher's, with some of Denweg's Nandor, making their displeasure known at being called 'moriquendi' to their faces. And in reprisal the young firebrands of the Golodhrim took out their anger on the boatyards."

Nimrodel broke in, her face full of Silvan ferocity; "Galathil did not tell you they tore up his new sail? The one he spent years working on, which he said could be filled by sunlight and drive a boat windless through the Void? He was so furious I think he would have gone and burnt down their workshops, and ruined their treasures that they work on in secret at dead of night, did Galadhon not hold him down til Ulmo had forbidden it."

Picking up his mother's mood, the baby let out a shriek of anger and threw his spoon on the floor, and all there - who had died violent deaths, or seen loved ones do the same - sobered at the sound. Picking Celbeg up, Amroth took him out of one of the windows, where they might sit together on a swaying branch in the quiet starlight and grow settled once more.

"No one has yet been killed," Amdir finished, more quietly, "But I fear that if there is no new task ahead of us, nothing to unite us in one purpose, we will come to warfare at last, if only for something to do."

Sipping his wine, Celeborn studied the dance of candle-flames above the tablecloth and thought of Doriath, and Sirion. It occurred to him that Elu had hinted of this, with his veiled talk of unpleasantness between the clans. He understood now why Celebrian had named her residence the Half-Way house, for she and her husband were in all things half way between the Amanyar and the Ennorim; living embodiments of all that was good about unity. And at the same time, the request that he come and live in Thingol's court bore now a more practical interpretation. Less of nostalgia than a move to have at least one warleader available in the centre of his realm, for Melian had proved she would not put his people first, and thus for his folk's sake Elu could no longer risk himself if it came to battle.

With the example of the kinslaying at Alqualondë before him, he could not blame Elu for discounting the Valar's control of events and preparing for the worst. "I have been idle too long," he said at last, bracing himself to set his back beneath the burdens of life once more, "If you will take me, Elladan, I will go to Dor-Eden and put myself at my lord's service. Then we will see what we will see."

Dor-Eden = 'Renewed Country' - the part of the continent personally ruled by Thingol.
Ardh-in-Eledhil = 'Realm of the Star Elves' - the name of the whole continent ('Star-elves' being a less offensive name the so called 'Dark-elves' have given themselves.)
Daerbronwe = 'Great faithfulness'

Aglarhir circled, and the night wind buffeted them, full of the scents of earth, a memory of morning's lavender, woodsmoke, bindweed and trees. Beneath them lay the sprawling complex of Aranost, chief city of Doreden. Unlike Menegroth, this was all above ground. Built without aid from either Dwarves or Noldor, it resembled more Caras Galadhon than Nargothrond - near stoneless, but with a high artistry and craftsmanship in wood. Looking down, Celeborn saw shingle roofs gleaming with pearl and silver, oaken pillars bewound by gilding - gems glittering chill beneath the stars. Both houses and telain blended with the living beauty of forest.

Golden lamps swung among the canopy of undying leaves, picking out a carving here, there a fresco in bright paint - Mablung in the dragon's den; Elwing caught in flight, half woman and half mew, the sun bright on her white feathers. It was a strange, eclectic mix of architectures and styles. The unmistakable line of a Galadhrim flet was decorated with interlace which spoke of Lindon. A hall, such as the raft-elves had built in Laketown, glowed with woven tales of Avari heroes, unimaginably distant in time and understanding.

Only the king's house was of stone, and that they flew over twice, each time lower, before Celeborn beheld it for what it was. It seemed at first a round hill, where tangled blackthorn opened their pale sweet flowers to the night - the scent of them a thin freshness, as delightful as starlight to the fëa. Only when they alighted - the rush and sudden halt, the feeling of falling making Celeborn laugh out loud in delight - could the house beneath be seen: The pillars of crystal, and the walls of nimluingon, translucent and pale as cloud, shot through with veins of deep indigo, of purple midnight dark. It looked rather grown than built, as though the mind which shaped the glittering caverns of Aglarond had here wrought a king's palace, and some other kindly force, thinking its splendour too great for even elven eyes to bear, had cloaked it in the seeming of a growing knoll.

"And that is indeed the truth," Elladan must have picked the thought from his grandfather's mind. "Aulë and Yavanna made it for Melian, as a sign of their support."

"Support?" Celeborn paused before dismounting, fully appreciating the sleek warmth of feathers beneath his hands, the great eagle's breathing and heartbeat, which trembled through his bones, shaking him with borrowed ferocity. On eagle-back it was hard to feel anything but magnificent - Lord of the Skies. Aglarhir's arrogance was far more understandable once one had looked down at the scurrying world from a place of tearing speed and sunlight.

"The union of elf and Maia seemed less... problematic... to the Powers," Elladan's ironic tone was so similar to Elrond's that Celeborn could not help but imagine the raised eyebrow, the Peredhil's look of distant, welling humour and disapproval, "when it occurred many miles away - in the uncivilized fastnesses of Arda Marred."

Around the base of the palace-hill there lay a long swathe of grass, grey beneath the night sky, and there, on pale, slender stalks, nodded delicate white and pale green blossoms of niphredil. The tiny flowers brought back so much remembered pain that Celeborn's elation was swept away at once. Luthien he thought, for these flowers had burst into the world new born to celebrate the birth of that fairest maid - a sister to him as Galathil had never been brother. And Arwen - for she had laid herself down to die amid the niphredil in the withering grass of Lothlorien, and it had been as though winter came, without hope for spring.

"They fear the example? They fear to unleash great dooms and destinies? Or to encourage us to look at them with less awe than love?"

"I am not privy to the councils of the Valar," Elladan snorted at his grandfather's vehemence, "Only I know that they were better pleased with the example of a Melian bowed beneath her loss's grief than with her restored to happiness with her husband. Some argue that they should live apart - like you and Daeraneth - if only to make the point that such unions cannot be lastingly blessed."

Celeborn dropped his bag onto the turf, then slid from the eagle's shoulder to the ground, almost overwhelmed by the scent of the niphredil. There were good memories too, to be found in the perfume, both of Doriath and Lorien - dancing and laughter and love, amid the sorrow. "I am become a cautionary tale now? That will have to change."

"Eagles do not mate with lesser birds," Aglarhir mantled his wings, allowing the gentle breeze to ruffle his polished metallic feathers. "If we did, we should have chicks who were fit only to be thrown from the nest. They do right to doubt such crossbreeding."

"Splendid One!" Elladan silenced him, shocked, "What is right for eagles may not be right for elves. Let us talk of this later. For now, hush. They come!"

Celeborn, less outraged than his grandson - for he had heard the same thing said about his own marriage, and lived to see the children of my line rule all Ennor in majesty - turned and smiled as the doors of the king's house opened and Elu and Melian came out. Like the rest of Doreden they had clearly been asleep. But, warned perhaps by her prescience, perhaps by his stationed guards, they had arisen and paused only to throw on the most informal robes ere they came running to greet him in person.

Seeing them thus dishevelled, abandoning dignity for this act of utter welcome, Celeborn felt the first sensation of true homecoming he had yet felt in Valinor. Touched, he looked aside, covering an embarrassed smile. It was one thing for Thingol to come to meet him in Alqualondë, where they were neither of them kings - equal in being out of place - quite another for him to do it here, in the centre of his power.

"Aranadar," said Elladan, and went down on one knee, formal and beautiful as a medieval knight in a church window. Celeborn bowed, and even the eagle, after glaring at the royal couple with a wide, sunbright eye, inclined his head at last.

But Elu laughed. "Come, Palanion, are either of us dressed for such courtesy? Up with you and let us go inside ere the whole city awakens to stare."

There was some truth in his jest. Aside from the focussed attention of guards, their minds taut as their bowstrings, there was now a stirring among the nearer buildings as drowsy, curious folk leaned over the edge of telain, out of house windows, to see the great eagle, and their king, in midnight conference on the grass of the new world. There was no alarm, but there was a wariness, as though not all those there had learned to trust in Aman's promise that there would be no more pain. They had not put down their vigilance, hard learned by the lessons of Arda Marred.

Celeborn was both comforted and challenged by the thought that there were many other Sindar who had not yet fully accepted that they were no longer in Ennor. But seeing it - the suspicion, the readiness to suspect threat, he understood too how unsettling such an attitude might seem to the true Amanyar. As though the Ennorim were constantly on the look out for violence. We bring our 'taint', from the realm Morgoth polluted in its very atoms, to trouble them here, where he only sojourned for a while. It is no wonder they cannot whole-heartedly welcome us.

"I greet you, King of the Lindar," said Aglarhir, "And you, Melian, lady of the Maia. But I will not come into your stone house. I have no desire to burrow in the ground like a rabbit, and I grow tired of elves." He shifted delicately from foot to foot, the sword-like talons gentle in their grip on the flower-strewn turf. "I will hunt and sleep, and once I am done, I will depart. If Elladan wishes to come with me, he will be waiting for me here at dawn. If not, he must seek me elsewhere, for I will be gone."

Elladan leapt to his feet and gave Elu an apologetic smile before turning to his friend. "I will be waiting. Forgive me, Aglarhir. You have been very patient with me and my family. Now I will go where you will - into the mountains and the waste places. At dawn then."

"Farewell, O Eagle," said Celeborn, grateful for the experience of flight, though not entirely sure he liked the creature, "May the wind bear you high and far, into good fortune."

"You are a seed floating on the air," the eagle replied with unexpected insight. He saw the flash of that strange, wild generosity once more in its fierce gaze, "May you come to earth and take root." And he departed, leaving the elf-lord chastened, a little ashamed of being so quick to condemn one whom his grandson found worthy.

Elladan was now walking arm in arm with Thingol into the sleek, mother-of-pearl glory of the palace. Snatches of their conversation drifted back - words from Elrond concerning the character and interests of many of the Mirdain; obscure pieces of gem lore which meant nothing to Celeborn but made him feel a huge and weary nausea of spirit. They were not still pursuing their foolish craft, surely?

"Welcome home, Telpë." Turning, he found Melian by his side. Her soft grey robe swept down to bare feet and her small white hands were twisted together in what would have seemed - had she not been a Queen, an immortal Power - a gesture of vulnerability. Her face was radiant as always, and a light somewhere between star and sunlight shone in her mist-grey eyes, but her long ebony hair floated unbound in the night air with a movement both tender and restless.

"My lady," he said, and waited to find out what he felt. No longer adoration at any rate. Long he had been furious with her, unable to forget the bloodstains in Menegroth's corridors, the small, accusing graves of children, cut down by dwarven axes. The friends murdered, the mourning emptiness and disbelief of those who remained to rebuild. Where was Melian?! Where was she? How could she let this happen? Oh yes, for many years he had brooded on the bitterness of that betrayal, cursing her in his heart because she was our protector, our mother, our Queen - and she left us to die!

Sensing the direction of his thoughts, she looked away, and her smile was rather a gesture of defiance than an expression of her heart. "You are angry with me. I knew it would be so." Moving away, she began to walk towards the crystal doors, and he fell into step beside her, marvelling at how much forgiveness was required to come and live well in Aman. First Galadhon, then she. Where will it stop?

"Did you know?" he said, unkind perhaps, but she knew him well enough not to expect kindness. "Did you know the Dwarves were coming? Did you know you left us utterly vulnerable - with Oropher in Brethil and Amdir in Nargothrond, myself in the very vaults of the enemy, and no one to lead the warriors or rally a defence? You had thought enough to send poor Mablung alone to the treasury. You had thought for the damn Silmaril! What about us? What about your people?"

She stopped, and gasped - the smallest sound of pain - and he found his wrath slipping from his fingers. It was harder to sustain the grudge now that she was before him and he could see how much hurt it caused.

Looking aside, she reached out and took his elbow, steering him into a small chamber where a tall harp stood, and instruments, swaddled in sheepskin and silk, sat in muffled watchfulness about the walls. "Let us not quarrel in public," she said, "Nor before Thingol - he is so glad that you have returned. So many children we have lost - Luthien, my most precious jewel. And Turin, poor Turin, for whom even the greatest kindness could not soothe the canker in his heart... And you, our dutiful one, whom perhaps we forgot sometimes, because you were always there, solid and dependable. No less love did we have for you, if at times we were overcome by the tragedy and striving of the others. Do not begrudge us our joy at having at least one son restored to us."

Celeborn laid his hand gently on the harp, which had gone slightly out of tune and whispered a dissonance beneath his fingers. It was pleasant to hear that he was so valued, for - long ago - he had grieved that they made Turin their son, but would not do the same for him. Much pondering on the subject had made him see that to do so would have been a slight to the memory of his grandfather, the loyal Elmo, who shepherded Elu's people when Thingol disappeared, but never took the name of King. And having come to understand it the grief had left him. He looked forward to greeting his grandfather in person in the morning, for he had little doubt the king's favourite brother would be here in Doreden, a power behind the throne as he was of old.

But Melian was distracting him with this talk of fondness. If she had thought him her son, like Turin, did it not make her deed even more inexcusable?

"Elu has always my love and reverence," he said, "And I begrudge him nothing. But you have not answered my question. Did you know?"

"Ah!" she spun and faced a wall at random. He could not see her face, but her back was rigid and her fists closed. The fall of gleaming jet hair lay like a mourning veil over slender shoulders, and he wondered for the first time if she had chosen a body of such delicacy to reflect the fragility of her spirit. It was a strange thought, he was accustomed to believing her so strong. "Truly it is said that the men of the Sindar are harsh."

Circling, he found that her gaze was fixed on a swirl of purple crystal in the wall. She had opposed Morgoth with her will, and held his people safe for many long years by her power, and yet at his word tears stood in her eyes. It astounded him. "I do not wish to be harsh," he said, and knelt in front of her, so that she could see he spoke true, "Only to understand. How can I forgive, if I do not understand?

Kneeling too, silk settling around her in ripples like twilit water, she smiled the kind of smile that hovers above a lake of tears. "Did I know? No. I knew nothing. Nothing but that my husband was dead and my life over and my soul torn asunder. Nothing, but that to take another breath was more labour than I could bear, and that all was emptiness, meaningless, worthless without him." She laced her fingers together and taking a deep breath met his eye, some dignity restored. "For Elu I became as one of the Eldar. It did not occur to me that there could be a reason to remain, when he was gone."

And after all, perhaps he had been unfair to judge her as though she was an elf. Perhaps she had never known that in marrying Thingol she had taken on not only earthly love, not only children, but a whole nation. That immovable sense of responsibility which was normally instilled in any noble child, she would never have known - never having been a child. Looking at the bowed, humble posture, he wondered if it was blasphemy to pity a Maia. Perhaps it was this realization that - however powerful - the Maia had their own flaws of character, and were no more to be worshiped than accepted as fellow creatures, which made Elu and Melian's relationship so much of a embarrassment to distant Valimar.

She did not know. The news was like the lightening of a shadow cast across his life for six Ages of the world. She did not know - perhaps her prescience failed because her heart was breaking, who could blame her for that? But she had not known that she let death follow in her departing footsteps, she had not deliberately betrayed them. For a long moment he sat motionless in blessed relief. And then he said "Rinaneth," and reached out to take her flawless hands in his.

"Oh, my kinsman," the tears that all this time had welled in her eyes now fell, colourless and abject as elven tears, and he thought of Oropher suddenly, and Beleg, of Amdir and Saeros and Eol, none of whom were known for their tact.

"How many times have you borne this accusation?" he said, "Too many, I wager."

"They look at me differently," she said, and wiped the tears with trembling fingers, "All of the Sindar, all of Elu's folk. I have lost their love."

And none of them had learned - as he had learned from Galadriel - that great power did not protect the heart from pain, that one could reshape the world at will and still be vulnerable, still need the strength of others to carry on. He loosed her hands, and at her look of sorrow for that drawing away, he dared to lean forward and hug her, letting go, himself, of ten thousand years of resentment. "But not mine," he said, lighter and more free for this reconciliation. "Not mine."

***********

At dawn, he arose to bid farewell to Elladan. As seemed typical - for he had observed it well in Men - his grandson's ability to travel at speed had resulted in him having less, rather than more time to spend. Celeborn found that, though the soar into cloudless sky was something he would miss, he could not envy the fretful novelty of one new place after another.

"If you see her before I do," he said, in parting, "Bear my love to your grandmother and tell her that my heart is not changed from when I first beheld her in Doriath." For all her talk about neither seeing nor speaking to him, this strange conversation by eagle-messenger had been the closest communication he had had with her for millennia. It was a small thrill of joy to know that finally they stood on the same world and breathed the same air as each other; that if he spoke, his words would reach her, eventually. It had not been so, for a very long time.

Returning to his room, he found it cluttered with esquires and fine clothing. A tall figure, struggling with the tangled layers of an opal-coloured cloak, turned at his footfall. His dark hair - braided in a thousand small plaits, each wound with silver cord and tipped with a jewelled clip - swung at the movement, giving forth a pleasant, metallic tinkle. Delighted, Celeborn wondered if the ornaments had become so habitual that his fëa could not now be re-embodied without them. "Calandil!" he cried, and laughing, strode forward to embrace a friend long missed. "Why did I grieve? Why did I ever grieve - and so much!"

"Perhaps because your life was utterly barren without me, and each day was as an eternal wilderness once I was gone?"

"That must have been it, indeed." Celeborn turned to survey the wreckage of his room. "And I am in bliss now that I see you. But why have you brought the entire contents of the King's wardrobe with you?"

Calandil grinned as he so often did, and a light was rekindled in Celeborn's life. Not the brightest, perhaps, but one of the most uncomplicated. He felt like a night sky when heavy cloud withdraws and stars are unveiled one by one, until all is ablaze once more. Yet it was some perversity in him, perhaps, to wonder why this healing should be available only to those in Aman. Why should the lands of Middle-earth, which needed it more, not benefit from some of Elvenhome's renewing strength?

"I am to make you fit to be presented to the people of Doreden," said Calandil, and held up the most appalling diamond-woven rose-pink tunic, whose fringes were weighted with beads of amber and peridot, and whose sleeves would trail upon the ground even were they wrapped twice about the wrist. "How about this?"

It was the sort of thing one of the Noldor might have worn in the First Age, before they came under the influence of Sindar tastefulness, and he was oddly reminded of Maedhros Feanorion, who could wear such monstrosities and still look dangerous. Giving his friend a glare of disgust, he watched the reborn warrior double over in laughter and tried not to snort in sympathy. "I am capable of dressing myself, thank you, and need not three pages and a Captain of the Knights of Lorien to advise me. Tell me, rather, more of what has passed here in Aman since I saw you last, and about the Troubles, and why Elu should need reports from Elrond about the Gwaith-i-Mirdain. If I am to take some sort of office here, I need to know everything."

"Alas," said Calandil, and tugged a fir green velvet tunic and grey trousers out of the sumptuous sprawl, "'Everything' I cannot cover in the half hour I have been given to get you - spruced and ready - down to the Great Hall. Yet so little is known of the Mirdain's arts that I can answer that at once. It is rumoured they are constructing some strange weapon, up there in Tirion. There is much talk of harnessing the inner power of jewels, but no one knows aught in truth. They do not speak of it to us."

After so much suffering came of the Rings, Celeborn thought, his heart falling, still they go on. And he struggled into his finery with a better will. The sooner he settled into his place here, the sooner he could begin to act.

*****************

The Great Hall was a startling evocation of vanished Doriath, for here the pale, beribboned stone was shaped into sparkling trees; a milk white grove, glistening. The ceiling was of beaten gold and cast a light like sunshine over all, but carven birds sat in the fossilized branches, and carven vines swirled in patterns of silver and green gems over the slender trunks of the pillars. Water moved and sang throughout, for a small stream ran in many lattice-covered channels beneath the floor. Its reflected light lapped gently at the walls and floated over the robed splendour of the crowd, making embroideries glimmer, softening the sheen of silks, catching in bright gleams from weapons - carried unneeded, except for memory.

Many familiar faces, Celeborn saw, as he made his way to the dais. With a bliss almost as intense as pain, he thought truly Dor-eden is Doriath renewed. Nothing is lost! But then, guilt jolting him, he remembered, except to Ennor. Every Fëa restored here in Aman is a loss to Middle-earth. All is loss to my homeland, the land where Iluvatar placed us, entrusted to our care.

Thingol and Melian sat together in state upon the dais, and bore no jewels. They were simply clad in white, adorned only by their own beauty. Their faces shone, and their eyes were radiant with the light of the Two Trees, captured as if in a Silmaril. Both smiled as he approached, and he could not forebear smiling in return.

Yet the dais seemed very bare without Luthien, and the canopied chair at Elu's right hand stood empty. He guessed that when Dior came to Doreden he sat there. Perhaps the little princes, Elurin and Elured, who must by now - surely - have been reborn, remained with their father, or had grown into lands of their own. But why did the seat on Melian's left remain unfilled? That was the place reserved for the King's brother, his chief advisor. In Doriath, after Elmo had died, Celeborn had come to occupy that place, but he had been sure that in this new world where all ills were mended, he would find his grandfather there, as was right.

His bliss faltered further at the sight, and when he stepped out onto the bare floor before the thrones, kneeling before the crowd, he was solemn, the instincts of Ennor filling him with foreboding.

Elu rose and looked down on Celeborn's humbled, kneeling form, then out, to his people. "Behold," he said, "Celeborn, Prince of Doriath, whom you knew of old. He has my love and trust, and I would have you accept him once more into the office of a prince of this realm, with all its duties and privileges." He took a breath, frowning. "Let anyone who objects speak now."

The silence burned, looming huge, and the stream's song sounded loud beside the small whispering of garments as the people breathed and fidgeted, but there was no outcry against him. Whether that was because they truly trusted him, or did not care, or had been specially invited, leaving the nay-sayers outside, he did not know. He wondered - in the infinite pause between challenge and satisfaction - if Oropher might not have spoken out, had he been here. But since Oropher now ruled his own country it was just that he should have no say in the decisions of this.

Descending from the throne, Thingol leaned down to place a square, strong hand on his head. "Then rise, Prince of Doreden". Raising his nephew to his feet he gave him a little nudge, turning him to face the crowd. "And I say this. Dior is my heir, but I name Celeborn of my brother's line to be Lord Steward of Ardh-in-Eledhil from now until the end of time."

It was a moment like that of being chosen to bear an Elven Ring - there was a rush of marvel and joy, followed by realization. Shocked, he mounted the dais and sat down in Elmo's place, with Elmo's mantle settling on him heavily, and did not know whether to feel like a beloved kinsman or a usurper. Beneath the crowd's cheering he leaned over and whispered to Melian. "This honour belongs to my grandfather, surely? Where is he? I would not take what was his."

"Oh, Telpë," she said, with a gentle sternness, as of one who requires the injured to take bitter medicine. "I know you have always tried to tell yourself he died, but surely you remember it was not so. He was taken. Taken by Morgoth." She laid her hand on his arm, where it rested upon a throne which should not be his. "Elmo's fëa has never entered Mandos, and he was not among the captives released when Thangorodrim was broken." Her face was gentle and sad, infinite in compassion, and it frightened him a little to be the subject of such pity. "I would that it were not so, kinsman, but either he remains as a houseless spirit in Ennor, or," she paused, and her mouth twisted with the taste of the words, for being a hungry ghost was not the worst fate imaginable. "Or - forgive me, I do not want to say this."

In a voice barely to be heard over the joyful murmuring of the people, with the unmerciful truthfulness of her Maia spirit, she finished. "We must now all face the knowledge that your grandfather has been tormented beyond his endurance. That he returns not because... Oh, I am sorry. Because he has become an orc."

***************

Aranadar = 'Father-King' - an honourific Elladan is using to indicate that Elu is one of his royal ancestors.
Palanion = 'Afar-son' - a slightly nicer way of saying 'my descendant'
Rinaneth = 'Crowned-mother' - a bit more formal than 'mum', but more affectionate than 'my Queen' :)

While plenty abounded the Lindar had never let slip a chance to rejoice, so it was little surprise they held a feast to celebrate his return. Outside, on the thousand-flowered lawn which swept down into the forest's green gloom, this was impromptu, but went with the smoothness of long practice. Tables had been set up - flimsy trestles covered with white cloth and heaped bowls. Fires burned pale in the afternoon sunshine, signalling an intent to go on dancing well past nightfall. Banners of blossom bedecked the trees, brighter than the unlit lanterns.

To do honour to the bakers and cooks who must have been working the night through; the folk who had woven garlands of flowers; the musicians who performed unrehearsed; all the well wishers who came up to the High Table with words of welcome, Celeborn had to smile and seem carefree. So it was a relief when the formal greetings were done and the celebration deteriorated into a laughing riot of drinking and singing and making merry, with all intent on their own pursuits and no longer with an eye on him.

It was folly, he thought, resentfully, to suppose that Elmo must have become an orc. His grandfather was to him a memory of great kindness - a hand less heavy than Galadhon's, a friend untamed by the weight of care, always willing to assist in childish games, or hear his small concerns - and he had long refused even to imagine that mischievous but resolute spirit in Morgoth's hands. There were always other possibilities. He might indeed be lingering, ghostly, in Middle-earth. He might have escaped alive from Thangorodrim and be wandering the world, too scarred and scared to remember who or what he was. Unaware of the gazes on him, Celeborn shook his head, I will not cease to hope for him. Just as he did not cease to hope for Elu. The King returned, stronger and in greater bliss than before, so may his brother.

He felt rebuked by the thought, for Elmo had remained in Middle-earth, losing his chance of Valinor in order to find Elu, but Celeborn had not been so faithful. Daeron too was still outcast, journeying inconsolable in secrecy in Ennor. Would no one now continue the search for him? Would Celeborn wash his hands of them both and say 'enough. They may be my friends, my very blood, but I have had enough and will care no more?' He could not.

And what of the other houseless ones? Suppose by now many had repented of their decision to abandon their bodies. Suppose they now yearned for the chance of a new life in Valinor. Might not persuasion gather them in where mere summons had failed? He shook his head again, and Thingol laughed.

"There is some stubborn thought that irritates you as the whining of a fly. If you may not shake it out, have you tried speech?"

"I was wondering about Daeradar," Celeborn cursed himself as he watched the pain flick through Elu's storm grey eyes. It was no unfairness to Olwë to say that Elmo had been the more beloved of the two brothers - merely the truth. "Has Namo revealed nothing about the fate of orcs? Dying, do their fëar not come to him? And in time - cleansed of what they did not consent to - might they not also be rehoused as elves? So unjust it seems, else."

"Namo does not say," Melian, seeing their distress, smiled regretfully. "He has declared that the affairs of the dead are no concern of the living. Yet it may be so. They may come forth like Feanor, at the end of time, when all is made new. In Mandos even orcs might find healing, perhaps."

"You did not ask?"

"We did," she was stern at this suggestion they had not done enough, "We badgered the Doomsman without end, until he told us Elmo had not entered his halls, and was therefore outside his ken. And no more would he say, despite all our pleading. You are not the only one to care, kinsman."

"In this matter there is naught we can do but hope that our worst suspicions are one day proved wrong," said Thingol heavily, "And in the meantime go on with our duties. We are not the only family to have suffered such a loss, and for our people's sake we must be seen to bear it well. In appointing you to his place I prepare for the worst, but I nurture my faith in the best."

"I understand," Celeborn poured himself a bowlful of red berry soup and set the thoughts aside, concentrating on his task in this moment. Taking a pinch of aniseeds he looked out at the Iathrim, now regathered. Beleg Cuthalion was dancing there with a maiden whose Minyar-gold hair suggested she was one of Oropher's kin. She had indeed a look of Legolas; cousin, or niece, or daughter.

He sprinkled the seeds in his bowl. "Then will you not tell me what my duties are to be? From Amdir I gathered there was talk of war. Should I be training troops?"

"Amdir has many Avari in his following." Taking the cauldron, Elu ladled out a bowl of the soup for himself, stirring in extra cream, "and some ancestral bitterness remains there towards those who left them behind and long looked down on them." He snorted with amusement. "More resentment even than our own. Thus Amdir's thoughts on the Troubles represent an extreme. I am... hopeful... that it will not go so far. That we may sit down and talk together, emerging as friends. And to that end I am glad that you have returned now, for I have had need of you."

This was better news, Celeborn thought. It did not take lengthy pondering to see that - though any one of Elu's vassal-kings might serve him as a warlord - only he had long experience of working with the Noldor - understood how their minds worked, and was known to bear them no ill will; had indeed fought long beside them and wed into their King's house.

"Might not Cirdan have served you equally well," he said on an afterthought. "Or Elrond?"

"You are a hard man to compliment," Melian laughed, and rising took off her mantle in order to snag the hand of a passing reveller and be pulled into the dancing.

But Elu leaned forward and gave him a shrewd look. "I like and respect both," he said, "and trust them fully. But Cirdan has become far more a Teler now, looking as much to Olwe as to me. I do not begrudge him that - so long he yearned to sail and forebore for our sake. Yet my folk are Wood-elves at heart, and would not believe he spoke for them.

"Elrond, despite his lineage, inclines more toward the Noldor. Knowing this, he restrains himself and is too impartial for my tastes. I want a spokesman they will listen to, but who is yet bound by blood and passion to the Ennorim, to the Lindai, to my people. And that I know you are, Celeborn Gelaidh."

The nickname made him smile; 'Celeborn of the Trees'. It had first been given to him in scorn, by Celebrimbor, who could look at a grove of flowering cherries and see only charcoal for his forges. He thought it a very poor term of contempt, and had received it, even then, as an honour. But thought of Celebrimbor inevitably turned into memories of Galadriel. For she was root and stem of the gem-smith's dislike for him: the hatred of a spurned suitor for the successful.

"My lord," he said, after all this long waiting suddenly impatient. "While a division stands between myself and my wife, I will be of little use to you. It would be a poor heart, among the Noldor, that did not take the part of their slighted princess. Before I dared give advice to others, I should first repair the discord in my own house." His thoughts welled with her, with a near physical thirst to see her face again, whether in anger or in joy. Just to stand in the same room and watch the light on her hair... "With your leave I will go to her now. And - if you would aid me - it should be beneath your banner, with as showy an escort as can be mustered."

"Naturally," Thingol's eyes gleamed with dangerous humour, remembering perhaps the fell and spiteful words of the Sons of Feanor so long ago. "You shall not go to Finarfin's court as a poor relation. I will give you such an entourage that his sight will be darkened, from the dazzle. All who see you will conclude that you are the equal of any of his sons. My own pride demands no less."

"While I am there," Celeborn finished, "I will discover the truth about the Mirdain's secret works, and whether the Troubles go deeper than a few young idiots blinded by history and patriotism." And I will set in motion one or two small projects of my own, which I will ask permission for later; after I am assured they will work. "If I take Calandil with me, to teach me what I must know of Amanyar politics during the journey, is there any reason why I could not depart within a week?"

Elu laughed again. "For greatest splendour make it two, but I will not ask you to wait longer. Go and face the lightning while there is still some hope of you surviving it." He shed his cloak and stood, turning to the wheeling throng. "Go, and bring her home. Melian has missed her, and it is long past time."

********

Finarfin, King of the Noldor in Aman, turned a sapphire in his hand. Deepest blue, and - even to elvish eyes - apparently flawless, still his fingers could feel the small weakness in its heart which made it too fragile for Finrod's work. It was not, he thought, the only thing in this room poised on the brink of shattering.

Raising his head from contemplating the jewel he saw his wife, leaning out of the tower window as she might have leaned from a mast in the harbour, oblivious to height and danger. The wind made a river of her water-silver hair and plucked at her trailing, gold-lined cuffs, making them stream and snap in the air.

"They will not arrive faster for your hurling yourself from the window," he said in what was intended as a jocular tone. Even to his own ears it came out sounding peevish.

"I have ridden storms where the waves rose to the height of this room," Earwen snapped back at him, "I am perfectly capable of supporting myself on a ledge of unmoving stone."

In the corner of the solar, their daughter, who had cast aside the names they gave her and taken a new, foreign one, laughed bitterly over the small device of mithril she was examining. There was no shake in the hand which traced its subtleties, but her gaze was fierce and bleak. "I do not know why you are both so nervous," she said, her serenity marred by the slight tightening around her mouth. "Let the guard go out and turn them away, and have done with it."

Going to his wife's side, Finarfin sighed. Few who knew only his daughter's empathic grace, her gentleness and generosity, would suspect the streak of harmful stubbornness in her - the way she clung to hurt, though it all it achieved was to scar her. Had she not gone to Ennor in the first place largely to spite Feanor? So it seemed to be with this husband of hers; he had worn out his welcome, he had taken her for granted too long, and she intended that he should thoroughly know it.

Propping his chin on Earwen's shoulder, he looked down. Beneath their white walled house the path snaked, lined with avenues of olive and box trees, down the landscaped side of the green hill of Tuna. Through many gardens and arched walls, through courtyards of onyx and marble and obsidian, ringed with flowerbeds and ablaze with colour, down to the curtain wall, and thence into the glitter of Tirion. There the roofs were tiled with every shade of semi-precious stone, and the ridge-beams aflame with topaz and garnet.

His unknown son-in-law had brought an escort which filled the road from the street-gate to the very portico of the house. The vanguard had passed the third wall of the residence and were now trotting jauntily between the flowerbeds and fountains of the family garden. Among the warm and vibrant colours, they were a splash of cool brilliance. Caparisoned in cloth of silver, their unbridled horses snorted, restless, and tossed the gems wound into their manes in flashes of light, as though they had waded through Varda's stars. The clothes of the riders were of white and green, fresh and clean, and their eyes were the eyes of warriors. In conference with Elwë and his lords, Finarfin had long ago learned that no-one could part a Dark Elf from his knife, so he had no doubt each one of these guards of honour was armed. But, if it was so, the weapons were well hidden, and the mounted elves seemed as ready for peace as for war; a courtesy to Amanyar sensibilities that he had not expected from one so newly arrived.

At the head of the procession the standard of Thingol flew, dark as night and milk white as the moon, and behind it there streamed a banner - white and green as the livery - with the device of a silver tree. There, on a coal-black steed, rode Celeborn himself, his shining hair held by a circlet of gold - the only adornment of a severity which seemed out of place amid this vainglorious abundance of followers.

How should I feel, at the sight? Finarfin asked himself, aware that he was instinctively looking for something of which to disapprove. Here was the man who had stolen his only daughter, his little girl, and then abandoned and hurt her. By that standard he should feel, indeed, this swell of protective hatred. He should be - as he was - half hearkening to Artanis' wish to send the intruder on his way, dismissed and humiliated. No one could be worthy of her, least of all this dark elf, youngest of a line of youngest sons, unaware of how ridiculous his display of self importance was making him look.

At Earwen's gentle squeeze on his arm he started, surprised. There was a look of sympathetic reproach in her eyes, which made him unclench his teeth and essay an unconvincing smile. "Is not her fury," Earwen said, bending close to whisper out of the range of Galadriel's sharp hearing, "proof that she loves him deeply? If you value her weal, try not to frighten him away. Finrod has his happy ending, should we not hope for our daughter to now have hers?"

And she was right, as she so often was. There could be no doubt that this goading of her husband was pleasing to Artanis' pride, but not to her heart. She was as tense as a harpstring, and joyless. If the over-pretty princeling now riding into his house, in over-extravagant pomp, would make her happy, then he should be welcomed with as open arms as Finarfin could manage. He looked down again, and suiting his thoughts to his resolve, told himself that there was certainly no denying his son-in-law's nerve - to have defied Artanis so long, and be unafraid to face her even now. The show of power and prestige might be for Elwe's benefit, or indeed for Artanis' own - a demonstration to the people of her city that she had not married a nobody, that she was not belittled by her choice of husband. Some reason might lie behind it, he thought, grudgingly. But the banners were still a touch too far.

Behind Thingol's, and Celeborn's own banner, the host carried also a mist-grey pennant with a device of a lake beneath a canopy of leaves. A snowy standard all emblazoned in mithril, with hammer and anvil, and the star of Feanor amid two overarching beeches. An azure, wave-bright, on which a swan ship sailed. An emerald flag where a mallorn fluttered. The banner of Imladris; and several others behind that, their designs growing more opaque in meaning the longer he looked at them. Finarfin had heard enough of his daughter's history to recognize each device as that of a realm she had ruled beside her husband. The final few he must have established alone. But all were now left behind. Dead kingdoms; vanished glory.

"I thought you said he was not a vain man."

Galadriel risked a brief, tight glimpse out of the window. He knew she had seen her lover; for an instant she was shocked still, as if she had grasped a lightning strike. But a heartbeat later she was herself again, composed and amused. "He is not. His purpose is practical - to make it impossible for you to discreetly turn him away. He is not above using whatever weapon comes to hand." She breathed in, closed her eyes, and he would have said the emotion that flitted across her face was fear, but that his Artanis feared nothing. "Prove to him that you cannot be thus coerced, and refuse him audience. I do not wish to see him."

"Why ever not?" Earwen lost her patience. Her wide-set blue eyes darkened, and she pushed back the straight sleekness of her starlit hair from a face grown intently bright, "So many years you have yearned for his presence, and now you spurn it? I do not understand you."

"So many years, yes," said Galadriel angrily, but she did not sit down again, and her eyes strayed back to the window. "Has he not thoroughly proved that his love for me is a hundred times less than his care for Morgoth-marred Middle-earth? He came not because he wanted to, but because he could not escape death any other way. While he had any strength or endurance in him, he stayed away. How do you think that makes me feel?"

Irony caught Finarfin unawares, before he could prepare himself. He almost laughed; restrained himself only because he knew it was what Feanor would have done. The memory went beyond pain into a strange, eviscerating agony, too intense for reason. Do you say that to me, my daughter? You, who left me standing at the quayside and came not back for three Ages of the world? And at the thought, unexpectedly, unwelcomely, he found himself struck by a wave of sympathy for his son-in-law. I too know what it is like, to be left behind by Galadriel.

"Yet he is your husband," Earwen said inexorably, her slender hands tightening around the sill. "When I look into your eyes I perceive his spirit, joined with yours. You are no longer an isolate being, but part of him, and he of you."

"That may be so." Pointedly, Galadriel returned to her corner seat and took up her work again, keeping her head bent. "But still I do not want to see him."

Watching her, Finarfin was torn between pity and frustration. He moved to stroke the many tight braids of her hair, piled queenly on her head and aggressively pinned with rubies. "Well," he said, "if your Celeborn's purpose in such grandeur is to force my hand, then he has succeeded. He comes as Prince of Doreden, and to turn him away would be such an insult to Elu Thingol, in these troubled times, as could very well end in war. I must receive him, whether it is your wish or not."

They were now dismounting in the courtyard, and heralds were crying names. The clatter of hooves on marble sounded out, with the stable-boys' excited chatter; and Orodreth's deep, soft tones, greeting the new arrival as a friend long missed. A voice ringing with the unmistakable music of the Teleri answered, laughing, and Galadriel gasped and stood up, painfully rigid, her fists knotted into her skirts. "Then do so, if you must," she said, "but I will have no part of it. As surely he would know, if he only believed my words to Elladan. By your leave, my King."

Since she had couched her request in such terms, he contemplated ordering her to stay - to get the folly over with once and for all. Yet Artanis' mind could no more be forced by command than slate go in the fire without shattering. Her mother could sometimes shape her, as water can shape stone. But it was a long task and one for which he had no patience. He nodded therefore. "You have my leave, my noble maid. And I ask you not to resent your parents curiosity about the father of their grandchildren, and forgive us."

The appeal made her smile, though her lips were white. "That will depend on whether you emerge from this meeting in league against me or not."

"I am not promising anything," Earwen smoothed her sky-blue sleeves primly, and watched her go with narrowed eyes. Exasperated with the pair of them, Finarfin sat down, and set his circlet on. At once his wife was before him, fussing over getting it straight, while taking the chance to stroke comforting fingers through the length of his hair. He breathed out at the touch and closed his eyes briefly, resting in the encirclement of her silk-clad slender arms.

"No interfering now, my lady. We do not even know if he was good to her. And it has been long since she needed our advice."

Shown in by Orodreth, Finarfin's problem son-by-marriage bowed with simple courtesy; far more hesitant than his massive entourage had led Finarfin to expect. Where he had thought to face a wall of Umanyar arrogance, he was taken aback to find something far more familiar. They stood, watching one another, and in a moment of profound and working silence what struck the king most was recognition. As masculine as he was, from the mithril hair to the elegance of his bones, Celeborn resembled Earwen.

Of course, Finarfin thought, though the realization had no flavour of 'of course' about it - more of astonishment. He is her cousin.

It had been a meaningless datum, a strange genealogical twist, that in plunging into the darkness of Endorë Galadriel should have met and married a blood-kinsman. One of those curious facts which briefly amuses before the mind travels to more important things. But now, the likeness played upon Finarfin's imagination. He saw Artanis - her certainties and supports cut away from her by the brutal murder of her grandfather, the madness of her family - alone in a hostile land, where even the song of the stones beneath her feet was in a foreign tongue. Did she cleave to Celeborn because he reminded her of home? Did she see in that face some promise of single-minded love, like a mother's unquestioning devotion to their child? If so, he could not help feeling sorry for the younger elf - to be loved because you looked like someone else, and worse, someone whose role was of unmixed support, unremitting forgiveness and kindness. To be cast aside, unneeded, when the original of that love was once more at hand... It would be a hard thing to bear.

"I hardly know what to say," Celeborn smiled, "since my staying away so long has made even politeness into an insult. It is good of you to see me at all."

But no one looking beyond the physical could have confused the two of them, Finarfin decided; for Earwen was sunlight on the waves, changeable but as clear as clean water. This man was all shadow - the moving shade and coolness of trees. One could not see what was going on in his mind, until speech broke the canopy of his thought, startling as a flight of hawks.

"I was not left with much choice," he said, annoyed at being thanked for something which he had been forced to do. Hostility threatened to break the bounds of his restraint. Forcibly he told himself to stop at that, and bite back the accusation of hypocrisy.

"But you would have been welcomed regardless;" Earwen broke in, with what seemed genuine pleasure, "for Celebrian's sake, and Amroth's, and their children. Quite apart from the fact that you are of my own family."

"Some would say that all of these things I have forfeited by too profound an absence," said Celeborn, ruefully, and sat, taking off his riding gloves and tucking them into his belt.

'Some' being Galadriel, Finarfin recognized. So her husband thought as she did, even in this. Was he then happy to take all her opinions before his own? Passive except in offering admiration? There were times he had feared his daughter might choose a worshipper, rather than a partner, in her marriage. It would be characteristic, but it would not be good for her. Was that why Artanis would not see him? Because he was a youthful folly of which she in her maturity now repented, no longer needing empty praise, unearned agreement?

He caught Earwen's glare, and again his heart spoke against itself, soothed and rebuked by her motherly wisdom. "I have known what it was," he offered, surprising himself once more with fellow feeling, "to see those I loved depart from me and to turn back because of duties owed. I cannot fault you for doing the same." Was it possible that in Celeborn Artanis saw also some reflection of her father - his integrity, his willingness to turn from paths of destruction and ask for forgiveness? It had taken her many years, on returning, to forgive him too.

Well, he wanted to see her happy, but not with a sycophant, not with a husband who was a mere embarrassment to her. If this Swan-Lord had the wit to win her back, if she had the heart to accept him again, then so be it. He would neither help nor hinder.

"But my daughter's forgiveness is not so easily obtained," he said, sternly. "Your tardiness has wounded her greatly, and she will not now receive you. I fear your journey has been in vain."

He expected protest; some change at the very least in the shadows of those verdant eyes, so strangely dark. Surprise, surely? But there was nothing, save perhaps the steady interest of a chess player, who sees a long foreseen move played out. His own interest was piqued. Was this a more even match than he had suspected?

"Lord," Celeborn laughed quietly, "Your daughter is as the North Star in my sky - the centre about which my world revolves. But I am not such a fool as to think her a liar. She said she would not see me, therefore she will not. The sight of her would be as rain to me after ten thousand years of drought, but nevertheless - respecting her wishes - I did not come to see her. Let my presence not trouble her in any way. For I came to see Finrod."

"He did what?!" Galadriel rose from her desk, scattering a litter of intricate wire onto the flower-tiled floor. Her eyes flashed, and to Earwen she seemed taller of a sudden. Blindingly bright, her beauty mixed with terror, her fea's power overflowing in anger.

"He came to speak with your brother," she repeated, giving her words just the right tone of sympathy to fuel the furnace. It would not do for the anger to cool, for then insult would replace it, calculating and hard. As Earwen had learned from her marriage-family, some things could far more easily be worked when hot. "He is at Finrod's workshop even now, discussing politics, I think."

"Does he think he can come all this way and then ignore me? Does he have nothing to say at all, not even 'sorry'?" Galadriel breathed in, and a look smouldered in her eyes which made her mother grow chill, remembering Alqualondë. Once, such a look had been levelled at her, while the point of a Noldor blade lay trembling in the hollow of her throat. He had recollected who she was - their prince's wife - in the next moment, but the gaze had stayed with her since. Never before had she felt so utterly disdained, so worthless.

Stepping back, warily, from her daughter's presence, her heart faltered. I hope you know what you are doing, cousin, she thought grimly. Unlike Finarfin, she had been Artanis' confidant, and - knowing all - she hoped for a new beginning for what had been a long, successful marriage. In bearing Celeborn's words to her daughter she had tried to further what she perceived as his intent. But it is one thing to shape molten steel, and quite another to stand before a tide of it.

"He will learn better," said Galadriel, in a tone sharp as any sword, and strode from the room, ablaze.

Celeborn, pulled too many ways by apprehension and hope, sat at one end of a bench occupied by a strange sculpture of metal and gems, and tried to fix his mind on needful things. So close to Galadriel, after all these years, an atavistic instinct in him urged him to find her door and break it down, to assert his rights and his needs, to claim her back whether she would or no. Though appalled at the desire, he could not make it go away. It shocked him, he who had always believed himself better than that. He would not do it - for Galadriel's free choice was precious to him, and he would not have her coerced - but still, the thought that he was capable of so base a possessiveness made him feel itchy and irritable, as though his skin was covered in dirt.

She would come to him if she wished. If not, he would accept her decision and go away. But, Valar! The waiting was hard.

"Here's to your return, long despaired of!" Finrod passed him a glass of white mead, and he accepted the toast, not knowing whether it was a rebuke or not. It was good to see Finrod again, his face glowing with purpose, brighter now than Glorfindel and every bit as joyous. Good too, to see the ring about his finger, the completeness in his eyes which told of his marriage to Amarië. The house of Finarfin would be filled up with more golden-haired children, it seemed.

He wondered, suddenly, whether some of the Noldor's discontent with their neighbours might not stem from the fact that their royal house was becoming more Vanyar, more Teleri by the day. Did not Finarfin have Earwen beside him, and Finrod Amarië? Orodreth's wife was of the Sindar, as was Galadriel's husband. Aegnor... poor, Aegnor, foolishly wise, who had neither the courage nor the power to claim Luthien's fate, would not provide them with a full-blood heir. Only Angrod had married within his own people. If they - reasonably - feared their culture being eaten out from within, it might well prompt some aggressiveness towards the other clans.

The thought of full-blood Noldor, and aggression, turned his mind once more to the other reason why he was feeling as grey and oppressed as the sky. Glad as he was to see Finrod again, unmarked by monster's tooth, he was not so pleased to find him working beside Celebrimbor. There was very little about Celebrimbor, from the soot-black hair and iron grey eyes, to the way he lounged on the wooden workbench, perfectly at home, which did not make Celeborn helplessly annoyed. How long had this frustrated lover been haunting his wife's steps while he was absent, plying her with all the things she did not need more of - jewels and power and doom?

"She would not see you, eh?" said Celebrimbor in ill-advised sympathy, and smiled. Doubtless it was meant to be a smile of fellow feeling, but it set his blood on fire. Far more than he could take from the usurper of his Lordship in Eregion and the architect of his most painful loss.

"What are you doing here, Curufinion?" he demanded, scathingly. Without meaning to, he found himself on his feet, fists clenched, standing above the gem-smith's seated form. There was some satisfaction in seeing his rival scramble backwards, instinctively afraid. Celebrimbor, genius though he was, was no warrior. "Come to steal someone else's kingdom? Make sure you hand it back when it gets to be too much trouble, as you did with me."

Who knew how many more ages of the world Galadriel might have spent with him in Ennor but for Celebrimbor's cursed trinkets. And he dared smile? "Or are you just designing some new device that will suck the life out of its bearers? Shall I describe to you what became of the Men who wore your Rings? The torment of Galadriel? And yet here you are again, meddling! I wonder that they let you out of Mandos at all, for truly you are your father's son."

"Telpë!" a hand caught his wrist, restraining, and he looked aside into Finrod's earnest gaze, just for one moment hating his reasonableness, the interference of his peacemaking. "He is here because I asked for his help. And he does not deserve to be treated thus - has not his death paid for all?"

Yielding to the gentle touch, Celeborn stepped back a pace, told himself this was no time nor place to demand redress for hurts inflicted so long ago. Forgiveness, he had learned how needed it was on this new world, where all former enemies now were asked to live together as friends. Thus far he had tried to give it freely. But this was not like facing Melian, or his family. He had wanted to forgive them, take them back into his life. For Celebrimbor his goodwill extended only to the thought that punching him in the teeth would not be worth the split knuckles.

"Death?" he asked bitterly. "How did his 'heroic death' benefit anyone, except to look good in song? He should have lived, and worked at undoing what he had done. It was but suicide, waiting for Sauron's wrath. Suicide at a time when he had a duty to save his people. Why take them from me, if he cared nothing for them in the end?"

"I too have asked myself that," said Celebrimbor, relaxing slightly as the threat was withdrawn, sliding down from where he had been pressed defensively into the wall. "In Mandos. Many things become clear there, uncomfortable though the knowledge is." He pushed back into his plait one of the many tendrils of hair that lay across his face, whence it began immediately to slither free again. There was, surprisingly, no answering anger in him, and the lack of resistance made Celeborn feel off balance, uncertain. "At first I tried to say 'because Annatar deceived me, persuaded me into it with cunning council.'"

As he looked up, Celeborn caught something in his gaze which had not been present before - the holiness of the reborn, shorn of the Kinslayer's curse. "But in the end I had to admit that I took your people, your country, only because they were yours. Why should you have everything - the deepest of my heart's desires - and I have nothing? I could not take from you that which I most loved, so I took Eregion in its stead. And I led it into evil, as Namo foretold."

Pushing back the wisp of hair once more Celebrimbor smiled, almost humbly. Light touched the iron eyes and brought out a sheen of mercury, evasive and fair. "If I had lived, how much more harm would I have caused? Would I have drawn Sauron to your small army, rather than leaving him to vainly pursue Amroth? Or if, by some strange chance, we ever reached Imladris, would I have contended with you and Elrond, while it needed unity; causing it to fall? I know not. But it was then, when you and I stood side by side and looked out on the seething infinity of Gorthaur's orcs, that I finally understood my fate. While I lived in Endorë, evil followed. Therefore I had to die. And if I chose to do it spitting in Sauron's face, would not you have done the same?"

A silence fell between them. In the hush, the final gust of rain pattered against the crystal walls and snaked in subtle grades of brightness down onto the green camomile of the lawn. The sky brightened into a luminous white dome around them, washed and empty as Celeborn's well of resentment. He did not want to feel sympathy or shame for this ancient rival, but he could not deny a new insight that made so much sense. Not an abandoning, but a final acceptance of responsibility. Anger, draining, left him feeling quietened, stable once more, though malice and humour could not forbear adding Like Turin: the best thing he ever did was to die. If only he could have done it the sooner.

"I would," he said, sighing. "Forgive me. I had not thought of it in that light."

"Too busy rejoicing that you had left me behind?"

Looking up in surprise, Celeborn saw a glimmer of the same wry amusement in Celebrimbor's eyes. Perhaps, perversely, the shared knowledge that they hated one another could become a basis for understanding. He laughed softly. "Indeed."

It had been hard to work together all those years, pretending for Galadriel's sake that they did not each despise everything the other was. But he would not make the mistake, this time, of ignoring Celebrimbor to the point that he knew not what sorcery was being wrought in his own domain. "So, what are you doing here Tyelpë?"

"Little to interest you, I doubt not, for it concerns neither Endorë nor trees."

Finrod snorted, and favoured them both with a look of long-suffering patience, the expression of one well used to being the only rational person in the room. It smoothed the barbs from the insult and helped Celeborn to pluck it out and throw it aside, disregarded. He addressed himself to his gwanur, certain that he would get better answers there. "Rumour circulates among the Sindar that you are working on a weapon."

"Paranoia," said Celebrimbor dismissively, and edged out from his seat to return to the sleek and beautiful thing which lay on the workbench, making minute changes to the placing of its embedded jewels.

"Yet the mere rumour is dangerous enough, in these troubled times, to concern Thingol deeply. It is hard to council friendship with those you half suspect of readying to attack you."

"This is Valinor," said Finrod, smiling, as though the suggestion was as foolish as Celebrimbor had said. But when Celeborn did not reply he filled the silence with thought. His smile faltered as memories of Alqualondë, tales of the slaughter at Doriath and Sirion, ghosted behind his darkening, sea-coloured eyes. He at least knew what folly it was to call the Sindar over-wary to a man whose own brother had fallen beneath a Noldor blade.

"Well..." he breathed in and began again more carefully. "We have been silent only because that is the way of the Mirdain. They are jealous of their methods and their arts, and did not want too much curiosity until the thing was done. That has suited us - Galadriel and Celebrimbor and I. We are dreading, a little, the furore that our work may cause, when it is complete."

"You are not reassuring me."

With the cloudburst over, the sun now slanted through the many panes of crystal and warmed Finrod's rueful smile. "It is a long tale," he said, and pushed back one of the bright walls to let the air in. Water dripped from the eaves onto his golden mane, reminding Celeborn painfully of Galadriel - in the mornings of Lothlorien, when she would dance in the dawn light, while dew pattered, shining, from the trees all around her and glinted like fiery jewels in her hair. Would she accept the excuse of his insult and come to him? Or was she really so resolved that she would pass it over with a knowing smile and stay away, isolate and out of his reach? He dreaded the answer.

"You must understand," Finrod refilled the glasses and stood with them in hand, his gaze focussed out beyond the city, perhaps on the mountain of Taniquetil that raised its god-haunted head, white-flaming into the sky, across the Calacirya. "Coming back to Aman was not quite like coming home, not even for us. Things had changed."

"Your father had become High King," Celeborn suggested, aware that while this elevation might have delighted Galadriel, both Finrod and Orodreth were likely to have received it less gladly.

"And that caused ill-feeling when Fingolfin and his followers were re-born. The Noldor are not like your people, Celeborn. You seem to have no pride. Even Oropher came forth from Mandos well content to bend the knee to Elwë once more. But Fingolfin was less happy to find himself subject to his youngest brother. Turgon and Fingon resented becoming dependants, where they had once been mighty kings. Even Gil-galad - he led the entire elven population of Middle-earth, and now he is a mere descendant. We went to Ennor looking for fame and rule, and returned to find ourselves dispossessed in our own homeland. It is inevitable, therefore, that some have resented the new kingdoms and strength of the Ennorim in Valinor. It is a wash of brine over our cuts."

"Finwë should return," said Celeborn, unsurprised, though enlightened by Finrod's information - the Noldor's quarrelsomeness, even within their own clan, had been one of the first things the Sindar had noticed about them. "The body decays because the head has been cut off. Ours prospers because we have Elu back."

"No," Finrod laughed. "It's generous of you to think so, but we tore one another even while Finwë was alive. It is our nature - part of that restlessness which drives us to be such great explorers, both of the mind and body."

"Then explore," shrugging, Celeborn followed Finrod's gaze out through the pass of light into the far distance. The spilled rain was now smoking up from the ground in the yellow sun's warmth, and after twenty miles or so the details became hazy. "Is there not a great continent there, the equal of all the lands of Middle-earth?"

"So we thought."

Celebrimbor had reached under the table and opened a small chest. A radiance like trapped moonlight spilled from it, mingling with the sunshine. He reached inside and brought out what must surely have been a great jewel, if its facets had been visible beneath the outpouring of molten silver. Light welled between Celebrimbor's fingers and dripped, organic and fluid, into the air. A mist of brightness trailed his cupped hands as he moved them towards the workbench, lingering like a faint perfume. It had not the holy and enchanting sweetness, the revelatory clarity of a Silmaril, but he was glad, nevertheless, that there were no dwarves in Valinor. Wars had been fought over less.

"But when we returned," Finrod drew close to his shoulder, watching with him, "we found it had been settled in our absence. Teleri Havens and harbours all about the coast, Vanyar retreats upon the meads, and some of our own 'Faithful' people in the mountains. Sparsely populated, but in such distant time they had long grown used to thinking it theirs. Nor would their established lords bow down to us."

"Doubtless it is some kind of lesson in humility," said Celebrimbor and set the moon-jewel reverently in a hollow of wrought mithril, as designed for it as the socket for an eye. Pleased with its fit, or the affect, he looked up, his eyes inspired and brilliant, lit with zeal. Still sleeked by clinging light, his craftsman's hands lay possessively over the device, as if the embodiment of his name, and Celeborn was taken aback for a moment by the genius of Feanor's line, and the fear of its cost.

"So this device is designed to put that right?" he said. "And to restore your fortunes. If it is not a weapon, then how?"

He paused and waited, in expectation of protest. It had been quite some time since Celeborn had last encountered so clear an assumption that he, as a savage, would know nothing. Nostalgia came over him at the thought - for the First Age, when they were all so much younger, and the world that much simpler.

"This, I have long known," he said, and took some satisfaction of his own in watching the Noldo frown, genuinely puzzled. "The Men of Middle-earth realized it centuries ago, and we have not been too proud to learn from them."

Circling the device, he could not tell even now what purpose it served. He dared not trail his fingers along it to feel if it would speak to him, lest he do it harm. Vanity stirred feebly in his heart, forbidding him to ask, since Celebrimbor was so eager to tell, but he ignored it with ease. "I see. You intend to travel through Ilmaren and come to other worlds, where you may each have realms of your own. This thing will aid you in that. But what is it? It seems a little small to sufficiently guard you against the rigours of that emptiness, which flesh unsupported cannot pass."

Disappointed and taken aback to have encountered knowledge where he expected ignorance, Celebrimbor was silent. It was Finrod who answered him, singing a rill of pure notes. At the tune the device awoke and burst into brilliant, coruscating life, giving forth a long beam of white light, violent as a battering ram. Silver radiance, and pearl wound, ribbon-like down its length, confining it into one pulse, terrible and potent. The ground shook.

"Where there is no wind," said Finrod, his voice trembling with excitement, "This will push forward a vessel. You come in happy hour to see it finally at work, so long it has been in the making."

"It is astounding!" Celeborn winced as the blaze filled his eyes. A power came off the insubstantial light and stirred the hair on his nape even as it urged him backwards. He was not certain this thing could not, after all, be used as a weapon, though that was not Finrod's intent. It should certainly not remain entirely in Noldor hands. He thought swiftly. "What of the vessel?"

"What?"

"I said..." instinctively, though the pounding of radiance was in fact entirely silent, Celeborn raised his voice, feeling foolish when Celebrimbor chose just that moment to shut the thing down. He eyed its dormant form, pondering. "Have you no craft to which you will attach it?"

"We have not proceeded so far," Finrod was grinning, all but jumping with delight. Celebrimbor folded his arms and sat down, looking smug. "There would have been little use without the power of movement. And we have feared to embark on any project so large, lest it become widely known, and spread doubt among folk who trust not our use of it."

"Do you know my brother, Galathil?"

"Yes..?" At this apparent irrelevance Finrod's look of glee wavered. Torn between satisfaction and his ever-present curiosity he turned bemused eyes on his gwanur's face. "Why?"

"You are not as alone in this conception as you think." The Noldor were not the only far-travellers in creation, Celeborn mused, only the most focussed on arriving and conquering. His own people had a love of wandering, also. Did they not ride the waves only to feel the freedom of the sea, or drift from kingdom to kingdom only to see the new trees? "Galathil has been working on a sail for use in the void - one which may be filled by light instead of wind. As the Teleri way is not to design ship and sail separately, but both together as one unit, he may already have built a hull for his cirilmaren which might be adapted for yours."

"Why would he do such a thing?" asked Celebrimbor, half mockingly. "Out of the goodness of his heart? I think not - the Teleri have never forgiven us, nor ever wanted to build aught with us again."

"He would do it if I asked him."

Alone of the many elves Celeborn had encountered thus far in Valinor, Celebrimbor had been a knowing Kinslayer, coming to Ennor in the host of Feanor, bloody handed. That he had repented of it was clear - or he would not yet have been reborn. But some of the attitudes persisted. "Perhaps we do not want Teleri help?" he said, darkly.

But Finrod had curled catlike into his chair with the look of intense absorption he wore when composing poetry, or peace treaties. "No," he said. "To have a prince of the Teleri royal house aiding us would cut through at one stroke the objections of those who think this another mad Noldor project, to be dreaded. And the Teleri are..." he shrugged, smiling. "They are the Eldarin experts in ship-building and star-navigation. It does not make sense not to involve them, if we may."

"And it makes a deal of sense to set our quarrelling peoples to some task they may do together, where each needs the other's unique skills," Celeborn agreed. "Are not the Troubles between us due more to idleness - in which every small slight can put down thirsty root - than true dislike? If our hands were full of new and exciting work, who would put it down to take up a weapon?"

"That would be well enough," Celebrimbor lifted the moon-like jewel out of its place and gently lowered it into its casket. "But that it is your people - the dark elves - who are the problem, and they have no skill to bring to buy their way into this bright future." Recognizing, finally, the wreck of his plait, he unwound it and sat for a moment clad in satin darkness, his long locks spilled over his shoulders. Gathering them up again and rewinding the braid he said, "Perhaps we shall just leave you behind. The 'Eledhil' may stay here, while the Calaquendi spread to every star. Would that not be ironic?"

In the past, Celeborn had sometimes suspected the gem-smith of deliberately needling him to the point of fury, as if to show his wife what a fool she had married. For surely no one could be that irritating by accident? He took a deep breath. This was not a good day for calm. Where was Galadriel? The rain had stopped and still she had not come. A pain beneath his ribs intensified at Celebrimbor's talk of being left behind, and his mind refused to be distracted from it any longer. O Valar! She really had meant it. She would not come.

"You will," he cleared his voice - his throat had closed, as he found himself believing, for the first time, that he might not be able to just walk back into his marriage; that he might, in truth, have forfeited all. Just so she must have felt, every time a ship came in and I was not on it. "You will have to eat dirt then."

Known as the gentlest, the most empathic of the Noldor, Finrod must have sensed the sudden breaking of his hope - the plummet into deep waters that followed. He moved closer and put a hand on Celeborn's back. The friendly, encouraging touch made him want to weep.

But not in front of Celebrimbor. He tried again; "Men say that every world they have thus far seen is barren. You will be Lords of airless rocks. Yet my people have just taken the ooze at the bottom of the sea and turned it into a realm full of blossoming groves. I'm sorry, Celebrimbor, but you need us."

"I need to think," the jewel-wright replied, and stood, striding away with his mouth down-turned. Perhaps, like Feanor, he was unwilling to allow his creation to be used in a way he had not foreseen. But he would return - he would not be able to bear the thought of Galathil's sail taking the lead over his device. Better to work with us than for us, thought Celeborn, in a last spasm of harsh humour - watching his enemy go with a sense of sudden vulnerability, as though dragon-fire had burnt away his shield.

While Celebrimbor had been present it had been impossible to give himself over to grief. Anger had disguised his agony. But now, as if it were a great drake, as if it were Glaurung with his merciless, labyrinthine gaze, despair came on footsteps alternately dull and piercing, and he was lost. Darkness arose over him. He had arrived too late. He had gained paradise and lost everything. What use were all his plans? He put his head in his hands and closed his eyes.

Galadriel had not come.

Notes:

gwanur = a brother who is not related by blood.

Telpë = a Telerin shortening of 'Celeborn',
Tyelpë = a Quenya shortening of Celebrimbor.

Ilmaren = Outer space. Yes, Tolkien did invent an elvish word for it, as the ships of the Teleri have to pass through it on the way from Middle-earth to Valinor. I am assuming that up to now they have been protected from it by the direct intervention of the Valar, as - in some strange, unspecified, multidimensional way - Valinor and Ennor are part of the same world. But the elves are now looking to become a bit more independent than that.

cirilmaren = space ship.

Grief surrounded Celeborn in lifeless darkness as he sat, abased. For a short time he knew nothing, nor even felt the press of his own fingertips against his face. But the instincts of survival in Ennor's perilous realm would not permit him to remain thus vulnerable. He could not abandon himself to sorrow without first opening to the world's song, alert for threat. It was thus with his mind that he felt her approach at first - the delight of the earth at being under her foot, her spirit's radiance falling like a bright sunrise over him.

He could hear footsteps; Galadriel's light, brisk tread, the almost soundless whisper of her skirts, and her breathing; swift, a little ragged. It broke off in a gasp. The footsteps stopped in front of him. Just for a moment he was utterly overcome and could not move. His wife stood before him, and he could not bring himself to look at her. So long he had been torn in two, frozen, famished, that he had ceased to think of the pain as pain. Its ending broke over him in a blizzard of joy. Four Ages of the world without air, and finally he could breathe. Tears pricked against his sheltering palms, and some emotion, too vast for him to name, shuddered through him. Just to be here, close enough to touch! Long he had lain dormant in the dark earth, drenched with cold rain, but the sun had returned and brought forth life.

It took all his courage, but he looked up at last and saw, through the dazzle of his lashes, a face that had haunted his dreams for ten millennia. Yet he had not remembered it as so very beautiful. Her shining eyes were wide and shocked, her lips half parted, as though she too felt that sudden, immense relief in his presence. No longer saddened, no longer diminished, bowed down with weariness and the constant struggle against the call of the Sea, she looked blazing and brilliant as she had been in Doriath, as she had been in her youth, when - like Feanor, like Fingolfin - she thought herself the equal of Morgoth and the whole world hers by right. She was a delirium of beauty, glory, strength and vanity, and - seeing her - he wanted to laugh with joy. He beamed instead. "Galadriel."

The sound of his voice broke the stillness which had lain between them. She shook herself, as though breaking from a spell, and her eyes flashed as she drew herself up to her full height, lifted her fist and slapped his upraised face with all her strength.

Working at the forges had not weakened her arm - the blow made his ears ring and, for a heartbeat, took away his sight. When it cleared he found her already in retreat, turned on her heel and hurrying out of the door. Not sparing Finrod - who had wisely made no move - a glance, he launched himself to his feet and pursued.

Galadriel no longer knew quite why she was so angry, or from what she was running. It seemed important to get away, almost as it had seemed during the Rebellion - to get away from something which threatened to stifle her, to take her life out of her hands and constrain her will. She needed air, freedom, space and time to think. A moment's unwelcome reflection told her that she had had far too much of these things already. Barren, empty space and endless, lonely time, these were the torment, these she should flee. Yet she could not stop her feet nor the wild, ecstatic fury which bore her on.

Oh she was too subtle, knew herself too well, to believe that she really desired to get away. But let him think so! Let him suffer as she had, not knowing, every day for untold years, whether he would ever arrive. Nights of secret weeping drowned her memory; a bleak, dark tunnel of healing denied, solace withheld. How could she be well when her own husband did not love her enough to set other things aside and be with her? How could she receive Valinor's blessing when she had left half of herself in the wilderness of Ennor?

Finally she had convinced herself that it did not matter. That their marriage had come to a natural end, and she should not mourn but go on into the future, hoping for a new beginning. Then! Then he chose to come! Just when she had achieved some serenity. And she was expected to take him back, without demur, without reproach, as though her ten thousand years of pain somehow did not count?

She was well aware that he followed her now. Her mind refused to contemplate the black pit of rejection if he had not.

Did he think he could just walk back into her life whenever it pleased him, and she would be waiting for him, passive, grateful, like a good little wife? She was a Queen, a daughter of Kings, and she did not need him. She did not.

"Galadriel. Please!"

He caught her trailing sleeve and stopped her. Turning, she snatched it back out of his grasp, but did not start walking again, instead folding her arms about herself and looking away. She had fled into one of the small meditation gardens and found herself contemplating a dark yew hedge, where grounded raindrops glimmered golden among the fleshy, coral berries. Her chest was tight and tears threatened. Valar! Not tears! Just when she was trying to be so righteously angry. No one undermined her control or made her act so stupidly weak as he did, curse him!

Out of the corner of her eye she was aware of him - the deep indigo of his tunic, a spill of hair over his shoulder like a bright comet across a winter sky. She let him turn her gently to face him, but would not take her gaze from the garden; distracted, almost overwhelmed by his closeness and touch. How had she forgotten that he was strong as the earth itself - dark and secret and solid, a haven, a safe place to be. For so long she had been lost on the ocean, abandoned to every swell and storm, scorched by sun and salt. Now she could come to land, now she could have shelter, if she would only let herself.

"Why did you not come to me?" she said, and heard her voice quaver shamefully. He should be weeping, not she!

"I did," he said, with the soft puzzlement of a man who has not understood the question. "I am here."

At so wrong an answer, she laughed harshly and shook his hands off her, anger spiking into a desire to hurt him as much as she possibly could. "You love me not. Not at all, nor ever have!"

He made some noise of protest at this, inarticulate in denial, but she gave him no time to pull his scattered thoughts into words. "Your own precious Ennor is all that matters to you, and I a very poor second. I will not be second!" Treacherously, emotion gagged her at those words, and as she struggled to find her voice, he breathed in, sharp and angry. They stood so close she could almost feel his outrage as her own.

"And I? I who for long years was second to your glory, your rule, your power, your fame, your Ring? Is my pride of less account than yours? I bore it for you. I was content. Do not dare tell me I love you not. For I do! You are my soul, Galadriel. But I cannot help having other duties, other tasks, even - yes - other things which are beloved to me. Perhaps if you loved me more you would accept me for what I am."

Now she wanted to slap him again, but to do so would mean looking at his face, and she could not risk it a second time. Seeing him gaze at her with such hope, so sweet a smile, his eyes bright with unshed tears - it had almost been enough to rob her of her rage at once. Such joy in him at beholding her! And she had forgotten how very fair he was. Her hand yet tingled from where she had touched his skin. "So you abandon me for ten thousand years to live alone, and I am wrong to resent that? What makes you assume you are still wanted? I have built a life without you, which you invade. Perhaps I want you here no more? Why do you just take for granted that I..."

"I take nothing for granted." He began sternly, then broke off, shook his head, and walked away a few paces, his back to her.

With a feeling of panic she followed him - she must not let him get away, or he might never return. "Celeborn!"

He turned and looked at her, and this time she met his gaze, her ire faltering at the depths of anguish she saw in his eyes. He believed her. Man-like, he took her words - the weapons of her anger - for the literal truth, preparing himself to yield to her will and leave. There were two paces between them and it was an abyss. "I presume nothing," he said softly, "I know I am owed nothing." He caught his breath in a small, soft gasp, such as she had once heard him utter when a crossbow bolt was dug from his side, and rubbed both hands over his face. Already there bloomed a faint bruise on his cheek, where she had struck him. "I thought," he began, wearily, "only to start afresh. Perhaps to court you again. To hope that, in time, you might come to feel for me something of what you once did."

Swaying backwards, he took one more retreating step, and laughed, unhappily, looking now not at her but past, to where the statue of Manwë stood in splendour at the centre of the garden. "No... not even that, in truth. I just wanted to see you. As a man in shadow longs for the stars, I yearned only to look at you again." His sight glanced over her once more, desolate but resigned. Dignified in misery. Her own pain suddenly seemed a small matter to her in the light of his. "If your love for me is ended, I know who to blame. And it is not you."

"Oh!" Wanting to punish, she had gone too far, cut too deep, and she could not see that wound without yearning to comfort. He did love her. He did. Or he would not have been so hurt. Closing the gap between them with three hurrying steps she wound her arms about his neck, and buried her face in his hair. Light and steel and strength and silver surrounded her. "O Valar. I meant it not! I did not mean it."

Whether he was bemused at this sudden reversal, or too used to her to be altogether surprised, he reacted at once, pulling her close with frightened, frantic zeal. They clung together, and if she sobbed into his shoulder it was with the comfort that she was not alone - grief and joy shuddered through the chest, pressed against hers, as he too wept in her arms. "It was so long!" she gasped, struggling with the tides of too much emotion, trying to explain. "You were gone so long. And I did not know..." She turned her head so that her tears could soak into the fine, expensive velvet. The embroidery of his collar had left a pattern of intricate interlace embossed into her chin, and she rubbed it smooth once more, trying to breathe. "I did not know if you would come at all. I could make no plans, let go of no grief, because I did not know."

"Like Amroth," he said, and sniffed hard. His voice firmed as he spoke, and his hand came up to rest on her hair, tentatively beginning to work free the many pins. It made her smile a watery smile. He never had been over fond of her elaborate crowns of braids. "We could not mourn properly for him because there was always the chance he still lived. I understand. Yet no more did I know, from day to day, whether or when the Sea-Longing would come, or the Land release me. I could not say yea or nay. And I cannot count how many times I cursed myself, and every Vala from Elbereth to Araw, for my fate."

"I will not tell them," she said, and fought against a desire to snuggle closer, close her eyes and stand thus until the next rainshower, or a few hundred years had passed. Instead she pushed him away. Only far enough to look fiercely into his eyes, her hands sliding down to rest at his waist. She was not going to take the risk of letting go, so soon after having caught him at last. "Never go away again."

"Where we go," he said, his composure as fragile as hers, but his determination no less strong, "we will go together."

This slight adjustment of the pledge was not as much to her liking as that he should promise to remain by her, wherever she chose to be, but she supposed it was fairer. It was, in any case, the best promise she would get from him. "Where I go, you will follow," she clarified gravely, nodding. It took no thought to make such a promise, not after the barrenness of these last Ages. "Where you go, I will follow. We will go together."

Celeborn pulled her close once more, marvelling. Sometimes it was as though she held the spirit of all three clans within her, and one never knew which would come to the fore. Where he had expected fire and iron, he had encountered water in tempest. He understood that she needed him to be a harbour, to brace himself and take the storm, until the waves could fall back and the sea lie calm within his encircling arms. But sometimes, he thought, shakily, she did not know her own strength, she did not know how close she came to breaking him.

Now she was as placid as a sunlit bay - light dancing from the gentle swell, lissom and warm in his embrace. He could feel her breathing against him, their hearts settling together into a mutual rhythm. With her scent about him - sandalwood and honeysuckle - like an aura of enchantment, her lips against his neck, and the damnable hairpins digging into his face, he began to think that he was not so unnatural a Teler after all. Did he not love this sea, dangerous as it was, in all its moods?

Opening his eyes to bestow a smile on the poor, manicured hedge, he caught the glint of harvest gold in the dark yew archway beyond the statue, and Finrod's face, framed in the curve of Manwe's palm. Caught in the act of peeking around the leaves, Finrod looked comically embarrassed. And well he might, thought Celeborn with no real rancour. Though the day had begun with so much irritation, at this moment he had forgotten how to be annoyed. "I swear you are the nosiest elf I ever met," he said, and grinned.

Raising his hands against his sister's imperious, questioning glare, Finrod held his ground. "Forgive me. I wondered if there were not one or two casualties here, who might require my help. That seems not to be the case. I'll go and leave you in peace."

"As you see," said Galadriel, with a poise that quite belied the streaks of tears on her cheeks, her unravelling hair, "we are well. But, if you would be of help, go to Celebrimbor instead. Though he will claim not to need you, I would not have him alone. This is a harsh thing for him, and in the very day of his triumph."

Much though Celeborn would have preferred not to think of Celebrimbor at all at a time like this, her concern for the smith provoked only a brief, habitual spark of resentment. It was her compassion at work - that empathy and kindness in her which had saved her from becoming another Feanor. To honour it, he knew he should be generous himself. "Wait," he said, as Finrod turned to go. "I have a thing to ask of him, a task that I cannot do myself. One that needs his genius."

He had intended to ask Finrod himself, but Celebrimbor - whatever else his Rings proved - had shown himself able to control time and the fëar of Men, and the very earth itself. Having just completed one astonishing device, might he not now be eager for a new challenge? And would it not give him something to think on, other than Galadriel?

"He will be delighted to have you in his debt, I doubt not." Finrod paused, tall and golden as a candle-flame in the shadow, his body all elegance, but his face full of curiosity. "If you feel it worth the fact that he will remind you of it until the end of time. What thing is this?"

How to start? He unwound his arm from about Galadriel's waist and took her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. She gave him in return a look of level judgement, which taught him hope, at the same time as reminding him how close he had come to losing all. It had been, perhaps, not the best time to broach this subject, but at least she would not have cause to accuse him of falseness when it did come out. Let her hear all, so that his plans could become their plans forthwith.

Her curiosity won out over the sense of slight that he had some secondary purpose. "Perhaps we should sit down together. It is chill here. Let us watch the evening sun go down over Tirion."

Following one of the mosaic paths, where orange-trees nodded, their glossy leaves spread, bearing golden fruit and pale, sweet flower on the same branch, they came out of a heavy stone door into a meadow. It was, Celeborn knew at once, carefully tended and designed to look wild, and he felt a small quirk of private laughter at the strangeness of the Noldor, who strove so hard for an effect they could have achieved by doing nothing.

The ground sloped away from them, and a breeze bowed the wildflowers, as though they genuflected towards the tower of Mindon Eldalieva, which bordered the view in a tall stroke of cloud-white stone. The mead ended with a line of lilac trees, their canopies heavy with violet, white and royal purple flower, as though it was spring, while the meadow's blond ripeness spoke of harvest. The timelessness of it seemed dizzyingly wrong; a nausea and weariness of artifice, and Celeborn sighed as he sat on the smooth marble bench, placed where the argent light of the tower would most perfectly counterpoint the golden blaze of sinking sun.

Galadriel sat next to him, reserved and carefully still. It took little empathy in him to know that she waited in a space of readiness while her thoughts caught up with the turmoil of her emotions. He felt the same. A long separation had come to an end. But what did that mean? What of the future? What were they to do now?

Finrod squeezed onto the bench with them, and Celeborn took the opportunity to nudge closer to his wife. The curve of her hip touched his as he shifted sideways, and her warmth washed over him, brighter than the falling sun. He sighed again, this time with content, and smiled at Finrod's quizzical look.

"Do you not miss Mankind?" he began, electing to come at his proposal by a flank attack. The whole Noldor nation had suffered so much the last time this idea was brought up, he would frighten them away by being too plain. "Finrod, Friend of Men."

Finrod gave a wry grin and brushed at a singed spot on his tunic skirts, where they had caught a spark. "I do at times." His eyes took on a loremaster's look, of unfocussed, inward questioning. "In considering any proposition it is hard to say whether we think a certain way because it is correct, or simply because we are Quendi, and our flesh shapes our minds. Men were... a mirror in which we could see our own faces. Without them it is harder to understand who we are. I learned much from them - Beor and Barahir, Beren, Haleth, Andreth. All of them."

"They feel the same, you know," said Celeborn. Though he had not Finrod's patience with the realm of ideas, this thought had caught him a number of times. "They remember us. They remember you, as a god, come from over the sea to bring wisdom. And they yearn with all their hearts not to be alone in creation - the only thinking, speaking creatures. They send messages of goodwill out into the Void, hoping that someone will hear. They miss us."

"How does this concern you?" said Galadriel sharply, as if she already understood his purpose. The shoulder which pressed against his tensed, and her eyes grew chill.

It was not a good start, but she had not yet drawn away from him, so he answered. "They are our family; Arwen's heirs, our distant grandchildren. The time is past when our presence might have kept them from growing into their strength. The purpose of that ban is achieved. Why should we now be apart? We are Iluvatar's children - sons of the same father. We would be enriched by being together."

Shaking his head, Finrod stood. His eyes were wide and fearful and his paces buoyed with painful energy. "You are suggesting another exodus? A way to lead the Sindar - or all of us - back? Can it be that you do not remember what happened the last time this was done?"

"The Valar would not permit such a thing," Galadriel said with certainty, the tone of her voice carrying both disapproval and personal hurt. "They are tired of having to rescue us." Her bitter words about being second in his affections echoed for a moment in the undertones of her voice.

Celeborn shook his head and put an arm around her waist, reaffirming through touch what he did not know how to say. "I do not suggest that. My desire is for... a small thing, a small chink of light to flow from one world to the next. Not a road but a... a Straight Path, if you like. For one or two to tread, no more than that - to go and come back." This was not proving as easy to explain as he had hoped. Perhaps the idea was as incoherent as his expression of it. But he had to try. "My grandfather is left behind, lost. There are those I would like to be assured were being searched for, to bring them here at last. Some quiet friendship might be re-established with Men, for all our sakes. And I... I am incomplete without that soil beneath my feet."

Fear had faded to pity, and he knew that one or both of them were now going to tell him that Ennor had to be forever forgotten on entering Aman, that that was just how it was, and though it was hard, he would get used to it. He had come prepared for that argument, with an answer from ancient lore. "When the elves first came to Valinor, did they not grow sick, deprived of the air of Middle-earth? And were not the defences of the Pelori opened, just a little, so they could remain? It is so with me. I need the ability to go back to enable me to thrive here. If this is true of me, may it not also be true of many Avari, many Houseless Ones, who linger still in Ennor? So many more would come, if it was known they could return, or even depart to the stars, did it not suit them here. This is not death, which must be the end of all hopes and duties, nor a prison, as Feanor claimed. So why should it not be possible to leave, and return, when we will?"

Galadriel softened at this, now that she understood that he was not seeking to abandon her again, nor to force her, by means of her promise, to a darkened world whence once she fled. Though her face had remained Queenly, thoughtful throughout, the rigid disapproval of her muscles slackened, telling him of relief, and she leaned, pliant against him. "This is a more modest ambition. And I cannot say it is impossible for the Valar to agree with it. They themselves sent Glorfindel back - they have set the example for us."

Finrod chuckled and perched once more on the bench's arm. "I suppose we, who wish to sail to other worlds, should not be concerned if you want to walk to one. I will speak to Celebrimbor and see if it can be done. But long ere he finishes such a device I will want to hear that you have spoken with Manwe himself and received permission. No more of Mandos' Judgement on our House!"

In the War of Wrath Celeborn had seen Morgoth Bauglir brought out in chains from Angband. Though captive, he was like a mountain walking - a shape of smoke and dread, his mere presence a torment. Manwe was greater still. To the Sindar, a figure of distant, indifferent power. World-breaking, and without tenderness for those who dared to live outside his over tame, garden kingdom.

"I have little liking for Manwe," he said, "and scant faith in the charity of his spirit, to hear the words of this dark-elf nobody, thrice left behind." He would stand before Manwe like Beren before Thingol, doubtless - a rustic, overcome by splendour, cast down by his own lowliness, struck dumb with wonder. Yet did not Beren achieve his aim in the end? No less can I do for my family, my people. If I have to challenge Manwe as Fingolfin challenged Morgoth, they shall not be forgotten. "Nevertheless, I too have had my fill of Doom. It shall be as you say."

Finrod's light footsteps faded away, and the meadow was full of the rustle of grass. A scent of orange blossom wound through the breeze. Further down the hill, a family were eating on their balcony, watching the sunset. The smell of their roast duck and heady wine floated into the evening with chatter and soft laughter. A skylark sang one final song ere the night, but a flitter of small bats were already wheeling about the glittering rooftops; comical things, like tiny, huge eyed foxes on wings. Celeborn breathed deep and let the breath out in a great sigh. Beside him he could feel the rise and fall of Galadriel's ribs as she did the same. The smile that for many minutes had lurked about him now crept onto his face. Peace. He was at peace.

Many times in Lorien, and their older kingdoms, had they sat like this; on the edge of a flet or a tree branch, legs dangling over a fatal drop, side by side and content. Touching and breathing, and looking out into the sky, while the busy serenity of the land, the sun's warmth, and their closeness built a quiet understanding between them, deep and smooth as Esgalduin, on whose banks they had first pledged their love. Sometimes words were not needed.

But this was not such a time. Galadriel shifted on the bench so that they sat facing one another, their knees touching, but otherwise apart. Misliking the separation, he took her hands. Nenya had always been spiky against his palm when he did this, and its absence was a jolt of meaning, of revelation that made his heart race.

"You seem to have taken on many tasks, my lord," she said, half amused, "since arriving here. Do you think you will accomplish all?"

"I hope," he replied, gravely, "that we may be able to accomplish them together. As Finrod has pointed out, the curse is over. No doom now lies between us, no ring, no god's curse nor arcane power. What we begin now we may build for the rest of time, perfecting it. There need be no more pain ahead. No more ruin."

She lifted her head like a hound who scents the chase, and there was a fire in her eyes that he had seen often, in the very early days. "I heard what you said to Finrod. Noldor and Sindar and Teleri united in a quest for the stars. Your brother and mine working together on the ship, and you and I working together to unite our peoples, to end the troubles, to open a great future for all."

A familiar clench of dread filled his stomach at that look, her restlessness having taken her away from him too many times. He was rooted by nature, and she a wanderer. The lifting of Mandos' Doom did not change that in either of them. "Would you desire to go with the explorers?" he asked, bracing himself.

The vision of future greatness shimmered into oblivion before her, and she laughed, released from its song, turning on him a gaze which him warmed him through with ancient affection; a love preserved unstained by Valinor's grace. "Sometimes," she said, gently "but if I had a home and husband here, I would always return. And you? Would you desire to return to Ennor and take up your rule there once more?"

Relieved, delighted, he too laughed. Perhaps - without doing violence to either of their natures - this could work after all. "Sometimes. But not to rule. To give advice, to search, to speak... But if I had a home and wife here, I too would always come back."

Deep golden light lay on the land as the sun sank, seemingly beneath their feet. The wind died and the dark, glossy leaves of the citrus trees ceased their hiss and murmur. There was, for a brief moment, profound silence, before one of the diners lifted up an untrained voice, sweet but thin, in the traditional hymn of farewell to Arien. Freeing a hand from her grasp Celeborn stroked back a loop of spilled hair from Galadriel's cheek. Soft as fur, heavy as gold, the glint of Laurelin's light shone there still, more beautiful than the sun, and he felt, as always, honoured that she let him touch her, half closing her eyes in bliss to feel the caress of his fingers on her face.

"I must speak of all of these things with Elu," he said, trying not to disturb the quiet. Whispering almost. "Come with me? He has longed to see you, and Melian too has missed you, who has need of a friend at this time."

"I would have gone," she gave him a rueful, tender smile. "But that I could not bear to see a place so like Doriath, where no Celeborn dwelled. The outward picture of my own emptiness." Her eyes narrowed, daring him to be amused, or to disbelieve the rhetoric, but he held his silence, and she laughed again, pleased. "I owe them both a long visit. So yes, I will come there with you."

Reluctantly, he combed his fingers once more through her hair, then drew away to untie the bag he had brought with him, lashed under tarpaulins in his small boat, carried over his shoulder on eagle back, and tucked into his saddlebags for the journey to Finarfin's house. Just as she feared mockery for saying something so foolishly romantic, so this gesture - which had seemed fitting when he planned it - now felt awkward, embarrassing, bearing too much of his soul for censure. He looked out to the early stars for courage, but they were wan, in a sky washed pale by the white beacon on Mindon Eldalieva. Even the heavens, here in Tirion, were tamed for Noldor pleasure, to reassure those who feared the dark.

"I could not live in Tirion," he said, and wondered how he had intended to say this. Probably not with those words, but they were out now and could not be recalled. "It is so airless, so over-tidy..." Dipping into the smooth leather bag, he brought out a double handful of small nuts, about the size of an almond, silvery and shapely, with a fine curve any gem smith might have admired, and poured them into her lap.

"Mellyrn," she said, marvelling. Looking up, her eyes were full of pleasure and memory. The Golden Wood's fairness had not been Nenya's doing. Only its ruin could be laid at the Ring's door. No, it had been beautiful because there the trees were loved. He remembered each one by name, and knew that she did too. "They were a marvel of Numenor, so Gil-galad told me, and none came hither ere that land foundered. With all its perfections, there have, until now, been no Mallorn trees in Valinor. Whence come these?"

"They are the last seeds of Lothlorien," he said, touched by her wonder. "When I knew the wood was fading, weakened beyond my skill at healing, I gathered them to give to you. Four Ages of the World they stayed with me; a hope in my pocket, a pledge that love might conquer distance and sundering, that one day we would be together once more."

"Oh!" her laughter this time was mixed with tears. But even he, insensitive as he was, could tell these were blessed, a paradox of joy. She wiped them with her unbound hair, and they clung in the ends like glittering diamonds. "Tell me your desire," she said. "Tell me what you want from paradise."

Kneeling, like a liegeman to his king, or more, like a man proposing to his bride, with some of that same sense of fear and floating ecstacy, Celeborn looked up at his wife's face, for once shorn of all its masks and open as a girl's. "I want... to face the future, to do all these new tasks with you by my side. I want to make us a country, somewhere in Ardh-in-Eledhil, or an island - if you prefer - half way between your people and mine. Somewhere where both our hearts may rest."

She did not move, and he fell silent, wondering if he had said aught wrong, what she would reply. In the pause a blacksmith's hammer in the distant town rang a staccato rhythm, counterpoint to his anxious heart. "May we not build a home together," he insisted, "and plant there the seeds of old trees? May not new growth spring from the fruit of what once was?"

In reply she shook her head, and his spirit lurched in sudden pain. But it must have been a gesture to clear her thoughts, not of denial, because in the next moment she leaned forward and took his face between her hands. Softly she kissed his bruised cheek, and then his lips, light as the first butterfly of spring - the fair promise of a warm summer.

"We may," she said. "Yes we may. And at once."

Despair fell away and hope soared to meet the stars. He stood and drew her up beside him, returning the kiss with tenderness, as decorous as he should be, considering that this was Finarfin's house, and they stood in public view on the side of the hill. Yet his heart thrilled within him, and he was well content. For the first time in millennia sure where he belonged.

"Indeed," he laughed as they began to walk back to the house together, overcome with relief and brimming over with enthusiasm for his new life. "Let us begin this instant. I have rested long enough, and need no more healing." The stars and the Straight Path, talks between Celebrimbor and Galathil, the Eluwaith and the Noldor, a country to build and nurture and govern. Valinor was not the end he had feared, but a hundred new beginnings, bright with untainted hope. "No more delay. There is so much for us to do!"

Author's Notes

The idea of a 'Straight Path' to Valinor, along which a person might walk, if they only had the right token, came from Philosopher-at-Large's observation that the Elf-King, and the Elf-Queen in 'Smith of Wooton Major', might be Celeborn and Galadriel in another guise.

The elf-king - normally humble, but with quite a temper when he gets riled - who wanders the world of mortals in disguise, and allows one or two to find the way to Faerie by means of a fay-star; and the elf-queen - awe inspiring, gracious and as lovely as a dancing maiden in the springtime - do seem rather familiar.

This was written (partly) as a sort of 'Smith of Wooton Major' tie-in. It amused me to think that the fay-star, if it was a device made by Celebrimbor to allow passage from one realm to the other, might well be made in the shape of the Star of Feanor, which he also put on Moria's West Gate. A sort of gesture of family pride that would have the added benefit of annoying the hell out of his old rival ;)