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lotrchallengesTitle: Galadriel: There and Back Again
Rating: Teens
Theme: MPTT Third Anniversary
Elements: Home is behind, the world ahead… The world behind and home ahead… (plus some bonus allusions in the third section)
Summary: A group of three vignettes from the life of Galadriel: (i) Home is behind, the world ahead (First Age): Shortly after her arrival in Middle-earth, Galadriel visits the beach of Losgar; (ii) Does not apply (First Age): Galadriel in conversation with her eldest brother Finrod Felagund; (iii) The world behind and home ahead (Third Age): Galadriel leaves Middle-earth, boarding ship at the Grey Havens.
Characters: Galadriel (Artanis), Fingon (Findekano), Finrod Felagund (Findarato/Ingo), Frodo Baggins, Bilbo Baggins
Word Count: 1617 words
Author's Note: A very late entry. My apologies!
I Home is behind, the world ahead
The sea’s breakers have done their work at Losgar. She has heard—although not at first hand, for she has not spoken about it to anyone who was actually there at the time—that, when the Feanorians left here, hulks of burned ships were still to be seen adrift in the shallows, the charred remains of swans that had once been white and graceful. But in the intervening years the impact of the waves has completed what the flames had begun, breaking up the wreckage into smaller and smaller pieces, grinding them down, scattering them.
Now, as she walks along the beach, there is no sign of the ships anywhere, but underfoot, among the grains of sand, little bits of charcoal crunch at every step, colouring the white sands grey. Artanis tries to imagine the scene as it played out on this beach—and then tries not to imagine it. She used to be afraid of her uncle Feanaro. She used to be ashamed of being afraid of him. She wanted to be afraid of nothing.
It was night when the ships burned at Losgar, the long night after the destruction of the Trees. Now she walks the beach of Losgar under the Sun, although the sun is veiled in cloud today, a grey northern day and a chilly breeze to match it. The beach curves, gently, before the shoreline bends back eastward.
Artanis reaches the westernmost point and halts. She looks out across the straits. Over there lies Araman. She remembers the bleak tundra bordering the Sundering Seas on their western side, growing bleaker the farther north they advanced, even the southern reaches barely touched by the Light of the Trees when they still gave light. There was not much wood for fires and little game over there, and even less of either after the host of the Noldor passed through.
She peers across the waves, but there is nothing to be seen of the western shore. Not so long ago—a lifetime ago—she was standing on a similar beach over there, on the other side, under the night sky, as she saw the flames of burning ships light up the horizon. And now she is here, where Feanaro did not intend them to come, and Feanaro is not.
She could wait until nightfall. She could spend many days building a huge bonfire, collecting driftwood from along the shore and great branches from the woods on the slopes of the Ered Lomin. She could wait until a clear night with no moon, until the darkest hour, and light the bonfire.
We are here. We made it.
But there would be nobody to see it over there, now, even if maybe the power of the Valar would not veil their sight. There is no reason to think that anyone would be watching out for a sign of them, over there. It is childish to imagine that her father would have posted watchers, wished to or been able to, in that no man’s land.
She shrugs. Be that way, then. She knows she is being unfair. She knows she does not know what happened to her father when he turned back towards Valinor. She has no way of knowing whether the Valar punished him, whether the Teleri attacked him, whether her mother chose to stand by him after what had happened. There is nothing whatever she can do about it now.
She walks back along the shore to where Findekano is waiting for her among the sand dunes, Findekano, who did not want her to come here, fearing that she wanted to nurse old grudges, but nevertheless insisted on accompanying her, because after all she is his cousin and this is part of his realm. Having taken care, meticulously, of their horses, he is still standing uncomfortably where she left him, unwilling to even sit down in this place. He looks at her with worried eyes.
He makes her impatient sometimes, does Findekano. She knows it is partly jealousy. He has so clearly arrived where he was going, in Hithlum, in Beleriand. She has not. She has quite a long way still to go.
II Does not apply
‘How can you bear to associate with them?’, she demands of her brother, meaning the sons of Feanaro, of course. ‘I am no more keen to pursue feuds to the detriment of all than you are. But they stink of death and doom!’
Findarato throws her a glittering sideways glance, takes her hand and sniffs it carefully.
‘No stink’, he pronounces, solemnly.
She tries to snatch her hand away, unsuccessfully.
‘That isn’t funny, Ingo!’, she exclaims, outraged.
He holds her hand, tightly.
‘Honestly, Artanis’, he says, ‘the way you behave, sometimes, it is almost possible to believe that you were not really party to the Flight of the Noldor, that you were just going on a trip of exploration and accidentally got mixed up with us at Alqualonde—that you do not fall under the Ban of the Valar yourself.’
She does not blush, quite. He looks her straight in the eyes, entirely serious now.
‘It does not displease me, always. I see you walking around as if you were carrying a sign saying Does Not Apply, and sometimes I dare to hope that, if you believe that firmly enough, the Valar will, too. I would like my little sister to be the one of us to survive.’
‘I’m not little’, she objects, upset, protesting against the one thing she knows how to protest against.
‘No, but I remember you when you were’, he says, smiling.
‘As for our cousins, the answer is simple’, he continues, ‘I love them, still. I remember them when they were more whole than they are now. They carry a heavy burden, and they are not likely to end well, I do not need a prophecy to tell me that. But I will not abandon them before I must.’
It would take Ingo to call an answer like that simple, she thinks.
III The world behind and home ahead
The ship slips down the long grey firth. Beside her in the stern, Frodo is still holding up the star-glass, her gift, keepsake of his visit to lost Lothlorien, leaning far forward—although surely the three hobbits on the quay, Samwise, Merry and Pippin, must have lost sight of it by now? Twilight is falling, and the rising sea mists shroud the shore, concealing the ruined buildings of Forlond, where once Ereinion dwelt, before he too fell, in battle against the Dark Lord.
Some of us just take a lot longer than others, Ingo, I suppose.
The ship passes out onto the high seas and, as the view expands, Middle-earth begins to fade away before her eyes. The long shoreline unfolds to her gaze, north and south, all the leagues and leagues of Endore, and recedes into darkness. Below her feet, drowned Beleriand falls away.
Middle-earth has inscribed itself upon her during the long ages—not only Lothlorien itself, but the many, many paths she trod in Endore with unwearied feet, all the way from the Helcaraxe to the mouth of the Anduin. She did not know how much all of that had become part of her until now. Now, as the ship sails on westwards, she feels as if Endore is gradually being torn out of her by the roots.
She will have to apologize to Celebrian, when she sees her, if she gets to see her. Although, at the time, she did her very best not even to think those thoughts, she could not conceive how her daughter could wish to leave the world behind, forsaking her husband and children, no matter what the orcs had done to her, unless there was, somehow, an innate weakness in her. And although she was so careful never even to drop the slightest hint, she is sadly certain Celebrian was aware of this.
And now here she is, leaving Lothlorien and Middle-earth, leaving her husband and her grandchildren, and she cannot even claim that she was tortured. It is as if, the moment Nenya lost its power, the long defeat she had seemed to withstand unfazed, undiminished, century after century, millennium after millennium, had come over her all at once and settled in her bones. She does not think it was Nenya itself that did this to her—or not only Nenya. Whatever Sauron’s involvement with the Rings in general, Nenya was crafted for her personally by Tyelpo—poor, dear, infuriating Tyelpo!—begun by him as a challenge to her and completed in mute apology, and that knowledge has supported her in its use throughout.
But, like others on this ship, she ended up wagering everything she had in the battle against Mordor and, in winning the war, she lost it. At least she can go home and face Ingo and the rest of her family now, head held high. She is no longer secretly ashamed of not having died, during the First Age or during the Second.
She looks at Frodo, still beside her in the stern of the ship. The star-glass is drooping in his listless hand, as if it had lost all purpose. As she tries to think of words of comfort to speak to him, she hears faltering steps behind them. It is Bilbo, leaning hard on his cane, but in his other hand he holds a slice of bread and cold meat, which he silently offers to Frodo for sustenance.
‘Frodo, my lad’, says Bilbo, encouragingly—excellent Master Baggins! ‘I think it might be time to go around to the bow, don’t you think?’
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Date: 2012-08-19 09:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-20 06:57 am (UTC)I'm glad that I was able to finish it at all; in late July, I thought I was completely stuck.
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Date: 2012-08-19 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-20 07:12 am (UTC)I'm glad that you like that exchange with Finrod, and that you say it really feels like a sibling argument (because of the other things it's trying to do as well).
Yes, there is never an unalloyed victory. Some of the defeats are pretty much unalloyed, though. I think it took the Professor a bit of time to develop his interest in eucatastrophe.
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Date: 2012-08-19 12:13 pm (UTC)And in those words you have captured the essence of what it is to be a hobbit.
I loved these. Galadriel is not my favorite character but her story is integral to the history of Middle-earth and has to be acknowledged. In choosing these three slices of her history you have isolated three very different yet complimentary views of a very complex character and helped to clarify muddy waters once again. Very nicely done.
- Erulisse (one L)
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Date: 2012-08-20 07:18 am (UTC)Galadriel is, as you say, both important and complex. If I've helped to clarify anything about her for you, I'm happy!
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Date: 2012-08-19 01:33 pm (UTC)That voyage must have been full of complex emotions and thoughts for Galadriel. You do a very good job bringing us into her experience here.
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Date: 2012-08-20 07:23 am (UTC)But if anyone is pretty much resistant to that kind of ghosts, it must certainly be dear Bilbo!
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Date: 2012-08-19 01:36 pm (UTC)*Some of us just take a lot longer than others, Ingo, I suppose.* Yes, they did. And she stayed on, lived, fought the long defeat, and succombed when finally the ring failed. I liked the lesson learned about Celebrian - I've always thought she'd have had trouble understanding her daughter sailing instead of staying and somehow fighting it, because figting is what she knows. The flash of guilt feels right.
So glad you posted this look at this wonderfully complex woman. I enjoyed reading it.
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Date: 2012-08-20 07:35 am (UTC)As I said in my journal post, I had this idea of someone visiting Losgar after the event for a while, but couldn't make sense of it until I realized that the one who would have gone would be Galadriel.
She is definitely a fighter, isn't she?
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Date: 2012-08-19 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-20 07:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 09:51 pm (UTC)I really like this. The shame at not having died in the First Age feels very Galadriel - not saintly, shiny, deity-like Galadriel through hobbit's eyes in LOTR, but very Noldor, very proud Artanis from the Silmarillion.
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Date: 2012-08-28 06:57 am (UTC)That is very much what I was trying to do--even in the Third Age she is still Noldorin. She hasn't just shed all that history!