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Exodus Revisited

Canticle of the Haunted: 1st Chapter

"Won't you lend your lungs to me?
Mine are collapsing.
Plant my feet and bitterly breathe
Up the time that's passing.
Breath I'll take and breath I'll give
Pray the day ain't poison
Stand among the ones that live
In lonely indecision."

- Lungs, Townes Van Zandt

Author's note: Hi everybody and welcome to Canticle of the Haunted, the sequel to In Cavern's Shade! I hope you'll enjoy this book just as much as you enjoyed the last one. I will probably be updating more slowly than I did with Cavern's Shade.

Just a note that I did go back and do a very heavy rewrite of the first 7 chapters of In Cavern's Shade, including adding some new scenes, so if you are interested please go check them out.

Canticle of the Haunted is probably going to be about half the size that In Cavern's Shade was. This fic will cover immediately from the fall of Doriath until around Second Age 700 but we'll be stopping before Eregion. The whole Eregion storyline is so big and so complex that I really feel like it deserves its very own book.

Thanks to all of you, I feel so confident coming into this story. Your feedback from the last fic has helped me to grow so much as a writer, which means that I get to write even better and better things for you. As ever, I would so much appreciate reviews or even just little notes telling me what you liked, what you didn't like, and what you think the strong points are, and anything else you want to tell me.

In Cavern's Shade ended in First Age 506.

Circa First Age 523

Celeborn generally preferred to travel through the treetops, however, summer had only just come to Nan-Tathren and so today he had found himself yearning for the warmth of the soil beneath his bare feet. His boots had fallen to pieces years ago, as had his shirt, which was why he now went clothed only in a pair of long buckskin leggings.

Nature had reclaimed the aspects of Doriathrin luxury that had marked his body. Summers in the south of Beleriand were far hotter than those of Doriath proper and the intensity of the sun had tanned his skin to a deep bronze and bleached his silver hair until it was nearly white. His entire physique had undergone some metamorphosis of the wild and he was leaner than he ever recalled being, not the leanness of starvation, but that which resulted from a diet of fish and deer meat, roots and nuts. The bulk of his muscles, so used to battle and the sparring ring, had lessened and lengthened to the sinewy lankiness needed for days filled with the certainty of manual labor and the possibility of an empty stomach.

Galadriel too had changed. She was slimmer now than she had ever been before, her already small breasts having nearly disappeared, her once carefully maintained nails now short and chipped, her golden hair a wild tangle of shimmering light. She had the unfortunate propensity to turn pink rather than brown, despite her lineage of Telerin mariners, and yet after a few years even her skin had begun to darken.

It worried him sometimes, not the physical changes she had undergone, for he would have thought her beautiful no matter how she appeared, but what worried him was the way that he sometimes saw her looking at herself, the way she rubbed the pad of her thumb over her short nails, or stared preoccupied at her work-worn knuckles and the sun-darkening of her skin, the way she traced lines between freckles as if she were charting constellations, or sometimes ran a hand over the nearly non-existent curve of a breast before giving him a furtive glance, one she doubtlessly hoped he did not see, as if she were trying to discern whether or not he was put off by the changes in her body. But of course he had seen, nothing about his wife escaped his notice, most particularly her thoughts. She tried to hide a great many of them from him, or to temper them at least, but even if he could not discern their exact nature, he still felt the soft pressure of them in his mind, like seeds taking root.

His Galadriel could sometimes be a vain woman; that he knew and had known since the day he had met her. It wasn't that she had an aversion to labor or to the life of the forest, indeed, her brothers had long ago told him many tales of her more tomboyish exploits in Aman, of her wrestling matches and footraces, of her horsemanship and sailing, and he had seen for himself how extraordinarily resilient she was, but he knew, as anyone who knew her did, that she had a certain propensity for the finer things in life and the luxuries that Doriath had afforded her.

What was more, despite spending very little time in Noldorin settlements and cities, he had perceived that, while the Sindar might see such a rustic physical transformation as a mark of strength and, therefore, worthiness, the Noldor were far more likely to view it as something shameful, as some sort of pollution of both body and spirit, and he recalled the night he had first met Galadriel and her people and how taken aback they had been at the strange clothes and appearance of the Sindar, how closely they had associated it with darkness and, therefore, the lesser. And, though it had been more than 500 years ago, he had not forgotten how her eyes had glinted with rage, the fierce flaring of her pride, when he had remarked that night upon how hungry she looked.

A hint of irritation gnawed at the edge of his mind. Galadriel had been quick to discard such concepts of Noldorin superiority, too quick perhaps, and he sometimes, most especially in recent years, saw the vestiges of her past come nearly to the surface again. It caused him to wonder whether she had ever truly addressed the deeply rooted prejudices of her youth or whether she had merely pruned the leaves of the tree from which they grew. But perhaps he was being too hard on her. It took many centuries to unlearn such deeply rooted preconceptions and Galadriel more than any of her people had worked to rid herself of them.

He didn't doubt her of course. He had seen the strength of a sea-change in her even at the moment they first met, the spirit of a woman who would move mountains, who would subject even the steel of spirit to the crucible of change all in order to achieve her goal. Thus he knew that she was capable of more than perhaps even she recognized but, being so familiar with her, he was also keenly perceptive of the way that her pride so often hindered her own objectives. Once the consummation of the physical passion they bore one another had cooled he had found himself more aware of her faults and wondered at the degree to which his love for her may have blinded him to them.

That wasn't to say that he didn't love her. Since their haphazard and unplanned marriage he found that he loved her with a greater clarity of passion than he had heretofore known, but it was to say that, given the immensity of his love for her, he desired nothing but the best for her and sometimes she was the very person who stood between herself and the actualization of her hopes and desires.

The thought of his wife, as ever, brought a smile to his lips, as he slipped noiselessly down the bank of the creek. He had passed out of the willow vale of Nan-Tathren and into the south of the forest where the Sirion and Narog met. Some years ago, he and Galadriel had forded the Sirion and crossed into the heart of the forest, nervous, despite the protection of the Onodrim, that living in the east of Nan-Tathren left them too exposed to danger. Celeborn had been able to feel the changing of the earth, the way the trees trembled when fell things drew near, and Taur-im-Duinath, filled with orcs, wolves, and worse things, had been too close to the eastern edge of Nan-Tathren for his liking. The center of the forest afforded the dual protection of the river Narog and the river Sirion as well as the cover of denser undergrowth and greater proximity to the dwelling place of Treebeard.

The trees in the south of the forest were different here at the border of the woods, not the willows and camphor trees of the center and east of the forest, but ancient oaks with massive low-hanging branches that were draped with an abundance of soft gray moss hanging in long tendrils so that the trees rather took on the aspect of great hairy beasts in slumber. The ground was coated here with a thick carpet of verdant grass rather than the soft pale mosses of the place where they now dwelled, and he paused for a moment to enjoy the feel of the soft verdant shoots beneath his feet before he stepped into the firm mud of the bank. The smooth water-worn stones that lined the creek bed were cool beneath his feet and a gentle breeze stirred his long silver hair.

A hover of trout stood in the crystalline current, fins wimpling gently in the flow, their rosy red sides shimmering in the early afternoon sunlight that glanced across the soft green of the water like a mirror. They were smooth in the hand, polished and muscular and torsional, spotted with flecks of black against mossy green and wrapped in vermiculate patterns that were the maps of Arda at the dawn of time, maps of a thing that could not be put back, that could not be made right again. In the depths of the forest all things seemed older than time and hummed of primordial mystery.

Celeborn bent, fingers dipping into the cool water, feeling the current, his ears attuned to its murmur. It told him what he already knew - that life lay at its end – and he pulled his fingers from the water as if he had been scalded, for who was to say that if he could feel others through the water that they could not feel him too. This stream flowed into another, and that into a tributary, and that tributary into the Sirion, and the Sirion at last tumbled into the ocean where he was nearly certain to find Círdan and, with him, the last remnants of Doriath, not stone and jewels and coins of silver, but hearts torn asunder and clothed in the marred and battered flesh of his people.

He braved the touch of the water again, his arrows rattling in his quiver as he bent. The quiver was old, a survivor of Doriath, but the arrows he had brought out of Menegroth had not lasted but a few years in the wild and these he carried now were new, made of scavenged feathers, straight sanded yew, and dusky brown quartz chiseled to points that were bound to their shafts with deer hide. He turned over a stone to reveal the glistening amber shell of a crayfish and gently pried it loose from its perch, watching its legs wriggle for a moment before he dropped it into the leather pouch at his side. The second one he discovered latched onto his index finger with its pincer and he had to shake it off before he was able to snare it again and deposit it into his satchel. He couldn't blame the creature; he would have done the same.

With a measured breath, he cast his gaze out across the gently flowing surface of the stream, through the viridescent canopy of leaves that framed the bright gold of the early afternoon sun, and tried to push any thoughts of Doriath's demise from his mind. There were some things about which Celeborn never spoke, even to Galadriel, some because they meant nothing, others because they meant everything. And, the fear he felt of facing his people was the kind of secret that he kept from himself, never admitted, undiscovered because it was too big for this mind to hold, too strange and vast, too terrifying to contemplate. It was the reason that their mad and unplanned escape from the ruins of Doriath to the refuge of Nan-Tathren had turned from temporary asylum to prolonged sojourn, and the reason that the prolonged sojourn had slowly become permanent as the years passed, slipping into decades.

And today he would make it more permanent still, for today he planned to continue his work on the house he had been building, though of course he would never admit to himself that this was what he was doing: building things to shackle him all the more securely to the freedom the forest had to offer. If he had dared to contemplate the idea he might have realized that Galadriel already knew the fear that lay in his heart and that she felt it too, though for different reasons.

For her, confronting the fear meant facing a people that almost certainly wished her dead, a people who had held their knives to her throat during the sack of Doriath while they debated the benefits of her murder and weighed them against turning her over to the Fëanorians. That would have been death too, though of a different kind, a slow putrefaction of the soul. And facing those same people also meant that she need necessarily disclose the nature and circumstances of her marriage, which meant acknowledging that she had flouted every decree and custom of her kin, that she had not only married in a time of war, but that she had done so without ceremony or witness and with only bodily union to substantiate the wedding.

While she knew such marriages were commonly well-accepted amongst the Sindar, who often wed in flight, exile, and wandering, they were less commonly accepted amongst her own people and, being keenly aware of the fact that, without her brothers alive now to support her, she had most likely fallen even further in the regard of her own kinsmen and women, who had never held her in great regard from the start, she found herself caught now between two peoples, neither of whom she could depend upon for support and both of whom were far more likely to antagonize her situation than ease it.

What was more, their marriage had forced upon her the terrifying reality that Celeborn was now irrevocably bound to her not only in body and spirit, but in fate as well, and that if the kinslaying had damaged her credibility and reputation amongst the Sindar, then his marriage to her had almost certainly ruined his status amongst his own people. Sometimes she wondered if he regretted her; other times she was almost certain he must.

Unlike Celeborn, Galadriel rarely kept secrets from herself. Her problem was almost always a hyperawareness of her troubles and, along with that, an overabundance of anxiety at the imagined and terrible outcomes coupled with the fierce gnashing of pride that convinced her that not only ought she keep these problems private in order to avoid the shame of judgment, but that these problems were in fact no one else's business nor should they be. Even Celeborn was not exempt from the impositions of her pride that caused her to refrain from sharing what it would be needful for him to know.

This wasn't to say that she did not love him, in fact, she loved him more than she could say, more than she had ever imagined she was capable of loving anyone, and as ever, it was that very love that staid her tongue, or so she wanted to believe. He had already suffered more than anyone should and what would it benefit him were she to reveal that his people had attempted to kill her and that it frightened her still?

But in her heart of hearts she knew that the true reason was because she did not want to admit to anyone that she had been terrified, that she had not felt brave at all, that her strength had nearly failed her there in those dark caverns. And the most frightening thing of all had been that she had been powerless to prevent any of it, powerless to prevent the slaughter, powerless to prevent her own death, powerless to save Celeborn's life.

In Alqualondë she had felt something similar but far less severe. In Alqualondë she had been certain that the Fëanorians would never kill her and that the Teleri who had tried had merely been confused. Maybe it had been the truth or perhaps it had simply been the naïveté of youth. But in the depths of Menegroth she had known with unshakable certainty that both the Noldor and the Sindar had wanted her dead and she had been able to do nothing to save herself. She was the anomaly caught between them – a woman who fit into neither of their worlds. Her only salvation had come in the form of luck: first Nimloth's intervention and then Celeborn's miraculous reappearance. And, sometimes in the depths of night, she wondered what might have happened had providence not favored her.

Dwelling on such thoughts had nearly caused her to burn the potatoes that roasted in the bottom of the iron kettle before her and it was only the acrid scent of the vegetables charring that spurred her to tear the pot from the fire. She had done it out of instinct, without thinking, and the hot handle of the pot sizzled in her hand before she dropped it to the dirt. It sat there smoldering while, gasping for air, she brushed ash from her simple buckskin breeches. The stained linen shirt she wore was somewhat of a luxury and so she refrained from wiping her hands on it.

Most of what they had they had made themselves: the lean-to comprised of sticks and leafy branches, the sandy-bottomed fire pit where they cooked their food, the buckskin breeches they wore and canteens that held their water. But a few of their possessions - the iron cooking pot, the linen of her shirts – had been obtained from the Ents. The Entwives traded many of the fruits and vegetables that they grew in their gardens with the scattered remnants of the Avarin and Nandorin tribes and they had been only too happy to ask for such objects as Celeborn and Galadriel needed in return, bound of course, by the promise that they would tell no one for whom they obtained the goods.

The fear of being discovered was still very real for the both of them and this they had not kept secret from each other. Neither of them knew what had become of the Silmaril during the sack of Doriath but both of them were certain that the Fëanorians had not found it and, as such, were doubtlessly still seeking news of its whereabouts or the whereabouts of those who might be concealing it. Given that they had both been under suspicion of hiding the jewel during Doriath's fall and, given that Celeborn had been, as far as they knew, the highest ranking of Doriath's nobility to survive the slaughter, they had feared what retribution might come their way should any whisper of their whereabouts reach the ears of Galadriel's cousins.

But their location remained safely hidden, their most closely guarded secret, and the one whose discovery they feared above all others. Galadriel hissed, clutching her burned hand with her other one. The only thing that had kept her from fisting it in her shirt to dull the pain had been knowing how difficult and dangerous it had been to obtain the fabric. She opened her hand to assess the damage and found already a raised welt blossoming in a furious crimson that spanned the width of her palm. Tomorrow it would ache and pain and be blistered with pus, she was sure of it.

With a sigh she made her way to the little brook that wound its way around the edge of their campsite, ducking beneath the drooping silvery boughs of the willows and stepping carefully amongst the closed bulbous blossoms of the moon lilies that shimmered in shades of lavender and silver. The stream gently meandered its way beneath waxy green lily pads festooned with bright yellow water lilies and inhabited by chirruping little muddy-brown frogs.

Startled by her approach, the frogs leapt into the water with a chorus of croaks, and Galadriel stooped, brushing her hair behind her ear, to slide her injured hand into the stream, watching idly as the clear water rippled over her flesh, the coolness of it lessening the pain of the burn, and closed her eyes against the prickling of tears.

It was stupid, she thought, so very stupid that she should worry over such a thing, for she knew that Celeborn did not care in the least, but she was ashamed when she looked down at her hands, hands that were cracked from constant exposure to the elements, that bore scabs, and cuts, and callouses, her nails worn down to short stubs. They had been elegant hands once upon a time, but the fall of Doriath had exempted nothing in its wave of destruction, as if the past 500 years had been nothing but ley lines drawn in the sand, their power erased so simply by the inevitability of the tide, the air whispering of the impermanence of things.

And feeling bad about it only made her feel worse. After all, wasn't she the woman who had braved the Helcaraxë, who had survived decades in the wilds of Beleriand? So many long years ago she had seen her wounds as marks of her determination, her grit, her strength, but now they seemed like mementoes of fear, of weakness, and she wanted nothing more than to hide them away.

Her vision went suddenly black as two large warm hands wrapped themselves about her eyes and for a moment she felt her heart catch in her chest and stifled the gasp that sat between her lips. Normally she would have felt his presence long before he was upon her, but she had been so deeply absorbed in thoughts and memories that it was only her husband's touch that had drawn her from her reverie. The tension drained from her shoulders and a smile tugged at her lips as she whispered, "so there you are."

"Guess," his laugh was a deep rumble that danced across her ear and that she felt in the press of his stomach against her back.

"I already know," she protested, and yet, despite her melancholy of a moment earlier, she could not keep from laughing.

"You must guess or I shall refuse to free you," Celeborn insisted as, still laughing, she tried to pry his hands free of her eyes to no avail.

"Celeborn," she said his name at last with a sigh that indicated just how childish she thought his antics were and with a smile that spoke of how she loved them nevertheless.

"How perceptive," he said drolly, pulling her up and turning her in his arms so that she faced him. She could feel his presence keenly now, his thoughts like the roots of a plant gently exploring the undergrowth of her heart. "You're hurt," he stated, taking her hand and splaying her palm before him, scrutinizing the angry red burn as if it were some battlefield he meant to conquer.

"Unless Ilúvatar has suddenly granted you some powers of healing I'm afraid the only remedy is to let nature take its course," Galadriel said with a grin, placing a kiss on the tip of her husband's nose. Despite all of her concerns, it was good to see him in a playful mood these past few years instead of crippled beneath the burdens of Thingol's madness and a stagnating kingdom.

"You really ought to stop trying to cook," Celeborn said. "Neither one of us benefits from the exercise." Galadriel felt the flaring of pride burn hot in her chest for a moment, but it was always difficult for her to be angry with Celeborn, particularly when his green eyes were bright with mirth and his elegant lips curved so effortlessly into a grin. And besides, as much as she hated to admit it, he was right, whatever skills she possessed in the way of cooking seemed confined to the breads and cakes that Melian had taught her to make and did not extend so far as to encompass any other sort of food.

Celeborn had noted the flicker of injured pride in her eyes and his smile broadened as she felt his laughter at the edges of her mind, politely entreating entrance, and she opened her heart to him, feeling his presence flood into her soul like the warmth of the summer sun, spreading through her veins as if his blood were her very own.

Perhaps I cannot heal this wound, he spoke in her mind, taking her hand in his larger one and gently pressing a kiss to the furious red line. But I believe I can heal the wound of your heart.

The wound that you caused yourself, she replied, with your inconsiderate words.

As I am no poet, nor profess to be, I am afraid that you shall have to forgive me, his thoughts coursed over hers like water slipping over the bed of a stream, for I had the inelegance to misspeak and am not possessed of the eloquence to repair the damage with words.

One would almost think you had designed this situation precisely for your benefit, Celeborn, she murmured in his mind, her lips curling into a pleased smile as she reached out to brush his silver hair behind his ear, but he caught her wrist in his hand, breaching what distance remained between them with practiced disregard, and Galadriel parted her lips in anticipation of his kiss. And yet he lingered a mere breath away from her lips, his eyes flickering to hers, withholding from her that which she sought.

"Don't tease," she whispered.

And if I have provoked your pride to suit my designs, his words were a murmur in her mind, do you resent me for it?

No, she replied, trembling with want already as the warm roughness of his fingers traced the curve of her hip, catching on the hem of her shirt before moving beneath it, coming to a stop with the tips of his fingers pressed against the skin of her stomach, rising and falling with each breath she took. But I will demand your atonement. She heard his laughter in her mind, soft and pleasant as the summer breeze, before his lips at last met hers.

"I wonder," he said, as they lay there afterward by the side of the stream, bodies entwined and sweat slowly cooling on their skin, twisting blades of grass about their fingers. "Do you think that if they ever saw us, the people from our old lives, would they even recognize us anymore?"

Galadriel shifted, it was a subject that she often tried not to contemplate, though it occasionally came to mind, but now, basking in the slowly fading glow of passion, the question did not bother her as it ordinarily might have. "I've never really thought about it," she said. She hadn't meant to lie to him and yet the words seemed to have taken on a life of their own, springing from her lips of their own accord. She considered retracting them but Celeborn spoke before she had the chance to do so.

"Give me your hand," he murmured.

"My hand is yours," she said with a smile, surrendering it to him, "as is the rest of my body."

"And what of your heart?" He said with a laugh, taking her hand in his own. His was so much bigger that it encapsulated hers and she felt a familiar fluttering in her stomach as he began to trace the shapes of the clouds with her fingers. When Celeborn held her hand she could almost forget her short chipped nails with the dirt crusted beneath them, her cracked and work-worn knuckles, her sun-browned skin, the callouses on her fingers that had once been adorned with diamonds.

"You know that it is yours," she said with a smile, glancing over to see him grinning proudly at her and she scoffed cheerfully. "You act as if that is some great accomplishment," she teased him but he made no reply except to continue tracing the shapes of the clouds with her hand.

"Do you remember all those years ago when we did this?" He asked her.

"Yes, except it was the stars then that we traced," she said, "and you taught me all of the Sindarin constellations." The memory made her glad for a moment before she remembered everything that had transpired that night, how Celeborn had bought her the very same knife that was destined to be plunged into Curufin's guts, how an evening that had started so romantically had ended in their bitterest quarrel. She felt a chill as cold as the ice of the Helcaraxë rattle down her spine at the remembrance.

"So I did," he said with a smile. "And what does this cloud look like to you?"

Galadriel stared up, squinting at the white tufts that floated lazily across the sky. "Oh I don't know…a dog maybe…" she said, but what pleasure she had taken in this little game had evaporated. All she could think of now was the hatred she had seen in Curufin's eyes during his final moments and the way his flesh had yielded to the blade of her knife.

"I suppose they would probably recognize us," she said, turning the conversation back in the direction from whence it had come. Celeborn seemed to have abandoned that train of thought and so it took a moment before she saw recognition dawn in his eyes as he realized what she was talking about.

"Ah yes, I suppose," he said. "It would be hard to mistake your hair after all, or mine." Galadriel favored him with a smile, though she did not feel at all like smiling, and pushed herself to her feet, bending to pick up her breeches and shirt and pull them back on. Celeborn lazed in the grass for another moment, watching her with a grin on his face, and she felt the heat of a blush color her cheeks at the attention.

"What is it?" She asked him, pulling her shirt over her head.

"I was only admiring how beautiful you are," he said and Galadriel rolled her eyes, though his words did cause a little smile to spring to her lips.

"You're a lucky man and you had best not forget it," she remarked and Celeborn leapt to his feet at last, pulling on his own breeches.

"I'm not aiming to forget," he said. "Speaking of which, you've quite forgotten that you burned your hand, haven't you?"

"Oh!" She gasped, looking down at her hand. There was still a vicious red blister across her palm but she had indeed forgotten about the pain. "I suppose that I have."

"A testament to my prowess!" She heard him call, his laughter filtering back through the trees as he made his way back to their camp, and Galadriel rolled her eyes. Stretching her arms over her head, she followed to find him nudging the pot with his toes. It had long since gone cold. "Your potatoes are beyond salvation I'm afraid," Celeborn chuckled, flashing a grin at her, and Galadriel pursed her lips.

"Well then I hope you had a more productive afternoon than I did," she told him, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned against the wooden frame of their lean to.

"As a matter of fact," Celeborn replied, carrying the iron pot in one hand as he strode over to grab up his leather satchel, "I did have a rather productive afternoon. There are a few trout in there, and crayfish as well. If you don't mind cleaning the fish then I'll take care of this mess." He jostled the pot to illustrate and Galadriel nodded.

"Now, cleaning fish I can do," she said, closing her eyes as her husband wrapped an arm around her and drew her into a long embrace, his lips warm against hers. "Celeborn," she gasped against his lips as he parted hers, kissing her with that fervency of his that never seemed to tire. He nipped at her bottom lip and a moan caught in her throat. "We've only just…" she whispered.

I hope you know how much I love you, he murmured in her mind and she laughed, pressing her hands on his chest, pushing him away playfully.

I'm well aware, she replied and he shot her a grin as he made his way back through the willows to the stream to wash the pot, whistling as he went. The trout proved to be delicious, the moist white flesh of the fish was sweet and succulent on the inside, charred to a delicate and crispy golden-brown on the outside, and the fish dripped with fat as, with greasy and eager fingers, they devoured them. The crayfish proved delectable as well, cooked in the pot with a lump of deer fat and some of the leftover lemons that the entwives had gifted them at the start of the summer. And Galadriel wondered how the most rustic meals that Celeborn prepared always managed to taste far better than her most elaborate dishes.

"It is precisely because I keep things simple," Celeborn chuckled, having listened in to the train of her thoughts. "The key is to allow the natural flavor of the fish, or what have you, to shine through. If you want to eat a fish, then it should taste like a fish, not an herb garden."

Galadriel only smiled and rolled her eyes, wondering what he would say if he were ever to see the banquets of Tirion. She could well imagine him calling them 'monstrosities' and nearly choked on the last bit of fish at the thought. Celeborn merely laughed and grinned as her thoughts flitted through his mind.

"Do they really serve things like that there?" He asked her as he sifted through her memories of Tirion. "They really serve things on little plates like that?"

"They do," Galadriel said and Celeborn raised his eyebrows, nodding as he sucked the last bit of crayfish flesh from the now translucent amber shell. He held the empty husk of the creature up for a moment in the dying golden light of late afternoon, watching as the last rays of the sun illuminated the intricate structure of the shell, and Galadriel felt his marvel at this simple but beautiful thing pass through her mind for a moment before he flicked it into the pot.

"How can you put enough food for both you and your friends on such a little plate?" Celeborn asked. "It doesn't seem very practical."

"It isn't meant for more than one person," Galadriel told him and watched with delight as confusion flitted across his brow while he tried to puzzle this out.

"What is the purpose of food if you eat alone?" He asked her.

"It isn't that we eat alone," Galadriel said, "just that everyone's food is kept separate, individual."

Celeborn only laughed, his green eyes twinkling with mirth. "That doesn't at all sound like an enjoyable sort of banquet," he said, standing and offering his hand to his wife. She took it, pulling herself up and brushing off the seat of her breeches. She bent to pick up the pot, intending to wash it as Celeborn had gone to the trouble of preparing their meal, but he gestured to her to follow him. "Come on," he said, "I want to try to get these planks up before night falls."

Galadriel glanced towards the sky, where the brilliant orange of sunset stained the horizon and the dusky pale lavender of night spread across the dome of the world above. "Can't we do it tomorrow?" She asked. "There isn't much daylight left and, besides, you still haven't finished with the varnish on half of the boards." She looked up at the giant oak that Celeborn had long been preparing to house their talan. It was supposed to be a sort of dwelling that was sometimes used by the Green Elves, or so Celeborn said.

"There's light enough to get at least some of it done," Celeborn countered, "and when I finish the rest of the boards we can put them up as well, but I don't like leaving them sit upon the ground so long. It isn't good for the wood."

Galadriel said nothing but bent to pick up the end of one of the larger boards, as Celeborn instructed, helping him carry it to the oak. They were both strong enough, but fitting the boards in place in the tree seemed to her to be a job that might require more than just the two of them. She had asked Celeborn if they might not ask Treebeard for assistance, seeing as he would be easily able to lift the boards into place given his height, but Celeborn had only made the excuse that Treebeard was away on some sort of errand and he did not wish to wait until he returned.

That reasoning did not make much sense to Galadriel, given that they were friendly with many of the other Ents and Entwives, but Celeborn knew a great deal more about building a talan than she did and so she had not questioned him any further. And yet, something about Celeborn's haste to finish this talan sat ill with her. He had always been impatient, but it was not like him to rush into something like this with so little planning and forethought. Celeborn was the sort you could always depend upon to have some strategy and, if that strategy failed, he was guaranteed to have another up his sleeve as well.

Just then the roll of thunder echoed in the distance and Galadriel saw a flash of white streak across the sky. "I think it's going to rain!" She called up to her husband, who had already scaled the trunk of the massive oak and was waiting now upon the branch where they would place this board. "Perhaps we ought to wait for morning!"

"It's nothing but heat lightning!" Celeborn called back down. "Happens all the time in the summer!" Galadriel wasn't so certain, seeing as she had never heard of nor seen heat lightening that was accompanied by thunder, but she protested no further and hefted the board up, balancing it on her hip.

Even with her arms fully extended, Celeborn still could not reach the opposite end of the board, and was forced to scramble down to a lower branch to grasp it. She bit her tongue, refraining from reminding her husband that, if only he would wait but a little longer and consider his plans more thoroughly, it might have occurred to him that this idea was not as feasible as he thought. The board left her hands as Celeborn dragged it upward and Galadriel watched with a faint throb of anxiety as her husband struggled to move the board into place on his own. Celeborn was strong, and even more sure-footed in the trees than he was upon the ground, but the whole situation made her uneasy anyway.

"Shall I come up?" She called as thunder rolled across the sky again.

"What?" Celeborn called down.

"I said, shall I come up and help?" She repeated herself, still anxiously watching as he at last managed to move the board into place.

"No, just hand me the next board!" He called down. "We need to be quick about this. I can't hold these boards up here very long unassisted. I need to get them fitted together."

"No! Not that one! That one!" Celeborn shouted down at her in irritation as she reached for the next one and Galadriel felt a spark of anger flare in her chest as she dropped the one she had picked up and reached instead for the one he wanted.

"Well how am I supposed to know! You never explained to me how they will fit together!" Galadriel shot back at him, more than a little frustrated with him now. And that was exactly when it began to rain, the quickly darkening sky opening up to unleash a veritable torrent of water as lightening lanced overhead in an intricate web of sizzling white.

Blinking water out of her eyes, Galadriel struggled to lift the second board, but it was longer than the first, which made it even more unwieldy, and she struggled to grasp the now slippery wood. "Hurry!" Celeborn called down as she hefted the end of the board onto her hip.

"I am hurrying!" She shouted back up, having half the mind to strangle her husband whenever he came back down. She managed to rest the opposite end of the board against one of the low-handing branches of the tree, pausing to catch her breath for a moment and readjust her grip. But the end of the board slipped, the wood scuffing across the palm of her hand, agitating the burn she had given herself earlier, and thudding into her stomach, knocking the air out of her for a moment.

She wheezed, her hand stinging with pain, but was determined not to show Celeborn any sign of weakness, and thrust the board upwards once more, fueled for the greater part by her anger. He caught it, struggling to grip the end, and Galadriel clenched her eyes shut and then opened them again, hoping to rid them of water, but it was no use. The rain was falling so heavily that she could not blink it away quickly enough to see. The ground was already slick and muddy and she struggled to maintain her footing against the mud that puddled about her feet.

At last Celeborn manage to pull the board up, ridding her of the burden, and she sighed deeply, reaching up to brush her hair out of her face, but it did her little good. She took some sort of satisfaction in watching as Celeborn nearly tumbled from his precarious perch, but at last he managed to slot the boards together. "One more!" He called down. "We need at least one more before these will stay put up here!"

Galadriel stalked over to the remaining boards. "Which one do you want this time?" She shouted at him angrily.

"There's no need to take that tone with me, Galadriel!" Celeborn shouted right back. "I'm doing this for you, you know!"

"How odd!" Galadriel retorted. "I don't recall ever asking you to do any of this!"

"No one needs your dramatics, Galadriel!" Celeborn cried.

"No one needs your pig-headed stubbornness, Celeborn!" Galadriel hurled the words at him like stones.

"Just give me the board!" Celeborn shouted, pointing to one and nearly losing his footing in the process. Galadriel reached for it, pulling it up from the ground and dragging it through the mud, her heart pounding with anger, feeling as if she was on the verge of tears but far too proud to cry. She might not have managed to hoist the third board up if she hadn't been so determined to do so out of spite, but at last Celeborn managed to grasp it and pull.

Freed of the burden at last, she bent to wipe her scraped and bloody hands on her breeches, only to look up at Celeborn's strangled shout of, "look out!" She wasn't sure what had happened, but later she realized he must have lost his grip on the board, and it came careening back down toward her, slamming hard into her stomach, knocking her down into the mud. She lay there, shoulders trembling from the effort it took not to cry, soaked through with rain and covered in mud, her heart brimming with fury at her husband.

"Galadriel!" She heard Celeborn shout frantically. "Galadriel, are you alright?" She heard the sound of the other boards falling and then of him scrambling down from the tree. But the only thing she could think was that she didn't want his pity, that his concern meant nothing to her now, now that the damage had been done, and she pushed herself up from the ground, turning to glare at her husband.

"Don't touch me!" She shrieked as he reached out to enfold her in his arms and he let his hands fall to his sides, his eyes wide with fear and regret. "Don't touch me," she repeated the command, shoulders still trembling.

"Galadriel, I'm so sorry," Celeborn gasped, "I'm sorry for all of this for…for…" he took a deep breath and cleared his throat, reaching up to wipe his eyes, and she wondered whether he was wiping away tears or rain. She had seen Celeborn weep only a handful of times in the five centuries that she had known him and yet she remained unmoved. "We'll wait," he said. "We'll wait until Treebeard returns or else…we can get one of the other Ents to help us."

"That's what I've been telling you!" Galadriel shouted at him, long past the point where she could have been placated. "That's what I have been trying to tell you this whole time and you wouldn't listen to me! I don't understand! I don't understand why you wouldn't listen! You promised! You promised me you would listen to me! You promised when you asked me to marry you! You promised, Celeborn!" She was crying now, though she had tried her hardest not to, and it only augmented her embarrassment, which fueled her anger all the further as her voice expired in a hoarse shriek.

"I wanted this for you!" Celeborn shouted back. "I wanted to build this house for you, Galadriel! What do I have to offer you now? What can I give to you! I am a prince no longer, my kingdom lies in ruin, everything I promised you when we were betrothed I can no longer provide for you! But this, at least, this house I can build for you!"

"What you can give me," Galadriel retorted, "is the courtesy of listening to my counsel when I give it! When did I ever say that I wanted you to build this? And yet you insist upon doing it! Do not pretend as though this is about me, Celeborn! This has everything to do with you! This is about you trying to fulfill some sort of need for yourself! This has nothing to do with me!"

"Does it ever occur to you how difficult this is for me?" Celeborn cried. "Do you ever stop to think that I don't know how to be a husband to you, that every marriage I have ever seen has ended in suffering and death? From whom can I seek advice? My grandfather was gone before I was even born and my father I can hardly remember! Thingol is dead and Galathil as well! Everyone is dead, Galadriel! Maybe you would have noticed by now if you weren't so busy worrying over how you look!"

"Do you think I do not know that, Celeborn?" Galadriel spat. "Who can I turn to for help when you act this way? Lúthien is dead. She left without even bidding me farewell! And Melian too, but not before she laid bare to me the most gruesome details of my fate! And my mother lives in a place from which I have been exiled for all eternity!"

She was certain now that those were tears and not raindrops that Celeborn was wiping away, and she felt a brief pang of remorse. She hadn't wanted to hurt him, but her anger had been begging to be unleashed and she was still so very furious with him over this whole idiotic ordeal. "I'm going to wash off," she said, her voice rigid with slowly cooling rage. "And when I return I plan to sleep. It is your choice whether or not you join me." It was a far fairer offer than she believed he deserved.

"Then I'll spare you the inconvenience of my presence!" Celeborn sneered, but Galadriel turned on her heel before he could say another word, and stalked off to the creek. She managed to clean the mud off of herself, but that only had the effect of soaking her clothes even further, and she at last stripped off the wet garments and padded back to the campsite after she had taken some time to allow her anger to dissipate.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle by the time she returned and she threw her wet clothes over the branch of a tree, pausing as she caught sight of Celeborn huddled beneath a nearby willow, already sound asleep. The idea that he could sleep after such an argument while she knew that she would lie awake for hours, pondering the meaning of each word he had said and second guessing every word that she had said, frustrated her beyond end and yet she hated this sudden distance that had erupted between them and her heart ached in the place where she usually felt the gentle warmth of his love.

She ducked into the lean to, listening to the soft pitter pat of the rain that fell upon the roof of greenery, and shrugged on a dry pair of breeches and a shirt, glad at least that it was summer and she didn't have to be both wet and cold. Gradually the drizzle slowed to a stop and, after a while, the familiar sounds of crickets chirping and the hum of cicadas filled the humid air of the summer night. Galadriel shifted, pillowing her head on her cloak, her anger having dissipated for the most part.

She had tried to go over the conversation in her mind, but it didn't seem to matter so much anymore. All she could think of was what they could have been doing instead of sleeping apart, nursing their wounds, how the rain would have sounded beautiful if she were nestled comfortably in Celeborn's embrace, how the chirrup of the frogs would have been soothing.

And most of all, the thoughts that tormented her were about how Celeborn must feel, how this was the closest he had ever come to speaking to her about Thingol's death or Galathil's, and how she had only thrown his words back at him and destroyed his trust in her. Her lip trembled again as she wiped at her nose with her sleeve. It was no good. She could not sleep, not without him at her side, and so she pushed herself to her feet and, ducking out of the lean to, trudged through the wet and muddy grass to where Celeborn lay.

She stood for a moment, looking down at him, and he opened one eye to look up at her. "Are you awake?" She asked.

"I'm looking at you aren't I?" He remarked, his voice low, though devoid of the bitterness from earlier.

"But sometimes you sleep with your eyes open," Galadriel said. Celeborn shrugged.

"Well I…" she began and then swallowed hard. "If you want to come back inside…"

"I don't," Celeborn replied quickly and she felt her heart sink. She stood for a moment more but Celeborn said nothing else and so she turned on her heel and began to trudge back to the lean to.

"Wait," she heard Celeborn say with a sigh and turned to see him push himself up and follow her, stopping a few feet before her, close enough to hint at reconciliation and yet far enough that she knew he hadn't entirely forgiven her yet, just as she had not entirely forgiven him. He pushed his hands into his pockets and hung his head, rainwater beading in the damp silver of his hair, dripping slowly to the ground. "I'm still angry with you," he told her, "but I love you."

Galadriel reached out, pulling one of his hands from his pockets so that she could brush her thumb over each of his knuckles. She didn't know why she did it, maybe because she needed something to look at but didn't have the courage yet to meet his eyes, maybe because she wanted to touch him but a kiss was yet too intimate and too soon after their argument.

"I still love you," she said, "and I'm still angry with you." Celeborn took her hand, weaving her fingers between his own as, with his other hand, he reached out and turned her chin up so that her gaze met his. Galadriel swallowed hard.

"I don't want to fight with you," he said.

"I don't want to fight with you either," Galadriel told him. He looked down at his feet and then back up at her.

"If you don't want the talan…I'll forget about it," he said but Galadriel shook her head.

"No," she told him. "If it is important to you…I'll help you. We'll do it together."

"But we'll wait until Treebeard returns," he said.

"Yes," she said. "We'll wait for Treebeard." And then she reached up to tuck his hair behind his ear, a gesture of reconciliation, but in that moment she saw Celeborn's eyes go wide and he lunged forward suddenly, his hand rough and ungentle as he pulled her to him, one hand pressed hard over her mouth.

Quiet! She heard him hiss in her mind and felt a chill race down her spine, but the moment that her heart began to hammer in her chest was when she felt Celeborn slowly reach behind him for the knife that he always wore at his lower back. Someone just came out of the lean to, his thought crossed her mind and Galadriel felt her heart go still with dread. They must have gone in after you came out, when we were talking.

Maybe a deer or…or… Galadriel replied, trying to think of some other excuse, but she knew it had been no deer, not if Celeborn had said that it wasn't. His response was to slowly and silently turn her in his arms so that her back was to his chest and her eyes facing in the same direction as he was looking. And then she saw the dark shape darting noiselessly about the perimeter of the lean to, her mind buzzing with blind terror, every fiber of her being screaming for her to run.

When I tell you to go, Celeborn whispered in her mind, you run, get to your weapons, and we hunt this person. If it is one of your cousins' scouts then you know what we must do. Galadriel nodded against his chest. She had killed elves before and she knew she might have to again, but she did not relish the thought. The dark shadow had stopped and, though she could not see its eyes, she knew that it was looking directly at them.

Now, Celeborn said, and they both lunged forward in a mad sprint, but the dark shape had begun to run as well, headed for the perimeter of the clearing. They ducked briefly into the lean to, hearts pounding furiously in tandem, snatching up their bows and quivers, before they pursued the shadow into the dark of the forest.

The mysterious visitor had leapt into the treetops, moving quick as lightening through the forest canopy. As ever, Celeborn shot up the tree with impressive speed while Galadriel struggled to find handholds, growing frustrated with herself for slowing them down. Celeborn paused, caught in indecision between waiting for her and pursuing the stranger.

Go! She urged him in her mind, knowing what might happen if they didn't stop this person, knowing that their survival perhaps depended upon it. She reached the treetops at last, catching a glimpse of Celeborn darting ahead, his silver hair flashing in the light of the moon, and she scurried after him as fast as she could. Her mind was pulsing with a thousand horrific possibilities, with the fear that this was one of Maedhros's scouts who had found them at last, or perhaps that this was some creature of Morgoth that had ventured into Nan-Tathren from the sickened forest of Taur-im-Duinath.

Fear shivered through her heart as she leapt from tree branch to tree branch, and she heard Celeborn whisper something on the breeze, something that seemed to cause the trees to contract about them, their branches creaking as they wove together. He must be trying to fence them in, to keep them from escaping, and the thought sent a jolt of worry through her, for Celeborn was the most skilled of all trackers, more skilled than even the Green Elves or any of the Avari, and yet she could not imagine why he would have called the trees to his aid unless this stranger were escaping.

And as she ran, the trees knit their branches together beneath her feet, creating a road through the sky for her, but at last she reached its end, coming to a halt beside Celeborn, drawing her bow in the span of a heart beat and knocking an arrow as she looked about for the shadow, every fiber of her body alert. But all was silent once more, save for the quiet chirping of crickets and the far off croaks of frogs. Celeborn too had his bow drawn and ready, but after a moment he lowered it, his body quivering with the heightened awareness of the hunt, his eyes scanning their surroundings for a moment longer before he unleashed a string of curses so foul and violent that they might even have caused one of Círdan's sailors to quiver in his boots.

"They're gone," he said. "They're gone."