Chapter Text
Galadriel explores a magical forest by Greyjedijaneite
The City
In the West-cavern of Menegroth, great golden lamps hung from the long roots that made up the great cavern-roof, casting a dappled light over Lúthien’s pale skirts.
“Cousin, I am seeking Celeborn. Have you seen him?” Artanis asked, raising her voice a little over the sound of the fountain playing.
Lúthien turned, unsmiling, her shadowy eyes dark and secretive, her pale face hard to read. She must, Artanis thought once again, have some of the power of her mother Melian, but so far, she had showed very little of it — at least where Artanis could see. Lúthien was more often with her father than her mother. She looked like him too.
“He is not here,” Lúthien told her. That was obvious and was exactly the reason that Artanis had asked. Artanis had wandered through a good many of the Thousand Caves in search of her friend, and had already looked around the great cavern-hall before approaching Luthien.
It was sometimes difficult not to be annoyed with Lúthien. With time, she would feel like a proper cousin. Artanis would feel at home in Doriath, if she kept trying. These were Mother’s relatives, and there was no reason to feel awkwardly Noldor among them.
Melian had been more than welcoming: had praised her skills, and helped her find new ones.
The heroes of Doriath had accepted her among them, and had raised no objections to her joining in with the competitions and feats, just as she had done among the princes of the Noldor.
Even Great-uncle Elwë — well, he had come around to her staying here, even if he had been annoyed that Artanis and her brothers had not told him everything from the beginning.
It was a good start.
A dark-haired woman who was probably yet another cousin said, “I think he went down to the river, Artanis. I saw him near the river-stairs.”
“Did he not say where he was going?” Artanis asked her.
The probable cousin shrugged. “North into Neldoreth, as usual, I expect.” She turned back to her spindle: grey thread fine as spider-web in her hand catching the light softly.
Lúthien shook her head and held out a long pale hand for a nightingale to land on her forefinger. It began to sing, a liquid wordless warbling that wove with the sound of falling fountain-water.
Artanis could not understand any of the song, but it was clear everyone else here could.
She turned on her heel and left. At some point she would find the key to Lúthien, but that could wait.
*******
The dark water of the river flowed under huge grey branches and was edged with moss-covered boulders. Myriad leaves shaded moss and water, but here and there, small openings pierced the canopy and sunlight glittered in patches on the water surface, changing the blue shadows to translucent gold.
Children were playing at the water’s edge, splashing one another in the golden shallows, squealing and laughing in the pools.
Artanis stopped on the moss-grown bridge for a moment to watch them. She could feel the care of the River Esgalduin running through the water, as if the river had reached out to Melian, and taken her hand to guard the children at play.
It was not quite like the massive warmth and consideration of the Valar that had once run like bright thread all through the woods and shimmering streams of Eldamar, lit by the distant trees of light and the stars above.
Melian’s power was smaller and closer than any of the Valar, and quite different to most of Vala that Artanis had known well.
The powers of the Valar had been warm as the power of the new mid-summer sun. Even at home in Alqualondë you could feel it around you, by light of golden tree, or in the star-shine of the mountain shadow. In Valimar, where the fountains had danced bright in the light of Laurelin, the power of the Valar had felt so huge that it was hard to imagine anything outside of it.
But Melian’s power flickered through the tree-shadows, as near as the leaves, veined with silver. Once again, Artanis caught at it with her mind trying to fully understand it, but something in it eluded her.
It was a different kind of silver to that of Varda, a darker shade. Was it like stars seen at a great distance, or was it more like star-shadow? If she could only understand it fully, perhaps she would find the heart of this new land at last.
A child slid sideways into a pool, sending up a shriek and a white spray of water. Artanis startled for a moment, ready to run down to the riverside... until the dark-haired child bobbed up to the surface again, laughing through the ripples.
The power of the river, though gentled to watch children here in the heart of Doriath, was wilder than anything Artanis could remember in the West.
What had Beleg said? To taste her waters brought inspiration in poetry, and that those who slept beside the waters often had strange dreams.
The waters might help her know this land, to understand it better. Artanis must try it soon: perhaps once she had found Celeborn.
She went on over the bridge, and the great beech-wood of Neldoreth enfolded her. Tall grey trunks were the wide-spaced pillars of Neldoreth, and the floor was covered in the golden-brown of fallen beech-leaves, but the roof high above her was a deep green.
It was quiet in the wood, with no sign of Celeborn or anyone else, for that matter, though she was quite sure that he had passed this way, and not long ago.
Some way off, she could hear the sharp rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker, and a little later as she followed the barely-visible trail northward, she heard the sound of movement in the distance, and turned in time to see three deer moving through the green depths of the wood, their long legs moving gracefully, great dark eyes observing her without fear.
*******
She walked for a while. Night fell, and stars glittered, here and there among the leaves. Just before the dawn a bright, refreshing rain fell, and at midmorning, she came to a spring, and quenched her thirst.
The light from high above the green beech-leaves now slanted and was more golden than before, and was beginning to doubt her first instinct that told her Celeborn had gone this way. The trees opened up ahead of her to form an open glade, where the path she was following led past a row of great rough-hewn boulders.
In the middle of the clearing, one tall strong oak tree with deep-patterned bark stood knee-deep among the long grass and the white foam of scattered flowers.
Bees were humming, and as she stepped forward into the warm afternoon sunlight, she caught the sound of a shrill song, and saw a cloud of tiny golden-crested birds, scarcely larger than the bees, swooping and playing up into the branches of the oak.
Artanis looked up to follow their twittering flight through the branches. Then she blinked, startled. The oak tree had opened strange deepset eyes, and was regarding her with interest.
“I have heard of the Tree-folk of Yavanna,” Artanis said, filled with delight. “But never have I met one until this moment. May the Giver of Fruits smile upon our meeting.”
The tree did not reply. The gold-crests fluttered around it and settled in the leafy hair like so many jewels, while the Ent lifted long arms to the sunlight.
“I’m seeking an elf called Celeborn,” Artanis said. “He’s tall, and silver-haired, a kinsman of the King. Have you seen him? I was told that he went this way.”
The birds sang, and the sun shone on the leaves, and listening, Artanis became aware that the ent was replying, but not in the language she expected.
Of course, she thought. Why would a person who was almost a tree speak in any language of the Elves, here at home in the woods?
A deep rumbling song almost beyond the limits of hearing hummed through the glade, filled with thoughts full of roots and water seeping, light on leaves and the rhythmic sway of branches.
She concentrated all her thought upon it, opening her ears and mind, and after a moment, sliding off her shoes as Melian had taught her, to stand barefoot in the grass, taking in the ent-song through the soles of her feet.
As she listened, she began to pick out themes, as if the ent were weaving a tapestry of sound through voice and the rustle of leaves. The long slow moments full of water and bark were layered over with a dapple of sunny and shady days.
She was just beginning to understand, and to find a way to reply in the same way, when a clear joyful call came from among the trees, and a second ent came striding into the glade, as unlike the first as an apple tree is from an oak.
The new arrival was not so tall as the first, and was wrapped in a smooth green rind in place of the thick bark. Leafy hair was decked with pink and white blossoms.
The oak-ent turned and reached out a long arm, and for a moment both ents stood and regarded Artanis with their strange, deep eyes flecked with gold like sun through moving leaves. They were so beautiful, standing together like that, that she could not but laugh with joy, feeling herself childlike before their age and beauty.
She stood, and turned ideas and language in her mind delightedly. Their language, she could tell, was slow as the passing of winter, and swift as the unfurling of a leaf in spring.
She bowed to them both, and turned the movement into a kind of dance, conveying, she hoped, her delight at meeting them both.
She learned a little of their thought, in that first meeting, too little to be entirely sure if either of them had seen Celeborn: their lives were not concerned with elves. And yet there was a delight to them that answered her own, and a sense of fellowship that came from nothing more than being and breathing in the same great forest.
At last, as the sun was setting, they turned, and hand in long-fingered twiggy hand, they strode away into the hall-like shadow of the trees.
Artanis watched them go in wonder. Celeborn was still ahead of her, somewhere. She could feel it, in the same way that she could feel the voices of the trees around her. Her mind was busy with the song that still echoed through the ground and the silvery-grey trunks and long roots of the beech trees. As she walked, she began to understand the song more clearly, and then, understanding, she began to join in their soft, rustling song.
As she walked on, singing a wordless song of beech-trees through the purple dusk of the woods, the stars began to come out one by one into the evening sky, high above the leafy roof.