Hithlain by Himring

Chapter 1

(Obligatory name confusion: Artanis=Galadriel; the name Galadriel was given her by Celeborn.)

They depart from Doriath laden with gifts and supplies.

‘What is this?’, Artanis asks, picking up the coils of silvery-grey rope and weighing them in her hands. Soft, but strong, she thinks, liking the feel of it in her hands, the texture.

‘You are interested in rope?’, Celeborn asks in return. He should not have been surprised. She seems interested in anything and everything, this young Noldo.

‘My cousins in Alqualonde are skilled in all kinds of rope-making’, she answers. ‘Hawsers for their ships, painters for their boats... But I have not seen this material before.’

‘It is hithlain’, Celeborn tells her. ‘I could show you how it is made, if you were not about to leave...’

‘I will just have to come back then, won’t I?’, she says and smiles at him.

***

The silvery-grey rope slithers down the rock face, its final coil pooling at his feet.

His wife’s face appears up above, haloed in sunlit hair against blue sky.

‘Come on up’, she calls out cheerfully. ‘I can see Mirrormere from here!’

He shakes his head a little ruefully. ‘Noldo’, he grumbles to himself affectionately, takes firm hold of the rope and begins to climb.

Chapter End Notes

First part based on the departure from Lorien in FOTR, second part more loosely on the descent from the Emyn Muil in TT.

Also, obviously, based on the Silmarillion.