Through a Mirror Darkly by HannaGoldworthy

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Chapter 6

This hits prompt six of Caprice and Chance, and Celebrian is certainly experiencing the return of a problem from the past.  She's not the only one, though.

There's some imagery toward the beginning that might be a little disturbing...no gore, not really, but it's rather like a jump scare.  Some reference to long-past noncon toward the end.

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It took two more days to catalogue Vairë’s treasury, though Celebrían scarcely noted the passage of time, so absorbed was she in the work.  Still, the day dawned when she and her cousins needed to return to Tírion, and though she was loath to leave, she nonetheless awoke early to prepare.

 

As she finished dressing, a glimmer of Ulmo’s-fire blue danced in her peripheral vision.  Thinking that it must be Amarthan, come to collect her, Celebrían turned with a mischievous smile and a quip about how her generation knew how to get out of bed…and stopped short, unable to move despite the fear that suddenly gripped her heart.

 

He had to be near seven feet tall, this monster of her youth, but the size of the room forced him to crouch grotesquely, his hand upon his knee.  Lurking from beneath his blood-clot hair, his intense gaze was too desperate to be casual glance, not angry enough to be a glare, and it pierced her very heart as she looked at him.  The scars on his ruined face stood out in sharp relief against his pale skin, and what remained of his right wrist, pushed up near his cheek by the position in which he sat, seemed alight with the red lightning-fire of a terrible infection.

 

“Celebrían!  Milady!”  Her vision became a wall of soothing green, and Celebrían blinked, to find herself against the wall, staring into Opolintë’s eyes.  The other elf had her face in her hands, her entire body determinedly placed so that Celebrían could see nothing but her.

 

“You’re safe, milady,” she murmured, her presence enveloping her charge with the comforting familiarity of a cool forest morning.  “What you see is not here and not real.”

 

A deep, shuddering breath wracked Celebrían’s body, and she eased into Opolintë’s embrace, too shaken even to cry.  “I told you.  I am your kinswoman, not your lady.”

 

Opolintë chuckled low in her throat, the relieved laughter of one who was still gravely worried.  “And I told you not to trust mirrors, but here we are.”

 

Mirrors?  Celebrían held her friend tighter, and risked a look over her shoulder at the place where Maedhros had sat.  It was indeed a mirror, the same one that had been in the room for the entirety of their stay, the same one at which she had never taken a second glance in her preoccupation.  And now the only face she could see within it was her own tattered visage, her own desperate blue eyes.

 

Childlike, Celebrían hid her eyes against Opolintë’s shoulder and shivered.

 

***

 

It was a quiet and pensive Celebrían who bade the occupants of the Cottage goodbye later that morning.  She tried not to seem as suspicious of them as she was – she had been having episodes for months, yes, but the powerful tricksters of her mother’s tales would not be above triggering one of them for the goal of character growth.  Of course they saw right through her, and Lindo and Quitë seemed more sad than insulted, but Vairë smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead.

 

“You are welcome here, my child, whenever your heart leads you back.”

 

Celebrían, instantly regretful of her mistrust, dove into a fierce embrace with the clothed Valië, breathing in Vairë’s scent, like the tingling static of a well-used loom.  She would look back on this moment, in years to come, and decide that it was here that she’d begun to drop her guard.  It was a place where children were nursed back to life, she’d realized, not a place of death…and she’d been brought back too, in a way.  For the first time in entirely too long, Celebrían felt like life was worth living.

 

Now, if only she could hold to that conviction when presented with the outside world.

 

The apprehension built in her heart as the Cottage of Lost Play faded from view.  It grew stronger as she heard the characteristic tapping of sculptors at work, and realized, without looking up from her seat in the back of her wagon, that they’d begun the transit over the bridge.  It truly began to well up in her stomach and throat as they stopped, and, after a few moments of indistinct conversation, took on two more passengers into the nearly empty space.

 

Nerdanel smiled pleasantly.  “Good morrow, my dear!  You’re looking rather pale today…are you well?”

 

“She’s probably fasting, Haruni,” Sarenda said, arranging her tools for an excuse to be busy.  “Let her be.”

 

“I’m precluded from the fast, actually.”  Celebrían took in Sarenda’s quick, appraising glance with her usual veneer of nonchalance – she had several reasons for not overtasking her body’s endurance at this point in time, but people always jumped on the most obvious one.  True to form, Sarenda’s jaw dropped, and Nerdanel was at her side in a moment, taking her hand in a motherly fashion.

 

“Why is she in the back of the cart?” the older woman griped at her son.  “There’s no cushioning mechanism here, she’ll be terribly jostled.”

 

“She’s Nerwen’s daughter, Ammë,” Amarthan sighed, clicking to get the donkeys walking.  “I’ve no doubt that she was born in the back of a cart herself.”

 

“She went into labor in the middle of a skirmish, actually – berated my father for being worried, too.”  At Nerdanel’s studied look of resigned horror, Celebrían tried to soften her statement with a shrug.  “Also, Valinor roads are like feather mattresses compared to the roads I grew up riding.  Really, I don’t feel a thing.”

 

“Ah, yes, the warrior traditions of Endorë,” Sarenda sneered, though she put few teeth into it – Nerdanel’s glare could probably blunt obsidian.  “It’s no wonder you get along with the she-orc so well.”

 

Amarthan twisted so sharply Celebrían could feel the wagon turn under his unwitting pull against the reins.  “Do you want to walk home, niece?  It could be arranged.”

 

“What?  Doesn’t she know?  It’s not like there’s any shame in it…”

 

“Get out.”

 

“Ambarto…” Nerdanel looked around them nervously, likely at surrounding spectators.  Celebrían did not care to see how may; she’d been under a glass her entire life, and the best way of dealing with that was to ignore it.  Instead, she gazed up at Amarthan, who was uncharacteristically livid, and at Opolintë, who sat tall and ramrod-straight, staring regally ahead of them without acknowledging the conversation.

 

Looking at them, Celebrían’s voice seemed to find itself without her own permission. “There’s also no shame, now, in growing up without a father-name,” she said, pointedly meeting Amarthan’s strange eyes.

 

There was a palpable silence, and Amarthan seemed on the brink of an apology for his overreaction, when the wagon shook as Sarenda alighted upon the ground.  “I’ll see you in a few days, Haruni,” she grit out, obviously from between her teeth.  “I’ll be at the Tower if you need me.”

 

Amarthan turned around and started the wagon going again before anyone could object.  They crossed the bridge and were well into the residential streets of Alqualondë before Nerdanel broke the silence.

 

“I’m so sorry, my dears.  I don’t know what’s come over her.”

 

Celebrían shook her head and patted Nerdanel’s hand.  “I’m her law-sister, in a way.  Likely she thinks I’ll overtake her place, or that my husband has already overtaken her.”

 

Nerdanel’s face flooded with exhaustion.  “Such wisdom from one less than half her age; perhaps there’s something to be said for Endorë’s harshness.  I wish I could make her feel welcome in her own home.”

 

“I’ve fostered many orphaned children in the past.  She’ll feel welcome when she’s ready, not when you are.”

 

***

 

Nerdanel’s house was studiously, questionably clean; on the outside, it sparkled, but Celebrían could smell the ever-present rock dust of a sculptor’s studio.  To her, it felt almost like Ost-in-Edhel, and flooded her mind with bittersweet memories of her long-lost home.  Opolintë, however, was disgusted, and discreetly began to run a broom around Celebrían’s bedroom when Nerdanel’s back was turned.  She also insisted upon moving a cot into the room so that she could watch, in case Celebrían regressed again.

 

She never met Celebrían’s eye the rest of the day, not even when they were seated across from each other at dinner.  Somehow she managed to coax Amarthan from his sullen silence, but though he was willing to joke lightly with his cousin and mother and laugh a little, Opolintë never smiled genuinely herself.  And when Celebrían made an excuse to go to bed, letting Amarthan and Nerdanel catch up with each other, Opolintë followed her without a word, her head bowed like a respectful servant.

 

It grew to be nearly too much for Celebrían to bear, though she did wait until after the door was closed behind them.  “Who you were changes nothing about who you are, cousin,” she whispered.

 

Opolintë took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders to look Celebrían in the eye.  “You are brave, and dearer to me than I ever anticipated.  I wanted to avoid reminding you of what happened to bring you here.”

 

“Avoiding what happened will never erase what happened.  And you likely went through something akin to my experience, didn’t you?”

 

There was a certain look about a hunted deer which realized it was caught, and could no longer run – a sort of bleak denial, a wild refusal to accept its ultimate fate.  In that moment, Opolintë was particularly well named, for Celebrían recognized that fearful stubbornness very well indeed. 

 

“It wasn’t…they never…”  With a sigh, Opolintë sat upon her cot and massaged her temples.  “I was…taken, yes, but they…I was not used for…”

 

Celebrían took a seat next to her, and clasped her hands.  “For breeding purposes?”

 

Opolintë shook her head, her eyes bright with unshed tears and her hand over her mouth.

 

“And yet, you knew exactly what happened to me as soon as you looked at me, did you not?”

 

Her caretaker gave her a pained look, confused at her calm.  “I…yes.  I was tasked, at that time, with hunting down children or other…experiments, when they ran.  I had to know a great deal about why they were running.”

 

Celebrían studied Opolintë’s face, letting her regard shine through steadily.  Opolintë had never turned away from her terrible secrets; it would be poor manners to look away from her now.  “What changed?”

 

The other woman gnawed her lower lip, and her eyes became distant.  “On my last hunt, my quarry was cleverer than most.  He got away, and led me out into the Open, where the stars still glittered.  I got a good look at the Little Sickle.”  There was a shaky smile.  “That’s where I got my name, actually.  The northern Laiquendi tribe where I was born called the Sickles the Doe and the Fawn.  My mother named me for the Fawn, so that I could always find my way home by the bright white stars of its tail.  It was coincidence that I started to look like a fawn later in life.”

 

“Some might call that a mother’s prophecy.”

 

“Some might.  But that night, when I found myself again after wandering for so long in darkness?  That I call my mother’s real prophecy.”

 

Celebrían nodded.  “You’re probably right.”

 

Opolintë grinned.  “And your next question is, ‘how in the blazes did she get here?’”

 

“Well, I’m going to bank on previous experience and assume you died.”

 

“Eventually, yes.  I found Gondolin first.”

 

Now that was impressive.  “Before Huor and Hurin?  How did you manage that?”

 

“Not for long.  Eagles can be disgusting little bastards.” Opolintë looked nervously at the window.  “Don’t tell Manwë I said that.”

 

“Do you think he’s just waiting outside our window like a beggar?”

 

“The Lord and Lady of Mandos live in peaceful domesticity in their spring and summer cottage near the beach.  Anything can happen in Sovallë.”