Ribbon-Cutting Instadrabbling by Lindariel

Galadriel paused. She had managed to avoid looking back every time they crested a hill. But this was the last height of the Ered Luin. She look back westward to the green expanse of nothingness that her eyes could not pierce even though she knew it to be Doriath. Then she looked forward again, down the mountain toward a land of swelling hills and green river valleys. She began to remember how it felt to be Alatáriel, delighting in the mysteries of unfamiliar terrain.

She held her hand out to Celeborn. "It is good to be traveling again," she said.

Nolofinwë's ramble had taken him far outside his usual haunts. Hithlum on the edge of springtime made him restless, and he found himself on one of the old tracks. Here the earth still showed the marks of the Noldorin host on its march to Lake Mithrim. Nolofinwë walked wrapped in memory, until he saw a single yellow flower blooming against the dun floor of the uplands. The bright color reminded him of his golden-haired relatives, since departed for other homes: Alatáriel, his sister-sons, and Itarillë. A patch of several such flowers together gave him an idea. He'd throw a feast!

A familiar whine interrupted her pacing, heralding another visit from the great wolfhound whose companionship was the prisoner's only consolation. She cracked her door open, seeing nothing. "Huan?" she said, "what brings you here by the dark of night?"

A shape pushed past her into the room and shook itself once. Obscurity slid to the floor and puddled there, revealing her friend standing above her cloak of shadows. He nosed the cloak toward her and spoke with words: "My lady, this place is not safe for you. Don your dark cloak and I will lead you away."

Marveling, Lúthien obeyed.

Exhausted, the scout sank back onto her bed. Three healers elbowed Findekáno out of the way as they applied moss to her wounds. He touched her hand once, then withdrew to the other end of the room where the king and his advisors waited.

"Mounted archers!" said Findekáno to his father. "Give me four companies of mounted archers. We will surround this great red-gold worm and kill it from afar."

"You will need cavalry protection," Nolofinwë replied.

"That's what the knights are for," asserted Findekáno. "If we say I will take only the fearless, they will all scramble to volunteer."

The face of the water began to steam, then cloud. Galadriel turned away from the Mirror and raised her hand. The ring on her finger still gleamed silver-gold, its white stone glittering. But it no longer thrummed with the power she had guarded and wielded for nearly 5000 years.

"It is done," she told Celeborn. "The Ring is destroyed."

"And must you go, vanimelda?" he forced out, low voice scratching.

"There is no other choice for me now," she sighed. "I wish you would travel with me on this last long voyage."

"It is not my time," he reminded her.