Beauty in Dark Places by chrissystriped

Beauty in Dark Places

Celebrían loved caves.

Her father had always thought with a shudder of when they’d left Ost-in-Edhil for Lórien and had travelled through the mines of the dwarves. Now, any dwarf would likely feel insulted to have their home compared to a mere cave, but that journey had woken Celebrían’s interest in the hidden depth of the mountains.

She’d been fascinated by the swirls and patterns the different layers of rock and ore made in the walls, had even tried to paint them from memory, when they’d been settled in Lórien, but it had never looked quite right to her. She wanted to see the real thing again, but after Cousin Celebrimbor’s death and during the war against Sauron, the dwarves had closed their doors fast.

Only when she’d wed Elrond and come to Imladris had she had the opportunity to go under the earth again. Her husband had been worried, orcs were common in the Misty Mountains, and had sent soldiers with her the first few times. She’d suffered it, not wanting to fight with him over this — she understood he only wanted to know her save — but after years she knew what she was doing, felt instinctively which caves were save, and he’d finally agreed to let her go alone.

She squeezed through a narrow part, the walls slippery with wetness and lifted her lamp as she felt the tunnel open up around her. Celebrían took in the sight before her. A pond spread out in the middle of the cave, surrounded by stalactites and stalagmites, drops falling down from the ceiling and rippling the water periodically. Something moved in the water as the light fell on it, a pale fish that fled from the sudden brightness it had never witnessed before.

Celebrían relished the feeling of seeing something, no elf had seen before her. She set down the lamp beside her and pulled her sketchbook from her satchel and started to draw the cave into the map she’d started of this cave system, later she’d walk around the perimeter and see if there was another exit, but right now she wanted to draw the cave — the pond and the stalactites. She spread her cloak on the smooth, slightly damp floor and sat down, flipping the pages until she found an empty one.

“You should have been born a dwarf”, Elrond sometimes teased her, when she gushed over her findings, but he understood that she was doing it simply for the beauty she saw. Few did. Most people asked for the scientific value of her explorations. (Noldor! Celebrían rolled her eyes.) That she went to these places for no other reason than that it made her heart leap with joy to see nature bring forth such beauty  was strange to them. Even her map was only for the benefit of finding her way out again. Celebrían sketched on. Someday she’d be good enough to make her pictures speak for her, to let people see what she loved so much about these deep dark places.