Long, White Knives by sallysavestheday

Long, White Knives

Read Long, White Knives

Galadriel bites.

When her urge to be heard outpaces her words, or when the conversation takes place far above, and those who are taller forget her. She clamps her small teeth into robes and tunics and sashes, tugging and growling.  

When justice evades her: a bedtime too soon; a cake for tomorrow; a kitten for Angrod, because he behaves. She nips and snarls, catching fingers with the prick of her ivory darts, and then howling.

When her idiot brothers call her a baby, and her idiot cousins come looking for trouble, and her idiot uncle asks for her hair!  She stuffs her own sleeves into her mouth, gripping and scowling.

When she loses a race. When she answers her tutors' questions incorrectly. When she can’t quite grasp the angle of the tool she is using, or is slightly behind the balance of a blade. She turns her fury inward, eventually; her lips grow rough and ragged from her gnawing.

Finrod carries sweets in his pockets to fight the same impulse: soft caramels and sticky toffees and smooth, springy licorice. He slips them to his sister when the clouds gather on her brow, forestalling storms with an opportunity to chew and chew and chew. He watches with fond understanding as her jaws work and the frustration passes.

She returns the favor as they grow older, when court audiences degenerate into shouting, and at family gatherings when their cousins’ foolishness spills into something worse. Finrod smiles and smiles, mouth closed, lips pulled tight across his teeth. The long muscle at the side of his face leaps, but he is not hungry. Galadriel passes him things to bite into, anyway; she hands him figs and grapes and pastries with a wry, complicit grin.

On the Helacaraxë they share leather, then strips cut thin from the skins of seals to worry between their teeth. Better that than to speak her mind. Better that than to tell what he has foreseen.

They part tenderly in Middle-earth, each to their own kingdom. Melian’s tutoring helps Galadriel soften her jaw, allows her to breathe her rancor into the ground and away from her face. And now, when she nips and snaps, Celeborn groans, and pulls her closer, and stops her nibbling with kisses.

She believes she has grown past it: the jaw-tightening, mouthwatering rage.

But when the news comes from Nargothrond, she bites her own arms, her hands, her hair, her teeth like knives glinting as she howls, cursing the Valar, screaming for Finrod, furiously rattling the bars of her cage.