Visitation by Elleth

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Chapter 1

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She receives the summons in a dream.

The clouds roll back to reveal a brilliant sky. Sweet Alatáriel, the stars murmur, and pour their light into the waiting vessel of her mirror.

Galadriel remembers the voice, through the cloud upon the years behind her, and knows at once who calls to her. She rises and makes her way into the mirror glade, and looks into the silver bowl on its pedestal. The stars reflected there shiver and re-arrange into a well-beloved face lit as a constellation across the sky. “Alatáriel,” Varda says again. “I must speak with thee.”

But it is not love nor gratitude Galadriel feels. Anger roils cool within her stomach, grief of years upon years that she slaved and loved and lost in through the Long Defeat, and she stands with her breath catching in her throat, her hands clenched around the mirror’s bowl until it goes dark again, reflecting only Galadriel’s implacable face.

“A way should open to me,” she says to the water, which ripples like the sea under her breath. “I have passed every test set before me, even that of the Ruling Ring. I have resolved to depart when I am given leave. What more is there that I must do?”

From behind her, a hand reaches to cup her face. It is Varda, but in elven form, and although she stands as tall as Galadriel herself, it is strange to see her so humbled as to assume a raiment of flesh and blood, so that any who might pass her garden so late at night would merely see Galadriel converse with another woman, and not know that the Queen of the Valier has come to Lothlórien, however brief.

Varda’s pulse thrums softly in the palm she rests on Galadriel’s cheek.

“If thou wilt not speak with me through thy mirror, then I must come to thee.”

She loathes the touch, and yet closes her eyes against the long-remembered blessings it bestows and that she has sorely missed. Yet Varda’s hands are the ones that have drowned her homeward path in mist and shadow for so long, and permission to return, surely, would take other shape, perhaps simply that of a ship waiting for Galadriel when at last she makes her way to the Havens?

She half-turns toward Varda.

“What would you say to me? Speak quickly, for my people will look to me in the morning and I would be rested then. I am awake, am I not?” The reverence that would, long ago, have had Galadriel bend her head and knees is now barely enough to muster the deferential Quenya forms that befit Varda. Varda’s familiar - intimate, even - language sends chills across her skin like frost on a clear night.

“Thou art awake, yes. And I would not come to thee if the tidings were not urgent.”

“Then you have come for the Quest of the Ring, but are too late. They went down the river this morn.” Some tension shifts and loosens in her body, and Galadriel lets her hands drop to her side, opening her eyes again. It will be easier if this does not concern her - no false hope for the perennial exile, although against her will disappointment joins the gamut of her emotions.

Yet Varda smiles. “The task of the Fellowship is not what concerns me here. Their journey I may not meddle with, but thine is almost come to an end. It is urgent because I heard thy laments. Thy test is passed. Thou hast rejected the Enemy utterly and to the last. Thy ban is lifted. Return home, Alatáriel.”

The hand caresses her cheek while Galadriel stands dumbfounded. The words seem to echo in her head and although the meaning is clear, she does not know what to feel.

Perhaps she should feel a rush of wild joy that weakens her knees, for Varda is granting her greatest desire, but now that Galadriel has certainty, her breath escapes her in a rush of ungrateful, angry words and she all but curses the hand that would open her homeward path, and might summon and speed the ship that she had not dared hope for:

“Have you come to take me to Aman, then? Uproot me from these woods I made my home, leave unprotected what I shelter? Would you humble me, for the same reason that I was banished - that you will it so?” But even through her anger, Galadriel knows the accusation to be false. Her younger self, eager for lands and glory of her own, and unaware of the burdens, might have spoken so, but now the words lie bitter on her tongue.

Varda, it seems, also knows this. She does not look grieved, nor very surprised at the outburst.

“This at least is what always was, that I may counsel thee and even command thee, but may not compel thee against thy will, Alatáriel. The choice to come lies with thee, I merely bear the summons. I would refill the cup for thee, and the mead is sweet indeed, but thou art the one who must drink. Set in order thy realm before the leave-taking. A few scant years of thy task remain, but they will pass swiftly now. Thy toils are nearly done.”

“What do you know of my task, or my toils?”

“Oh, sweet one,” Varda says, and her eyes spill with tears suddenly, each drop shining like a star and leaving a trace of light upon her cheeks. Galadriel feels compelled to reach out, wipe them away, or catch them in a vial that would shame the light of Eärendil that she gave to the Ringbearer, but keeps her hands stubbornly at her side.

“Oh, sweet one,” Varda repeats. “Taniquetil affords a long view. Thy plight grieves me now as it has always done, but I do not begrudge thee thy anger. I know that thy exile was hard on thee, and thou hast come near breaking. But surely after all this time and all thou hast wrought, thou canst see why thy pardon was so long in coming for rejecting the West when Thangorodrim fell, and again before the loss of Tyelperinquar. We knew that in thy heart thou hadst longing that might yet have driven thee over the sea before thy time, and so thou hadst to remain exiled. For thine were the pride, the hands and the counsel that directed many of the courses of the Ages of these Hither Lands. Thou only couldst have wrought that. The losses that thou hast suffered and the wisdom thou hast gained made thee the prime instrument in the Song against the Dark Lord. There is nothing that needs forgiveness.”

Coolly, standing rooted to her spot against the rising urge to flee, or at least to move and have a semblance of escape, Galadriel replies, “My exile was a necessary evil, then, you are saying. Do you not think I would have stayed in the lands I have poured my all into? Did you doubt me so, or the love of the Elves to their works and their lands, so that my pride needed humbling and humbling again? Did you learn nothing from Fëanáro, whose equal I was once thought to be, and what terror he unleashed for love of his works?”

Another tear rolls over Varda’s cheek before her crying ceases. She makes room for Galadriel to move at last, although her hand remains where it has been, still resting on Galadriel’s cheek - but lightly, almost as though it is not there at all, and Galadriel might pull away if she wanted.

She does not, and Varda looks straight into her eyes. Galadriel forces herself to endure it, a light that she remembers filling the halls of Ilmarin upon Taniquetil. Her own eyes begin to water, and yet she dares not blink.

“How could any forget? But thou, Alatáriel, hast long surpassed him. Thou hast learned that at last there must be a letting go, a fading of thy golden elanor and all else. Thy exile was not a lesson in humility by our intent. It is the course of the world to be an exercise in it, and to understand that what should be shall be. I heard thee say so to the Ringbearer. What way the tides shall turn now I may not say, but whether the Shadow falls or rises, there is no more need for thee to be strong and to endure a burden thou hast long grown tired of bearing.”

In answer, Galadriel pulls herself up straighter. A pillar, she thinks, once more willing herself to stand still. Her words have already given away far too much of what she truly feels. There is no need to reveal yet more.

Her hands clench into the fabric of her dress. Varda’s eyes flicker toward the movement.

Galadriel releases a heavy breath.

“Not so tired that I would not bear it all this time again, if the need arose,” she says in a last, gentle protest, but then lowers her head, whether in acknowledgement of Varda’s words, or weariness. Which it is, or whether it may be both, she cannot say. The pillar crumbles.

A glint of light through the trees, one of the silver lamps in Caras Galadhon, catches on Nenya as though to remind Galadriel of the land that has become her home. As though she needs reminding of what she is giving up. But if the Shadow is indeed passing, as she thinks it may be at the hands of the meek, then there is no more need for her light, either, lest that cast something darker yet.

“But in parting, will there be bliss at the end of the journey for me?” she asks quietly, subdued at last, her anger gone.

“That, also, depends on thee. There are those thou lovest there who are waiting for thee. Thy mother and father, thy brothers, thy daughter who has healed from her ordeal. And there may be those of thy folk who would pass over the Sea with thee. Thou wouldst not be alone.”

“And would I be welcome, or the least of all who dwell in the Blessed Realm?”

Varda’s hand leaves her cheek, at last. “Turn around,” she says, and when Galadriel stands, facing her mirror again, she feels her hair being braided, gently and swiftly, tress by tress, by Varda’s nimble fingers.

Galadriel shivers, no longer from cold or revulsion. Varda is gentle carding through her hair and gathering it up, and where her fingers brush Galadriel’s scalp, they leave warmth.

“You will return a queen in all you wrought, in honour, not disgrace - you were always a lady of a high house, but now there is no longer any doubt that you have proved yourself not merely of high birth, but high grace indeed,” Varda says, and Galadriel’s breath hitches at the sudden change in her speech, no longer the familiar form, but one more formal, acknowledging her station. This at last fills her with the warm, wild joy that Varda’s coming has so far lacked, and she laughs freely.

Still Varda’s hands are working in her hair, now fixing the braids into a wreath around her head, and Galadriel watches in the rippling water of her mirror how she becomes crowned with the radiant garland of her youth that gave her her name.

When Varda has finished with her hair, she reaches out her hand toward the water of the mirror. It ripples under her touch to at last reveal a ship, white and swan-like, gliding out of Mithlond into a golden sunset. And then the presence is gone in a glimmer, leaving Galadriel alone in her garden at night.

But not for long now. Not long.