Clear Pebbles of the Rain by StarSpray

Two

It was dark, and it was cold. Maglor was frozen in place, unable to move, unable to make a sound as before him suddenly arose a great Eye, lidless and yellow as a cat’s, wreathed in red flame. It was searching, seeking—not for him, but he was caught in its gaze. The pupil widened as its focus bore down on him like a physical weight. He could not breathe. Distantly he heard laughter like the roar of a wildfire. 

He woke with a start, gasping for breath. His face hurt, lips swollen and tender with their healing wounds, and his jaw aching and stiff. The room was dark, except for a small lamp that cast a soft golden glow over the rugs, but that only deepened other shadows, and at the end of his bed Maglor glimpsed his brother, ghostly, watching him, before someone else leaned over him. “Maglor? It’s all right. It was only a dream.” Elladan. Or Elrohir. In the dark it was hard to tell which twin, and still Maglor thought first of Elrond or of Elros. He was trembling all over, and unable to explain that it had not only been a dream. 

The lamp brightened, just enough that Maglor could look up and see that it was Elladan and not Elrohir—and when he looked back into the dark corner, Maedhros was not there. He let out a shaky breath. Elladan squeezed his shoulder before turning to put water over a brazier to heat. Maglor closed his eyes and let himself sink back into the pillows. 

Nothing felt quite real—or, no, that wasn’t right. He did not feel real. The pillows and the blankets, and the windowsill and the wall—they were all solid enough. But it was still a surprise when he reached out to touch them and found himself equally solid, for he felt untethered and strange, as though he would dissolve at any moment with a stray breeze through the open window. No wind came through it then, but he heard a strange sound outside, a soft pattering that it took several moments for him to recognize. Rain. He struggled to sit up, pain and fear momentarily forgotten. It was raining. He could feel it on his hand when he reached out, cool and wet and clean. He could smell it, too, damp wood and leaves and the fresh scent of the rain itself. If he had had the strength he would have climbed fully through the window just to feel it on his face. 

“Maglor?” Elladan sat by him on the bed. He had a bowl of steaming water in which he had dropped athelas. It was fresh and clean smelling, and when he used it to clean the scabs on Maglor’s lips that he’d somehow managed to reopen, it helped to ease the pain. Elladan caught Maglor’s face in his hand afterward, looking into his eyes as though searching for something. Maglor did not know what he thought he would find. Whatever he saw, Elladan said nothing of it, but there was a grief behind his eyes that Maglor did not think had anything to do with him. It was an old sadness. If he had been able to speak—if he had been other than he now was—he might have asked about it. But he couldn’t, and he wasn’t. 

Weariness rose up in him as Elladan moved away, setting aside the water and dimming the lamp again. The rain continued to fall outside, as comforting as a song that Maglor had once known but had long forgotten; the sound of it lulled him to sleep, and filled his dreams until, upon waking, he almost thought that he could recall the sound of the Sea. 

Morning brought an end to the rain, and bright sunshine to make the raindrops on the golden leaves outside his window glitter, as though someone had tossed diamonds all over them. Maglor found himself waking alone, and sat himself up to lean on the windowsill, looking out of it properly for the first time. He was startled to find tree branches both above and below, and no sign of the ground. The tree branches were of a smooth, silvery wood, and all the leaves were that same bright golden color. On a sudden whim he reached out to pluck one off the nearest branch. It came easily, as though the tree were glad to let him have it. Water drops rained down onto the boughs below, and Maglor leaned back inside. It was autumn, and the air was cool—not unbearable to most, he thought, but he found the warmth of the blankets welcome. He was shaking from the effort it had taken to sit up and even just to reach out his hand, but he could ignore that in favor of marveling at the leaf in his hands, at the crisp smoothness of it, and the brilliance of its color. There was something familiar about it, but he could not recall its name. He had forgotten much of what he’d once known of trees, and the shapes of their leaves, and the quiet music of their thoughts.

“Malinornë,” said a voice from the doorway. Maglor started. He had not heard it open. When he looked over he stilled, fingers losing their grip on the leaf stem. Galadriel stood there, and suddenly the power that he had felt striving against Sauron in Dol Guldur, and the power that held sway over this place, was made clear to him. Of course it was hers. She stood with her hands clasped loosely before her, her hair in a simple braid laid over her shoulder. Maglor met her gaze and looked away, though he thought that she had seen into him already. “Tar-Aldarion gifted the first seeds to Gil-galad, long ago,” she said, and for a moment he wasn’t sure what she meant, until his gaze landed again on the leaf. “They would not grow in Lindon, so he gave them to me, and I planted them here.” 

Maglor picked up the leaf again, rubbing his thumb over the thin veins branching out from the stem. He recalled them now, from his youth long ago and far away in Valinor. They grew in towering groves there, most beautiful in the spring when the golden leaves fell at last, to be replaced by equally golden flowers, so that all was gold and silver above and below. They had been most beautiful at Mingling. He had never seen them under the Sun until now. 

Galadriel moved into the room to sit beside the bed. Someone had cut Maglor’s hair, ridding him of the matted uneven snarls of it, but he wished that it was longer so that he might have something to hide behind. They had never been close, she the youngest of Finwë’s grandchildren and he almost the eldest. And now—she had surpassed them all in power and in wisdom, that was clear from the timbre of her voice and the way that she carried herself, all quiet assurance. The fiery pride of her youth had been banked, burning lower but steadier, here in this golden realm that she had planted and tended. And Maglor? He had diminished as she had grown, and now he did not even have the voice for which he had been known. After all that he had done and all of the years that had passed since, he did not know why she seemed so ready to welcome him there into her realm. 

Perhaps it was for Elrond’s sake, though Maglor could not imagine Elrond offering him such a welcome either, after all this time. His sons, then—they seemed to be remarkably forgiving, or perhaps were young enough that it was all so distant as to not matter to them. 

“Elladan tells me you have not spoken since you came here,” Galadriel said after a few moments in which he could feel her gaze on him. He did not look up. “He believes it is something the Enemy has done to you.” She reached out to touch his face, careful of his mouth, her thumb brushing lightly over the scar a stray whip crack had left, long before. “Is that so?” He nodded, and heard her sigh. “Oh, Macalaurë. I am sorry.” She spoke in the Quenya of their youth, and the sound of its made tears prick his eyes. Maglor closed them as Galadriel withdrew her hand. “We did not know you were there. Had I known, I would have acted sooner, regardless of what Curunír said.” 

That did make him look up, startled. Galadriel met his gaze, and a look of deep sadness passed over her face at whatever she saw there. He didn’t understand it. “I would be the last to deny that you have done terrible things,” she said, reaching out again, this time to place her hand over his. Her touch was soft and warm. “But what has happened to you is beyond any punishment that you could deserve. Even your long isolation is too much. It is long since I have forgiven you, but even if I had not, I would never knowingly leave anyone in the hands of the Enemy. Least of all my own kin. Nor would Elrond,” she added, and at that Maglor did look away. “He spent many years seeking you. Did you know? Elros searched, too, before he left for Númenor.”

He had not known. His chest felt tight, and the tears that had threatened before now spilled over, the room blurring before him. Without thinking he raised his hands to cover his face, but his jaw and his lips were still sore, and touching them only made it worse. 

“Telperinquar searched, too,” Galadriel went on. “He kept a place for you in Ost-in-Edhil for many years, hoping that you would make your way to the city.” Maglor could only shake his head. He didn’t want to think of Celebrimbor—to think of him was to remember what he endured at the end, and Maglor couldn’t bear it. “And I searched for you, but could never see more than mist over the shore. You kept yourself too well hidden.”

He had not thought that he was hiding, though he had never wanted to be found. He had just…wandered, with no real destination and no real thought beyond where he might camp the next night, or what he might manage to get for food. Sometimes he came upon villages or cities of Men, and they were always willing to trade for his songs, but he had avoided Elves where he could. They would not have been so welcoming. It had never occurred to him that anyone might look for him. Elrond and Elros had been better off with Gil-galad than they ever had been with him, and with Maedhros gone there had been no one else who had cared what became of him. 

Even Maedhros had not cared, in the end—not been enough to keep him from the fire. 

Maglor tried to swallow the bitterness that threatened to rise up and choke him. He’d thought he could leave it behind in Dol Guldur along with the impenetrable darkness of its dungeons, but perhaps it had been in him all along, buried deep beneath the surface so that even he had forgotten it, and Sauron had only known how to bring it to the surface. 

And now here was Galadriel, offering both kindness and protection that he did not deserve and did not know how to accept. He did not even know if she would allow him to leave this place, or if he had only traded a cage of dark stone for one of gold and silver boughs. 

She sighed, seeming to catch the direction of his thoughts. “I am no jailer, Macalaurë. I will not keep you here, but you are not well. I do not know if it is within my power to restore your voice.” He felt her hand in his hair, combing briefly through the short strands. “For now, you need only to sleep, and to eat, and to let yourself be cared for. Elladan and Elrohir must depart today on an errand, escorting Radagast back to his home in Rhosgobel; one of my handmaidens will care for you in their absence. Her name is Eleryn; she once dwelt in Eregion.” With the soft rustle of her skirts she rose. Maglor lifted his head to watch her go; at the door she stopped to look back at him. “I know what you dreamed of last night,” she said. He flinched. “I see him, too—but he will not find you here. Not while I remain the Lady of Lórien.” And with that, she departed. 

In the quiet, Maglor wiped the tears from his face, and looked back down at the mallorn leaf. He picked it up, rubbing his fingers over the surface for a moment. Then he reached out of the window and let it fall, drifting gently to the ground somewhere far below.