In My End Is My Beginning by Lilith

A Place to Take Root and Flower

Celeborn, Galadriel and Celebrimbor arrive at the site of Ost-in-Edhil.

Written for the B2BMeM Prompt: He was interested in roots and beginnings ...

This chapter also serves as the beginning of "Here, Where We Are."

He was interested in roots and beginnings. Well, Celeborn supposed, as he watched his wife and her cousin standing near the confluence of the two great rivers, someone had to be. He was wise enough to recognize the irony in the statement, given that the journey the three of them and those who’d followed them over the mountains from Lindon and across the vast plains and through the forests of Middle Earth had been undertaken with the hope of a new beginning and the desire to find a place to put down roots. But neither his wife nor the cousin who followed her or whom she followed — he was never entirely sure which of the two drew the other along — had been overly interested in roots or beginnings. They had been, however, fascinated with endings, that of Morgoth and those of the Sons of Fëanor whose choices shaped the destiny of the last of that house and, with his destiny, that of Galadriel. 

Galadriel.
His wife.
Whom he loved and for whom reason he was here with a people not his own and accompanied by the son of one who’d destroyed his home.

Galadriel had first begged him not to set out further east, towards his kin among the Sindar. She’d hoped to persuade him to make a home with her among her kinsmen in Lindon. He had agreed. He knew his wife and knew she would not be entirely content among the roots and the trees, among the vines and the trailing leaves. He understood her, better than most, and he knew she needed the conversation of her kinsmen, of those who sought to shape the woods, sculpt stone and mold the land. He had known, too, whose company it was, among her kin, that she truly craved. He had recognized that inconvenient truth as soon as he’d met him, ragged and worn, lacking shoes or a cloak, holding together by force of will and with no small amount of courage, the last of those who’d followed his house. He’d led them, guided them and ensured they survived, even though he had not been long with them and even though they were seldom welcome and though they rarely had enough to eat or time to rest. 

Celeborn hadn’t liked him. He hadn’t liked Celebrimbor. They had little in common. Moreover, both the look in Celebrimbor’s eyes when he’d seen Galadriel and the ferocity with which Galadriel had embraced him had ensured it would be difficult for Celeborn to care for him as he should for one of his wife’s kin. 

But, though he had not yet grown to like him, he had grown to respect him for his courage and for his determination to face the past and not to hide. He’d grown to respect him still more (and perhaps liked him less) when he saw that Celebrimbor did not — would not — begrudge Galadriel her happiness or her marriage and had embraced Celeborn as best he could, often and frustratingly taking his side or acting as his intermediary in the frequent conflicts and misunderstandings that defined the nature of his marriage to Galadriel. 

He had wondered, sometimes, had his wife been reunited with her cousin earlier, when he’d grown from a youth to a man, or if they’d not been such close kin, if the tale would have been a different one. But she hadn’t and they remained too close to wed. Besides, he did not want to think much of it in any case. He loved his wife, and he was unsure he could have accepted the choices of her heart with the same grace her kinsman had. So he had been willing to stay in Lindon in order for her to be content, though he knew he would always miss the great trees and forests of the east and that he would not understand the need she had to be near someone whose past was so haunted and whose doom followed so very close behind, and stay he’d thought they would. So it seemed, at least until it became clear that many among those seeking refuge in Lindon had neither forgiven nor forgotten the Sons of Fëanor nor would forgive their heir the sins he’d not committed. Then she had asked him, quietly, as they lay abed if he still wished to travel to the east. He had almost asked her for whose sake they traveled and if she would have chosen to go had she not needed to protect her cousin and wished to offer him a new beginning. He did not ask. He saw no purpose in such a question, only pain. 

They’d set out then, as soon as the weather permitted and the stores they needed for the journey were made available. The High King had come to see them off, and he had not seemed surprised. He’d ceded land to them or, rather, he’d ceded it to Galadriel, noting that she now had her realm to rule. Celeborn had found it amusing. The land the High King offered was none Gil-Galad had held or settled or could. It would have to be claimed from the wilderness or from those who’d already settled it. As such, it was no subtraction from his realm, but rather an addition, a firmer foothold in the east, to it. The journey had not been easy, but it had not been as hard as it might. Its end found them here, in this narrow triangle of land between two great rivers.

“The rivers will be good for trade,” his wife said. They had come near as he’d sat and thought.

“And for defense,” her cousin observed.

“And for crops,” he added.

“Will it?” Celebrimbor asked, kneeling beside him. “I haven’t your sense for it. I don’t think I ever will.”

“Perhaps not,” Celeborn replied. He lifted a handful of rich, dark soil and let it fall gently into the other man’s outstretched hand before closing his fingers around it. “But you’ve chosen well. The soil here is rich and good. It will allow for many things, including us, to take root and to flower.”