"Well, my Lord," Daeron unplaited the end of one of his sable braids and plaited it again, nervously, "What think you?"

Celeborn brushed his fingers over the white marble table and brought them away faintly gritty with dust. The strange, angular carvings, which stood out black against the pale expanse, seemed to hold some meaning not only for his friend, but for the naugrim, Fali, who stood beside him. "I think a bird has run across the snow," he said at last, well aware that his ignorance was pleasing them both.

"It says 'King Thingol owns me, Fali shaped me, Daeron of Doriath made me speak.'" Daeron put both of his long hands down on the table, tracing the shapes of the symbols while his untethered braid unwound, making him look charmingly dishevelled, as if he'd been dancing.

"Now you cozen me!" Celeborn laughed, delighted by the mystery, "How can scratches on stone speak?"

"Each of these signs," Fali bent over and traced further runes in the dust, "Stands for a sound." His beard - the vibrant brown of autumn bracken - swept a space clean, and the golden bands which decorated his intricately twisted moustache clicked musically against the stone. "See this one is 'teh', and this is 'ng'."

"Little pebbles of sound," Daeron interrupted eagerly, his quietness loosing in the ardour of his craft, "Like the pebbles of the mosaic in the Hall of Two Trees. Each one is simple, but pattern them together and you have a scene. These are - if you like - the mosaic tiles of speech."

"Captured words..." Celeborn followed the carvings with his fingertips, feeling the bends and angles as his mind turned over the thought. "This is your idea?"

Daeron nodded, shy, immensely proud, waiting for approval.

"It is astonishing!" He looked up just in time to catch Daeron's incredulous smile - a flash of joy bright and brief as a salmon leaping in a stream - before the minstrel, released by praise, leapt into explanation.

"You esteem it overmuch, Lord. I call it the Cirth. It is but a toy I made for the Naugrim - you see the letters are designed to be easily carved on stone. Fali here and his brother...?"

"Modi," said the dwarf.

"Were arguing about the name of one of their legendary heroes. And no-one was left alive who knew him, because they only live for a few hundred years... So it seemed to me that if there was some way to...to crystallize memory, then the Naugrim could carve their names into stone, and thereby preserve them unchanged." Daeron's flow of words faltered. He looked up with fading pleasure. "But as the Quendi live forever, and our recall is flawless, I know not what use it would have for us, but as a curious game."

Celeborn looked down at Daeron's face - a purely Sindar heritage written in the fine bones and the almost breakable delicacy - and wondered if there was any way he could convince him of his genius. If Luthien would but praise him he would open like a white flower, and be radiant for her. But she will not. And he will not accept it from me. The braid unlooped once more, and, with main effort, he stopped himself from tugging it. The gesture had been an habitual sign of affection between them when they were playing together as children, but was no longer appropriate between adults. "You misprize yourself, my friend. It comes to my mind that the minstrels of the Green-folk and the wanderers in Ossiriand never stop begging you to visit and teach them your songs. I know it grieves you that you cannot."

Daeron looked down at his hands, knotted in the fabric of his plain green robe, "You know why I can't go."

Because you had rather torture yourself by singing for Luthien. "I know. And, though I understand it not at all, for our friendship's sake I will say nothing more about it. But see, here you have a device with which to go to them, even while you stay."

Relieved to be free of the subject of his obsession, Daeron giggled, "I can hardly send them great blocks of stone, my lord!"

"No, but you could use birch bark, and paint these symbols thereon with a brush."

"I could." Winglike and fine-drawn, the minstrel's black eyebrows swooped into a frown of thought, "Or linen, mayhap...and I would need to devise some way of representing the melody..."

"And I could use it in Court. If we had some record of what was said, we would not have to bring three witnesses to forswear every liar, or remind debtors of what they had 'forgotten' they had agreed to. Witnesses can be suborned. This cannot."

"I see a demand for jewellery, also." Fali broke in, "How much more satisfactory if your Lord can look on a gift you give him and see your name. Or a wife wear her husband's name clasped around her wrist."

Celeborn laughed, thinking he understood why Daeron had picked this particular naugrim to work with. "You are a romantic, Master Dwarf!" Fali's head, when standing, came barely to the Prince's waist, so it was difficult to look him in the eyes. He had to step back to do so. "In fact, you have given me an idea. These things..." Crouching, he reached out to touch one of the dwarf's beard-clips, only to have Fali rear back from him in agitation and plain fury. At the look in the dwarf's eyes, Celeborn was at first insulted, and then confused.

"Forgive me, Fali. I meant no offence. What have I done?"

"No-one touches a dwarf's beard except..."

Now the poor creature was further humiliated by having to explain why he had given insult to a Prince of Doriath, without revealing in his explanation any secrets about his kind.

Understanding dawned, uncomfortably. "Oh...I see. Do you think of it...as we feel about our hair?" The length and thickness of an elf's hair was a sign of beauty, vitality, strength, and they were reluctant to allow any but parents and lovers to touch it. In the name of Elbereth! Celeborn was embarrassed himself, talking about such things with the Stunted One. Who would have thought they had any such refinement? "I had no idea your customs were similar to our own in this. Please accept my apologies."

Fali nodded, though he still looked sullen. Celeborn took a firm hold of his temper, refusing to exacerbate his lapse in tact with pettiness over the grudging reply. "I meant only to examine the clip," he explained, "I thought to order a pair, with a line from Daeron's poetry inscribed between them, perhaps in jewels. What do you think - silver and sapphire, or gold and emerald?"

The prospect of a sale lightened the dwarf's face far more successfully than the apology. "Gold is always a more acceptable present than silver."

"It depends on the Lady," said Daeron, wide eyed, "Whether she is dark or fair." He gave a sly, teasing smile, releasing the tension as expertly as he might pluck a lute. "Who is she, Celeborn? You have kept very quiet about this. If I am the first to hear, then I have news to shake the foundations of Menegroth, and I want to proclaim it."

The thought that his marital status was in any way important to Menegroth made him want to laugh, but he could not quite resist teasing his friend. "Well," he said, unable to keep the mirth out of his voice, though he tried, "She has dark hair, and is as fair as a lily in starlight. She lives by the sea and we see each other too rarely, for I am her favourite thing in all Ennor. Oh, apart from honey cakes and certain types of snail."

Daeron laughed, disappointed but amused. He smirked at Fali. "He means his niece, Nimloth."

"I do indeed. Gold it is then, for silver is as common as dew in the streets of the Falas. I only wish we could send your Cirth into the West, Daeron, for folk to marvel at it there as I marvel. For today you have changed the world."

"I do not deserve..."

"For me to go out into the woods and risk my life hunting boar, so you can have bristles for all the brushes you'll need? I dare say you don't, but I will do it anyway, if you promise me one of the first collections of your captured songs."

"I need to work on the notation of music first..." An idea smote Daeron almost as visibly as lightning. He sank onto a stool by the table and began drawing in the dust. Recognizing the signs of inspiration, and fearing to disturb them, Celeborn left silently. As he turned to go through the door, he thought he saw the naugrim's face settle back into resentment, and sighed to himself. They are quick tempered, and slow to forgive. But, since he had apologized, and made a bargain to enrich the creature, there didn't seem anything further he could do. He set the small unpleasantness aside, and went out to find his huntsmen.

"Yet not a half-year ago you said the path was lined with caltrops, and both your horse and yourself were lamed." Celeborn glanced sideways at the scribe and received a small nod of affirmation. "How do you account for this extraordinary reversal? Were you lying to the Court then, or are you lying now?"

For the first time in this sorry affair Mordir had the grace to look taken aback. He gathered up the swinging length of his belt and fingered the ornate strap-end, while his eyes darted from the guards to the grim faces of his audience. Celeborn took a sip of water and waited for the heavy silence to do its work. He could not allow himself to smile, but inwardly he could taste satisfaction. This sordid case was almost at an end. The next question would settle it. "So, son of Morduin, tell me..."

"Lord Celeborn!" The great doors of the Hall of Doom trembled on their hinges as Daeron tried to push them full open in speed. Victory slipped out of Celeborn's hands like grasped water, but he was already on his feet, fists clenched on the haft of the axe which had lain across his knees in symbol of authority. "Morgoth's creatures attack?"

"No. No...I did not mean to alarm." Daeron's robe was awry, his eyes wide and uncertain, as one who enters a dark room after a place of many lamps. "Celeborn you must come. There is a wonder...a wonder on the edge of the world. I hardly know how to speak of it. The King bids you come." He turned, still squinting, though the courtroom was well lit, to face the many petitioners who waited for judgement. "You must all come."

Celeborn sighed Alas that the wonder could not have waited five minutes more. "As the King commands," he said. He leaned down to the captain of his warriors. "Bring Mordir also, that this marvel may keep his mind from further creativity in his evidence."

"My lord." The Captain grinned.

Celeborn slipped the axe into his belt. Too often any strange sign in the woods of Ennor later proved to be of the Enemy's devising, and was straitly followed by bloodshed. He would not go unprepared, not even if Daeron's face was as dazzled as if Luthien had smiled on him.

Folk were pouring out of Menegroth as if it was on fire. Corridors were a dappled river of lamplight, satin and flowing shadows. Shade should have deepened as they came to the pillared vastness of the First Hall. Here few lamps were lit, lest light should spill forth into the starlit woods, betraying the secret realm's existence to evil things. Lamp and candle should dim, twilight fall, darkness embrace the traveller like cool silk, so that emerging into the woods of Doriath was like plunging from clamour into silence. Over all the dark trees and shivering fountains only the stars should shine, remote and holy.

"What is this?" The crowd had parted for Celeborn and, with his longer strides, he had drawn ahead of his following. At the base of the front stair he paused to allow them to catch up. Here, where it should have been dark as the inside of a helmet, there was a strange, grey glimmer which lit the walls and poured like cloud down into the citadel.

"It has grown!" Very fair Daeron's face seemed in the new light - all narrow strokes of steel and pearl. Surely, Celeborn thought, the Enemy could make no beauty. This could not be an attack after all. Surely it could not.

"Come," he said, allowing himself excitement, "Show me."

Following the minstrel, Celeborn found Melian and Thingol on the crown of the tallest hill. A great press of folk were about them. They sat in slight chairs, clearly brought in haste, and were canopied only by the cloaks of their nobles set upon an arch of spears. Their faces shone with the light of Valinor - majesty become visible - and jewels made pinpricks of brilliance in their hair and garb, yet as Celeborn walked towards them he saw that they were no longer the most radiant things in Ennor; they were overshadowed by the sky. The light about him was the colour of pared lead, and a shadow streamed out before him, moving as he did. He knew not whether to feel foreboding or joy. All things seemed strange, and still the light grew.

Tall and terrible and glorious was King Elu Thingol, greatest of the elven-kings of Middle Earth, and the regard Celeborn had for him was that of son and subject both; awe, mingled with love. When he looked close he could see no diminishment by comparison with the light; only, as with Daeron, a new form of beauty. He went down on one knee. "Your command, my lord?"

"Rise, nephew, and see it."

Obeying, at last he turned eagerly to see the wonder, looked out over forest which fell away in swells of indigo and dark. There, in the West, the sky had become as polished slate, and a line of molten silver smouldered at the edge of the world. As he watched it moved, spilling over trees, shimmering in the mists over Esgalduin. A curve was uplifted over the horizon, as of some vessel which burned like a thousand candles, serene and pale.

There were no words to describe the beauty and newness of this thing. It made his ribs ache, as if his heart desired to leap from his chest with joy. Astonishment and awe stopped his breath, and he could not speak above a whisper. "What is this miracle?"

He turned to Melian. If any would know, she would, for she was a Maia of the Blessed Realm, strong and wise. But she shook her head, her eyes glimmering, a shadow of unknown colour sliding across her smile. "I know not, my fair one." She said with answering joy, "But look, it has the colour of your hair."

The comparison was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard, freeing him to laugh out some of the painful delight. "Ah, now I see! The Powers have sent it merely to quench my vanity. I am sorely outshone."

At the levity, Thingol gave a snort of disbelief. His face was troubled. "I have no doubt the Powers sent it indeed, but why? Never have they cared for us, forsaken on the long march. Why should they begin now? That they turn their gaze to Ennor at all, I deem portends ill."

For a while all gazed in silence, and the silver light broadened, until the vessel was lifted wholly above the trees and revealed. Round as a plate, or perhaps as a ball, smooth and wondrous and unmarked as a pearl. "A Maia guides it," Melian said at last, her clear eyes fixed on the heavens, "Though he is unbodied and cannot be seen. I know him - Tilion of the Silver Bow, who hunts with Orome." Her smile became wistful, "At least I may now gaze at one of my people from afar."

"Then it is a blessing, is it not?" Celeborn asked, hating the look of homesickness which fled briefly across her face, "A sign of hope. A sign that we have not been forgotten."

"But it is blotting out the stars!" Luthien the King's daughter cried from where she sat a little apart, surrounded by her maidens. Knowing well how she loved to dance in starlight, it was easy to understand her regret. "Are we never to see their glory again?"

"Aye," Saeros the archer called, "Must the Valar intervene only to take from us what we love?"

"This is a gift, not a theft," Celeborn began. Over the past few centuries the Enemy had seemed ever present, and it was not hard to see how that threat worked fear and distrust in the Doriathrim. But it should not be permitted to take hold. He had begun to say more, but the sweetness of a harp struck across his words, and he fell silent, trustingly, when Daeron began to sing.

Justly was Daeron honoured in Doriath. All voices fell silent and all faces turned to him, as the song took to the sky like a white-winged hawk. It too - in the newborn light - was almost more beautiful than flesh would support, with a pure strength the minstrel's day by day personality belied. He told of the waters of Awakening, where the Quendi had come into being - and how strange and new everything was in the world; how every day had been filled with another wonder, another discovery. He told of the Long March, when they had followed the Valar Orome in hope of a new land. Grief overwhelmed, soft as falling snow, as he sang the Teleri's loss of their king, disappeared in the dark woods of Nan Elmoth. How kin had left them, abandoned them to go into the West, yet they, ever faithful, remained - waiting, waiting.

Ice and snow melted, and fountains of joy burst forth as he sang of Elu Thingol's return to his loyal people. How greatly the King had changed - grown yet more powerful, yet more fair, with an angelic power beside him as his Queen. And as Daeron sang the final verses, extolling the pride and brightness of the Kingdom of Doriath, other singers took up the melody with him, accepting, understanding the message of his tale.

We have survived great upheavals, Celeborn joined his voice to the counterpoint, With our honour intact. And not all changes are for the worse.

The song, like the history of which it spoke, was long, and Tilion had guided his vessel across the dome of the heavens ere it ended. He lowered now towards the eastern rim of the world. "And perhaps the stars will flower now in the west, until he comes again," said Luthien, as she sent her maidens to fetch fair white bread and wine for all.

But Melian said, "I think it is not ended. I feel, even here, an awakening, as if some other power is made ready. This is a holy day. Let us celebrate it, and wait for the sign that is to come."

So Thingol gave orders that none should work, but all await the foresight of the Queen. And the Doriathrim spent their time beneath the stars in dancing, singing and the telling of tales, and when Tilion arose they would watch his strangely wayward progress across the sky with increasing love, as comfort drew the sting from fear.

But on the seventh day the heavens were reshaped once more.

"Look!" One of the dwarves shouted as Tilion dove into the utter east, "The horizon is stained with gold."

Celeborn laid down the lute he was playing and turned to see. Revels ended abruptly across every hillside, and lovers drew together for mutual strength. Thingol, who had been winning a race, sat down quickly, to reassure his people that whatever changed, he was still there. Melian lay her hand on his arm, and Luthien came and sat by her father's feet. Daeron's singing was silenced.

Oh! The Valar had been gentle, Celeborn thought, to send Tilion first. Without his forewarning, this would have been terrifying. Climbing up the sky now, blotting out stars, was a great sheet of exultant colour. It had begun palest gold, but strengthened swiftly into white flame. Clouds were lit with citrine and topaz, or boiled, red-stained as steam lit by fire. And the sky!

"The very sky alters!" Saeros cried, his voice full of panic and disapproval.

"Blue as periwinkle," Celeborn said in reply, emphasizing his own joy, that folk could see there was nothing to fear, "And the clouds like snow. Look at the trees!"

Light strengthened, came crashing ocean-like over Beleriand. All the hidden mysteries, all the glades full of darkness and shadowed waters were shown forth like jewels in candlelight: oaks clad in emerald; beryl of new beech; willow in peridot, strung on waters that flamed like mithril. Beauty sharp as pain.

It burned still brighter, and now heat caressed his upturned face, prickling his skin. Yet astonishingly all of this was held in a vessel no larger than Tilion's. He tried to discern if it had markings of any kind, but the light was too fierce to gaze on, and when he turned to the Queen he saw through eyes in which its image marked her like soot. "Is this also one of your friends, Lady?"

"Her name is Arien, but I knew her little." Melian leaned back in her seat and exchanged a glance of mutual foreboding with her husband. "You are right, beloved. They would not have moved like this unless great changes were afoot. And whatever now passes, we cannot continue to live as we once did."

Her hair, which had been shadow, was now revealed to be glossier than ebony, and embroidered flowers of a hundred shades glowed on her raiment. Thingol's hair was as silver as the great lakes below, gleaming in the golden light. All the world shone as colourful and warm as a lamplit room. "But then, why should all things go on always the same?" Celeborn said, "And I like this."

Thingol laughed, the jewels of his circlet scintillant in the brightness, "Ever the optimist, nephew?"

"There seems little point in asking them to take it back." He shrugged, "So perhaps we should embrace it."

Melian laughed then too, and tugged his sleeve playfully. "Wise words from one so young."

"And perhaps it means," Thingol's eyes gleamed speculatively, "That they are finally ready to come forth and do battle with Morgoth. That I am more than ready for."

"My lord?" The guard Captain approached Celeborn respectfully, "Mordir would speak with you."

"By your leave?" Celeborn bowed and left the sovereigns talking together. The Captain lead him to a hollow in which the prisoner stood, surrounded by his accusers. The son of Morduin looked pale but determined, Arien's light unflattering to his thin nervousness. "What is it?"

"Lord," Mordir began, tentatively, "Is this the beginning of a new age?"

"So it seems." Celeborn took off his cloak and spread it on a rock. Then, sitting, he took the axe from his belt and placed it once more across his knees. The court was reconvened.

"I don't want this on me any more, Lord. Evil can't prosper under this light, I see that." Mordir wrung his hands, stooped away slightly from the press of Arien's heat. "I confess. I did falsely accuse my neighbours. I wished to see them suffer. I wished to deprive them of their lands and honour, which I envied...but if this is not a sign I do not know what is." He drew himself up, as if he finally remembered what dignity was. "So I will make reparation, and be punished, and begin this new age clean."

Mordir was of the Green-folk, but lately settled in the safety of the hidden city. Many Doriathrim thought them savages, but this was not the first time they had impressed Celeborn greatly. And he is not just being cunning, knowing he was closer than ever to having his guilt proved. Sincere repentance was evident even in his fea, which was strengthened by honesty.

"Very well, son of Morduin. The tally of reparation is with the scribes. You will satisfy it completely. And you will further pay the King twelve sesters of honey, for the nuisance you have been to his Court."

Mordir bowed, and sighing, straightened up to face his doom, steady eyed.

"But because, in the sight of the works of the Valar, you have turned away from your lies, I will not lay any punishment on you. Pay your dues and go free."

Celeborn knew the decision would be unpopular. It did not trouble him. So often the correct decisions were. And mercy was called for on a day so holy. He looked up at the vessel of Arien once more, risen high and shining over them all in the strange azure vault of the sky. Whatever this new age brings, he thought at last, It is a comfort to have begun it well.

"A great force of orcs and werewolves passed into Ossiriand two seven-days ago, and our people are overmatched. For love of Denethor your friend, who died in your service in the Battle of Amon Ereb, the Green-folk beg you will remember us and send aid." The green-elf messenger stood in his rustic clothes amid the wonder of Menegroth's carven halls. His raiment was rude and his weapons very basic, and yet there was great dignity about him, and though he trembled for fear for his people he was not abased.

Thingol looked up, "I know many were injured in the attempt to re-open the road to the Sea. What forces do we have to spare?"

Celeborn, who stood by his elbow, leaned down to reply. "Mablung has returned, lord. He is hale, and many of his warriors with him. We can assemble a company."

A company, Thingol thought, sighing. It already seemed so long since the days when he had last seen peace, and a great regret rose up in him for those times - before the sun, before the great Enemy, Morgoth, came to dwell at Angband, as his neighbour. The promise of Tilion and Arien had been an empty one, and the doubts of Melian had proved wise. "In what time?"

Celeborn spoke with one of his captains. "By the first hour after noon."

Thingol nodded, bestowing a faint, weary smile on the Green-folk messenger. "All those we have to spare will be made ready to accompany you. Refresh yourself and take rest until then. My hope goes with you."

He raised a hand, dismissing this, the last of the petitioners. The emeralds, clasped in the bracelet around his wrist, gave a burst of light under the lamps, and he saw leaves; leaves and moss, and the roots of trees, going down into the bones of the earth. His land, his folk, his to protect with every last breath in him.

"They should remove to Doriath," said Melian, taking his hand in her own more delicate one, "Where I could keep them safe."

"Ah, Lady," Thingol said, raising the linked hands to his lips, "You of all people should know that the Quendi value freedom over safety. I will not ask the Green-kindred to abandon their lands. Not while I have strength to defend them."

"But our strength declines daily," Celeborn broke in. Since the formal audience was over he left his place at the king's left hand to sit on the steps of the dais. "Unless we can somehow learn to breed like orcs, we will soon by overwhelmed by sheer numbers."

"You have a foul mouth, nephew." Grief at the knowledge that the words were true did not prevent Thingol from a bitter smile at the way it had been put, "And clear sight." A weight like that of Thangorodrim seemed to settle on him, and he straightened his back in defiance, struggling to breathe deep. "Indeed, even if the Nandor and the Green-folk withdraw within Doriath, what will that achieve, save to have us all like fish in a net?"

He reached up to take a lock of his wife's raven hair, smoothed it gently between his fingers. "You are mighty, Melian, Queen among Maia, and what peace we have is because of the Girdle of Defence you have wrought about this kingdom. Yet can your will prevail over that of a Valar, though he be fallen? I think not. Did Morgoth have us all in one place, it would but hasten the end."

Gazing into her grey eyes he could forget all of this, return in memory to the glades of Nan Elmoth where they had first met, where they had stood, enraptured, hand in hand while the stars wheeled overhead and the trees grew tall. She smiled at him now, and somehow, though he had not hope, he found the will to endure. "Well, the end will come yet swifter if we give up. I will not despair. Any victory over me will be dearly bought!"

There was a stir by the door, and courtiers drew aside in a flutter of silk as a grey-cloaked scout burst through. He raced into the centre of the floor and flung himself to one knee. "Lord King, I have great news!" His upturned face was stunned with good fortune, and Thingol felt wary interest. Good news would be welcome.

He signalled for the messenger to speak and, glowing with importance, the young elf burst out; "A great host of Eldar has landed on these shores from Aman. They are numerous and glorious - splendid with banners and trumpets, with armour and shield and sword. It's said that they touched ground at the same time that the sun first arose - I can't vouch for that - and have been travelling since. I spoke with some of their servants, and they said their lords were Fingolfin and the sons of Finarfin. They have returned to do battle with Morgoth."

About time! Thingol thought, slow ebbing despair making him feel bitter even towards these potential allies, About time the Departed gave some thought to those of us they abandoned to live in safety in the West. And what will be their price for this sudden aid? But he tried to ease the grimness as far as he could. Whatever change these new Eldar introduced, at least Doriath was no longer in danger of being overrun. "Valar be praised," he said grudgingly, "In the very hour of our need. Do I know these princes?"

"They are spoken of as the sons of Finu." The messenger's smile was broad, and at last Elu Thingol could mirror it. Doubts were swept aside at the name, and a great flame of joy rose in his heart that had been so bowed down only moments before. "Finwë?" he cried, leaping to his feet, "My greatest friend! The brother of my heart! Long we have been apart and yet he has not forgotten me in my need. Has he not come himself?"

"That I do not know, Sire. I lingered only briefly and then hastened away. They drew nigh to the lake of Mithrim as I departed. Beyond that, I know no more than I have told."

"Return to them swiftly then, and let one of the Princes come to me. I will send an escort behind you, so that all will be ready once your message is sped."

"My King," the scout bowed his way out, grinning, and Thingol turned to his great-nephew, the closest male kin he had left in Doriath. Celeborn was watching him with a curl of the lips catlike in its smugness.

"Ai! Now you will claim you knew all along what the rising of the Sun portended. Take your gloating gaze from out my sight...for you are the only one of rank I have to rightly welcome these sons of Finwë, and I would have you do it as a prince. So go, finish those things that need to be done, make yourself stately and stand ready to depart."

"My Lord," Celeborn left promptly, and Melian watched him go with amused eyes.

"Even if you had twenty messengers of equal rank, you would have still sent him," she said, "You do know that?"

"I do," he said, and laughed at her maternal ferocity, "But he need not. He is unruly enough as it is."

Standing, he offered her his arm, and side by side they walked from the throne room into the gardens and radiant caves of many fountains where the folk of Menegroth gathered to converse and dance. News of Finwë's return made him feel like singing in reprieve and joy... and yet. And yet a small corner of his mind whispered still that this was far too good to be true.

You are ever churlish, and ever suspicious, he rebuked himself sternly, Think only that your chosen-brother will soon be with you once more and rejoice. He called for his harp and drowned the small disquiet in song.

Angrod, son of Finarfin approached, in the centre of a group of outriders, all jangling with armour and spangled with jewels. Little flames of many colours went up from the harness of the Noldo Prince, and his breastplate was crusted with crystal which caught the sun's light like a sheet of water. There was a circlet on his head and a sapphire gleamed on his brow. The heavy fall of his corn blond hair was intricately braided and in places pinned with gems. Even from his sword hilt there went up a fountain of radiance from the inlaid stones and precious metals of many hues.

Above Celeborn his honour guard, Calandil, sniggered quietly in the treetops, and there came the muffled sound of Daeron trying not to laugh. Celeborn smoothed down the restrained elegance of his soft grey tunic and wondered if perhaps he should have worn the one with the overdone embroidery. Beside the Noldo's rather barbaric splendour he felt woefully under dressed. But no. It is he who looks like the inside of a magpie's hoard. With a word he urged his horse forward and came out from the shadow of the trees alone.

It was strange to see how Angrod's guards reacted to his presence - they looked around themselves at once, as if expecting the rest of his escort to burst out of the forest beside him. They did not look up, to where Calandil's forces had covered them at bowshot for the last eight hundred yards. In this, as in their clothing, they seemed at once showy and naive.

A guard challenged him, and as he put down his hood he saw a flash of ...something... go through the elf's unnaturally fiery eyes. It looked, he thought, his heart sinking, a lot like guilt. Taking advantage of the other's moment of shock he spurred his horse onwards and so came through the ring of men-at-arms and face to face with Angrod. "I am Celeborn, Prince of Doriath," he said, "And I greet you in the name of King Elu."

Angrod's face was pleasant, open, a little rounded still with youth. His skin glimmered like the moon behind a cloud and his eyes held the same flame as the guard's eyes. They also, briefly, as they swept over the long tail of Celeborn's ice-coloured hair, held the same uncertainty, the same...shame. "You look like a Swan-Lord," he said, nervously.

"A what?" It was hard to follow Angrod's rather strange accent, he wondered if he had heard right.

"You look like one of the Teleri from Alqualondë," Angrod spoke louder, as if he better hoped to be understood that way, but his face had clouded. His gaze fell to Celeborn's belt and fixed there as if he was trying to essay the value of the silver, or, more likely, as if he no longer dared look him in the eye.

"I am a Teler." Celeborn shrugged and turned his horse to lead the Noldor into the trees, "So there is little surprise in this." But he wondered all the same, feeling the discomfort around him, not just of Angrod, but of all his companions. Discomfort and anger, and guilt. What have the Teleri done to them, or they to the Teleri that they cannot look on me with ease?

"But in truth you're not." Angrod kept pace with him, and the young face was lit with an academic curiosity that seemed more a part of him than his jewels, "'Teleri' only refers to those of your people who came to Aman...just the Calaquendi. You are Moriquendi, so you cannot be Teleri."

It took him a moment to translate the Quenya, 'Calaquendi' would be...Celbin. So Moriquendi is... and then he reined in, stopping in shock and insult. "What did you call me?" An urge came over him to take hold of the little prince by the over-elaborate braids and shake some respect into him. It was not helped by Calandil choosing this moment to lead his guards out of the trees. Calandil's face was grim, and Daeron, who stood beside him, was wide eyed with hurt.

"Dark elf," said Angrod, as if it should be obvious, "You have not seen the light of the Two Trees, so you are all dark elves." He looked at the scowling faces of Celeborn's guards without comprehension, "It is not meant as an insult. It is simply a description."

"I think perhaps," Celeborn made an effort not to move his hand to his axe, though he was suddenly aware of its sheathed head beneath his elbow, "I think you should remember that in Doriath we use those terms differently. A Dark Elf is an elf who has - whether for spite or for fear - taken service with Morgoth. A Light Elf is any who have openly declared themselves against him. We are Light Elves in Doriath. As are our Nandor kin, and the Green Folk, and even those of the Avari who are our allies. We are all Celbin."

"Oh, the Laiquendi!" Angrod laughed uncomfortably and attempted a change of subject, "They are quite savage aren't they? With their arrowheads of stone and their garments of leafs. Do you know, we thought all the mori... all the Lingerers would be like them. We were very surprised to find the Doriathrim have a culture almost as advanced as our own."

"Indeed," said Celeborn, his temper getting the better of him, "The Doriathrim have almost managed to scrape together a civilization. How sad that the rest of us have been too busy fighting for our lives to learn the finer points of etiquette!"

"You are over touchy," Angrod drew himself up in affront, "Again, I meant no insult. I do not compare you with the rude and unsubtle folk we have so far met. It is well known that your Queen is a Maia, and your King and ours were like brothers together."

He is a guest, Celeborn reminded himself, And a valuable ally. He had noticed that the prince's retinue seemed all the more haughty after this exchange of words, and - ridiculous though it was - he felt an almost physical threat from them. And a foreigner who doesn't know our ways. I have probably insulted him just as vilely, in some way I know nothing about. He sighed.

"I thank you," he said, "That you think the folk of Thingol worthy of your regard." It would have been politic to finish there, but the smooth words of politics had always eluded him. He did not regret that they did so now. "But you do ill to call the Green Folk savage. Three yeni I was with them in my youth - their lore is deep and their woodcraft unsurpassed. In truth we do not consider them a separate people from ourselves. We are one people - the Avari of the Third Clan, the Nandor, the Green Folk, the Silvan, the Sindar and the Teleri - we are all Lindar, the Singers. We are kin."

Again that sudden guardedness, that flinch at the word 'kin', and Angrod's fire-filled gaze fell to study the mane of his horse. There was a mystery here that had the taste of shadow in it. Proud though the Noldor were, they had not escaped the marring of Morgoth. But it was not wise to press him about this, Celeborn thought, Melian will see it in him. Whatever it is. And he should be given the chance to speak of it himself.

They had come to the great gates of Menegroth, and it was evening. The rush and lilt of Esgalduin filled the twilight with the scent of water. Greeting the dusk, a nightingale trilled. Moved by homecoming and music Daeron replied, in a voice that wove the mists and stars and silver stream into glory. His song seemed a new creation; solid as a gem, awe-filled, holy, beautiful and bright. Yet it vanished before it could be grasped, leaving only the bliss of memory.

The Noldor reined their horses in and looked at the minstrel, with their mouths open and their eerie eyes wide. Calandil came to take Celeborn's bridle and say, mind to mind, And for all their 'culture' they have nothing like him, even in Valinor.

Hush, Celeborn thought, but he smiled.

"So," he said, and took Angrod by the elbow to guide him across the narrow bridge and into the first entrance hall, "You spoke of Finu..."

A look of incomprehension. He unpicked the linguistic changes in his head, "Sorry... Finwë. Has he returned with you? My Lord is very eager to see him again."

Angrod balked at the stair down into the earth and Celeborn could feel the thrill of fear run through the muscles beneath his fingertips. Afraid of the dark? he thought, wonderingly, and then in astonished understanding Calben...elves of the light... He has not grown used to dwelling in darkness. It was both amusing and vaguely annoying, bringing to mind the millenia in which the elves of Doriath had dwelt, neglected and forgotton by the Valar, in perpetual night.

"No," Angrod said, his tones thin with grief, "Finwë is dead. Slain by Morgoth before the Enemy fled to Middle Earth. It is largely for revenge that we return." He raised his head to look Celeborn in the face. The flame in his eyes was yellow and white, mingled, and his voice lowered, as though he spoke news so terrible it had to be whispered. "The Enemy threw down the Two Trees and defiled Aman with darkness. Only their remnants now ride the sky; flower of the silver tree, fruit of the gold. The sun and the moon...the only things the Valar could salvage."

"I see," Celeborn said and brushed a hand through his hair, needing the comfort. So I was wrong. Even the sun and moon were not meant for us - we profit from them as an afterthought. And the Noldor's return is not to aid their friends, long abandoned, but only to avenge a wrong done to them. It never grew easier to learn that the Valar did not care about the elves of Middle Earth at all. Especially not when, this time, he had built so much hope on the sign. As for the loss of the Two Trees, it meant little to him, beyond a passing whimsy that he would now never see his namesake. Quite why Angrod seemed to think he would care about this was a mystery.

"You have my condolences," he said, heavily, "My lord will grieve indeed."

"Yet you do not seem shocked," Angrod looked at him with puzzled innocence, "Or even greatly surprised."

"Should I be?" Celeborn looked down at the earnest face and felt suddenly very old, though in truth there was likely little difference in age between them. "My own grandfather, Elmo - brother of Elu - and my mother and my unborn sister were killed by the servants of Morgoth. It is a daily refrain in Middle Earth. Something you will grow used to, with time."

"I do not wish to grow used to it!"

Sheltered little princeling. "Then go back to the waiting arms of the Valar," Celeborn said bitterly, "Loss is the price of life in Ennor. If you wished to be protected from it you should not have left Aman."

Angrod's reaction was instructive - the lash of pride that opened his mouth and the ...something... that closed it again with the retort unmade. He looked as Mordir had looked in court; captured in guilt, afraid to admit it but afraid to lie. "We took an oath not to return until Morgoth is defeated," he said with sullen politeness, "So do not taunt us with the desire."

Not wholly a lie, Celeborn thought, his long experience of judgement making the reading almost instinctive, but certainly not the whole truth. He sighed again and told himself that the Noldor were like the Sun - one could not give them back - so whatever terror it was they were hiding, the Sindar would have to learn to live with it. There would be time to learn what it was later, without being so inhospitable as to subject a guest to cross examination the moment he had passed through the door.

"Forgive me," he said, "Everything about you is strange to me. And I'm sure I give offence at every step. Doubtless we will all grow more easy together when we know each other more." He motioned for Calandil to escort the Prince's guards to the barracks, and smiled, rather half-heartedly. "Let me take you to your rooms. For, if you have come all the way from Valinor to here, it must have been a hard journey indeed."

---

"What think you?" Thingol stood before the fire in one of the smaller drawing rooms and nudged a lantern with his fingertip so that it trembled in its sheath of diamond, filling the air with dancing light. Empty plates were on the table and Luthien still toyed with a stem of grapes, holding them up more to admire their sheen in the lamplight than with the intention of eating more. Angrod had been persuaded to play flute for them and had left the room in the company of a servant who would help him find an instrument to suit him.

"Nice hair," said Luthien, "A little like Oropher's. Only more shiny."

"Luthien..."

"But I couldn't get used to those eyes - glowing at you in the dark like the eyes of a fox in torchlight."

"Luthien!"

She wrapped a lock of her long, midnight hair twice around her wrist and looked up coquettishly at him, making him wonder for a breathless moment whether he had spawned some emptyheaded fool of a daughter and these truly were her thoughts. Then she grinned. "Or do you mean the fact that he is an honest person weighed down by a secret too terrible to share?"

Thingol sat slowly and put his head in his hands. "You saw it too." His friend was dead and all his doubts about this unlooked for aid seemed to be coming true.

"Not just a secret," said Melian grimly, "But a shadow. A doom...a curse...some form of judgement over him." She looked up, as though she saw the stars of Elbereth through the many layers of pressing stone, and when she spoke her voice held the certainty of prophecy. Cold. Implacable. The voice of a goddess. "Fate is against them, and ill luck follows them. We would do well to wash our hands of them all."

Thingol so wanted to join the many armies Angrod spoke of and to crush Morgoth once and for all. He wanted there to be that hope, that goal to strive for. Why? Why would help be sent only to be snatched away? Why did every new thing that came to Doriath only seem to presage disaster? "Yet they are the sons of my friend," he said, and was appalled at how weak he sounded, "For Finwë's sake, I should aid them."

Melian looked at Celeborn, who remained silent, though the tension in his shoulders showed he was stifling some outburst at this argument. "You did not empty Doriath to go to the aid of Elmo when he was taken," she said, as if she spoke for him, "Though he was your own brother, and every bit as beloved as Finwë. You knew it would be in vain. It is so here. The Noldor will not prevail over Morgoth. I have seen it."

"And what of Angrod and his folk?" The slippery way Angrod had turned the conversation every time he had asked about Feanor and Fingolfin made him think that perhaps Melian was right with regard to these princes. They were at the heart of...whatever it was that was wrong with the Noldor. Let them take their revenge to Morgoth and distract his attention from Doriath long enough for the Sindar to rebuild, if that was all they could do. But Finarfin's children? "Are they not the sons of my niece? Are they not my own family?"

Seeing his distress she softened, the awe of her power giving way to compassion. "I do not council that you never see them, my love. Only that you do not let them shape your fate to their own."

He poured more wine and drank it down too fast to taste it. "I cannot refuse to greet my own kin," he said, salvaging whatever he could of personal consolation from this disappointing gift. "I did not even know that Olwë had married. What do you say, Celeborn?"

"My Lord." Celeborn's eyes were bleak with memory, focussed somewhere a long time ago. "These Noldor seem arrogant and a little obnoxious... But when Elmo died I lost all of my family at once. For his sake, I would very much like to meet these cousins of mine."

Nerwen caught herself rubbing her arms again as if to warm them. The halls of Menegroth were high and vaulted and full of lamplight - so like a forest at twilight that birds nested in the stone trees and filled the air with song. But she could not forget that if the lamps went out darkness would fall, utter and absolute, as it had been when Ungoliant destroyed the Trees. Nor could she feel secure in this stronghold full of elves whose musical voices proclaimed them kin to the Teleri her family had slain. Distress and guilt made her feel chill, as though she had not yet shed the deathly cold of the Grinding Ice. She struggled again not to clasp herself and shiver.

She would not show weakness in front of these Dark Elves.

Smoothing down her beech green dress, she adjusted the hang of her golden girdle and wished once again that she had at least a knife to hand, or better still her sword. No wonder women were meek, with these confining skirts to hamper them and only their empty hands to defend themselves.

"Are you ready?" Finrod asked, coming into the room with a mantle of white fur on his arm. He put it about her shoulders gently. " I thought you might be cold."

"I do not need mothering!" she snapped, seeing in his face a disquiet very like her own. Curse Fëanor for this, she thought, bitterly, But for his rape of the Teleri ships, but for his murder of the Teleri who tried to contest their theft, this would be joyful; a family reunion. It is his fault. It is all his fault. And then she laughed, for of course Feanor was cursed, and so was she. She too had killed her own kind, though it had been in defence of her mother's innocent people. And the doom of Mandos lay as heavily on her as it had on Feanor. Heavier, it seemed, now that bravado had faded and she had begun to taste the draught she had seized for herself. The sons of Feanor do not seem to regret. But I do.

"No one would dare to mother you," Finrod replied, only half in jest, "I would do the same for any of my brothers and you know it. Now please, Nerwen, be obliging with these Sindar. We do not need any more enemies."

He took her elbow and she shook him off, not liking the restraint on her sword arm. Sighing, he put a hand instead in the middle of her back and nudged her out of the door of their chambers and into the corridors of the palace, where a servant waited to take them to the king.

The audience chamber of King Elwë Singollo was huge, many pillared, arched over with carven trees and vines picked out in gems and gold. Water poured in a moss-grown fountain from the centre of the floor and ran in rills of silver beside each wall, so no part of the room was free from the music of it. Folk turned to look as Nerwen and her brother entered - Sindar in grey, Nandor in brown and Laiquendi in unwashed tatters of rags that had possibly once been green.

They are a dull folk, she thought to Finrod as she passed through them, and felt yet more out of place. Though the Noldor were also mostly dark of hair, they did at least make up for that lack of colour in their garb. These folk seemed as they were called - Dark elves. With little pleasure in the hues and beauties of light, they were clad plainly, a monotony of many shaded drab, here and there relieved with white or black, and they put no effort into dressing their hair - tying it back simply, unadorned to the point of aggression.

Did we expect them to be otherwise? Finrod's question reminded her that she should not expect too much. These elves had not had the advantage the Noldor had received; they had had no Valar to tutor them, to form their understanding of the world and equip their hands to works of craft. It was surprising enough that they were not all dwelling in trees like the rustic folk of Ossiriand.

She smothered a slight feeling of disappointment, braced herself, and came out before the King's dais. Looking up she beheld Elwë for the first time. Throned and crowned he sat in splendour. Grey cloaked, but in a robe of white, emeralds glinted at his wrists and lay about his neck on a chain of gold. Where she had looked to find strangeness she saw instead a heartbreaking resemblance. He looked like her grandfather, Olwë, and yet more like her mother, though Earwen's fragility was here recast in strength. A family reunion indeed, she thought, moved by his comforting and familiar power. He met her eyes and for the first time she felt warm enough. She smiled.

Beside the king sat his wife, Melian, beautiful and benevolent as the sunny earth and just as strong. An awesome power, cloaked in the form of an Elven-Queen.

In a canopied chair on Elwë's right hand there sat a maiden whose beauty humbled Nerwen's pride in Aman. Not even in the courts of Manwe, king of the Valar, had there walked a lady so fair. Yet her radiance was that of Arda Marred - all darkness and shadow about glimpses of light. Her face was moon-bright, and her eyes grey as the sky, and her hair was a fall of night that lifted and swayed as she moved. White gems glittered there like strewn stars.

On Melian's left hand there stood behind the thrones a tall prince clad in grey. The silver of his belt was less bright than his hair, and his face was also very fair. Not exactly delicate, Nerwen thought, pleased with his looks, but elegant and fine-drawn as a sword. They made a handsome family.

I did not know Elwë had a son, she thought to her brother.

He does not, Finrod replied, That would be the nephew, Celeborn. The one Angrod warned us about.

Oh, Nerwen smiled again and felt the press of doom ease a little over her, The one who was so disrespectful and harsh to our poor younger brother?

Finrod had stepped forward to give his gracious speech of homecoming and alliance. She waited until he was in the middle of the sentence he had so much trouble with and then said I think I'll seek him out. He sounds interesting.

Finrod's discomforted stumble after his words was one of the the few things she had felt able to laugh at since leaving home.

---

After enduring more empty politenesses than she had the stomach for she found the prince in a small garden; sitting on the edge of a fountain, with his feet in the flowerbeds and his head bent over some small thing held tight in his hands.

"I take it amiss that you fled sooner than look on me," Nerwen said, wondering why he had not yet glanced up. He did so at her question and smiled ruefully.

"I looked well enough," he said, "It was speech I found myself unprepared for."

She waited for the compliment that must surely follow such a gallantry, but it did not come. He turned back to whatever it was he was working on, leaving her unsure whether she had been praised or insulted. "What is it you do?" she asked, coming forward to look. Her dress swept against the white and yellow flowers and the sweet lemon scent of feverfew rose among the spray of the fountain.

"I remembered that I had a final answer to one of Angrod's pronouncements," he said, his wary smile brightening, "And I hoped to give it to you to take to him. But it needed finishing." He brushed small flakes of stone from his knee. They fell flashing in the lamplight like the water.

"Angrod had much to say about you," Nerwen was intrigued. She swept the damp from the fountain's side and sat next to him, realizing with a faint surprise that he was as tall as she. It was odd but pleasant not to have to look down at a companion. "He said your lámatyávë was quite savage." He had also warned both Nerwen and Finrod that the Sinda had a way of unearthing subjects they would rather not speak of, and had advised them to avoid him. But Nerwen had taken the caution as a challenge, and relished the opportunity to test herself against it.

"That seems to be a favourite word of his," said Celeborn coldly, "It is largely because he called the Green-folk savage that I felt it necessary to make him this reply."

"Oh, come," she was unimpressed - he would be defending the beauty of dwarves next, "The Laiquendi may be fellow elves, but it's clear they have no art or knowledge greater than that of the birds whose nests they share. 'Savage' is a fair enough description."

"Then this will be an answer also to you," he said, "For I learned the craft of making these when I guested with them." He handed her a knife made of nothing but stone and wood and vine. It should indeed have been rude and worthy of contempt, but it was not. The hilt was carved with exquisite skill in the likeness of a hound stretched out before the fire. The lashings that held the blade in place were a bright spring green and intricately knotted, bemusing the eye with patterns. And the blade itself was a long shard of flint so pure that the light flowed through it, giving it the changeable translucence of the sea; a more subtle and beautiful colour than steel, but just as deadly.

No amount of talking could have said better what this creation made plain - that even the most backwards of the elves of Middle Earth were not without craft of their own. It was no Silmaril, but it was still a work of great beauty; the creation of a mind that could not with justice be considered beneath her own.

"This is a sharp rebuke," she said, turning it about to examine it closer, pleasantly aware that he was watching her do so, "I am wounded."

"I had hoped it would be more pointed than speech."

She found herself smiling again, taken back to a more innocent world by this foolish game of words. "Do your arguments always have such an edge?"

"Only when I am trying to be cutting."

For the second time in a single day Nerwen laughed. Rarely had she been so at ease since leaving Valinor. There must be, she thought, more to this kingdom of Doriath than she had yet perceived, and though guilt was still a nagging presence in the deep places of her heart she sighed, and some of the ever present tension left her. Looking out she saw the small garden anew, as a clearing in a forest of stone. If she let the fine carvings and the white lamps fool her eye she could almost feel a free breeze wend its way through the herbs, stirring the aniseed fragrance of the lacelike fennel and the scent of lavender into the cool air. It felt like evening, though she guessed it always did, here, under the earth.

She waited for her companion to say something difficult and spoil the mood, but he was silent once more, though she felt his gaze stray to her occasionally; a small sensation of wonderment that was not at all unwelcome. She supposed she was indeed quite unlike anything he had ever seen before. But so also was he to her.

The note of the fountain changed, and she looked up to find him with a hand in the water, watching the fall of the moon-bright liquid through his fingers. Everything about him was twilight, from his starlight-coloured hair to the soft grey and silver of his raiment. Looking at him she thought again of the knife - light passing through subtle shadows like the ocean, and the drabness of the Sindar suddenly resolved itself into something else in her mind.

The fitted cuff of his undertunic was a pale blue-grey silk, stitched with silver embroidery, and the overtunic was of charcoal velvet, woven in a diamond pattern that shimmered slightly each time he moved. This dullness is not a lack of art, she realized, Not because they are backwards and have no delight in colour, but because... In the dimness of night the colours the Noldor valued so highly would be stripped away, but these Sindar clothes of many shades and textures would become a delight of half-seen richness; a tease and suggestion of beauty, like a half heard melody that enchants because it cannot be grasped. Because their taste has been formed in millennia of darkness.

It made them both more like the Noldor and more unlike. Like, because they were not the ignorant rustics so many of the Calaquendi had supposed. Unlike because, if they had their own lore, their own arts, how strange they must have grown after so many thousand years apart.

"You have succeeded," she said, and handed the knife back to him, "I am cut indeed, cut to the quick. And the understanding is barbed. It will not easily come out."

"It was not intended to injure," he said, more gently than he had spoken before. He caught her gaze as if to assure himself she spoke in jest. He had strange eyes. They were holly green, so that with the pale hair his colouring could not have more exactly matched the Silver Tree of Valinor. But the strangeness was not in hue. They were dark, without the flame of Aman; windows to a soul that must also be dark, unknown and unknowable as all the shadowed fastnesses of Ennor in the days of awakening, before the Valar came. Dark eyes for a dark elf. Yet she thought that there might yet be a glimmer in them, like the gleam of the ancient stars of Elbereth above the mere of Cuivienen.

Am I staring?

The thought came to her like a splash of cold water from the fountain. She dropped her gaze, and if she had felt cold before now she felt too hot - discomforted and exposed. "Angrod was right in this," she said with brittle anger, "You have little respect. Few men would hand an unsheathed knife to a lady."

He drew away from her, shook out the piece of leather he had used to protect his tunic from the shards of flint and rolled it up with the round, smooth stone and piece of antler folded within it. "Forgive me," he said, his voice a little unsteady, "If I am ignorant of some Noldor fashion of treating women as though they know not one end of a blade from the other. Melian has been as a mother to me and Luthien a sister. I am not used to thinking women powerless or unwise."

Nerwen frowned, and in her astonishment forgot that she was angry. This was a reversal! How had she ended up on the wrong end of this debate? It should be she smiting and laying to waste his preconceptions, as she had always had to do with her brothers. He should be treating her as a delicate blossom to be wooed, and she setting his notions aright with the superiority of her mind. It was both dizzying and a sweet liberation to find the battle won before she had even begun to fight.

It was also a little frightening. She had never before been measured against such high expectations. For a moment she did not know what to say. '"You confuse me,"' did not seem an adequate answer.

"Am I not called 'Nerwen'?" she said, "You need not use these arguments with me."

"Nerwen?" he laughed, a light, scornful sound, "Is this not a symptom of the same pattern of thought? This claim that somehow your glorious strength makes you more masculine? Is that not an insult in itself? For I see nothing manly about you, Galadriel."

And he was, after all, just as savage as Angrod had claimed. Affronted, she rose with all the stately grace she had perfected when facing Fëanor. "Do not presume to name me," she said, "You do not know me. You do not know anything about me."

She was half way to her room before she realized that he might think she was running away, but by that time it would have been a humiliation to return. A few steps later she thought of what she should have said and cursed. No matter. She patted down her skirts furiously and raised her head, eyes flashing. If today she had underestimated her opponent and thus been beaten, tomorrow he would not fare so well. She had already several things she wanted to say to him. Tomorrow he would see why no one had ever dared rename her before.

"Daeron, I must speak with you," Celeborn caught his friend by the arm and pulled slightly, wanting to get him away from this place as soon as possible. He liked not being back in the workshops of the dwarves and he could not see what was so interesting about the metal harp strings that required Daeron to watch over their production like a hen over hatching chicks.

Behind him one of the dwarves said a single word in his own tongue and the atmosphere of the already sweltering room heated, leaving Celeborn feeling as he had felt when surrounded by Angrod's guards. Fali was long dead, but he seemed to have cut and polished his grudge and passed it on like an heirloom to the rest of his family. It had become uncomfortable for Celeborn to be among the Naugrim at all, and today he did not have time to address such unimportant matters. "Come away from here, please. I swear if you will not let me speak of this I will run mad."

"My Lord!" Daeron tucked his braids behind his ears, leaving smudges of charcoal across his cheeks. He had pushed his sleeves up and was as grimy with soot and grease as any of the dwarves; unsurprising, since he had been interrupted at the bellows. When he saw the look in Celeborn's eyes, his air of preoccupied craftsmanship faded, "Of course. Wait but a moment while I find someone to take over."

He called one of the naugrim, though it seemed to Celeborn that the dwarf came grudgingly. Then, when all was set to his satisfaction, he grabbed his sheaf of plans, rolled them up, and suffered himself to be lead out into the cool of Menegroth's corridors. His fingers left dark imprints on the parchments and only at the sight of them did he balk and look at himself. "Ai! I am filthy. May we speak at the baths?"

"If we must." Celeborn looked again at the soot stained minstrel and managed a laugh, though the tightness in his chest did not ease, "And you must!"

The main bath lay in its cavern like an underground lake. Tendrils of steam floated over its surface or rose to twine around the spears of crystal and stone which grew from the cave's ceiling. If one came alone it could at times be an eerie place, dimly lit, misty and full of the lapping of water. It was not so today. Today it was full of mothers teaching their children to swim, and the noise and the shrieking and the laughter were as loud as an encampment of orcs.

One of the smaller chambers which led off the main pool was unoccupied. The bath in it was sufficient only for six, but it was a pleasant place - plants grew and trailed from alcoves and niches, adding their freshness to the humid air, and one of the aqueducts emptied above the arch which led to the main pool, so that, once within, one could drowse in the heat, curtained by an ever changing fall of hot water.

Ewers and basins were set out, and a servant brought in linen towels even as they were disrobing. He drew water from the pool for them and waited while Celeborn washed his long hair and passed the soap to Daeron, who scrubbed his arms and face. As they were stepping into the deep pool, the servant took away the soiled basins and returned with drinking cups and a pitcher of cold water before withdrawing altogether. He did all in silence, but still his presence was an irritation.

Now that he was permitted to speak Celeborn did not know how to begin, but Daeron's face was grim as if he expected truly bad news, and he could surely manage reassurance. "I find I must apologize to you, my friend. I confess, I have long thought you foolish to circle Luthien as the stars circle the earth but now..." Oh now he understood. He understood it with a knowledge like despair. "Well am I paid for my arrogance! For I have met the woman I love with all my soul, and she likes me not."

Daeron set his head back against the lip of the pool and there passed across his face a look of great pain, swiftly concealed. "I will not jest with you about this," he said, "If you are in my case it is no matter to laugh at." He sat up, making a small wave, "But tell me who she is, and what has happened."

"It is," Celeborn took up a handful of water and gazed at its brilliance, to calm him, "It is Nerwen." The light on the liquid resolved itself into her hair, deep golden and shining like a royal circlet, and he relived, yet again, that moment when it had seemed to him he had seen her fëa; the spirit of a queen, powerful, glorious, splendid, and yet sad, oppressed by the shadow that lay over all the Noldor. Like a fine blade quenched to the point of brittleness. It was hard to fit words to that moment of understanding.

"When I first saw her, defiant and proud in the stronghold of strangers, it was as I felt when the Sun first rose. At first I was blinded, and then all things were coloured by her light, forever changed. Then much in me that had been sleeping awoke and burst into flower, like the new blossom that came in the first springtime."

"I have never heard you speak this way before," said Daeron in quiet gentleness, "Did she say aught to you, or you to her?"

"In truth, I fled," Celeborn's unruly emotions surprised him with joy. She had sought him out, though there was far better company than he at the feast, "We met later, and she sat by me," such a simple thing to build ridiculous hope on, "She looked at me, Daeron... She looked at me with wonder."

He clenched his fists, and the muscles across his back - which had at last been relaxing in the heat - tensed again and ached as he felt once more the bitter barb of his own stupidity. "And then I...I lost my head. I charged in recklessly where I should have lain in ambush, and I was utterly routed and overcome." Remembering her walking away in cold fury, he put his head in his hands in dismay, and whispered, "And she will never want to speak to me again."

---

There was silence, but for the music of the water and the muffled laughter of children in the further cavern. Celeborn looked up - Daeron's eyes were wide and sorrowful as the sea. He did not seem to know what to say. And why should he? He might understand, but he had no solution to offer.

A quiet scuffle in the passage caught his attention; the sound perhaps of napping servants being unexpectedly awoken. The hanging curtain of green and silver linen was pushed aside and a hand came in bearing a wine-jug and a goblet of gold, dangled unceremoniously by the stem. The rest of Elu Thingol followed it, smiling with the blithe certainty that he was welcome everywhere.

"It's like a rookery at twilight out there," he said, "How they bear the din I know not. And all the other small chambers are occupied by folk who would either flee in awe of me, or regale me for hours about taxes." He poured wine for himself, then filled the cups that had been meant for water and passed them to his nephew and his bard. "So you will have to make room for me." The silence, perhaps, prompted him to pause in the act of unlacing his tunic and look at them properly. He frowned. "You are a cheerful pair. Why the long faces?"

At that moment Celeborn knew his secret was out - Daeron's nerve, never particularly formidable, always failed in the presence of the King. Commanded to speak he could never keep his mouth shut. So it was now. The minstrel shrank into the corner of the bath furthest away from the lamps and sank as though he would submerge altogether. Seeing it, Thingol raised one silver eyebrow questioningly, and even in the heat Daeron paled. "Celeborn's in love with Nerwen," he blurted out, using the words as though he was fending off an attack. "Or at least he thinks he is...though he has barely spoken to her...and I do not see how one moment of revelation is enough to be called love."

Celeborn was stung by this. Daeron may have grown up loving Luthien - knowing her every thought and expression, all the steps of every dance, all the places she would go and the things that would amuse her. There had never been a time before Daeron loved Luthien. But he thought his case was not so different. Nerwen was here now. Galadriel was here now, and there had never been a time when he had not been waiting for her.

Elu's face settled into a look of concern. He stepped into the pool and sat, stretching his arms about the rim, so that it became a throne to him, recast in the aura of his authority. "It takes only one moment, only the meeting of eyes for love to reshape the world," he said, "Like lightning out of a clear sky - unexpected and devastating. This I know from experience." He gave Celeborn a warm but worried smile, "Perhaps this is a family trait, and you inherited it, as you have inherited the colour of my hair."

He drank and put the cup down again with a metallic ring on the stone shelf behind him. "But if that were so, why would you not be with her? Why would you be hiding in here with a face like a month of rain?"

Celeborn bowed his head and watched the surface of the water once more. "The Lady was not equally impressed with me."

"How can that be? How can lightning come upon two standing together and take one but not the other?" The King shook his head. He reached out and touched Celeborn's tensed shoulder with his fingertips, a slight caress to take away the hurt from his words. "But if it is so, is it not a fortunate escape for you? Remember the words of Melian. 'Fate is against them and ill luck follows them.' Even your Nerwen is cursed; you cannot tell me you have not seen it."

Celeborn had not forgotten the Queen's words, and he could not deny that some dire thing lay heavily on Galadriel, filling her eyes with grief and secrets. But even this had become secondary to him. She was high hearted and noble. Whatever it was, if Galadriel had been involved, it could not be as bad as it seemed.

"Do you really wish to join yourself to that?"

Having spent his eloquence on Daeron, Celeborn had nothing more than the brutal words of fact to give to his liege. "Yes." He wiped the steam from his face with both hands, "For I am not cursed, and it may be that my innocence could yet be some shield between her and her doom. If only she were willing to receive it."

"She is frightening," said Daeron unexpectedly from his dark niche, trying to lightening the mood, as he would have slackened the strings of a lute before the tension tore it apart. "A very scary woman. I know not what you see in her."

At that, Celeborn laughed at last. You say this to me? You who love Luthien? But he said nothing, for the delicacy of mentioning Daeron's obsession in front of Luthien's father.

Elu too laughed. "Perhaps what you call terror we call splendour." he said, "It was thus between myself and Melian. They wondered how I could dare raise my eyes to her, but the truth was she filled my vision, where ever I looked." Then he ducked beneath the water and surged out again, causing a great wave to suck and splash against the mossy wall. "Come, you two look poached. Let us go somewhere and drink too much and recall times when life was simpler."

"If it please you, Lord," Daeron dried and dressed with embarrassment, "Now that I know my friend is in your care, there are some harp strings I would like to get back to."

He was a strange creature, Daeron. Content to fill the forest with heartbreaking music from some hiding place where he could not be seen, but always unreasoningly awed and brought to incoherence by the King. He would be happier as a disembodied voice, Celeborn thought, and then shivered, appalled at the idea . No. I meant it not! He had to hope the chill and ill omened thought had been only his own foolishness, and not some moment of insight. In either case a blessing seemed called for May Elbereth protect him!

"Of course," said Thingol. He lifted the curtain for the minstrel and, when Daeron had left, dropped it and sat, the desire to go elsewhere apparently gone from him. Looking up to where Celeborn stood, only now beginning to struggle into a slightly damp tunic, he sighed. "I have today received the fealty of Finrod."

Celeborn stopped, startled. He shook off the dread his fleeting thoughts had conjured, and turned his mind to this unexpected news. Finrod accepted Thingol's overlordship? He was impressed. Perhaps he is not so proud as the others. Perhaps he really has come not to conquer but to serve..

"Nerwen and he have gone with Beleg to view the caves of the Narog," said Thingol thoughtfully. "He hopes to set up a kingdom of his own there, in imitation of Menegroth." He took off one of his bracelets and gazed at it - the gems were brighter for the thin film of water that still clung there. "In truth, I was surprised by this humility in him. And I like him."

He raised his eyes to Celeborn's face, his pewter grey gaze full of care for Doriath and its people. Worries that would have crushed a lesser spirit, and a weight of concern that made his nephew very glad Kingship had passed him by, were reflected there for the younger elf to see. Like all of his subjects, I rest in the care of his hands, Celeborn thought, moved.

"Finrod's people may be inexperienced in warfare, but they are fierce," Elu went on, "And he at least remembers he is of our blood. They will be good allies to have in this dark time. It is my hope that, by my lordship over him, I might protect him from his ill-luck - divert his shadowed path into my starlit one. So I understand well enough your desire to be Nerwen's shield. We are playing with fate, you and I, but we would be less than Celbin to venture nothing for our kin."

There was some hope then, Celeborn thought, pulling his tunic aright. He began to plait his hair into a thick rope, squeezing the water out as he did so. "So you do not object to my pursuing her?"

"I do not."

"Then do you have any advice as to how to go about it? This is not an art I have practised before."

The king laughed, and stood up, stretching. "Nor have I! Were she an encampment of the enemy things would be easier."

With hope revived, Celeborn recovered his courage. He liked this better than talk of fates and dooms and shadow. The future was nebulous and he cared little for it, better to concentrate on the present where at least his problems were solid and had a shape that might be known and acted upon. "I have already tried the frontal assault and been repulsed," he said, "I think I must now set in for a siege."

"You have not the patience for a siege," Elu scoffed from long knowledge.

"I will learn it."

Leaning down, confidingly, combining the roles of King and Father and confident, Elu smiled a sly smile. "You need to suborn her allies, and compromise her lines of support."

"Alas! Your metaphor has now escaped me," Celeborn laughed.

"Finrod," said Thingol, "Will he not have much to tell you that you need to know about your beloved? And will she not look more kindly on a man her brother likes? You should cultivate his friendship."

There was more in this suggestion than simple helpfulness, Celeborn knew. He was not unaware that it suited Thingol's statesmanship to reinforce the allegiance of Earwen's children to Doriath, first with friendship and then later, hopefully, by marriage. But it did not trouble him. He would as lief be the friend of Galadriel's brother as not. And as for an alliance by marriage, he could think of nothing he wanted more.

Looking up at Thingol; tall and bright as a Lord of the Maiar, who took the trouble to persuade when he might order, wonder came over him. Perhaps it was not so surprising after all, that Finrod had accepted Elu's authority. Perhaps it was only an example of how things ought to be. "If he is not like Angrod," Celeborn said, "And if it is possible without doing violence to my own nature, I will befriend him as you suggest. Even in my love I will serve you... I would always have it so."

'Galadriel' Nerwen thought, as she braided up her long hair, twisting a blue ribbon into the plaits. The name had been haunting her. It had followed her to the caves of Narog and whispered in their dry, arched darkness, sometimes in his voice, sometimes in her own, distracting her from Finrod's speculations and the gruff mutterings of the dwarves. For all the help she had been, she might as well have stayed in Menegroth; her mind too full of nuances of meaning to be at all attentive to architecture.

She wound the plaits about her head like a coronet, and looked with some curiosity at her own face, reflected in her mirror of polished silver. Maiden crowned with a radiant garland, she thought, and tucked the ends in firmly. Well, it was apt. Even in the candlelight the braids shone deep gold, touched with some memory of the pale glimmer of Telperion. "Hmn!" she said, and undid the elaborate arrangement with swift irritation. Queenly she might look, thus, but she was as yet no queen, and it felt presumptuous to seem so. Why do they never see aught of me but the hair?

Feanor too had praised the hue of her long tresses, his eyes following her with something of the strange obsessiveness which he kept for his art. His desire had been to take, to possess, even as he had hoarded the light of the Trees; 'I ask but a strand, you will not miss it.' She had refused; no part of her was a thing to be owned. She did not belong in another's possession. She was herself.

But perhaps the most obvious interpretation was not the intended one. It had been a long time, after all, since Feanor had given anything away, even a name. Perhaps she did the prince of Doriath an injustice by the comparison.

Maiden crowned with radiance, she tried a variant meaning. If not her hair, what had he meant?

The silver of her mirror became liquid as she recalled the fountain playing, and he simultaneously mocking her and praising her 'glorious strength'. Could the galad of which he spoke actually be the fire of her spirit, the flame she tended in her secret heart. Was it possible that this dark elf saw and valued her for what she truly was, within?

Or was she reading too much into this, and he meant merely 'Lady of Light', in a bare and literal description of her Calaquendi status?

At this last idea, tired of her chasing thoughts, she laughed, smoothed out the braids and stood. Sindarin was so full of exotic aspirates - though it made for a pleasant accent - that he might well have called her 'Galadhriel - tree woman,' and she misheard. Who would have thought that a man whose lámatyávë she had called savage could come up with so intriguing a name?

She laid her hand on the handle of the door and paused, seeing her sword. It stood, sheathed and peace-tied, between herself and the outside world. From Alqualondë onwards it had been her constant companion, for there in Olwe's city she had fought against her own kin; fought against theft and murder and madness in defence of her mother's faithful people. Ever since then she had needed it by her side, not knowing who in the Noldor host might wish her ill, might consider her a traitor, might even have just cause for vengeance against her. In defending the innocent she had exiled herself not only from Valinor, but also from her father's folk.

The Helcaraxe had paid for much, and many grudges had been smoothed over since, but none knew better than she what pride and resentment simmered beneath, and even in Fingolfin's house she now felt at threat.

Not since the sack of the Swan Haven had she been without it. Not until her audience with Elwë, and it had been a great effort to set it aside then. Picking the sword up, she lifted the belt about her waist, and paused again.

Here in Doriath she was not among Noldor. It would look foolish, it would look suspicious to be armed within the protection of Melian. Here too, no one had a just complaint against her. She had defended Elwë's kin. She had placed herself on their side, so surely with them she would be safe?

Setting down the sword, she turned her back on it. Walking out of her chamber, she closed the door behind her, and it felt as though she left the spilled blood behind with the weapon. Nerwen could be left behind, with the sword, with her guilt, and here in Doriath she could be something new.

How had Celeborn known that her fëa cried out to be washed of it's stain, to be made afresh? How had he known - before she did - that she needed a new name?

She could be Galadriel, new and clean. No darkness lay on the name of Galadriel; born beside a fountain in Doriath.

Smiling, lightened, she seized the arm of a servant who was hurrying past. If a beginning was called for, where better to make it than in her brother's new city? "Do you know where Lord Finrod might be?"

"But a little while ago he was in the workshops of the stonemasons." said the lad, his eyes sparkling as she turned her smile on him, "I can show you the way if you will."

"I know it," she said to his evident disappointment, "But thank you."

There was nothing in the cave of the masons but dust, a scattering of hammers; large bulks of white stone half carved, some smooth as new lain snow, some from which it seemed carved beasts struggled to emerge. A horse stood drinking from a river of sensuous curves, his mane all pointed with moisture, but his back legs little more than scratches disappearing into the marble. Scrolls were rolled and stacked in wooden shelves so heavy with dust they seemed calcified. She took a few down and spread them, weighting them with chisels and set squares; a map of the hot springs with suggested routes for aqueducts. A plan for ventilation shafts to bring fresh air down through the press of earth to all the main rooms. A sketch of decorative detail - lily of the valley, its petals weighted by rain.

The art of these elves was different from that of Valinor. Less... fraught with immanence; more frivolous, more fresh. And their architecture spoke of camouflage, of hiding rather than mastery; yielding to the contours of the ground rather than reshaping them to a powerful will. Subtle, she thought, but a little weak to her taste.

"I guessed I would find you here." The voice was clear and sweet as new white wine. Turning, Nerwen beheld Luthien poised in the doorway with a spear in her hand. The King's daughter was barefoot, bare armed, in a loose dress of the silver-grey for which the Sindar had been named. Her hair - a long plait that flicked to and fro behind her - was sprinkled with diamonds, but she was otherwise unornamented. Artless and wild as a child of the Avari, she looked to Nerwen, and beautiful as the moon. "Are you looking for your brother?"

"I was. I imagined he would be hard at work, planning his new kingdom."

Luthien laughed, "Aye, busy as a troop of ants he was, and all alone. Today is a day of rest for the dwarves, and our own masons observe the same feast days out of respect. Yet Finrod would sit and make notes and worry himself over details he could better solve tomorrow when he will have someone to ask. And so Celeborn came upon him, frustrated and crosseyed with poring over faint plans, and took him fishing to clear his head." She picked up a bag that had lain by her feet and slung it across her shoulder. "Then I bethought me that I would join them, and that perhaps you would enjoy the company too."

Oddly, the idea delighted Nerwen. When was the last time she had had leisure to do something so simple? These joys she had thought left behind in the peace of Aman, and her life from now on all politics and warfare. "Thank you," she said, "I would like that."

The sun was up, but still pale in a sky filmed with mist as Luthien led her through beech woods and thickets of sombre yew. The turf underfoot was speckled with white flowers. As they walked, the sun's beams filtered through the tree-trunks in long slices of lemon yellow light. Finding that she had drawn ahead Nerwen stopped to see Luthien caught, ensnared by the beauty of a spidersweb beaded with mist, all gold and faint blush pink against the deep spiked green of the yew trees in the dawn's radiance.

"Sable and argent," said the Princess of the Sindar, "And indigo and grey - these I am accustomed to. But now there are so many fresh hues that I am dazzled wherever I look. Who would have known the trees were so green, and every leaf a different colour?"

"If only you could have seen the world in the light of Telperion and Laurelin," Nerwen replied, unsettled. Luthien's wonder at maimed, impure Anar made her feel a little guilty, like a man whose cloak is rigid with jewels walking past the ragged. "Can you imagine sunlight and moonlight mixing, the proportion of each changing through the day, so that every moment and every sight is a dance between gold and silver; equal but different. I used to lie abed and watch the shades slide across the white wall until I felt I was floating on a sea of pearl. I am afraid the Sun does not compare."

Luthien tore herself away from the cobweb and began to walk away once more through the long wet grass, her skirts and her bare white feet glimmering "I do not think I would like that," she said, brushing aside a branch of ash, "I would miss the stars. I would miss the darkness itself," her smile was fleeting as a firefly, "Like a velvet cloak, it can be; soft and welcoming. Intimate."

Nerwen thought of Ungoliant, the spider-demon, who slew the trees and sucked Aman dry, until all that was left of millennia of brilliance was the gleam at the heart of the Silmarils. After the terror of Ungoliant's shadow, it was hard not to feel that Luthien's enjoyment of the night was an indication of moral frailty. Hard to trust there was not true darkness in the heart of the Dark Elves.

"The Night was not created evil," said Luthien quietly, sensing the turn of her thoughts, "So Daeron says, who knows all the lore of the ancient times. Iluvatar Himself chose to create us in the darkness, beneath the stars, and if we love what He gave us, is that not to our credit? We are as we were created to be. So Celeborn says, who thinks more than he talks, and better. And you..."

So they had both almost come out and said cruel words. Nerwen felt better for it. She was not permitted all the honesty she would have preferred - having secrets which were not her own pressing on her - but something approaching the truth had almost been said. "We are what?" she asked.

"I don't..." Luthien hesitated, "Forgive me. Those who come back from Valinor seem - like my father, like myself - to be a strange hybrid of elf and Maia. It should make me feel greater kinship towards you, but instead I feel you are strange, unstable. Like a maid with one foot on the hythe and one in the boat."

"I have little choice but to step in the ship and learn to sail," Nerwen was at first surprised at the Sinda's insight, and then taken aback at her own surprise. Is not Luthien half Maia? Of course she is wise. "I am an elf of Middle Earth too, now," she said, "And the blood of Earwen runs in my veins. I can learn to love the forests with every bit of passion I once reserved for metal and gems."

"Thank you." Luthien offered her hand and Nerwen clasped it, "If what I said seems cruel it is only that the Noldor seem to think us all so lowly and worthy of contempt. The Green Folk tell us such tales of the terrible sons of Feanor and their arrogance. Even this fair land fails to delight them, and we wonder why they returned if they are so determined to dislike everything."

"And what is your conclusion?"

Luthien turned, tugging her to come. The beeches had given way to birch and willow and there was an endless flutter of small leaves, delicate against the sky. Nerwen heard the lilt and lap of a swift but shallow water. A splash, then cursing, and the easy, companionable laughter of men.

"There are those who say you were sent by the Valar to our aid," Luthien said, brushing aside the peridot curtain of a willow's hanging hair. "But mother would have received word from the Powers if that was so, and she has not."

Coming out from behind the curtain of leaves Nerwen saw a bright broad valley; a slope of poppy-scattered turf descending to a shingle and stone beach. The stream glinted where the sun struck it, but beneath was as brown and clear as fortified wine; all the pebbles richly coloured as agate in its peat stained depths. Finrod stood with Celeborn, knee deep in the water, his undertunic and half the length of his sun-shot hair soaked and dripping like a small rain into the flood. He was hoisting a spear out of the mud of the river bed, shaking his head and laughing.

Luthien paused on the bank, looking across at the two neri with a speculative gaze. "But Celeborn says that perhaps the Noldor realized they'd made a mistake in going in the first place. He says that you needed more room to quarrel in than was available in Aman." Luthien's grey gaze wandered back to Nerwen's face - testing for a reaction. A smile lurked about the corners of her perfect mouth, painting her beauty with mischief.

Nerwen held back laughter. She had come to Menegroth from Fingolfin's stronghold of Hithlum, where many songs were sung of the coming of the Noldor - how the moriquendi and the rude Sindar were overwhelmed with admiration and awe; how they trembled in their hidden fastnesses at the might and majesty of the people of Finwë. Would that the bards who spread this tale could hear the true thoughts of Elwë's folk, she thought. It would do them good.

Nevertheless, she drew down her brows and frowned at the Grey-elf Prince where he stood, slender, silver, poised in the rush of the stream. Finrod had already waved and was wading towards them, but Celeborn had not moved. "Does he indeed,'' she asked with hauteur.

He struck with the same unhurried sweep as a heron, and drew the spear up with a brown trout curling about its barbs, only then did he turn and favour Luthien with a complacent grin, and Nerwen with a look of uncertainty.

"I'm sure he didn't mean you," Luthien said, amused.

"I daresay he would have, had he known me then." she said, watching him - very Teleri he looked, in the water, his movements fluid as the stream, "We did not go from our first meeting on the best of terms."

Luthien laughed, "My kinsman has a way with first impressions." Then she handed the spear to Nerwen and went to Finrod's side. "Lord Finrod! You are soaked. Look - over there is a little bay where we might make a fire to dry you out. I have my tinderbox here, would you oblige me by fetching some wood?" She drew him away, leaving Nerwen and Celeborn facing one another in shared, uncomfortable silence.

A cloud passed over the sun and its shadow passed fleet across the trees, scudding like a living thing across the river, cold on her shoulders, then passing, leaving the warmth of the sunlight newly welcome. They watched it go together, and though she had many clever things planned to say she found that none of them exactly fit the moment. She had been envisaging a meeting in Menegroth, both of them in their finery, surrounded by courtiers who would admire the wisdom and the art of her reply. Not here, with him barefoot at the stream's edge, dirt on his hands and leaves in his unbound hair; like a child caught at truant from his tutor.

At length when she did not speak he sighed, and his dark gaze came to settle on her. "Lady," he said quietly, "Rightly you said to me, when we last met, that my words were presumptuous and unmannerly. I beg you, forget them, and let us begin anew. For if my speech was insulting my intention was not, and I would gladly be counted your friend, if you will have me."

Nerwen was taken aback. This was unforseen. She had indeed done him an injustice to compare him with Feanor, who had never in his life apologized for anything. Ridiculous though the comparison was, she was reminded of her father, turning back from rebellion, bearing the ridicule and contempt of his family by admitting that he was wrong. At the time she had thought it cowardly of him. Now she was coming to see it as a strange sort of strength. A flexible, resilient strength, like that of the best steel.

Impressed though she was, she felt oddly bereft. Some part of her had been looking forward to the argument - to matching him and forcing him to acknowledge her victory. Now that contest had been set aside; parried by this unexpected move. "Do you then demand back the word you hurled at me with such vigour?" she said, and felt a pang of regret. Galadriel. It was a beautiful name.

He laughed. "It was rather launched as an arrow, was it not? But no. It was a gift. Yours to use or discard as pleases you. I have no more part in it." He ducked his head and put down his catch on the grassy bank. Then he looked at her sideways with an expression of faint daring. "Your brother says that in Valinor you use a rod with a hook, and have not spear-fished before, which explains his clumsiness. Do you think you can do better than he?"

"Of long experience, I know I can." Nerwen boasted, and her mood soared, leaving her neither determined nor fell, not triumphant, nor grim, but only happy, as she had not felt since unrest came upon her people in Aman. So rare a feeling it was indeed that at first she could not remember its name.

Kilting her skirts, she slipped off her shoes and strode into the water. It was clean and cold. The small stones underfoot were rounded, slippery, making each step a matter of care. As she drew near to Celeborn the water deepened and grew dark. Its surface smoothed, but its current strengthened. Sunlight was stained topaz by the time it reached the stream bed, lighting a forest of swaying weed with a storm-like gold.

"Hold the spear like this, and raise it thus," said the Sinda, demonstrating. She mirrored him, determined to better all of his expectations.

"And then?"

"And then we wait."

Tiny crayfish scuttled among the stones and weed, their eyes on stalks, their backs painted in intricate designs. Freshwater crabs sidled out of the shade to grasp at empty light. The flood nudged at her knees, deliciously cool, and the scent of mallow and balm lay over the water. Warmth caressed the back of her neck from the last fruit of Laurelin, and the unfamiliar happiness grew until it filled her lungs like a song.

"There are no fish," she said.

"Because we were moving," Celeborn replied, "Which is why we prepare for the strike now, and then settle into stillness. You are to be - for them - a tree. Rooted, drowsy, drinking and thinking slow thoughts. Then they will come close to you, suspecting no harm."

"Is it not cruel, deceiving them thus?" she said, looking at him from the corner of her eye. She could see only his shoulder and hand, a sweep of bright hair and just the edge of a sweet, private smile.

"Finrod says you bait your hook with food, and they, receiving your gift, are drawn out to death with steel through their lips. Is that not equally cruel?"

"Aiya!" she laughed, "We are monsters, then, both of us."

"Still now. See - he comes."

This was also a trout, but of every colour - faint rose and citrine stripes glimmered on his sleek sides as he came nosing into the dark water, looking for cover. The fans of his tail worked with lazy grace and his eyes were cold yellow moons. Drifting, a weightless dragon of the deep, he passed under her shade, and for a moment she quailed, thinking of other times her hand had dealt death, pitying him.

But if I will not kill, I may not eat, She plunged the spear down with all her strength - it dived like a kingfisher. Impact jolted through her back and the tug and shudder of a life passing broke open memories of the slaughter of Alqualondë. Blood in the water. There was blood in the water. She recoiled, sick, assaulted by the past.

"Lady?" Celeborn was beside her. She looked at him and saw the faces of Teleri mariners; surprised by doom - confused, but not yet afraid, because they had not learned to conceive that elf might slay elf. "What is it? What is wrong?"

Aman's holiness had been spoiled that day. But Doriath...Doriath retained its innocence. Here, in the power of Melian, the elves were free of fear and guilt, as they had been in Valinor, before her family tainted it. She covered her eyes, and felt the pressure of his fingertips on her wrist - a little, inquiring touch, shy and concerned. They were like children, these dark elves, secure in their safety, untouched by Morgoth. A desire burned in her to keep them so, to protect them. By her ruin she could stand in places they dared not go. She would be their champion.

"What can I do?"

Shaking her head, she brought herself once more to composure. "Stay, it is nothing. Only I...I do not like to kill."

Such a hypocrite I am, she thought, as he took her arm gently, to steady her and help her to the bank, Such a hypocrite.

Finrod's tunic hung on a tree, small tendrils of steam rising from it in the warmth of the fire. He sat, bare to the waist, gutting and cleaning the brown trout. Luthien had rolled a large flat stone into the centre of the fire and taken from her bag a loaf of bread, a pat of butter and a flagon of white mead, stoppered with wax. Both looked up easily as Celeborn and Nerwen approached, and Finrod beamed to see her catch. "I told you my sister would uphold our Noldor honour," he said, "She was ever unwilling to be outdone by any of us."

Only his eyes told of concern as he looked up, seeing her white face. What happened? Is there aught I can do?

Bitter memories, she replied, and set down her kill beside him, still skewered on the spear tip, Let me be a moment. Hands on hips, she raised her chin and looked sternly at the shadowy woods. Breathed in, then let the past go. That was Nerwen. Not Galadriel. The pungent smell of wild garlic provided her an excuse to walk away, and she gathered herbs until her hands and heart steadied. When she returned it was to find the brown trout split and smoking gently on the hot stone, basted with butter, sprinkled with sorrel which grew beneath the willows. Luthien took the garlic from her with a smile of thanks, to chop it, and it went in the rainbow trout with more butter, and breadcrumbs, and a splash of mead.

"I will never remember all those names!" Luthien was laughing in reply to something Finrod had said. "So Finwë had Feanor, Fingolfin and Finarfin, and then Feanor had...far too many sons, Fingolfin had Turgon, Fingon and Aredhel, and your father had you two and three more brothers besides?"

Celeborn returned from the edge of the wood with four lengths of birch bark, smooth and grey as cloud, which would serve as platters for the meal. He sat down on the grass with his back to a tree and began to whittle forks out of peeled sticks.

"That's, what, fifteen royal cousins!" Luthien shook her head. "What would you do with so many princes?"

"It doesn't seem so many to me," said Finrod, "Though we were a rowdy tribe of children together, and it may have seemed more to the adults. To us it was simply a case of having many ready-made friends."

This was a better thought, and Nerwen wondered if Finrod had chosen it deliberately. Sitting on a sun-warmed boulder she took the loaf and began to slice and butter it. "Aye," she said, remembering a lost paradise, which had seemed at the time just to be normal life, "In and out of each other's houses and the workshops and studios of our elders. Always someone to talk to, or fight with; knowing that if you woke in the night your champions and your playmates would still be there."

Behind Nerwen a lark sang out, and a blackbird answered it in a duel of sweet notes. The shifting wind brought her the savory scents of smoke and cooking fish, and the green open smell of woodlands. The susurration of leaves above her and the lilting chuckle of the stream against its banks were huge and gentle at once. Contentment returned to her, and humour. All of a sudden she wondered what this little picnic would seem like to Caranthir, or the twins, who preferred not to dine off silverware if they could get gold. "She's eating with sticks! Barefoot, off plates of bark! Our coz has turned as savage as the natives.

At the thought she turned to look at Celeborn, with whom she had wrangled over the word. He was uncharacteristically quiet, his head bent over his carving, his back a tensed line, his face obscured.

"To me it seems strange there are so few princes among the Sindar," said Finrod, tying his hair in a knot behind him so it would not catch the flames as he lifted the food off the fire. "From three brothers in Aman come fifteen children, but from two brothers in Ennor, only the two of you. How can that be? Does Aman increase the birthrate? Or Middle Earth decrease it?"

"It would seem in keeping," Nerwen said, caught by the observation, "Since the Two Trees increased our strength in all other spheres for their light also to improve our power of generation."

Luthien too had now grown still, her smile with a splintered glass edge. "You are not comparing like with like," she said, very carefully, "For my mother is not an elf, and it is wonder enough that I exist at all, without demanding siblings."

"I think it has little to do with Treelight," said Celeborn without raising his head. He shaved a long curl of wood from the branch he was carving, and looked at it rather than at them. "Only that in Aman you were safe. My grandparents had Galadhon on the march, when they were under Araw's protection, but when Araw went ahead my grandmother was slain by wargs. So there was one child of that union only. My parents had two sons and were expecting a daughter when my mother was killed, and Elmo...taken by orcs. Then Galadhon could bear life here no longer and went West, and Galathil, my brother, went with him to the Havens and did not come back."

He laughed, without humour, and looked up at last, vestiges of ancient hurt in his gaze. "So that is why I, distant though my kinship is with Elu, am 'Prince of Doriath'. Out of all his brothers and his brother's kin, I am the only one left."

There was a silence. Finrod gazed helplessly at Nerwen across the fire. I did not mean to cause pain. I did not think. We feel so much is due to us, because of Finwe's murder... Yet we are not the only ones to suffer.

Nerwen reached across and clasped Celeborn's wrist. "When?" she said, "When did this happen?"

He gazed at the hand on his sleeve and then up into her face with a rueful look. "I was not yet twenty, and understood nothing but that my family had all gone, and left me behind. Folk said to me 'Your father sails the white ships in the Haven of the Swans now, and when your mother is reborn they will dwell there together, happy and free from harm.' It did not seem a great comfort, when I wanted them here."

"Lamps of the Valar!" said Finrod, uncomfortably. "So much death! And you a child!"

"It is not an uncommon tale," Celeborn smiled, shrugging off their concern. "There is scarce an elf in Doriath who has not lost a loved one, and the case is all the more common outside the Fence. Besides, my fate is not so pitiable. If I lost Galadhon I gained Elu, and Luthien is a better dancer - and prettier - than Galathil."

Nerwen laughed, and ate, and heard with great relief as Finrod moved the conversation on to forms of dance, comparing the traditions of their two peoples in a discourse that swiftly grew too technical for her. Like children, secure in their safety, she had thought of the Doriathrim, but no elf of Aman had ever lost a parent, save Feanor alone, and him it had driven slowly mad. Doriath was not, after all, a little piece of Valinor on Earth, but a fortress against a world whose hostility she still had difficulty comprehending. The Sindar had borne such blows as the Noldor had inflicted on themselves - worse blows - without becoming fell, or doomed or dangerous. In the midst of death they remained light of heart; worked, played, rejoiced, and by their mere existence defeated Morgoth's plans daily.

It was a sobering thought, humbling her Calaquendi pride, but perhaps, before she could claim the right to protect them, she should set herself to learn from them how to live in such a marred, deadly world.

---

The cooked fish was full of flavour, the bread light and the mead sweet. Under their influence the grimness of topic swiftly passed. Nerwen eased once again into unaccustomed pleasure, flicking the bones into the water and dabbling her buttery fingers to cool and clean them.

From dance, Luthien's discourse passed to music. She pressed Celeborn to sing with her the duets and love songs of Beleriand. It was natural then for Finrod and Nerwen to reply with the music of Tirion, the hymns of Indis' people and the shanties Earwen had sung defiantly in the stone city of her husband. There was much to praise in both traditions. Privately though, Nerwen felt that while she and her brother could not compare as singers to the fair-voiced Lindar, she preferred the complex depth of Valinorean melody to the simplicity and occasional folly of the alternative.

Thus the day passed in wonder, and night came down, while their small fire painted every face with gold, and the stars were strewn like dew over the meadow of the heavens. Then Nerwen went to the edge of the wood, where Celeborn sat. Looking up with him into the sky she breathed in the wonder of Varda's ancient creation and felt both released and apprehensive, on the cusp of something untried and wonderful, though she did not know what it could be. Certainly the stars were more awesome because of the darkness that surrounded them, just as the diamonds were made more beautiful by the contrast of Luthien's midnight hair.

"I have not had a day so free from concern or grief for many years," she said, half to him, half to herself. "I had forgotten who I was, in my zeal to be achieving things."

"That will not do," he said, smiling. The branch he had been carving was now a fish with whorled fins and a comical expression. He put it down and looked at her. "I thought to take you and Finrod hunting, but since you are so loathe to kill perhaps I will take him alone."

"And leave me in my chambers, bored?" She was affronted by this piece of tact, and furious at herself for giving rise to it. Was she really so dispensable to their amusements, that they would go without her? It smarted, worse than many other things which should hurt more.

"And show you the river instead. Do you sail?"

"My grandfather is Olwë of the Teleri," she said, all insult forgotten in eagerness to prove herself once more, "And I have spent many a day on the waves in the Bay of Eldamar. Gladly would I relearn such skills as I have lost from lack of use, and pleased I will be to see more of the fair country of Doriath, which I am rapidly growing to love."

She had not seen such a smile from him before - it lit him like the scattered stars. She had endured the empty words of many great Lords among the three kindreds of Valinor, and not once felt so flattered as she did by that smile. Her reeling emotions touched on joy once more.

"Tell me of Eldamar," he said, suddenly, "And Alqualondë. I should be glad to know what life Galadhon lives now. That he is happy."

It was all she could do not to flinch. Joy became misery with a rapidness that seemed unnatural to her; a keenness that must - she had no other explanation - be some result of Melian's overarching power. Curse Feanor, she thought, And his bloodyhanded sons. And whatever misguided loyalty which keeps me silent. But she sat by his side and forced herself to say, lightly, "I had rather you told me more of this land. Did you say you had dwelt in Ossiriand in your youth? What is that country like?"

The pleasantry bid fair to choke her. Guilt closed dark wings over her like a hawk mantling over its prey. Chances are, she thought, bitterly Your father met his death on the end of a Noldor blade.

The sword thrust came in hard, swift. Nerwen blocked it only just in time, her shield arm aching with effort, but her opponent had left himself open. She stepped in, sliced toward his ribcage, sure she had him now. He leapt back and parried her blow - the blades of the two swords sliding together down to the hilt. His movements, which had been thoughtful, cautious, suddenly became sure as he twisted the weapon in a violent circle, the quillions grating on her steel. Her wrist felt fit to break, but she pulled her sword from the lock in a shriek of metal and sparks, and jabbed it straight in again to press the links of metal just above his belt. At the same time, a blow in the side made her reel - he had hit her, ungently, with the rim of his shield.

"Do not take out your ill temper on me, my lord Prince," she said scathingly, "You lost. Had it been my pleasure, you would be dead."

Celeborn tossed the shield on the ground and kicked it, though not so harshly as to do it harm. "If I bore my own weapons, you would be dead," he said. "That lock would have broken the blade of your sword, an' I used an axe." He took off his helmet and combed his fingers through his hair - brighter than the polished steel. "And I am accustomed to wielding a weapon in the off hand, not a shield - that would have been a killing blow, had I my knife."

Nerwen put her own shield down more reverently on the turf, where it all but disappeared into long grass and waving buttercups. Where they had fought a swathe lay trampled, but it began to spring up again even as she watched. The practice ground was deserted. Apart from them the only living things were meadowlarks singing in the twilight. The sun was going down - a great wrack and glory of madder and gold in the west, and the heavens seemed all around them here, bathing their mail and their weapons in glory.

"You fall instinctively into your own style," she said, "Whenever you are pressed. And while it's a good style with the axe, it will not help you learn the sword."

"I begin to wonder why I want to."

By the side of the meadow there lay a fallen tree, left to provide homes for mushrooms and hedgehogs, which also served as a bench. Celeborn sat there, and after a pause, looking out at the curtain of fire between herself and the West, she came and sat by him. It was peaceful. Mist had begun to arise beneath the trees, and spill in long runnels of cool translucence out among the cornflowers. Dimly, in the East, stars began to shine, and the moon was a crescent of white in a pale blue sky.

"The sword is the weapon of Kings," Nerwen said, reflectively, "Symbol of power and authority. The axe ...just makes you look like an overgrown dwarf."

Celeborn laughed and stretched out his long legs, linking his hands behind his head. "I little care what I look like, and I am no King. Besides, the axe is the traditional weapon of my people - why should I be other than they?"

Over the last few months, Nerwen thought, they had done much together - he keeping her company while Finrod became more and more absorbed in the planning of Nargothrond - and this was one of the things she found most frustrating about him. "But surely you will be a king one day? Your birth entitles you, and you have strength and wit enough. What is lacking?"

"Only the desire. Elu is my king, and I am content."

His contentment was all too obvious, and she found she both admired and begrudged it, depending on her mood. It was very alien to her - she had inherited in full the drive and restlessness of the Noldor, who understood neither the settled security of the Vanyar nor the drifting happiness of the Teleri. "Yet I should like to be a Queen," she said with tart asperity.

His eyes widened, as though he had seen something astonishing in this reply, and then he looked away with a slow, delighted smile.

"Is it so amusing to you, that I might rule my own country?" she said, nettled "What makes you grin so?"

"My own thoughts."

"Share them with me then."

"I will not," he unstoppered his water flask to take a drink, passed it to her, "I deem the time not ripe."

Taking a mouthful of watered wine, she felt herself filled up with annoyance. How could he be so blunt at some questions and so provokingly silent at others? "I have learned many things from Melian these past months," she said, threateningly. She would not be made the butt of some private joke. "I could ferret out these thoughts of yours did you will it or no."

"Yes, you could." he looked back, his voice gone hard with warning, "And the cost would be our friendship. I will not have you meddle in my mind like Morgoth in the thoughts of his orcs."

The moon had waxed and waned a half dozen times and more since they had met, and in that time Nerwen had begun to see that beneath the rough surface of the Prince of Doriath there lay a complex and intriguing man, surprising wise, surprisingly kind. But it could not be denied that his turn of phrase was unfortunate in the extreme. "I would not by any means emulate the Enemy," she said, managing to be light hearted about the slight. It was she, after all, who had offered the first offence. "Keep your secrets - I doubt they could insult me worse than this comparison."

He laughed and stood, stretching. "Well, I'm to work - I hold court today. You?"

"To Melian, she and Luthien are teaching me to spin the web of those grey cloaks you Sindar wear. It is quite an art!"

"Indeed. Shall I see you here tomorrow?"

"Before that, even," Nerwen gathered up her shield. Her feigned amusement transformed into anticipation. She could not resist a parting dart. "For I'm sure you will not miss Daeron's recital this dawn-tide, and I would hope to hear your insights into the work. If they are not too delicate to share."

---

Celeborn sang to himself on the way to the bath, his court robes over his arm and his heart light. 'Should you not like to learn the use of a sword? I will teach you, if you would.' She had said, little over a month ago, in the rain, as they stood beneath the same oak and looked out at Finrod, blade-dancing in the downpour. Finrod had seemed a flame unquenched, leaping, radiant in the grey, and Celeborn had thought of little but the beauty of it, in taking up the offer. Well...that, and the excuse to spend more time with the lady. He did not know then, he believed that she did not know, even now, it was the root of a seedling which might grow up into hope.

'I will teach you the sword.'... 'The sword is the weapon of kings.'... 'Do you not want to be a king?'.... 'I want to be a Queen.'

She was mighty, fair, incisive, and endearingly vain. He enjoyed her company and believed she liked his. But this was the first indication that - however vague the stirrings - she was beginning to wonder if their futures might run together.

He bathed with no awareness of the water. Folk greeted him and he noticed the greetings a little to late to return them, distracted as he was. Dressing absently he checked twice to be sure he was neat, and still did not know.

If no one interfered, in the next five or ten years he could take this little seed and nurse it into a great tree beneath which they could both shelter. Only time was needed, and that he had in abundance.

It was going to be hard to maintain a pretence of Magisterial sternness, when he so felt like grinning for joy.

---

The workroom of Melian was full of lamplight, blended of gold and silver in a heartbreaking echo of the Trees. The walls were covered with tapestries and storied hangings of many colours; depictions of the Valar, of the garden of Lorien. A cunning mirror brought a square of the night sky down into the cave, so they could look out as if from a window at Menelvagor, bestriding the sky. To the left hung a scene of Oromë, discovering the elves by the waters of Cuivienen. To the right - all pearl and mithril on a sea of palest blue - a depiction of Swan Ships off the coast near Tol Eressea. This last, Nerwen thought, must be taken from dream, or vision, for Melian could never have seen the ships in waking life. And now she never would. They had been burnt - Feanor destroying the master-work of others in chasing his own masterpiece, betraying his kin who had followed him to their own ruin, leaving his brothers to walk to Ennor, across the grinding ice, or to perish in the attempt.

She did not look at that picture as she sorted yarn and warped the great loom.

"I want more gold for this," said Luthien, and rose to pause in the doorway, "I will run down to the workshops and see if the naugrim have any." She leaned over, plucking a mist grey thread from Nerwen's tangle, "This one should be in the sixth shed, not the fourth. Is there aught I can get for you?"

"Thank you no."

On Luthien's departure, there was silence for a while, though Melian's gaze beat upon Nerwen's bent head like the heat of the sun. Then the Queen of Doriath said, "Nerwen, have you received welcome here?"

"I have, Lady," she smiled, "As though I came home from a great journey."

"Yet you repay us with silence."

Nerwen looked at her hands and wished fervently that she was outside at swordplay once more. True, Elwë and Melian, Luthien and...and all their people, did not deserve this of her. Feanor did not deserve her protection. But she would not be like him, she would not backstab her own kindred. Not now, when Maedhros' torment and Fingon's heroism had drawn the Noldor back into one folk. "Though it grieves me to do you discourtesy," she said, "The secrets I have are not my own to share."

Melian withdrew the weight of her glance and stitched the white wing of a bird in flight. Into the silence her voice fell both serene and commanding, like the voices of the ocean. "The Noldor speak never of the Valar, nor have they brought any message - not even from Olwë or his people, who went away. And if we speak to them of returning they say 'we may not' and then lie. For what cause were the high people of your folk driven forth as exiles from Aman? And what evil lies on the sons of Feanor that they are so haughty and so fell?"

"We were not driven forth." Nerwen raised her chin, her pride flaring, "We came of our own will. For vengeance for Finwë, and for the Silmarils." Then she told Melian of the glorious jewels and their theft. But still she said nothing of the Kinslaying, or the Doom of Mandos, or the Oath before Iluvatar which had already chained the sons of Feanor in such madness.

"You have not told me all." Melian said, her face as still as a mountainside. Beneath her fingers there spread the flutter of Telperion's leaves, many shades of dark green and silver. Her presence was golden and heavy, like the light which broods on earth before a storm. "But from what you have told me, I guess much. A shadow you would cast over your journey here, but it is a shadow thrown to cover evil. Deeds have been done which Thingol should know, for his guidance."

In her childhood in Aman, Nerwen had not conceived that light could have a pressure, that holiness and innocence could cause pain, but it was so. She felt torn apart under the Maia's gaze. I have found folk I want to belong with, and I do not wish to deceive them. But I do not want them to know, either. I could not bear it if ...they... were to look on me with abhorrance.

She despised her pain. Yet I am Nerwen, daughter of Finarfin of the royal house of Finwë, and no umanyar is going to make me feel like this. "Perhaps," she said, simply, "But he will not hear of them from me."

---

Luthien returned with her hands full of overflowing light and poured on the table gold thread as fine as gossamer and gems pierced for stitching. Then Melian rose. Her hair fell about her like a cloak; shadow enfolding splendour. "I must speak with Elu," she said, and departed. When she had gone, it felt as though summer had passed to autumn.

Nerwen came to stir the gems with her finger, to watch the ripples of colour they made as they worked upon the lamplight. She did not like the dwarvish step-cut in which they had been shaped, which made the colour seem richer, but reduced their sparkle. Now, however, was not the time to say so.

"Bad?" said Luthien.

Nerwen looked up. "Bad enough." She tried to smile. Her mouth had forgotten how.

"Aye. We have all seen this darkness in you," Luthien said lightly, "And wondered at it. And at last Mother said she would come out and ask you. Did you tell her?"

"No," Nerwen said, "But I wonder at you. You have welcomed us and feasted us, learned and taught and played with us, and we thought...we thought you saw nothing until now. Why would you be so kind if you knew we were marred?"

Luthien unwound some gold thread and held it up as if testing the colour against Nerwen's hair. She shrugged and gave a comely grimace of resignation. "You are family. Is that not enough? I just wish you would tell us, so we could have the argument and the reconciliation, and get it over with. You will have to speak, at least, before you and Celeborn get married. It cannot be the sort of secret you keep from your husband."

"My what?" This was so unexpected that Nerwen recoiled from it as from a literal blow, taking a step back, raising her hands defensively. Her mind likewise reeled and for a time she was speechless, though aware enough to be insulted by the clear sincerity in Luthien's eyes. "I think you have misunderstood. If we have been close it has been as friends. I do not regard him in such a light, and he, I am certain, does not see me so."

The past half year wavered as an image caught on water. 'Galadriel' she thought. Even the best of friends might consider the gift of a name too personal to hazard, but it was customary for lovers. She had slapped him back for it, and he had seemed to take the correction, but suppose he had merely feigned a change of heart, deceived her since, regarding his intent?

"He does though," said Luthien warily, "Love you, I mean. He said so." She sat down, turning a great sapphire over and over in her fingers, watching it, crestfallen. "I am sorry. I thought you knew."

"He said so?" if she had been incensed before that anger was now white hot. She clenched her fists and tried not to loom over the Sinda, but she could not keep the contempt from her voice. "And has he been saying this to all of Menegroth and I the last to hear?"

"You are unjust!" Now Luthien stood, her grey eyes glinting like spearpoints, to match Nerwen stare for stare. "He told Father, who had the right to know - in case he wished to veto such an alliance - and Father told me. And I would not have said a word had I known your mind. Though I do not understand why you are so up in arms - you are together all the time, you light up when you see him, you even laugh, sometimes. And if rumour flies round Doriath that you will soon be wed it is not I but your own behaviour that has made it seem so."

"I..." Nerwen felt huge with intolerable emotion. "I must think on this." Surely this was how Maedhros had felt in Thangorodrim - in agony he was helpless to relieve whether he writhed and cried out, or lay still. She had been betrayed by her closest friend, and now she was being blamed for it? "I must..."

She turned and swept through the door, unsure if she wanted to do murder or to weep.

The case - a wrangle between fresco-painter and tapestry-maker as to who had stolen the other's idea - was reaching a level of inventive name-calling which displayed livelier imaginations in the artists than their work, when it was interrupted by an usher declaring the sky outside was full of shooting stars. Since the artist's dispute would wait, but the heaven's glory would not, Celeborn adjourned the case until tomorrow, so all were free to go and watch. He went himself to Melian's rose garden and lay down flat on the daisy spangled turf, enfolded by scent. Looking out, the world was a wall at his back: above and around him he faced the deep quiet of night and the arrow-swift flashes of hurrying stars. Did Elbereth weep? Did she hunt? Or was she dancing, her hair spattered with white gems, flying out behind her like Luthien's?

If Galadriel were to dance, he thought, it would be like the sunrise - all fiery colours and splendour and heat.

He sighed. It would have been nice to share this with her. His heart always beat faster in her presence, and joys were tripled. The very world adorned itself in extra beauty around her, and though it was fair to lie here alone under the mithril sky, it could no longer be perfect until she was beside him.

As if in answer