One for @mircallaruthven who requested something about Celeborn at Celebrian's birth
The chamber doors open. The midwife comes forth, swathed bundle in her arms. Celeborn would rise but the strength has drained from his legs. His has been the lighter task, but still he has been carrying these fears for a day and a half: Will Galadriel live? Will she come through this battle whole as she has come through many another, creating life this time rather than destroying it?
Will she have put so much craft and magic, so much of her own creative force, her fea, into the child that she has drained herself and is lessened by it? She never did like to do a thing half way.
Vain of her dignity, aware that to give birth is a thing one cannot do prettily, and unwilling to be seen in her travails, she had shut herself in with a healer and a midwife, and permitted no others to witness the birth, not even him. Every possible disaster has tormented his thoughts ever since.
Now he raises his head and breathes out. Galadriel is too sensible to die from a thing like this. She knows when restraint is necessary just as well as when to give her all.
He meets the midwifeās gaze. Alfirin is her name. She is nearly as old as he ā he remembers her as a child in Menegroth, and even then she was never without a pocketful of newly born beasts. Doubtless, she has ushered more lives into the world than he has dispatched from it.
āYou have a daughter, my Lord.ā
The joy tries to hit him then. He pushes back the great shining silver wave of it long enough to gasp, āGaladriel?ā
āShe is well. Resting. Here.ā
All this time she has been approaching. Now she lowers the bundle toward him. His arms come up to cup it, in an instinct born of long practice. There is an echo of Nimloth, of Dior, of Elwing, and then he parts the white cloth that swathes her and sees her tiny face and all at once there exists no one but her in all elven history.
Here is the little one to whom he sang the Nandorin songs of strengthening, when she was wrapped up in her mother and Galadrielās bright eyes shone above her, humouring him. Here she is, whom they loved already, but whom they clearly had not loved enough.
He ghosts a fingertip along the slope of her nose, and the joy that had been oncoming now breaks over him, cutting the world out from beneath him, reshaping him. His chest aches as it is expanded to hold her. Part of him now.
Oh look at these tiny hands! Have there ever been hands as perfect as this? With their tiny moon-pale nails and their strong grip? Never, surely.
She opens her eyes, and they are Galadrielās eyes, slate blue and imperious as she frowns at the sunbeam striking the tapestry above his head.
āIs it a little bright after all that darkness, my queen?ā he laughs, feeling renewed, as though he were again no more than a hundred years old, and moves to the other side of the room, where she can look down into a shaded garden, over-run by wild roses. āThere. Donāt be afraid. Itās not a bad world, and daddy will keep you safe.ā
He brushes his own hand feather soft through downy hair that glints like water and tears burn in his eyes once more. āDid you know you have the Kingās hair? Eluās hair? How generous of your mother to choose it. She must have known what it would mean to me, to have his crown continue in my own child. When they see you, all the elves of Middle-earth will know you are Eluās kindred. Royalty.ā
āShe must have a name, my Lord,ā says Alfirin, and her brisk tone drags him back to the real world, where his daughter will be princess of a realm shared with the grandchildren of kinslayers. She will be looked down on by prideful Amanyar and eerie golden-eyed Maia alike as they pass by on their way to their forges.
Fine then. āCelebrian,ā he says, in his mind already fighting any man who would disdain her, full of a soul splitting pain at the thought of anything hurting her in any way. Did she stumble and graze her knee he would break the ground beneath it. She would know only bliss. Misfortunes would have to come through him.
āFor she is a descendant of kings and will be a mother of kings until the end of the earth.ā
āAnd sheās queen of your heart,ā Alfirin quipped, not quite rolling her eyes. She had doubtless heard many other similar declarations from other fathers before, and having survived Galadriel in the pains of labour was not intimidated by his bombast.
He looked back down to his daughter as she wrinkled her nose at a distant butterfly, and laughed, swinging back into worlds of joy.
āAnd sheās queen of my heart,ā he concedes, full willingly. āSo she is. My silver queen.ā
stormborns
kaledo-art
baratheonpilled
jbbartram-illu
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
titsay
turnnoffyourmind
