Omg LOTR. Will you do a fic where Celeborn and Galadriel first meet and both are nervous to admit that they have feelings for one another, especially Celeborn because Galadriel is pretty much higher ranking??
Whoo boy, did this give me a mental and creative workout. I spent way too much time researching the history of the Elves and the timelines, but I hope you like it! I’ve always loved Galadriel so it was fun writing for her! Thank you so much for the request!
Sunlight (Galadriel x Celeborn)
In the sunlight, her hair glowed like the golden leaves of the mallorn trees and her voice was like the deep, steady creaking of the trunks. Her eyes violently pierced right through him, right to his very core, and he was stunned at how a simple look had managed to draw the very breath from his lungs. Her skin was smooth and pale like a stone polished by the river’s current; cheekbones as high and sharp as the walls of Minas Tirith which had barely finished being erected. She looked everything befitting her status and Celeborn found himself trembling in her presence. He wasn’t sure if it was out of fear or respect or something else. Another look from her icy eyes, the tiniest pull of her lips into a not-quite smile, made the skin over his body feel like it had been plunged into the deepest parts of the river Sirion and then thrust into the midst of a great fire. If he had been asked to speak, he did not know what he would say. His voice had left him, like the last hollow wind whipping leaves off the trees and disappearing without warning.
He knew it was a fool’s idea, that he had no right to even think such things, but the way her eyes held his for a moment longer than was custom, or the way that her lips still held that glimmer of a smile when she turned away and walked off with other kinsmen of Menegroth. It felt like she could read his every thought, feel his every emotion, and she knew — she already knew what he was feeling and thinking and she still held that smile for him.
It was a young Elf’s dream but he could not help but hope for it all the same. An entire lifetime, thousands of years in the eyes of the Afterborn, spent with her; even to the end of an age, where his spirit was entwined with hers in the Halls of Mandos until the world came to an end. All of it, he could see in just the fleeting moment of their eyes meeting and her turning away with the resoluteness of the mallorn trees she so resembled.
If he had been anyone else — someone higher ranking, someone stately, someone worth speaking about and worth speaking to, or maybe even someone so young and foolish who had not yet learned their place — he could have spoken to her. He could have held her gaze, retrieved the breath she had stolen from him, and said something. He could have caught her attention, made his presence something worthy of her attention; but he had not. He could not. His hands, his legs, his very core, they still trembled when he watched her leave. The trembling did not cease, and when he saw her in the evening, it seemed to grow worse.
Her golden hair had turned silver in the evening light, her gown an ice-white river of fabric, her eyes glowing like Ithil which hung over their heads in the night sky. That same breath she had stolen that morning had not yet returned to him, and he felt like an empty basket bobbing down the Sirion, helpless in the torrent. Celeborn did not think that he could have found her more beautiful, more frightening, more powerful than that morning in the sunlight. Yet she seemed to command the evening just as well, perhaps even more so. Her features were sharp and white, even more like Minas Tirith in their dazzling shell-white splendor. Her eyes seemed to turn dark in an unexpectedly wonderful way when they landed on him, and there — upon her thin, pale lips — was the same, guarded smile.
He understood now why she was called Lady of Light. There had never been one before, and he knew there would never be one after, who could radiate all the beauty of the worlds so effortlessly. She was imposing and inviting at the same time and it confused him. He did not know whether to bow his head and retreat from the conversations, or stand his ground and return that same penetrating gaze and smile.
Alatáriel, was what came into his mind, like a whisper breathed in the early morning before the sun rose. It was shameful and exciting to have already chosen a name for her. He knew he would never get a chance to use that name, sing it against her head of golden hair, or press into the pale coolness of her skin with his lips, but still it remained at the front of his mind. Even if she exceeded him in rank and status, and had a proper name to be addressed by, his mind was always reciting the name he had given her. It was his own bit of bravery, since he knew he would never be able to utter a single syllable in the presence of the Lady.
****
When Galadriel, who in those days had only been called Artanis or Nerwen, first laid her eyes on Celeborn, kinsman to King Thingol, brother of her mother’s father, she did not expect the feeling that washed over her body. His eyes were warmer than any other’s she had ever met in her lifetime, his features were serious but kind, and he seemed to lean into her even when she was not speaking. There was something strange about him, something that did not quite match the royal rigidness of Thingol and his other kinsmen, nor his court.
It felt like a bird had nestled itself in her stomach, stretching its wings to brush against her heart. It was curious, the way her feelings had shifted so suddenly in the presence of this Elf. Before she could even think of turning away from him, he raised his gaze to hers and held her eyes. A strange warmth spread through her chest and up her throat. It felt impossible to tear her eyes from his and she found herself smiling at him. She did not know how he had managed to make her smile, with just a simple look, with his own serious expression, his unbending posture.
She wondered just what thought was going through his mind; surely something noteworthy and only resigned for the most important people in the court. He said nothing the entire time yet she, for some reason, desired him to speak. She wanted to hear his voice, see how it lilted with a question or lowered with a trusted secret, vibrated with the odd syllables of Sindarin, so unlike her own language of Quenya. She wanted to know what great speeches he held just behind his thin lips, what sounds would roll off his tongue if they spoke together in solitude. It almost brought some sort of childhood rosiness to her cheeks and she felt like wrapping her shawls around her face to hide away from Celeborn’s intense gaze. Yet she longed to be under it, to be the only thing he saw, to be the one he spoke to in that deep tone, with unfamiliar words of a foreign language, her ears full of his voice and his laughter and the light of his eyes shining down over her.
Her own voice held a sort of tremble, a nervousness she had never felt in her life before. All she could do was tear her eyes and mind from the Elf standing in front of her, instead addressing the rest of the Elves in their presence. No one who did not know her would not notice; her mother and father would. They would hear a pause of hesitation, a swallow of nerves, a stop mid-sentence at the feeling of warm eyes on her cheek. She wondered if her language sounded just as strange and awkward to Celeborn and his did to her; or if he found its melodic notes pleasing and lyrical.
Only a moment in his presence and she was already longing for his approval. It was strange and she did not know how she felt about it. At the end of the meeting, she could not help but throw another look at him and was not surprised to see that he was still staring at her, face still stony. Another smile tugged at her lips and she did not stop it from forming, her eyes trained on his as she turned away.
She did not know when she would see him again, or how she would feel upon a second meeting, but she kept the warmth of her heart close and thought on how it made her feel all that day and into the night. There was no telling what her mother or father would think, what Thingol would say, or even what Celeborn himself thought, but it did not matter. As Ithil rose in the night sky, scattering its cold light across the grounds, Galadriel found herself wandering out through the trees and into a clearing where, on the other side, stood a shadow. It was the Elf who had occupied her thoughts so fully, and who she had wished to see again even before the next day started. It was like he had called to her in the darkness of the night and her heart had heard it, beckoning her outside and to where he stood. His silver hair looked as brilliant as the decorations on her dress, and his eyes reflected the loving light of Ithil above.
Neither of them spoke, but it was not needed. She could feel that same bird nestling in his stomach, brushing his heart. He felt the same way as her. She knew that when the morning arrived, they would have to tell the others — mothers and fathers and the king and queen and their kinsmen — but in this moment, in this night, it was only them and it was all that mattered.
Celeborn with his sapling-thin lips parting in a smile to whisper above the night’s breeze, “I knew it would be you, Alatáriel.”
She had never liked the sound of a name so much and she decided, right then under the watchful eye of the moon and the pleasant smile of Celeborn, it was the only name she would ever want to go by from then on.
