✨Reminder that Haladriel Valentine's Week begins February 6th! See @haladrielsweek for all the prompts and details! Now, for all the fans who would like to support and celebrate our lovely fandom and its creators, I've created a little Bingo event for anyone who wants to join in! Have fun! See details below 💌
Rules: Connect just 4 squares vertically, diagonally or horizontally and you're all done! Fill out your cards by February 14th!
Tags: #haladrielvalentines2025 and #haladrielbingo
If you complete a row [or 2 or 3!] on the Bingo card, post to Tumblr and I'll send you a little treat ^^
Feel free to send me any questions or simply reply below! Thanks again to @haladrielsweek [on Twitter] for putting together this event! 💋
Proud to show this beautiful art that my friend and artist @reimymonfer has made for my fic of Haladriel Valentine's Week, "A Casual Encounter". If you read the fic you will discover what scene it belongs to! 😍
Galadriel from New York City writes: “I am a young woman, of great intelligence and refinement, with no fortune save my good looks and warm heart. Any gentleman who could appreciate these few qualities will find me an affectionate and docile wife.” See the editor for inquiries.
It had all been meticulously arranged via extensively detailed correspondence. Upon receipt of his funds for the agreed upon amount, Galadriel Noldor promptly bid goodbye to what was left of her family and began the long, arduous journey to California.
To meet her new husband.
However, when she arrived at the camp, after two weeks of travel by coach, then train, and then coach again, she was met with a most unwelcome sight.
Mud, as far as she could see. The landscape was harshened even further by tall, wiry pines and stark, rocky cliffs. She’d heard California was full of sunshine and gold. And all she wanted was to be warm and dry, and clean again, but it seemed fate had other plans. For there was only cold and damp to greet her.
From the first step out of the coach, she nearly sank to her knees in filth. Her finest dress, that she saved for the day of her arrival, now bore the stain of three inches worth of dirt. Clouds darkened ominously overhead, threatening to rain down another torrent.
Surely, her bridegroom did not expect her to arrive pristine, but it stung all the same. She wanted to be perfect. To make a good impression. He confessed to having read Richard III and Dante’s Inferno. He studied at one of the finest universities in the country and spoke of bringing enlightenment to the great Wild West.
Galadriel had envisioned they’d be throwing grand dinner parties and hosting businessmen and politicians who traveled on their way to the neighboring San Francisco.
There’d been almost 200 responses to her advertisement in the paper. She’d been most scrupulous in her dissection of each. Many wrote of superficial things, like acreage and good breeding.
Her Halbrand spoke of connection. He quoted poetry and claimed to be in a position of high esteem among the settlers at the bustling fort of Ostirith. He desired a companion by his side. Someone to share in his love and his good fortune.
And of course, he’d offered the most in funds. His check cashed for half of the agreed upon amount without issue with the backing of the prestigious Wells Fargo Stagecoach Line, and her poor mother was to be well taken care of in her grief. The second half of the money would be wired back east after the marriage certificate was signed.
Galadriel had dutifully done her part.
But in person, without the trappings and promises of her suitor’s beautifully written words, her ankles nearly shook in her boots. Perhaps she had made a grave mistake.
Ostirith wasn’t an established city, as she’d been made to believe, but a simple mining camp. There were no buildings or avenues of commerce. Just a hastily assembled collection of meager tents, a shabby mercantile and a saloon. It stood half-charred like it had been licked by the flames of hell itself.
“Sir, could you please direct me to the clerk’s office?” Galadriel asked of a man who hobbled past with a slight limp.
“Clerk’s office?” He looked at her as if she was speaking in tongues.
“Yes, is this not Ostirith?” Her letters had been addressed there. It was a known stop on the coach line. Surely it existed and she wasn’t deposited in the wrong location.
“We call this place Mordor, miss. You’d best be on your way.”
“No, I’m looking for the esteemed Mr. Halbrand? Perhaps he’s the law around these parts? The mayor or the sheriff?”
He turned to her then, revealing a grizzled and pocked face behind his stringy grey hair, and only cackled toothlessly at her distress.
“Ain’t no law around here.”
As if to prove his point, the door to the nearby saloon swung off its hinges, and a pair of bodies splashed forth into the soggy street. A blur of fists and blood landing mere steps away from where she stood.
“Don’t you know who I am?” One of the men had the other by the front of his shirt, and was pummeling a fist into the side of his head with a sickening crack. “Think you can steal from me!”
He was poised to deal a final blow until he looked up, straight to Galadriel. Hand raised mid-strike.
“You,” she thought she heard him whisper, his brows drawn in confusion. Or perhaps guilt.
The moment didn’t last long enough to be sure, as the man beneath him sprang to steal the advantage with an elbow to his face. It knocked him back enough for the other to break free and run towards her direction.
“Help me! Please!” he begged, just before a shot rang out and a mist of crimson spattered across her face and chest. The bullet exited the man’s skull and landed somewhere behind her. His features contorted in horror as he passed from life to death.
Shocked, she could only blink as he hit the ground with a thud.
“Welcome to Mordor,” said the one who’d done the shooting, as he replaced his pistol in his holster, and his hat on his head. Tipping it in her direction politely, he added, “Wife.”
