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ncfan-1 · 5 years

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The Mirror Pool

One day, Lúthien took Galadriel to a mirror pool. [Written for the April 1st general prompt, In the Mirror.]

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Honestly, Lúthien had not expected Ardis—Celeborn had taken to calling her ‘Galadriel,’ but Lúthien did not sense much in her in response to the name, asides from ambivalence, and thus, to Lúthien, she remained Ardis—to agree to her request to accompany her out into the depths of Region. Ardis had shown little interest in exploring the wide forests of Doriath. She was hardly bereft of natural curiosity—Lúthien didn’t think her mother had ever had so eager or so diligent a pupil—but that natural curiosity did not seem to extend to the natural world.

The offer had been made largely out of sympathy, though there was some desire for Ardis’s company interwoven with that sympathy. Winter had been a hard one, the snowdrifts deep and the skies absolutely choked with clouds, and Ardis had withered like an autumn flower that died with the first hard frost. Lúthien had known very few of the exiles, but Ardis’s brothers had had the same reaction, and when Lúthien attempted to divine the answer, she was met with jagged spires of ice, and walls behind that Lúthien could have broken through if she wished to, but did not care to shatter. There were lines that should not be crossed without permission, doors whose locks should not be picked. The lesson had been slow in the learning, but Lúthien remembered it.

Today was the first properly warm day of spring, and Lúthien had thought that Ardis, who had spent the entirety of winter immured in Menegroth, would appreciate the opportunity to come out of the depths of the caves into the sunlight and the fresh air. And perhaps Ardis would like to take a walk around the part of the forest closer to Menegroth later, but Lúthien had not expected this to be the offer that Ardis accepted.

Being wrong was always startling, but in this case, it was also welcome.

“That’s right, you never have been to this part of Region, have you?”

Ardis nodded, the heavy, deliberate nod that was so uniquely hers that it would have looked utterly unnatural on anyone else. “I cannot say that I have.” A frown flitted over her lips, translating into a faint jitter in her mind that Lúthien heard in a flurry of sharp whispers behind Ardis’s skin, before everything smoothed back out, thoughts and face both. “The path I travel from Finda—“ she frowned again, and the jittering disquiet in her mind persisted into her speech “—Finrod’s stronghold does not pass through this part of Region.”

The background noise that had flowed out of Ardis’s mind had been, Lúthien knew, completely involuntary, and she knew also that Ardis was not the sort of person who would appreciate Lúthien’s prying, no matter how well-intended it might have been. Lúthien did not think it a trait shared by all the Tatyar; Ardis’s older brother seemed frankly eager for someone to discuss things with, for all that he would lead a merry dance around the point of the subject at hand. There, the need for privacy and the need for comfort were locked in an eternal clash. In Ardis, Lúthien saw the battlefield where the former had prevailed over the former long ago.

“Excellent,” Lúthien said brightly, and constructed her face so that her smile was just as bright. “We can go slowly, if you wish. When experiencing this beauty for the first time, I wouldn’t want you to miss any of it.”

From Ardis, there came a movement of the shoulders that wasn’t quite a shrug. “As you like.”

Lúthien slowed her pace so that they walked shoulder to shoulder, trying to ignore the way the song of contentment in her breast had been replaced by a giddy cacophony. Someone who could not think clearly would make a poor guide, though she knew they had no set destination in mind, and that Ardis’s silence was of a kind that did not desire to be roused to speech. She just—sunlight poured through the gaps in the trees, dappled and golden and wonderfully warm, and Ardis’s hair glinted like veins of the gold and silver it was oft describe as—needed to keep her mind.

And the forest of Region was such a lovely place in spring that there was no need for Lúthien to give any commentary. The verdant green leaves on the holly trees shone like polished emeralds. Scattered among them were the other residents of the forest, beech and yew, elm and rowan, sprawling oaks and slender cherry trees. Some of these trees were crowned with delicate, fragrant flowers, nearly all with new, translucent leaves, and all were so gloriously awake that if Lúthien had sang to them, she would have half-expected them to sing back. The next time Lúthien encountered an Onod, she would have to ask them the ways her songs could reach the trees; she knew there were ways, she just didn’t know how to go about it.

The ground was soft and sun-kissed under Lúthien’s feet. The ground was blanketed with new, vivid, sweet-smelling shoots of grass, with flowers quivering in the gentle breeze coming up from the south. The snowy-white niphredil were long-loved, and would be in full bloom for the rest of spring. Hellebore shot up above the niphredil flowers nodding in the breeze, white petals dappled with wine-violet speckles. Clumps of yellow primroses and early, slender pink harebells dotted the forest floor in all directions. Lúthien saw smudges of violet and blue, but didn’t care to stretch her sight to determine just what they were. The air was filled with a sweet perfume, and the swifts had returned to the forest and were darting through the trees, chirping cheerily.

There really was nothing Lúthien could say that would be up to the task of adequately describing what she experienced. She knew that Ardis could not hear all the things that she could. She knew that Ardis, no matter how gifted she might be, could not hear all the undercurrents of song that thrummed so loudly in Lúthien’s veins. There had only ever been one person who could hear everything that Lúthien could hear. It was… That was stifling.

You would think that if there were those who were fully of the Eldar who could hear everything that I can hear, Ardis would be among them. Lúthien looked down at Ardis, who was beginning to survey her surroundings with more open interest than she was willing to evince before. She quickly looked away—Ardis seemed always to know when someone was looking at her, and Lúthien would rather not be caught—and the stifling feeling only grew.

Mother’s tutelage could introduce the students to mysteries that they would never otherwise have had access to, or even knowledge of. Perhaps with Ardis, who unlike the others had had access to and perhaps teaching from Mother’s kin in the Blessed Realm, would be able to bridge the gap. Lúthien would like that. The Iathrim looked at her and saw someone far beyond them, someone to be held in awe as much as loved. It would be a welcome change to be with someone who had something resembling the same perceptions as her.

“Were there forests such as this in the Blessed Realm?” Lúthien knew Ardis to not speak of the Blessed Realm especially easily. Once, she’d spoken of them very easily, but after the truth of the Exiles’ departure came to light, words had stopped flowing, slowing to a trickle so miniscule as to barely be noticeable. This would be a safe topic, surely. There was nothing to hearken back to the unrest that had soured the bliss of the Blessed Realm in a question about forests, surely.

Still, Ardis’s answer was slow in the coming. She halted, another small frown marring the statuesque perfection of her face. None of the jittery disquiet echoing in her mind this time, just a harder current to try and push information through.

“There are few places in Aman where the Ainur have poured as much of their power into a location as the queen has here,” Ardis said at last. “There was little need, in such a place as Aman. Little need for more beauty, and no need for more safety. In many regards, I would say that Doriath is unique. The closest we had in Aman to this were the gardens of Lórien.”

“What are they like?” Lúthien asked curiously. “Mother doesn’t speak of them often; she says there’s no point to it, when there is so much to occupy us here.”

A low, hoarse chuckle slipped from Ardis’s mouth. “A direct quote?”

Lúthien rolled her eyes and laughed. “Yes, that was a direct quote.”

Ardis pursed her lips, though the ghost of her chuckle glimmered still in her eyes. “The land had much the same resonance as the forests of Doriath. The power of the Ainur was very strong there, strong enough that even the untrained and the uninitiated could sense it. Indeed, the unprepared were likely to be overwhelmed. The flora was infused with the power of Irmo and Estë and the Maiar who attended them. The gardens were more alive than the surrounding lands.”

She did not elaborate on that, but she didn’t really need to. Lúthien had never left the eaves of Doriath, but she knew many who had. They had described the differences well enough that Lúthien could paint a picture in her own mind. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to live in a place untouched by her mother’s power. The thought was forlorn, but also oddly exciting.

“I wonder…”

Lúthien fell silent, frowning.

Ardis peered up into her face, her sharp green eyes trying to scour past the skin, though with a mind such as Lúthien’s, her chances of success were close to nil. “What is it?”

Lúthien waved her off. “It’s nothing.” It would likely be something, in a few minutes. Her eyes fell on a patch of reflected sky, and she strode towards it, beckoning for Ardis to follow. “Here is something that might interest you.”

The two knelt by a wide pool. It was perfectly round, with a smooth, stony lip and a diameter that was perhaps the same length as the length of Lúthien’s arm, from shoulder to fingertips.* The surface remained as smooth as polished obsidian, no matter how strong the wind was. It never dried up, no matter how little rain there had been, and it never overflowed, no matter how much rain there had been. The water was always cool enough to send prickles up Lúthien’s flesh, and there was an undertone of power to the still water that whispered to her spirit.

Ardis did not disappoint today; barely a moment after she had settled on her knees by the pool, she began to peer intently at it, her brow furrowed. “This is an interesting place,” she said quietly. She stretched out her hand towards the water, but withdrew it at the last moment, fingers curling in on her palms like withering flower petals curling up in the heat of summer.

“There are places like this in Doriath,” Lúthien murmured, nodding. “Mother’s magic had more effects than simply what she intended. People come here at times, when they need an answer to their troubles. The waters show the truth.”

At that, Ardis’s face froze, and though Lúthien was not entirely certain as to why, she could think of a few reasons. “The truth of what?”

Lúthien shrugged. “It tends to vary. What is certain is that that the water shows the truth, without fail, every time you look into it closely.” Her mind slipped back in on itself, and suddenly Lúthien was wincing, putting a hand on Ardis’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I should have asked you. Would you rather not…”

But Ardis only shook her head. “I have nothing to fear from the truth. I would sooner know the truth than live my life in ignorance, no matter what the truth might entail.”

Which sounded like bluster to Lúthien’s ears, though it might have been delivered more steadily than Beleg’s insistences that he could go back on duty in spite of broken ribs or a sprained ankle. She was hardly going to bar Ardis from the pool. The truth was something everyone must face sooner or later, and if Ardis wished to drink a dose of it today, Lúthien was no one to stop her.

Lúthien took a breath before looking into the depths of the pool. She did not know exactly what other people’s experience with the pool was, for this was the first time she had ever come here in the company of another, and though she had heard stories, had divined some further details by accident from the minds of those who told those stories, it was not the same as having experienced it for herself.

She only ever saw one thing when she looked in this pool. The same thing, every time.

And sure enough, when Lúthien looked down, the longer she looked, the more the reflection rearranged itself into a familiar image.

Her appearance was mostly Eldarin. Lúthien knew from the tales that others had told that when she had been very young, this had not been the case. When she was very young, she had been less solid, and some of her parents’ early followers in the heart of Doriath had actually been quite wary of her, believing her a wraith or some other fell spirit. But as she grew older, she became more accustomed to the Eldar, and more proficient at taking on what could, for the most part, pass as an Eldarin form. For the most part.

Lúthien’s mostly Eldarin form stood head and shoulders taller than most of the women in Menegroth. Ardis herself came up to around Lúthien’s chin, and the only woman in all of Menegroth who was taller than Lúthien was her own mother. Her hair was… Well. The Eldar did not have hair that flowed like water or looked like smoke, did not have hair where tiny white flowers grew in spring and summer, and were replaced in autumn and winter by holly leaves and berries. The Amanyar could restrain the power in their voices more easily than could Lúthien. The eyes of the Lechind burned with dimmer fires.

There were things no amount of control or suppression or illusion could hide, and Lúthien knew how many of her people saw her. Love was mingled with awe. That emotion that promoted closeness was mingled with something that drove all closeness away. Even with many of those she called friends, that distance sat between them, squat and baleful, denying Lúthien what she craved.

The pool… The image she showed her was an image Lúthien had grown accustomed to, from many visits when she had hoped it would show something different, then many visits when she no longer hoped for such, and merely looked for more information.

The sky reflected was a pale, soaring azure. Never mind the time of day, never mind the weather, and never mind the fact that the pool was flanked by trees. The trees never appeared in the pool’s reflection, and even in storm, even in dead of night, the sky reflected in the pool was always that cloudless, unblemished azure.

Lúthien had seen her mother cast off her disguise of flesh just once; she did not see that image reflected in the pool. Nor did she see the body of a normal Elda, untouched by the blood of the Ainur. What the water showed Lúthien instead was Ardis’s reflection vanishing from her sight, and her own becoming hazy. A pillar of white light that burned too brightly, crowned with rippling black smoke, something that was not her mother, and could not be taken for a normal Elda. The reflection could not convey sound, but still, Lúthien could feel the songs of power that poured from her reflection-self’s translucent skin in a torrent. She could smell the sharp, green smell of plants growing too rapidly, urged on by magic. She could smell the red, copper smell of dead flesh.

The water showed the truth, alright. Pity it didn’t come with a neat, concise, easy-to-understand explanation as to what it all meant.

Lúthien’s reflection-self wore just the same expression it had always worn when Lúthien visited the pool. The red smell could be strong enough that an Elda would have gagged, and the look on the apparition’s face would still be one of mild benevolence. That mild look was inevitably what drove Lúthien to look away from the pool, and today wasn’t any different. She rose to her feet, and went to sit leaning against the sturdy trunk of an elm tree carpeted with springy moss.

Ardis lasted nearly a minute longer, scanning the water with an expression of intense concentration and an undercurrent of something taut that Lúthien could likely have easily identified if she had stretched out her mind, but honestly? She didn’t care to. Finally Ardis asked, a few moments before tearing her gaze away from the still water, “What did you see?”

“Myself,” Lúthien said simply. “And you?”

Very softly, with an acrid aftertaste of bitterness, “Myself.”

Ardis remained sat by the pool, though she no longer looked into the water—indeed, the way she avoided staring into the depths seemed frankly pointed. What statement that was supposed to make, Lúthien had no idea. Her companion had a stillness to her that seemed always to elude her brothers, indeed eluded most of the Iathrim. That stillness settled over her like the return of winter all at once, and the only thing to differentiate her from a statue was the gentle rise and fall of her breast.

They sat like that, and the only sounds that came to Lúthien’s ears was the wind, the call of swifts, and the far-off, muffled voice of the Esgalduin. Quiet wasn’t stressful to Lúthien, wasn’t soothing—it was what it was, and quiet, by itself, inspired in Lúthien absolutely nothing at all. Her curiosity had added a taut tune to the silence, and eventually, the tune grew so sharp that silence must be broken.

“Ardis…” Lúthien combed a hand through the thick smoke of her hair, coming away with a few scattered flower petals. “…I want to know… Why did you agree to come out here with me?”

Green eyes dragged themselves to her face. “What do you mean?”

“I… did not expect you to agree, actually. I would have thought you would have other things you wished to do.”

She was happy, of course. Just a little lost, as far as clarity went.

One fine eyebrow arched quizzically. “And I suppose I cannot simply have wished for the pleasure of your company?”

“It’s certainly possible, but if you have any other reason…”

Ardis paused to consider it. The sunlight made her hair shine; metallic thread in the hems of her robes glinted bright and hard. “I do enjoy the chance to leave Menegroth, at times.” She looked away, her mouth grown hard. “Much the same as in Aman, I like my solitude.”

“You’re not alone, though,” Lúthien pointed out, voice soft. “I’m here with you.”

Another long pause. If Lúthien concentrated, she could hear the faintest strains of Anor’s energetic, almost frenzied melody. Then, there came a roll of Ardis’s shoulders in a shrug. “It’s…” Her mouth twitched, ever so slightly. “It is no burden to me. I feel no expectations upon me, when I am with you.”

Lúthien’s mind burst into undiluted light. “Likewise.”

-----------------

* My Lúthien is 6’10”, for reference.

Amanyar—‘Those of Aman’ (Quenya) (singular: Amanya—probably) (adjectival form: Amanyarin); those Elves who made the journey to Aman, or were born there. Anor—the Sindarin name for the Sun Eldar—‘People of the Stars’ (Quenya); a name first given to the Elves by Oromë when he found them by Cuiviénen, but later came to refer only to those who answered the summons to Aman and set out on the March, with those who chose to remain by Cuiviénen coming to be known as the Avari; the Eldar were composed of these groups: the Vanyar, Ñoldor (those among them who chose to go to Aman), and the Teleri (including their divisions: the Lindar, Falmari, Sindar and Nandor). Esgalduin—literally ‘River under shade’ (Sindarin); a tributary of the River Sirion, which originated in the Shadowy Spring in Ered Gorgoroth and flowed southward to empty into the Sirion; marked the borders between the Forests of Region and Neldoreth. Iathrim—the Sindar of Doriath Lechind—'Flame-eyed'; a name given to the Ñoldor by the Sindar, referring to the light of the Trees that shined in the eyes of those Ñoldor born in Aman during the Years of the Trees (singular: Lachend) (Sindarin) Niphredil—‘Little pallor’ (Sindarin); a white flower that bloomed first in Doriath when Lúthien was born. It also grew in Lothlórien, on Cerin Amroth. In appearance it was similar to a snowdrop. Onodrim—the Sindarin name given to the Ents (Sindarin) (singular: Onod) Tatyar—‘Seconds’, the second clan of the Elves of Cuiviénen, named for Tata and Tatië, the former of whom was the second Elf to awake (Singular: Tatya) (Adjectival form: Tatyarin). Their name in Aman, ‘Ñoldor’ (meaning ‘the Wise’), was given on account of this clan showing the earliest aptitude for intellectual and technical pursuits; it has a Primitive Quendian original in ‘ñgolodō’, from which is also derived the Sindarin ‘Golodh’, ‘Golodhrim.’

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