Broken Monuments by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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Broken Monuments

Celu is Elrond’s nickname for Celebrían. It means “rill or stream” in Gnomish (a precursor to Sindarin) or “to flow forth” (as water) in Quenya.

Emig is Sindarin for mum/mummy.

Ennor is Sindarin for Middle Earth.

 

Distance

 

Celebrían

 

“It is only magic,” mother told me, “until one understands how it works. That is all magic is: a mystery unsolved.”

I had thought lightning some sorcery of Manwë’s, channelling light from Varda’s stars. Mother told me of atoms repulsing each other; the parcels of raw energy thrown between them, if forced, until the sky sparked.

“All our smallest pieces hold that power too,” she said.

That is how I know there is distance between Elrond’s hand and mine, less than an atom wide, though it may as well be a thousand miles.

Our bodies do not attract; they repel.

✧ 


Elrond


There are one hundred and twenty five uncaring miles between Caradhras and Imladris. Four hundred and two frantic strides carry me from threshold to healing rooms. These are not difficult to fathom. I can even quantify desperation, measured in hours at Celebrían’s side, fear of death’s creep turning to prayers like broken glass on my tongue. But the cruel chasm torn between us? That I cannot measure.

Gay and bright she was, stealing one last kiss for the road. Now her brow flinches away from my lips as if they were made of lightning. I know no remedy for this.

Home

 

Celebrían


“You are home, emig,” my son whispered, gripping me tightly through the steep, switch-backed  descent. The valley lied to me; sound and scent had me believe he spoke true. But this place is home no longer. How did well-loved halls come to be strange?

I exist in a mirror realm, with reflection too bright, colours too rich for my grey heart; a backward, counterfeit place. Elrond watches, his insufferably kind eyes ruminative as I limp, unfeeling through uncounted hours. I know he seeks to shatter the mirror; to draw me out, but cannot.

Endlessly I shall wander, houseless and strange.

✧ 


Elrond

 

“I want to go home,” she tells me.

But you are home, my Celu; home here in Rivendell, home in my arms.

“To Lothlórien?” I ask.

“You do not understand,” she accuses. When did her eyes become as lacklustre as dust?

And it hits me then, confronted with the living cenotaph of my once silver-bright queen: my home has been obliterated once more, ground to dust.

“It is gone,” I whisper.

Her hand cups my cheek, soft with understanding. “What are you, if not one who rebuilds?”

Can a soul be re-made?

What am I, if not one who hopes?

Departure

 

Celebrían

 

Tides wash through us, insistent as the great sea, the night before I sail; emotion swells, cresting as it has not for months. And the room set aside for us in Mithlond is more real than anything has been for an eternity of grey days. My husband holds me tenderly, more the uncertain swain of old than comfortably well-worn spouse.

I imagine him standing there on the dock tomorrow, stoic and strong. For I know he will not weep desperate tears until I am long gone, and I grieve for those days to come.

Oh, Elrond, what have we done?

✧

 

Elrond

 

Eärendil lingers unusually long in the pale morn as if he knows. And Celu’s scars are silvery under his light as her jittering hands draw me close. Last night’s thaw has frosted over, leaving her raw as scraped parchment.

“One for the road,” she says, bestowing a stilted kiss.

Oh, Celu! Revulsion wars with repressed longing in the tension of your lips, and still determinedly you gift this closeness before we part?

I am as unmoored as her ship, drifting away with no anchor, nor harbour. Yet she is not directionless and nor am I. Neither are we without hope.

The Long Defeat

 

Elrond

[a letter is drafted...]

 

I flounder in this sinking world, Celu.

Immortality’s bitter gift, a cleared-eyed view of the long, inevitable defeat, weighs heavily. And though we dredge fertile soil from the murk, naming it victory, dearly is it bought, and transient; each stretch of peace a rapidly shrinking island consumed by the dark, lapping tide.

I fear this blackness irking me has followed you over the sea. We cannot let it drown us, you and I. Imladris was ever a bastion of life, raised in defiance. So it remains. So too we.

Dearest Celebrían,

All is well. Rivendell’s gardens spill over with song…

✧

 

Celebrían

 

I am shadow in a land never meant for dark; opaque and skewed with despair. Every breath is a failure, every scar a blight. What am I but incurable disease, imparting malady to all I touch?

I drift.

Out of hiding other shadows creep; victims of the long defeat, all. Would that you were here, Elrond! A magnet you would be, and a balm beside. Without you it takes years to find each other, for most do not bear their scars outwardly, but deep and insidious.

I expect we will fester together, Morgoth’s unwitting tools of transmission. Instead, we clarify. 
 

Legacy

 

Elrond

 

Our sons, Celu, haunt the mountain passes like hungry ghosts, cleaving monsters that lurk, hidden in their festering gloom. I fear the lust awoken in them is no less dark. For all my tempering they have only become harder, and of all you gave, they cleave most to the whetstone of your pain. Yet, still their swords swing for love, and this hope I cling to: that this devotion of theirs is no twisted thing. That our sons remain tractable to mercy; their swords ever protectors of life, not harbingers of death.

You would be horrified.

You would be proud.

 

✧

 

Celebrían

 

When did fury become a thing of pride? And peaceable acceptance bile in my mouth? Rage is the better, for to spark with anger is to be brilliantly, horridly alive. 
I am an angry woman. Furious. Livid. And I am far from alone. Too long our wrath, our wisdom, our very personhoods, have been subverted; driven under in service of narratives not our own. Our sacred bodies made messengers, like tablets hideously graven.

Who better to tear down rotten walls of blind comfort ‘til light, filthy as it is real, streams in?

We pick up our chisels, and start carving.

Myth

 

Elrond

 

War ends, Arwen weds and Ennor brims with story. Much is grim, gilded with heroism in firelit halls, or whispered with horror in the dark. Such is war’s legacy: we must sweeten it and swallow, or vomit bitterness, lest we choke.

Arwen’s tale, a bright and joyful gem amid sorrow, is told often. Oh, but they flatten her into the words Elven princess, buff my rough edges away, and say nothing of you at all, Celu. Not one captures us aright.

Arwen laughs. “They dress truths in fancy. Trouble not.”

I am uneasy. Who knows better the power of words?

 

✧

 

Celebrían

 

A princess, of golden forests born, once wed a river valley Lord, and his tale flowed smoothly ‘round her, like oil over marble. Princesses, you see, must be timeless statuario. And when foul torment corrupted that porcelain charm, and gaping wound proved her mutable flesh, she became a mere footnote, bloodied and forlorn. Story could flow smoothly no longer, catching on roughened, scarred skin.

Your trials, Elrond, could be made palatable, inspiring. Mine were too uncomfortable, an unaffordable bitter reminder. We were both reduced, and it served no one.

I never liked that damned tale. Let us write our own.

Reunion

 

Elrond

 

Westerly winds bring rumour of Valinor long before I dock, stirring old fears in my beleaguered heart. To find my wife now recast, rude in health, is more than I had dared to hope.

My Celu is not silver-bright, but golden in this land’s warm light. She, radiant, and I a pale thing beside. The years have been both cruel and kind it seems, for it is she who stands tall and I the broken monument to fortitude, crumbling in her arms.

Here we stand, two scarred, imperfect things on an unmarred shore; testament both to souls’ fragility and strength.

✧

 

Celebrían


Every Middle-Earthen ship gracing these shores this past age has borne me a letter. My assiduous husband, defeating distance with ink and quill! And I treasured each word, as glimmers of his soul. When silver sails finally bear him to me there are no words. With each passing year he gave of himself until only a wraith remained, and I am afraid. There should not be so little of him in my arms.

“Oh, Celu,” he says, and breathes of me like I were a fresh wind at spring’s first stirring.

I remember, then: my husband is one who endures.

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