All Her Scars Bloom by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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All Her Scars Bloom

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Most Noldor, upon meeting Celebrían, first saw her mother. After all, she was almost as tall and nearly as strong. ‘You are her very image’ came the repeated blandishment as they invariably ignored the deep brown eyes she had of her father and her distinct lack of interest in government. Most of the Sindar looked instead for Celeborn, complimenting effusively the temperate nature and flowing silver hair inherited from him. They did not often perceive the fierce streak almost as wilful as Galadriel’s. It became different after she sailed. In Valinor it mattered less to which people an elf belonged; most saw first her scars. But when Finrod looked, he glimpsed right into her heart.

“Still a captive, I see,” he commented, perceiving well her suppressed recoil.

The circumstances were of Earwen’s making.

“You simply must try the plums,” her grandmother (who had prepared an entire spiel lauding the fruit) cajoled. They were, she liked to claim, one of the chief delights of dwelling for part of the year in Tirion, far from her coastal home. “Stone fruit will not grow in the lowlands, you see, only in the cooler mountain airs. How remiss of me it would be to deny you this delight.”

Celebrían did not much like Tirion, with its grand architecture, colourful culture and, above all, interminable optimism. Most everyone she had met in the city tried tempting her into some pleasure or another, be it sweet fruit, fine art, or mere fresh air, for heavens forfend she should dwell in bright Aman and remain as grey and unfeeling as the darkling mist. So Celebrían, who had encountered plums before and did not think them worthy of such ebullient praise, but had also grown decidedly weary of the escalating attempts to ‘raise her spirits’, gave in.

Earwen, unfortunately, failed to warn her that the damnable fruit’s profuse liquids were as deeply crimson as its taut skin. So, when Finrod buffed the powdery coating from one flawless specimen and casually tossed her the cursed thing, she plucked it from the air and bit down without a second thought. Then that firm skin and ripe flesh gave way beneath sharp teeth, rich sweetness burst over her tongue and juice flowed down her chin. None of this did she pay much mind, being as indifferent to the taste as she was to most pleasures Tirion could offer. Crimson drops that spilled onto the paving, however, Celebrían could not ignore.

They bloomed.

Their ragged edges feathered into the porous stone like drops of blood had once done on the dusty floor of a mountain cave. Her blood. That very shape was the reason she could not stomach the paints Finarfin had gifted her, hoping the gentle craft might ease her mind. For where drops of water unseated pigment previously lain down, they dried in a disturbingly familiar pattern.

Celebrían tried not to flinch. Tried, but not successfully, clearly. For here was her uncle peering straight into her misery with his piercing blue eyes, calling her captive. She could not even find it within herself to be angry, for mustering any sort of passion had long been beyond her. Besides, it was true.

Of course, when Celebrían learned to look carefully at Finrod, she saw right through him too. When blustering trade winds ruffled thick curtains on the balcony where they took tea, and ensnared him in their opaque lengths, she marked well the hitching of his breath. Indeed, Finrod sat frozen within their dark folds until she thought to twitch the fabric free.

“You too, are captive,” said she, and Finrod did not refute the assertion.

That is how they came to be nestled among the dunes south of Alqualondë, taking brushes to each other’s skin. For that hour Finrod made their excuses to Earwen, and bore her away from stifling, suffocating Tirion the very next day. Celebrían could not say she went with him freely, for it is difficult to deem what constitutes consent when ones own will remains elusive as smoke, but no protestation did she make. An unmolested version of her might even have approved of the gesture, would they not still be living happily in Imladris and by no means in need of rescue.

When Finrod enquired whether anything their well-meaning, but overbearing family had forced upon her proved itself a helpful distraction, she answered, “how can I forget, even for a moment, what was done to me, when the evidence permanently marks my skin?”

And he had answered, “I promise you it is no easier when it does not.” From the haunted look he wore, she believed he spoke true.

Now the rising of the sea rumbled distantly against the shore, and its soughing was the first pleasant thing in this land to wrest contentment from her desiccated heart. The emotion made its unwelcome ambush as Finrod bent over porcelain palette, turning raw pigment to creamy paint, and Celebrían found herself caught between resentment and relief at finding she could still feel.

“What was missing?” he asked her thoughtfully. “What did you want for most when you were held against your will?”

Fine grains of sand infiltrated the spaces between her toes as she pondered the question, and waxy beach grass stems slipped between her fingers. Less often did the cave re-materialise unsolicited when the sky around her was wide, its unfettered caress reaching down to the blushing dunes. The cave, by contrast, had been confined and cold.

“Life,” she answered simply. “So bare was that place. It had only stone, dry dirt, and sharp metal shapes brought by the orcs. Nothing grew.”

“Then I shall cover you in blooms,” promised Finrod Felagund, whose great halls once housed jewelled flowers amid carven forests, grand as any in Menegroth.

Skittering over silvery ridges, his brush drew leaves and stems, its touch as unbearable as it was gentle. She would have allowed that cruel tenderness, despite bilious tendrils crawling through her stomach, unable to call for its end. For, what is helplessness but a wound that goes on wounding, usurping kindness to recast it as poison? But, more discerning than she accounted was Finrod, whose heart also knew such hurts, and would not permit her agency eschewed.

The brush stilled.

“I will not go on if it troubles you.”

Finding herself wilful once freed of inertia, Celebrían urged him on with a curt nod. In this way they continued: Finrod’s hands quieting when she grew silent, or lax, until came another nod. Together they recovered shards of her shattered determination in tiny, bearable increments, until not one wheal or puck remained visible on her chequered arms.

“And you?” she asked in return. “What did you lack?”

“Light,” came the unhesitating reply of he who had been kept in smothering silence and absolute dark. “Light and sound.”

Finrod promised blooms, and blooms she now had in abundance. Stems of green twined along her arms blossoming florid in every colour, save red, covering every scar. What Celebrían saw when she looked upon them was life. Wild, riotous life. In turn, all the scars that Finrod did not possess, all the lupine wounds never destined to heal on his once ravaged body, she limned in silver at his behest. He shone brightly, glimmering under the sun as if he would never lack light again.

“How fortunate for me,” she said, “that the wolf did not think to sink its teeth below your waist.”

Her captors had. Perhaps Finrod had been told, for he grew sad, and then angry. But, unlike her mother’s mourning, or the rage of her sons, nothing about her uncle’s demeanour demanded she be the one to contain such things. Understanding he offered without burden, inciting in her heart a skirmish of relief and resentment once more.

“You should have been furious,” he said, “when I called you captive. But I saw nothing in your eyes. Not a spark.”

“Do not tell me what I should be,” she railed.

Though her words were bitter and mean, Finrod’s answering grin was luminous. “Ah, there it is, the missing flame. Can you feel it?”

She could. It burned under her skin, in the cleft between her breasts, a hot vermillion ember amid the darkling grey.

“I am angry,” Celebrían realised, with some surprise.

“Good,” judged Finrod. “But with whom?”

Celebrían, who was as swift and brawn as her mother, had not outrun her captors, nor been strong enough to break free. And when at last unshackled, Celeborn’s agreeable, restrained daughter had shaped arrows from her pain, and let Galadriel’s ferocity fire them at those she cared for most. It was herself Celebrían was wroth with.

Finrod seemed to understand as much.

“I failed my most loyal friends,” he told her, in confession not bitter, but understanding. “I could not out sing Sauron, and nor did I find the strength to break chains until all but Beren had died. And for what? His quest still claimed his life. Nothing I did would have made a difference, if it were not for Lúthien. Do you know how long I spent beating myself with that truth?”

“No.”

“Half an age. You did not cause this pain, Celebrían. Turn your anger outward,” he advised, gazing east as he did so, over the shining sea.

“Toward what?” she asked, hugging knees to her chest though they ached from the confinement. Elves with shattered patellae could not run, even with legs unbound, and orcs had long ago become proficient at breaking bones.

“Towards something that deserves it, for you do not. It is no small thing to have survived.”

“Have I?” she asked. Most of the time it did not feel as if she had.

“Yes, my dear. You have,” promised Finrod, taking her hand and tracing carefully the petals of a chrysanthemum that dominated its back. “Now you have only to flourish. Though do not be surprised if that takes some time.”

“How long did it take you?” she asked.

And he was honest, as he always was. “I am yet to find out.”

“In that case,” Celebrían proposed, “I suppose we might find out together.”