Here, Where We Are by Lilith

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Chapter 1

Galadriel prepares for a journey and informs Celebrimbor of tales of a visitor claiming to be an emissary of the Valar.

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Even in the early spring, when the frost had barely receded, the rivers were only beginning to swell with the leavings of the spring thaw, and the days and nights remained cool, the heat in the forge was oppressive, Celebrimbor of Eregion stood before the anvil, a delicate hammer in his hand and a slim circlet of mithril in the process of being shaped before him, and felt a drop of sweat gather, then hover above the corner of one eye, before slowly rolling its way along his cheek and down to the hollow of his throat. He resisted the urge to shake his head and focused his attention again upon the mithril before him. He had devoted this morning to the first of the jewels he was crafting for his young cousin’s begetting day. Celebrian would be celebrating her tenth this summer, and she had begun to see herself as having grown older in the way that only the very young do. At her mother’s latest gathering, a salon of artists and writers, she had presented herself far more seriously to him than she had been used to doing, sweeping a low curtsy that her mother had instructed her to practice and wearing her hair in a neat braid, still the style of a girl, but of an older girl than she had believed herself to be only a month or two before. That said, she remained, as likely as she had always been to be found in a tree than in a sewing circle, the archery grounds rather than playing about with a doll or hidden in the Mirdain rather than learning how to churn butter properly. He had thought, then, that it was perhaps time to create a set of jewels for her to wear on a feast day — in truth, he’d wanted to for sometime but Celebrian’s father had laughed and said only that they would be more likely to find such things lost in the gardens or worn by one of the several cats Celebrian befriended as a quite remarkable crown — and he had settled himself to slowly design different pieces suitable for the unique being his little cousin was.  

He had enjoyed the labor; for many years in Beleriand before it was lost, in Lindon and then in Ost-in-Edhil, he had not had the time to devote to such fine labor, having been occupied with the design and then the building of the cities themselves. In Lindon, his role had been less central; Ereinion had architects and designers he knew and favored, but he’d worked at creating the tools and the varied inventions designed to create more ease and beauty in these new-birthed cities. How successful he’d been, he wasn’t sure he was able to say; he’d always seemed to be fighting a losing battle against the elements and time. But it had been rewarding to see houses and halls, towers and battlements, bridges and mills, smithies and bakeries arise from what had once been wilderness. Lindon had already become a noted outpost of art, lore and culture, and was visited often both by the men from over the sea and the elves from other parts of Middle Earth, though it was, he knew, his memory would not allow him to pretend otherwise, a mere shadow of the cities of Nargothrond or Gondolin, much less Tirion of old.

Ost-in-Edhil, he hoped, might one day, if the world remained peaceful and his people had time to recover, surpass those cities of old, but he doubted it would be any time soon. He had been successful when he insisted upon a extensive district to be devoted to the guilds and another to the arts. He’d even reminded Artanis of the schools of learning in Tirion and persuaded her to set aside small sums that might be used to persuade some of the more talented members of Ereinion’s court to relocate to this land located far from the mountains and near the sea with the hope that those scholars might be willing to instruct his apprentices and those of other guilds in the varied branches of knowledge known to the Exiles in Middle Earth. A few had come; he hoped more would follow. Though he’d not yet achieved a fraction of what he hoped to achieve in the city, sufficient progress had been made of late that he was able to devote more of his time to the famed arts of his House, to remember the old discoveries and rekindle the passion for innovation and, of course, to craft jewels and shape metals into ornament.  

As he gazed at the mithril circlet before him, he set the hammer tool and grasped a different tool, placing careful measurements in the silver to denote the places where he would begin to engrave delicate flowers and nightingales and where he might set jewels of a blue as dark as Celebrian’s own eyes. He smiled, looking at it, when he had completed the markings. He rolled his shoulders and knew he was glad of the project, not simply because he enjoyed the finer work at which he was not always able to spend his time but also because it reminded him of Celebrian when the girl herself was gone from Ost-in-Edhil.  
Celebrian and her mother had been gone from the city for a little more than three weeks. They were traveling to Lorinand in order for Celebrian to spend time in a land more similar to the one her father, Celeborn, had known in his youth and where he and Artanis had met. Celeborn had determined that winter that Celebrian had not learned enough of his people and their ways of living outside of the city. She needed, Celeborn had declared, to learn more of the ways of the leaves and the trees, of the rivers and streams, of the deer and the birds, of the fox and the fish. She had learned much of the ways of stone houses and works of craft and not enough of green and growing things. Celebrimbor had sympathized and thought he might understand a very little. He himself had wanted to show Celebrian the world of his own youth and, indeed, was attempting to build it, but he struggled to imagine having a past as easily offered to the world as Celeborn offered his own. But then, Celeborn’s family, for all of their mistakes, had not wreaked the havoc upon the world that Celebrimbor’s had.

Celeborn would be traveling with his wife and his daughter, but only as far as the gates of Cassarondo. The mountain passes were still too treacherous for the company to attempt them, but Celeborn refused to enter the dwarves’ realm and thus was unable to go farther. It was, Celebrimbor thought, both a pity and utterly unsurprising. Even as much as Celeborn had succeeded in transcending old enmities and grudges, at least enough to accept his wife’s Fëanorian cousin into his family, he had proven himself unable to relinquish others. Perhaps it was a necessity. No longer giving voice to some old hatreds did not mean the enmity was gone but rather may have been in need of redirection. If it was no longer possible to hate the last of the House of Fëanor, then it may be needed to hate the dwarves, the other scrounge of Celeborn’s house and of Doriath itself.  

Still Cassarondo, Khazad-dum in the dwarves’ own tongue, was one of the most beautiful and remarkable cities of Middle Earth. Nargothrond paled in many respects in comparison to this beautiful city under the mountains. Whether Menegroth did or no, Celebrimbor was not able to say; he’d not been permitted to set foot in the Thousand Caves before they’d been sacked or, indeed, after. He had wanted to visit, before Doriath fell, when Artanis had lived there and, even, after, in order to bear witness to the place laid waste by his father and uncles and that had cost three of them their lives. But he had not been able to go. His had been the charge the last of his father’s and uncle’s people, and he had shepherded them in secret from Nargothrond to Gondolin and then to the Havens. But Khazad-dum he knew. He had spent years in the dwarven kingdom under the mountains once Ost-in-Edhil had been built, exchanging the secrets and the knowledge of his people for that of the dwarves. Though Celeborn had been opposed, Artanis had not and a fruitful and profitable friendship had developed between the two realms. He remembered his time spent their fondly. He wondered what Celebrian would think of the great city with its vast halls and tall pillars, as wondrous in their own way as the soaring and elegant towers of Ost-in-Edhil.  

“We have built tall, too,” Narvi had said, looking at the towers of Eregion as they were beginning to rise into the sky, “in our fashion.” 

He remembered as well the central halls, some of which had tall, high windows that emitted shafts of sun, star and moonlight into the central hall and others that lacked such windows but were illuminated in a very different ways. Through ancient arts of which he knew little and in which he had not been offered instruction, these halls bore with them the manufactured likeness of the skies above and mirrored them so that it seemed night in the halls if it were night out and day in the halls were it day outside. The only concession the dwarves made was to the weather — it did not rain nor bear the semblance of rain in the halls of Cassarondo; “Why bring in that which is unpleasant?” they’d said and laughed.  

Artanis had promised that they would write, and he knew they would at least a few times. Artanis was meticulous in honoring the promises she made, enough so that she would determine a way to send two or three from Celebrian and one from her to Eregion, more, of course, if she felt events warranted such a measure. But Artanis was none too happy with him and he none too happy with her. The cause of their most recent quarrel was neither surprising nor new but rather the old matter that had long framed their lives, the fact of his House and its history and her decision to consider him suspect as a result. That said, though the source of the quarrel was unsurprising, its fact was. He had been saddened by her departure and that of her daughter. But he had agreed with Celeborn that Celebrian ought to spend time with his kin; it was, in fact, a point about which he felt very strongly about, much to Artanis’s surprise. She had thought he looked down upon the Sindar and their different ways, but he had smiled and had said only that he had no child nor expected to but, were the world different and his tale not as it had been, he would have wanted any child of his to know of her people. Since that would not and could not be, then he thought it important Celebrian should know of her heritage and, if that meant staying among her father’s people for a longer time and being away from him and his own, then he would miss her but it was well with him.

Artanis had not particularly wanted to travel to Lorinand. It had meant leaving her home and the healers’ guild with which she did so much work. It also meant, he thought wryly, ceding the governance of Eregion, however temporarily, to her husband and to her cousin. As she reminded them, she had been far more involved in the day-to-day business of running the realm than either her husband or her cousin. When Celeborn had protested that he had been occupied with the planting and cultivation of the crops to feed the city and its hinterland and when he had observed that he and the Mirdain had been occupied alongside the mason’s and the woodworkers guild in designing and raising the city itself, she had narrowed her eyes and asked them whether they thought her less busy with the healers’ guilders and the weavers’ and the dyers’ and the bakers’ and the millers’ and the cheese makers’ and, at that point, he’d not known what to do but to concede her point. It had taken another two days and Celebrian’s own reluctance to travel without her mother for Galadriel to consent to the trip and then two weeks for her to tutor him and Celeborn in the running of the city and realm. Most they knew, but the simple mechanics of the city’s growing bureaucracy and the networks of scribes and messengers they were less familiar with and had to be instructed. He remembered his uncle, red hair shorn short, cloak concealing where his hand had once been, reminding him sternly that these details were not to be avoided but were the matters upon which the success of many a regime rose and fell. He remained silent, made notes and took the offered instruction. He also reminded himself that it would not do to leave this to Galadriel alone when she returned but that it was also his responsibility, even if it was one he found less pleasant that the making of that which served the realm.  

At the end of this instruction, she had looked at Celeborn and then carefully handed him a letter. The seal, one of the royal house, had been broken and the letter clearly read more than one time as it was no longer curled but neat and smooth. He looked at the date and the signature — written by Ereinion in the fall and so likely delivered before the frost, perhaps only a little after the harvest. He began to read. In it, Ereinion spoke of a visitor, a woman claiming to have come from Valinor and to be one of the Aulënossë. This visitor, he wrote, wished to lend them aid, to provide them with the knowledge and the skills they had mastered before their Flight and that had been lost in their Exile. Interestingly, she offered more, techniques more recently learned, crafts that would ease the hardships of life in Middle Earth and would allow them to build, even more truly than had been done in Gondolin, Tirion in this Eastern lands across the sea. Ereinion had considered granting her entry, pondered it for some days. But something had not sat well with him, and his herald and advisor, Elrond, had been still less easy. He had thus declined to admit her and written this letter to warn Artanis of this woman and, indeed, of Celebrimbor himself.

“ ... feel it is my duty to warn you,” the High King had written, “of her possible arrival in Ost-in-Edhil. If she is truly from the West, it will take her some time to learn of you. If she is not, I suspect she might arrive ahead of or on the heels of my own messenger, being, perhaps, already acquainted with the reputation of your city.

She seems fair, pretty enough, though no great beauty, tall and slender, and capable, I suppose, of the work she claims to know. She resembles more one of our people, being pale skinned and dark of hair, rather than the Vanyar, and I might have found this surprising, save that she claimed to have been one of Aule’s people and those were of our folk more often than not if the old stories are to be believed. But there is something about her that left me uneasy; while I would have rejoiced at aid from the Valar, it seemed very clear as the ships departed from Middle Earth that they had little intention of aiding us, that our exile remained a punishment and that any who wished to do so would not have be been looked upon favorably. But I might have been willing to accept her save that Elrond was so very uneasy. She felt familiar to him, he said, though he could not or would not explain how — like a shape seen only in shadow before, he said. Poetic but not very certain. He also seemed to be unsure of her offer — I think he stayed long enough with Maedhros and Maglor to have absorbed some of their reluctance to trust and that true Fëanorian dislike of those things that are too rare and seemingly offered freely. He said it seemed too generous and disinterested not to have some conditions applied to it. Perhaps, dear cousin, you should be careful when you speak of this — if you speak of it, perhaps there will be no need — to our cousin of that House. He is likely to be susceptible to such an offer. He has long sought to reclaim the glory of cities and days long passed and one with such skill might make it possible, but — I ask you, cousin — at what cost and dare we risk it? Better to be safe.”

He had read it twice and then a third time before he spoke. He’d not needed the additional readings to comprehend the message but rather to master his temper and to school his tongue.  

“Thank you, cousin,” he had said softly, “for letting me know. I wonder that you had not mentioned it earlier.”

“No visitor came,” she replied. “There was no need to disturb you. Had one come ...”

“Then you would have had little choice as you have had little now,” he responded. “Unless, of course, I was occupied in one of my many trivial pursuits. Then I doubt I’d have heard about her for a se’en night at least.”

“Tyelperinquar,” she began, using his old name, the one she only used when she knew him to be angry and with cause and when she wanted to sooth him.

“Don’t,” he said. “You said that we would build this city together. You and I and Celeborn. Not that we would build it — that I and my people to raise the walls and pave the streets and construct the towers — and that you would conceal matters of such great import from me.”

“I would have shown you if there had been a need.”

“Then and only then as you must know. If she comes now that travel will be easier?” 

“You have been busy at your work and little involved with the council or with the other visitors who came. Were you even aware that the messenger had come?” A fair criticism and one that smarted all the more for it. 

“And been a visitor in your house, nonetheless,” he’d replied quietly. “Artanis, you either trust me or you don’t.”

“Well,” she said, “I am trusting you now.”

Because you’ve little choice, given that your husband has commanded this little adventure and he already tolerates so much, he’d thought but had not shamed her or himself by speaking it aloud. Instead, he asked simply, “What would you have me do if she arrives? Refuse her?”

Artanis sighed, “In truth, yes. It would be simpler.”

“And so my judgement is as suspect as our cousin believes it to be?” he asked. “Am I never to be worthy of your trust or his, in truth?”  

Artanis looked down at the letter and then back at him. She smoothed the paper carefully, though it needed it not. “It may only be that the threat is too great,” she replied. “I do not know. I trust Ereinion’s instincts.”

“Do you?” he answered. “He is oft suspicious of everyone and everything.”

“As are most who lived in the days we have,” she answered. “Even you. I trust Elrond’s.”

To that he did not have a ready answer. More open than Ereinion and possessed of an uncannily perceptive mind, Elrond Halfelven was one whose judgment Celebrimbor did trust. “Then you would have be refuse her.”

“I don’t know,” his cousin said. “I am sensible of the benefits of such an offer but I too wonder that it is given freely.”

“Your brother offered his talents freely to those in need and our knowledge. Have they any proof of their fears?”

“No,” she replied.

“Then is there much different about this person than any of the others we have admitted over the years?”

“True,” she answered and sighed again. “See her if she comes, if you will. But be wary and do not grant her a permanent entry until we three may discuss it.”