OOC: This turned into a longer story than I'd originally intended, and I haven't yet properly edited it as I'm posting quite late - so apologies. More importantly, it references the journey taken by Galadriel through Moria in the second age before Lothlórien was established, and noting that there is a certain ambiguity on different drafts of when and why that happened in the lore, I'm taking the interpretation (having received some trusty advice) of the view that she embarked on this before the break out of war (i.e. not as a result of a military retreat from Eregion). Link to that here [on TG]. I'll stop before I embarrass myself further on the lore side :)
Ceneshar was brooding.
He had not forgotten Doriath, and he certainly would never forgive it. Something at least that he and his liege Lord Celeborn held in like-mind. Yet where Celeborn carried a deep-rooted hatred for the Dwarves, all Dwarves, as a result... Ceneshar found himself regarding them differently.
Hatred implied worthiness. It implied an enemy deserving of passion. More often he viewed them as beings beneath his contempt. Stubborn creatures of stone and earth who clawed greedily at the world and called it craft.
Yet still it was the Eldar who now crossed beneath the mountains held by Dwarves… passing through Moria not as lords of the Elder Days, but as guests permitted safe road through a lesser race’s halls.
Wisely, Celeborn had remained behind.
Ceneshar now found himself wishing he had done the same. Yet his lord had pressed him into this journey, bidding him to accompany the Lady of Light on her passage eastward, and to keep watch upon the Dwarves at the same time.
So, he walked close behind Galadriel and her daughter Celebrían, who were both hooded and surrounded by an elven company, as the halls of Moria opened before them all. There were endless pillars that vanished upward into shadow. Great furnaces roared in distant chambers, and roads were carved like living arteries through rock that disappeared into black depths, untouched since the very conception of the world.
He would not afford them the compliment of recognising their deeds, though even Ceneshar could not deny the oppressive grandeur of the place. The halls of Moria were not crude caves clawed out by stubborn miners. They were vast beyond reason, ordered with a harsh and practiced symmetry that spoke of generations of fleeting lives which had laboured beneath the mountain with a singular purpose.
It offended him that such skill belonged to Dwarves at all. But he knew better than to express such views, especially in front of Celebrían - who was still so young at a mere few hundred years old.
As they travelled, the Dwarves watched them with guarded suspicion. With hands rested near, but not too near, axes and swords. With beady dark eyes narrowed on their every step from beneath iron helms and bushy beards.
There was a growing tension as they moved through the enduring dark. For not all of Moria was lit by torchlight, and as they reached way-station after way-station, the mood of the Dwarves seemed to tighten, as a noose might around a neck.
The way before them was too long to see this growing tension go unanswered. Conflict seemed inevitable, and Ceneshar knew he would take a certain delight in it when it came to pass.
But it was she who passed first… passed among them. Elf and Dwarf alike.
And everything changed.
Discarding her hood, she drew in their gazes. Voices softened. Hardened faces eased.
Dwarves who moments before regarded the Eldar with guarded contempt now bowed their heads as though starlight itself had descended into their halls. For indeed light seemed to glow about her in strange ways, the darker the surroundings got.
Some Dwarves openly wept at her passing. Others hurried forth bearing tokens and gifts: a pathetic display of lanterns, silver cups, trinkets fresh from the forge. The mountain itself seemed to yield before her, as its darkness was pierced.
It unsettled him.
Not because such creatures admired beauty beyond themselves. That was natural enough. Even lesser races recognised greatness when it walked among them.
No, what troubled Ceneshar was her acceptance of it.
Galadriel moved through their devotion as though born to receive it. Calm... Radiant.... she was untouched by embarrassment or hesitation. She listened to every trembling word and accepted every desperate offering with the same ethereal grace. She neither encouraged nor refused their reverence of her. She simply allowed it to gather around her like warmth drapes around an open flame.
And the Dwarves loved her for it. The tension was gone.
After a time Ceneshar realised he had ceased watching the Dwarves at all. Instead, he was watching her. He had done so many times across the ages, but few times had seen her in the presence of lesser beings.
Did she know what she stirred in others? Surely she must. One so wise and perceptive could not possibly be blind to it. Did she draw such feelings forth deliberately? Did she cultivate devotion as a gardener might shape flowers?
The thought disturbed him more deeply than he wished to admit.
For he had crossed the sea with her. For her.
He had followed her from Valinor itself. Through exile, through war, through the long shaping of realms across Middle-earth. Their interests had always aligned. Their ambitions had always seemed to move as one. But had they aligned naturally?
Or had she aligned him to her?
The question struck him with a sudden coldness that seemed to freeze his limbs.
Had his loyalty truly been his own all these ages? Had his admiration? His purpose? Or had Galadriel, knowingly or otherwise, simply bent hearts around her as easily as these Dwarves now bent their knee to her beneath their very own mountain?
Ceneshar realised he had stopped walking only when the sound of the company had drifted too far ahead, the Elven candles they carried now distant among the pillars, leaving only the harsh glow of Dwarven braziers lighting the way to their kin. He had frozen in thought and frozen in body… left standing alone in the vastness of Moria while she continued without him. He had stayed in Middle-earth for her. Or so he had thought...
Behind him, Celebrían had drifted away from the main company as well, though for reasons entirely unlike his own. She was among a group of Dwarven children, some playing instruments and all with laughter ringing out as they attempted some form of loose dancing in a circle that barely held together as they moved, but somehow didn't break.
She stepped out from it and caught his hand without hesitation, drawing him into their rhythm as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Her grip was light, unforced, and she remarked on how cold his hand felt, laughing as if it were some harmless curiosity rather than a judgement.
He withdrew at once and the contact broken. “You are not a child.” he said, too quickly, too sharply. The edge of his voice cutting cleanly through the warmth of the moment. “You are long past such foolishness.” The words fell heavier than intended, and for a heartbeat even the laughter around them seemed to dim.
Celebrían only tilted her head, untroubled; that same calm expression rested upon her face that he had seen before in her mother when she was as young. She continued to move with the children regardless, and after a moment the rhythm resumed, as if the world itself had refused his interruption.
Then, without missing a step, she extended her hand to him in invitation. “Then I choose to be such a child” she said lightly, “if it means I may keep joy for as long as this road allows us such new friends.” There was a glint in her eye, not unlike her mother’s; it was far less bright, but still quite captivating.
The simplicity of it left him without reply, and no answer came from him. Against what he knew his better judgement to be, he took her hand, and she guided him into the circle; warmth returning reluctantly to his blood as they danced with the children.
And though Ceneshar was aware of all of it, his thoughts had already slipped elsewhere, turning not to the dance itself, or with whom he danced, but to how easily Celebrían carried a form of her mother’s light within her without imitation, and how naturally she drew others into it without ever seeming to command their obedience. It was the ease of it that troubled him, the absence of effort where there should, by all accounts, have been some cost to the binding of another’s love.
A memory surfaced then. Of a voice, a whisper; measured and kindly it had given him counsel. “Be watchful Ceneshar of those who would draw in your love in ways you know not their hold over you.”
His gaze lingered on Celebrían a moment longer, as she danced, and as he danced with her, and as they both danced with those beneath his contempt…. and he wondered on those words…
Somewhere ahead, the main company had paused, either in concern or curiosity, leaving the stragglers an opportunity to rejoin. The Lady of Light stood among them, and though she was far away, Ceneshar felt as if she were close enough to witness his every step.
Perhaps there was some basis to what Annatar had told him.
