Chapter Text
Galadriel wakes with the first rays of sunlight coming through the tower window. She takes in her surroundings. The pale, sheer yellow drapes flowing lightly in the morning breeze with golden rays showcasing the tiny dust particles suspended in the air like shimmering starlight, an illusion of wonder in a place where wonder has long since died.
This is not new to her.
She has seen this same light, this same stillness, for a hundred years. Maybe more. Time has no meaning for her anymore. She no longer marks the seasons. Only the moments when she forgets her name or when he enters her bedchambers to take what he wants from her.
Nothing has ever come from their union, but in his darkest wishes to own her completely he tries. Again and again. To break her. To fill her. To make her womb bloom with his corruption. And she lays cold and silent, even in the moments of pain and brutality. She dares not make a sound. Her silence is her resistance and if he cannot break her he cannot truly own her.
For all this time, Galadriel has remained silent.
Silent with words.
Eöl has tried to coax her voice, to win her trust, offering lavish gifts, elegant dresses she has nowhere to wear, paints, brushes, and canvas, a library of books, epic love stories, histories of Middle-earth, poetry, and a harp.
At first, she refuses them. Most of them. But Eöl mostly visits during the day, and the night becomes her own.
She paints the moon when it shows through the trees. She cannot see the stars, but she paints them anyway.
She paints Valinor. The Two Trees.
Her hair has grown impossibly long-far more than the years should allow. She has nothing to cut it with. Perhaps it is his sorcery.
She does not ask.
She imagines her hair flowing through the sky like starlight, glowing faintly in the moonlight.
And she paints that too.
There is a white rabbit who began appearing in the early mornings, just before dawn.
She rarely sees creatures here, and is skeptical of its sudden presence. But eventually, she gives in to the temptation of believing it is simply a benign creature that happened upon her lonely tower.
She begins to imagine visiting the rabbit down below and how soft its fur might feel beneath her fingers. She imagines speaking to it, whispering fanciful tales of far-off lands and long lost wonders. She names it Nieninquë, “White Tear” a symbol of her sorrow.
She paints it, too.
The rabbit does not offer her salvation.
But it is her witness.
When the silence becomes unbearable, she turns to the harp.
Only at night.
Only when she knows he won’t hear.
Finrod had taught her to play when she was very young. Now, the music becomes her language. It weaves her emotions into sound. Fragments of lost joy, echoes of mournful farewells, the hollow ache of her despair.
She does not speak anymore.
But through her harp, she gently weeps.
Sometimes she stares at the narrow sliver of sky between the trees, wondering if the stars still exist.
She has not seen them in all her time here.
But she paints them nonetheless.
And when her loneliness grows too sharp to bear, she paints from a dream.
Always the same dream.
A silhouette of a man stands in the shadows beneath the moonlight. The darkness that clings to him gives her unease, but there is a strange pull toward him she cannot explain.
Sometimes, she imagines he is coming to rescue her.
And she paints that too.
But dawn never lasts.
The light that spilled through her window is now hidden by the thick brush of trees as it rises. The hush of morning gives way to silence of another kind: the heavy quiet before intrusion.
She hears it, faint but unmistakable- the low clang of boots on stone.
He is coming.
And the day begins again.
Not with hope.
But with endurance and a stubborn resistance.