Yes, everybody, I’m attempting another fanfic. My last one was a tragic failure if you ask me, but I’m trying again. Please review. I love reviews, good and bad. Honest criticism, please! Don’t beat around the bush. If nobody likes it, I need to know, so I can refrain from putting up any more of it. Main characters: Celebrian and Galadriel, Arwen and Elrond, Celeborn and dozens of others. Rated PG for safety. Fanart illustrations coming soon as i can figure out how to do it.

Author’s note

I have always, since I first read The Lord of the Rings, wondered about Celebrian. Who was she, really, besides just Galadriel’s daughter, Elrond’s wife, and Arwen’s mother? In all tales, someone or a few someone’s have to be pushed a little to the side, to make room for the heart of the story.
Yet every person has a story to tell, and every person has a song to sing.

This is Celebrian’s song.

Song of the Silver Maiden
Prologue

When an Elf receives the life-wound, they know it. Yet I am the daughter of Galadriel, and so I had foreseen this time for many long ages. Always my fate was in the balance, but in the balance with mine was my daughter’s.
Once, when I was very young, not even full-grown, I had a dream unlike any other I had ever experienced in my sleep-state. In it a tall woman with stars in her mantle and stars in her eyes and stars in her hair raven like the night sky spoke to me and she said, “My child…ever you have lingered in the still moments of the night and sang to me a hymn of glory. You ask as to your fate…and I have heard you and I answer you now: your daughter will be called beautiful beyond the measure of words, and no eye will rest on you when she is in your presence. Yet her fate is not to be unlike that of Tinúviel; unless you intervene. For she will love a mortal man, and so you will be eternally parted–unless you allow her life to go with yours, that the world may still have the memory of her beauty.” She smiled and gently touched my face, and I whispered to her, “Aglar le Elbereth Gilthoniel, Hírilo ara elenath,” which is “Glory to the Star-Queen, the Star-Kindler, Lady of the highest stars.”
I lie now in my chamber in Rivendell; little time now awaits me to tell my tale, but tell it I must. I know more of Middle-earth and her ways than perhaps all saving my mother and my husband. The wisest have now departed, and few now live on earth who know the tale as I tell it. Galadriel is wisest of them, and knows much that she will tell no one except my father. My father is ever an observer, gentle in his ways and wise. He speaks little, and will not tell it. Elrond is wisest second only to Galadriel and speaks of secrets to no one, rarely even me. The Ents could tell it, but they wouldn’t; they are slow and lumbering in speaking, seeming so even to the Elves, who have all of time. Iarwain Ben-adar, old Bombadil, is a fool though his wisdom runs deep, and sees it as import-less, and the River-daughter murmurs in the way of the River her mother, and few know that tongue.
So that leaves only me who would speak.
And I tell it to my daughter.
Arwen is indeed perfectly beautiful. She is a merry child, nearing full-growth. She smiles more rarely now, for she loves me as only a child can. Yet even in her sorrow her smile lights a room like the sun, and no one who remembers Tinúviel misses the resemblance to her, most beloved of us all. She sits by me in the mornings and I have no bitterness that I will lose her to Men. Elrond will not accept it easily, but he will give in and Arwen will not wed the Man as a shamed woman.
I turn to her now and smile. “Arwen…truly you are Lúthien reborn to us.”
She smiles quietly, and says, “I’m not so beautiful–the world just wants Lúthien to return to us. See, look here: a line. I have a line! I shall be the first aged Elf…”
“My dear, sweet child,” I say softly, “I have a story for you…”

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