Queen of the Rings

Chapter 1.1

Disclaimer : This is Lord of the Rings fanfiction. All rights remain with the heirs of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Tolkien.

I wanted to tell you everything, the truth, for the love we once shared, for the future that yet may be. When all of this is finished, and the world has changed, I hope that you will understand.

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Mithrandir spoke to my father for a long time in his private chambers. I waited in a slant of moonlight painting silver the smooth white stones of the arcade. Waiting is easy for an elf, especially in the presence of beauty, and Rivendell is nothing if not beautiful. There is artistry here beyond the understanding of mortals, for with my own hand I have spent centuries coaxing arabesques of ash and elm, guiding their every shoot and bud in a vision of future perfection. Contemplating the work allows me to pass another hour. Strange, for an immortal I have an unusually precise sense of time. My father has often remarked on it.

Mithrandir stormed from the study, thrusting a wide grey hat atop his head and striking the stones of the path so forcefully with his walking staff that a thin shard popped up from an edge and I caught it in my hand. Despite nearly grazing me as he went by the old wizard gave no heed to me, so focused he was on his own incorrigible dreams. The insult passed, and I knelt to replace the sliver against the offended stone. Old wizard. Why did he choose to appear that way? My father had swum six thousand years into the endless river of life, and he did not look so old.

Humming, I coaxed the stone into welcoming the return of its wayward fragment, and the edge was smooth again.

My father's study was a sanctum of living wicker. Thousands of vines had been woven into walls and windows, desks and shelves for his scrolls. It smelled of resin and spring.

"Were you listening outside the door again?" Elrond said. He was tall even for our race. The blood of Earendil the Mariner, who carried a Silmaril into the sky, was in his veins and mine.

"I am not a child."

"Arwen, you will always be my child." He gestured that I take a seat and I obliged him, though he continued to stand.

"Mithrandir was troubled," I said.

"The world is troubled, or so he believes."

"He is hunting again?"

"Every few hundred years he takes it in mind that the Ring has been found. You need not worry yourself."

"I am not worried. There is no danger to us here."

"Certainly not." My father poured us both a little wine, a matter of etiquette. As he did so, I noticed the ring on his own hand, blue steel set with sapphire, with patterns of warp like the eddies in a stream. Something in me responded to it, a Ring of Power, the birthright of our people.

"What if he's right this time?" I asked, the was tasteless on my tongue.

"He isn't, those days are gone." Elrond emptied his own cup and savored it, as if divining the quirks of fate by its flavor. "There will be no final battle, only a slow fading into twilight."

He was holding something back. "There have been stirrings on the winds," I said. "Rivendell may be at peace, but there have been sightings of easterlings in the realms of men, and the sky above Mordor has been quiet for many years."

"And why should quiet disquiet, my star?"

"It is the quiet of a held breath, as if all the darkness in the world is waiting for its moment to scream."

"A grim picture. I have felt these things before, and they came to nothing. Let the darkness wait, like a hound for the master that will never return home from war."

"I feel that it is different now. I feel it when I look upon your ring."

Elrond shook his hand. "There is no shadow upon my finger, daughter. This is not about Mithrandir, it's about the boy.

"Aragorn is not a boy, as you well know."

"He is a child to us. Nothing good can come of you pining for the ranger."

"I am not pining." It was a sharp rebuke, because he knew my heart too well. Aragorn and I had exchanged words of love, but he was a mortal man, and our paths could only rarely intertwine. I did want to go to him, out in the world, and share in his adventures, but that is not our way. And if I stayed with him, among mortals, the cost would be great.

My father regarded me with a too knowing gaze.

"Alright," I said. "I do think of him and it makes me foolish. Why don't you tell me where Mithrandir was headed?"

"So you can chase him?"

"For what? He does not seek after Aragorn."

"That is true." Lord Elrond did not visibly relax, but there were signs to his daughter of three thousand years that he was glad the subject had passed. "The Grey Wanderer seeks his doom in the Shire."

"The hobbits? Is Bilbo going to start another war?"

"No, but he found a magic ring half a century ago and Mithrandir has begun to wonder."

My heart gave two sudden beats, and then returned to its usual langour. "A ring?"

"Imagine a hobbit keeping the Ring for decades, never tempted to use it." My father scoffed. "Not only that, but imagine I had not sensed it either, with that very hobbit having once slept under my roof."

My excitement drained away. It was impossible that Bilbo could have kept the Ring for all this time and not been driven mad by it, or else been discovered by agents of the shadow. What was the madness in me that would look for fire on the horizon on a cool spring day? I would put Mithrandir from my mind. Ill fortune always followed in a wizard's path. I needed to rededicate myself to the ways of elves, forgetting Aragorn if I could. No doubt he would return to me, small moments in long days, but I had no control over him or his path. The ranger wandered where he would, pretending he was not a king.

Out in into the wood I went on light feet and found my peace.