Lapsus Memoriae [Rávamë's Bane: Book 1]

Part III : Chapter 18 ~ Mirror Mirror

There really should be a tax imposed on needlessly flashy entrances in Middle Earth - that along with mysteriously uninformative greetings. They could have solved world poverty and hunger overnight.

I stood there in the entrance to the glade, frozen solid as any of the statues dotting the garden, looking vacantly between the mirror podium, the silver jug, and the Lady of the Wood. She still had her hand extended to me in a beckoning gesture. She was smiling that warm but frustrating smile, as if she was amused by some unspoken joke that I wasn't in on.

"How do you fare now, child?" she asked, letting her hand drop to her side.

I blinked, shaking myself out of my daze and managing to unstick myself from the grass. I was really starting to get tired of people asking me that.

"Better," I replied instantly, moving towards where she sat. "Fit as a fiddle, even."

Galadriel watched me closely and the weight of her gaze was something heavy and almost tangible, like standing in the path of a strong but warm breeze. Her expression shifted from curious to faintly concerned as she looked at me.

"Something has caused you worry since we spoke this morning."

It wasn't a question, just a statement of what she was obviously seeing. I should have known she'd immediately notice the conflict in my face; perceptive, all-knowing elf lady and all that. I bit my lip, thoughts of the conversation I'd had with the Fellowship earlier returning. I looked sideways down at the grass.

"It's... it's nothing. Nothing I can deal with right now anyway," I answered quietly, wishing that I could hide the hurt still lingering in my voice. I swallowed hard, forcing down the knot out of my throat and returning my gaze firmly back to her again. "You said you were going to answer my questions."

"I did," she confirmed, taking a seat and gesturing for me to come and sit beside her on the bench. "I shall answer as many as you have, to the best of my abilities."

"Well, I've got plenty of those," I smiled back politely, though it felt forced. "So I guess I'll try and boil them down to the really good ones."

"I'm sure you will," she nodded with an amused look. I perched on the cool polished stone next to her, my hands resting in my lap as she continued to watch me with those kind but unnervingly sharp eyes. "What would you ask of me first, child?"

I just sat there for a minute, chewing my lip, and my fingers nervously fiddling with the intricate lace of my dress while I thought. For all the torrents of questions I'd had leading up to this point, now that I was faced with the possibility of real answers, my mind had gone totally blank. So much had happened since I'd been here. Where exactly was I supposed to start?

"First I suppose I should ask," I began hesitantly, "How much do you really know about me?"

Galadriel paused for a moment to consider the question, her eyes skimming over my features in what I assumed was consideration of how best to answer.

"Enough to know that until two years past, you knew yourself only as Eleanor Lucy Dace, and a human of a merely twenty-two years."

I supposed I should have been surprised by that, but honestly by this point in the day, I wasn't sure if much could shock me anymore. The novelty of having a native Middle-Earthling casually drop my human name mid-conversation had kind of worn off when Gandalf did it.

I nodded slowly, still chewing anxiously on my lower lip.

"Then you really know about me? Before I ended up here in Arda, I mean?"

"For the most part."

"And you know about that how exactly?" I asked, my voice gaining a little more strength as the steady stream of questions I'd been carrying around for months slowly started coming back to me. "The only two people in the world who knew my human name were Gandalf and Lord Elrond, and that was only because I told him."