Canning (Or how to focus on preserves and not the horrors that haunt you) (Tumblr Crosspost)

[endless_natterings]

Day 4 Prompt: Galadriel

Summary: Galadriel at the start of the Second Age. Establishing a brand new home is not easy. Neither is any of the rest

Warnings: Mentions of blood, vague references to pregnancy

AO3 Link

Author's Note: My first time writing for Galadriel, she's a character I struggle with a little but hopefully I've done her justice.

The ditch wall dissolved into the stream below a week after they finished lining the root cellar. The mud and gravel rushed into the water, turning it to slush. They would need to start building wells. Not that it hadn’t been on the schedule, but they had hoped for more time.

And by all rights they should have had more time, in between the lake and the stream they should have had more than enough freshwater to not have to worry. Then a strange slime had covered the lake (an algae native to the region, one of their scholars had said, it was probably the reason they had not found a permanent settlement around the lake), and it had soured the lake, leaving whoever had the misfortune of drinking from it with full-body cramps and tremors.

(She’d fallen ill around the same time, and everyone thought it was because of the water. Some days she wished they’d been right. It ought to have scared her more)

But then the stream was soiled as well, and no matter how fast they worked they would still need to build the wells. And she wasn’t even being allowed to help with the digging. Having to ask for permission had been insult enough, let alone being denied.

It had been the same age old excuse, that she was too delicate and should let others who knew better do the work. Which left her trapped indoors with the task of figuring out how to make what food they had keep through the winter.

Why they thought someone who had mainly lived in the paradise of Aman and within the beautifully preserved circle of the girdle (as a member of their respective courts at that) would know how to do any of this was beyond her. She’d never actually prepared food a day in her life (well unless she counted- no she wasn’t going to count that, she never would), let alone turned it into something that could last months if not years.

One of the Laegrim had given her a brief summary of what should be done. The sort of summary that assumed the listener already had at the very least some basic notions regarding the subject. She would have protested and argued for a more comprehensive explanation but she’d suddenly turned in a fit of nausea and dry heaving, which had swiftly changed the conversation from a lesson to an exercise of fussing over her while herding her to a chair.

She had been too embarrassed to seek anyone else out afterwards. And confident (or overly proud) enough that she thought she could figure it out regardless. So she’d grabbed the crate of roots she was supposed to handle and got to work.

A day later she had yet to see any progress.

Maybe if she stared at the roots hard enough they would dry faster. The sun itself had come from the Two Trees and everyone had always said her hair had captured their light, so maybe the still damp roots would wither and dry into powder under her gaze. And maybe the water would recede and Beleriand would un-drown, and she would be able to go home.

The rain was falling hard on the roof, water-drops sounding so much like the pitter-patter of squirrels scrambling over the woods had back in Doriath. She had not seen any over here, there was too little tree cover for them.

The air was damp, the smell of cut grass and mud sticking to her lungs. A traveling merchant who had stopped by their settlement a few months ago had mentioned heading somewhere much further south next, someplace where the air was almost always hot and dry. Except for when you got close enough to the coast, then it was sea-breeze and salt in the air, and the endless expanse of the ocean stretching as far as the eye could see.

After a week of non-stop rain she had almost cracked and tried to convince her husband to set off in that direction, just the two of them. He would have agreed, he always did when it came to her, and even though he would have argued to stay with their kin at first (his kin, hers was either dead, lost to her somewhere she could not reach, or not worth finding). But she could have persuaded him, that much she was sure of, and then she would have been somewhere warm with the tide lapping at her feet.

She turned to check on the simmering pot she’d left on the stove. It smelled like burned sugar turned bitter and wrong, but there was still more than enough water left in the pot so she wasn’t sure what she’d done wrong exactly.

She regretted waiting so long to ask Celeborn to leave, he wouldn’t want to risk it, not anymore. Not when he was so excited and nervous and busy making them a safe place to come home to roost. As though they were the same as the chickens they kept, sat in neat little rows on their perches.

She missed Doriath. Missed Melian’s hands hovering over her own, their skin barely touching, as she taught her how to push at the strands of the world to make it behave. And she also missed the ocean that had swallowed Doriath whole. She almost wished it taken the mountains that separated their lakeside from it as well.

If she could not have her forests she would have at least taken the ocean. Not that either would be allowed to her at the moment. Not that she would have allowed herself either. Not that she would pay the price of leaving this lake she hated.

She had always been told that was the problem with her. Wanting too much. A bundle of conflicting desires that tore at her until she ached.

She wanted to be a child by the sea again, to belong is a salt-water home and wash the ice and lies from her hands. And she wanted to be a creature of the forest again, to run wild in an everlasting springtime and have reality dance on the palm of her hand.

She wanted to be crowned, to rule, and she also wanted to be free and unburdened. Some days she woke up wishing to bleed out every tie she still had (that she still chose) to the world and others she dreamed of a world that was entirely her own.

She wanted to have never- She wanted the beets to dry and the jam to thicken. And then she should probably make herself want to oversee the building and lining of the root cellar. Maybe she should make herself want to sit in the makeshift hall and listen to complaint after complaint with the perfect mix of compassion and understanding on her face.

Artanis was stubborn after all. It was one of her better qualities (if anyone would bother to ask her), she could make sure to listen to herself, even if no one else did.

Yet. They would listen in time, she would make sure of that.


The start of the Second Age is so full of change and grief and Galadriel is just a character that wants so many things, it's all a big mess.