Through Fire and Water (A Legolas Love Story)

Galadriel's Mirror

3 years old and I’m running. My clothes are torn and I’m scratched and bruised. My tiny legs move as fast as they can on the uneven forest floor but it isn’t fast enough. The growls are getting closer and I can hear their feet beating on the ground as they chase me. A scream rings out through the trees and I recognise the voice.

“Mummy!” I cry “MUMMY!” I stop running, screaming out for my mother and wishing the terror would stop and she would make everything ok.

“Run Ana! RUN!” I hear my mummy yell. I don’t understand, why won’t she come for me? Why is she telling me to leave her? I don’t want to leave her. The scream comes again but it stops suddenly, followed by a loud growl which sends me running again. I stumble over a tree root, cutting my knee and causing blood to start flowing. I can hear footsteps running after me again. Where is daddy? He is supposed to protect me. He promised he would! I scramble to my feet, running again and wailing this time.

I stumble again, landing in a heap. I close my eyes and I hear my dad screaming. “Ana!” He yells.

“Daddy! Daddy where are you?” I cry.

“Ana!” he yells “I-“his voice is cut of suddenly and the forest is silent. There is a growl behind me. I spin around, screaming and-

I jolt awake, shaking and soaked in sweat. I close my eyes, trying to relax but I just end up remembering their screams. That’s all I remember of my parents, those brief moments that I dream about. I don’t even know their names.

I sigh, quietly swinging my legs out of bed. I doubt I’m getting back to sleep tonight so I might as well go for a walk. I pad across the clearing in bare feet and find myself a footpath. I follow it for a while, enjoying the sound soft the woods, when suddenly I hear voices through the trees. I don’t know why but I decide to investigate so I leave the footpath and slip quietly through the trees where I come to a clearing. Hiding behind a tree I peer round to see Frodo and Lady Galadriel.

Frodo is leaning over a basin. Suddenly he cries out and falls backwards to the ground. Galadriel looks at him through narrowed eyes “I know what it is you saw” she says as he scrambles to his feet “For it is also in my mind. It is what will come to pass, if you should fail. The fellowship is breaking. It has already begun. He will try to take the ring. You know oh whom I speak. One by one it will destroy them all”

“If you ask it of me, I will give you the one ring” Frodo says, holding the ring out. What the hell is he doing?

“You offer it to me freely…” Galadriel says slowly, moving towards the hobbit “I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired this” she seems to change before my very eyes. Throwing her arms in the air she seems to grow and become something altogether different, dark and menacing. And frightening.

“In place of a dark lord you would have Queen. Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Treacherous as the sea! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth!  All shall love me and despair”

Suddenly she is a slender elf woman once more “I passed the test” she says, quietly “I will diminish and go into the west and remain Galadriel”

“I cannot do this alone” Frodo says and my heart goes out to him. He isn't alone, he has us.

“You are a ring-bearer Frodo. To bear a ring of power, is to be alone. This task was appointed to you. If you cannot find a way, no one will” Galadriel says and I feel like crying. Now I understand a little more why Frodo is as he is. He is alone. He is among friends, yet he is alone.

“I know what I must do. It’s just I’m afraid to do it”

Galadriel leans down to Frodo’s height and smiles at him “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future”