Cold Like Fire
White and pure, she had always imagined ice floes to be. And easily floating, delicate wonders of Eru’s design, the sweetest of waters, solidified, swept up by the bitterness of salty floods below.
Now here she was.
The ice shone green and black and blue, grinding and moaning, breaking under their feet. The air so cold it burned her lungs like fire.
Now she was here.
Fell deeds and fey oaths had led them forth; no less than fitting that they should not find purity here, to cool and soothe their angry spirits. Just reward, to meet a cold that burned as true as the fire that had sent them forth.
But here she was.
She was here. Tears froze into glittering pearls around her lashes, her eyes gleamed green and blue like the ice to her feet. Too many were not. Faltering spirits or failing bodies had sent too many back from whence they had come, houseless fëa born crying on the icy winds. Yet she was still here. Every careful inhalation sent a sense of prickling exhilaration coursing through her body.
She was here.
She had reason for hatred now, where once there had been merely a faint distaste born of envy. She had reason for a bitterness now as bleak and grinding as the ice of the Helcaraxë. Yet she felt it not. If anything, she felt a strange kinship to that spirit of fire who had led them forth and abandoned them. She shuddered. Had she been in his stead, would she have stayed her hand in time? Or would she, too, have sealed the destiny of her people, as he had done?
But oath or no oath…
Here she was.
The icy cold of the far North suffused the woman who would once be called Galadriel. It roused in her a fire equal to the one burning in the soul of the High Prince and self-proclaimed King of the Noldor. Her feet did not slip as she moved along on the ice. Ice that was black, blue and green, with shards that tore through her shoes and coloured her foot prints red with blood. And though the fire of the North made her spirit burn, it did not consume her.
Here.
For while her fire was fey and fierce, it was a cold fire, this fire won in the North, on narrow painful paths through the grinding ice of the Helcaraxë. Paths that would be found only twice in all the long ages. Once by a spirit of shadow, once by a spirit of light.
Here.
Under the silver moon, their trumpets finally rang out in triumph. Echoes raised of unholy cries were lost amid the golden ululations of the Noldorin fanfares. Her soul answered the song of the trumpets. The air was wild and free and sweet. Wide lands beckoned. Destiny waited to be made her own.
Here.
Her heart beat heavily.
Cold fire glowed in her eyes.
She was here.
Thank you, Fëanáro.