gandalf is maiar, he is olorin from before the beginning of the world, this terrible bright untouchable thing that chose to stoop, to bend, not to just take up a necessary duty, but also to be gandalf the grey--to smoke pipeweed and make fireworks for hobbits, people of little consequence, yes, but they make stalwart heroes, as he delights in showing her.
and she is artanis, heir to the line of noldor, teleri, and vanyar, mistress of lothlorien, the dream-wood, with the light of the two lamps in her hair and a mind that saw into the hearts of men, but judged mercifully. She remembers valinor, and belerialand, and all the tongues of her people that have passed from memory--but he remembers too, and they are of a kind, keepers of a memory that has passed out of all but dreams and
she is so gentle with him, she walks, bare-footed through the dark fortress of dol goldur to find him, she pushes his hair from his face and cradles him in her lap, this being of brightness from before the world was made--and he says my lady come with me because he can see how very small she is, despite her height, how greatly unmatched against another thing like him. Will she not come away--
(she is a light in the darkness, and he will not let her go out)
but she is self-willed, like finwe before her, and so she stays, and fights, and banishes their enemy to the east, though it would take all her strength.
still he is glad--glad beyond measure--when he comes to lothlorien again, and she is there. And she laughs like a girl (to him, she always will be) and lays her head in his lap, and they speak in long-dead languages--of hobbits, and fireworks, and her shining hair smells of pipeweed for a good while after.
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