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They start by fitting the tiles with a river drawn upon them. It is their third round, and Galadriel is starting to get a hang of the game and its rules. There are five types of tiles: river, road, field, outpost, town. With the number of tiles available it's enough to produce thousands of possible combinations. Idly, Galadriel wonders how many years will it take for them to draw the exact same tiles, place them on the exact same places and get the exact same results as during their first game. Wonders if she would even notice the time pass.
"Do you wish to go first?" her father asks. Galadriel is still getting used to his voice. It differs drastically from the one she kept in memory.
She draws a tile; it's a town. She fits the edge of it with the city already on the map, and presses a tiny figurine of an elf-maiden on top of it. Her father draws a road.
The game passes silently.
Sunlight filters through the wide window of her father's office. His desk sits empty, and papers on top of it are disarrayed. Ink is spilled on some of them. There is a metal bowl with nothing left but sugary crumbs, and wilting flowers in a vase. Canaries sing outside, jumping around twisting greenery on the balcony. Looking out the window, Tirion sprawls as far as eye can see, glowing in daylight that pains Tùna in shades of gold.
She draws a road, next. Her father draws an outpost. It takes him a few seconds to determine which placement will profit him the most; he puts a mage on it when he finally decides.
Thousands upon thousands of years, she thinks. That's how long it will take to replicate the exact placements of their first ever game. That's how long it took her to come full circle.
She has been so many things. Witch, warrior. Queen, mother. She is ancient, wise beyond measure. And yet, even after seeing ages pass, she comes full circle in her father's office, playing a game of tiles; in a land changed beyond what she could have ever predicted, no longer recognizing her father's voice.
She draws a tile. Places it without even trying to think of strategy. What use is it, to put effort into winning? She knows her father does not have his head in the game, either.
It is strange, for all of them. Galadriel remembers being young, in a beautiful new land under a beautiful new light, her head full of possibilities. She scarcely remembers times before. They say the eldar cannot forget; the truth is, it just becomes so very hard to find what happened before when it is lost among all the memories of what happened after. So many things are there to occupy her mind that once, when she had stopped to think to times before the Sun, it took her days to uncover the face and name of her nursemaid. How much of her life has become hidden like that, lost to the expanse of her mind? How many more faces had she not thought about often enough?
How many years until dozens, hundreds of those she still remembers become obsolete?
"Oh," her father says, and points to a place on the map, and she realizes she had stared at her tile for half a minute too long. "You could put it here... maybe?"
Elbereth, but he sounds young. Why did she remember him wrong? Why did she think his hands were bigger, his voice deeper? She scans the map once again. Puts the tile down between a field and a town. "That works," she says, and spies his expression from behind her eyelashes. Is it the same for him? Does he remember her different, too?
"You forgot the mage," her father says. "Or a maid. Unless you don't wish to claim it?"
"Right." Galadriel takes the figurine and places it atop the tile. "I can retrieve them any time, yes?"
"Yes. It's the maid that has to remain there until all surrounding tiles are full." He draws a tile. "Road, will you look at that." He puts down the tile, and a chunk of the road he claimed earlier is now finished. "That's, uh, four points."
Galadriel nods. She draws a town; it's just what she's been missing to be able to finish the one on the map. "Six," she says.
Her father records the scores on his abacus.
They keep on playing.
Her Celebrìan has joy painted all over her face. Has Elrond told her yet? Galadriel doesn't think so. It's been a week, it's been bound to come up.
But her daughter had been so deathly still, when Galadriel last saw her, when she last held her hand and pressed her lips to her unmoving face. In the years and the grief that had passed that was what stuck with Galadriel: not her daughter's youth and smile, but her vacant face. Not her bright laughter, but her absent eyes.
How Galadriel howled, when she returned to Lorien after Celebrìan had sailed. How she wept, how she wailed. The memory of it still brings sickness to her mouth.
Her Celebrìan laughs now, swaying in Elrond's arms, her smile so bright it cuts Galadriel's heart open anew. Elrond laughs, too, and says something, and all Galadriel can hear is his pleading not yet, not yet weaving about her mind. Not yet, they cannot tell her yet. When? she asks then, and Elrond has no answer for it.
It is strange, how grief stains even this moment of bliss and reunion. They will not tell Celebrían her daughter took for herself the fate of mortals, the choice of Luthien—not yet. Perhaps Elrond will tell her tomorrow. Perhaps they will grieve anew in a few more days.
She leaves the house and heads to the garden. Down the hill and to a stream, where her mother handles fish from a trap into a woven basket.
Her mother is changed. There is confidence in the way she moves, the sort that only comes with age. Eldar do not bear their age as apparently as other kinds do: their skin does not wrinkle; their head does not grey. Still they have time woven all around them.
Galadriel wonders, suddenly, if her mother had wept for her. If her mother had grieved her just as fiercely as Galadriel grieved Celebrìan. Does she remember Galadriel different, too? Does she remember the girl who turned her back on her mother's people, and not the girl who sat by her side and learned to mend fishnets, to bake bread? Which one does she see, now that she looks at Galadriel?
"Child," her mother says upon noticing. "There is another trap up the stream. Wll you walk with me?"
"I have not been a child in a very long time, mother," Galadriel says. She takes the fish basket from her mother's hands.
Her mother smiles a crooked smile. "Ages have passed since you had last told me that." Her hand comes to cup Galadriel's face. It is wet, and droplets of cold water slip down Galadriel's skin where her mother touches it, and she feels grief seize her throat. She purses her lips, and does not wipe the tear that escapes the corner of her eye. Her mother wipes it away with a cold thumb. Seeks Galadriel's eyes, and Galadriel sees they are damp, too. "Last daughter of the last son," her mother says, and her hand trembles. "How much have you grown, Galadriel."
When her hand falls away, Galadriel breathes, and the inhale stings in her lungs. She wipes away her tears, hiding her wobbling lips. Her mother turns away, and crouches to retrieve the trap.
Circles, circles, Galadriel thinks, half-mad. In her mind's eye she sees a little girl crouch in the sand by her mother, poking at sea-shells and listening to her mother's words.
The snake of her line comes to bite its tail here, in her mother's garden, in her father's house, in her own chest, in her own beating heart.