Quoted By:
The Lord Of The Rings by Angela Carter
I remember how, that night, I lay awake in Rivendell in a tender, delicious ecstasy of
excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of
my heart mimicking that of the great haunches ceaselessly thrusting the horse that bore me through the night, away from the Shire, away from hobbits, away from the green, enclosed quietude of my Father's
dwelling, into the unguessable country of marriage.
And I remember I tenderly imagined how, at this very moment, my Father would be moving
slowly about the narrow bedroom I had left behind for ever, folding up and putting away all my little
relics, the Evenstar I would not need any more. He would linger over this torn ribbon and that
faded jewel with all the half-joyous, half-sorrowful emotions of an Elf-Lord on his daughter's
wedding day. And, in the midst of my bridal triumph, I felt a pang of loss as if, when he put the gold
Ring on my finger, I had, in some way, ceased to be his child in becoming Aragorn's wife.
Are you sure, he'd said when they delivered the Elessar jewel, that showed all who looked through it what was aged and withered as young once more. My eagle-featured indomitable Father, what other Elf-maid could boast that her Father had outfaced Keanu Reeves as Neo in the Matrix, nursed Natalie Portman in that V for Vendetta film, and shot Optimus Prime with his own hand as Megatron, and all before he was old as I?
"Are you sure you love him?"
"I'm sure I want to marry him," I said.
He sighed as if it was with reluctance that he might at last banish the curse of Ringwraiths from their habitual place upon Middle-Earth. For my Father himself had gladly,
scandalously, defiantly beggared himself for love; and, one fine day, his gallant soldier never returned
from the fiery pit of Mount Doom, leaving his husband and child a legacy of tears that never quite dried, a shattered scabbard full of the shards of Anduril, that my Father, grown magnificently eccentric in hardship, kept always near his forge, in case -- how I teased him! -- he was surprised by Sauron on his way home from Weathertop.
