Lapsus Memoriae [Rávamë's Bane: Book 1]

Part III : Chapter 18 ~ Mirror Mirror

I left out the part where Lord Elrond had assumed me unhinged to begin with, and Gandalf just found my paradoxical predicament rather amusing. Galadriel's small smile twitched at the edges, and I had the oddest feeling like she'd sensed what I'd just been thinking.

"I glimpsed it in your life's memories and dreams when first you arrived here. While you were being treated," she explained as if she was talking about a simple maths problem, not the next best thing to a mutant X-Man power.

"You read my mind?" I stuttered out, thoroughly creeped out by the idea of anyone, let along an elf queen, casually rummaging through my head. Then again, I'd spent the past two years with an internalised split personality sharing my mental space. I guess weirder things had happened.

Speaking of Tink, I found it a little odd that, despite everything that had been going on since we'd entered Lothlórien, she'd remained uncharacteristically quiet up until this point - and something was telling me it didn't have anything to do with our argument when I'd been unconscious.

Galadriel let out a chuckle at the vacant expression that had crept on my face, cutting my silent musing short.

"No, child. The mind is nothing so simple as to be read like a book. The memories, dreams, and nature of a person, however, are not so difficult to glimpse when looked for in the correct place," she turned her bright blue eyes to my face, very deliberately aiming them directly into my own. I suddenly had the deeply unsettling feeling that she was looking straight through me and right down into my soul. A nervous, twisting sensation crept up my spine and slithered up the back of my neck. Then, just as the shared gaze was in danger of becoming something creepy, her expression softened, and she said: "Your thoughts of late have been of home."

I edged back on the bench a little. I couldn't help it. You can't come out of a staring contest with Lady of Lothlórien without feeling at least a little unnerved by the experience. Trust me.

"Well, yeah," I shrugged, rubbing my neck to try and mask the shiver that had run up it. I didn't think I'd fully understood the significance of what she meant when she'd said that. "We've all been travelling a long time since we left Rivendell, and..."

"I do not speak of Imladris," she interrupted me smoothly. "Your home before then."

My chest tightened and my stomach clenched. I knew immediately what she was talking about, where she was talking about, but I desperately didn't want to think about it. Not right now. Not when I'd already had my emotions kicked in the teeth once today, but I couldn't help it. The thoughts of home, my real home, came flooding back even though I tried to stop them - along with the homesickness that always, always, accompanied it.

I sighed, my shoulder slumping a bit as the air left me in a soft rush, my throat tightening.

"London."

The name felt weirdly unfamiliar in my mouth, it had been such a long time since I'd said it out loud.

"The strange, towering city of steel and glass where you dwelt before waking here, and the family you left behind, yes," Galadriel said equally softly. I felt her hand close gently over mine in my lap, her fingers warm and strangely maternal in their touch. They were also pristine and totally unblemished, especially when compared side-by-side to mine. She turned my hand over thoughtfully in hers, examining the array of tiny cuts and half-healed scars I had dotting my fingers and knuckles. "But you also dwell on the memories of your home before that. Of the life you had here on this plane, but have only glimpsed recollections of."

"You know about those, too?"

"Of course," she answered gently, reaching up and absently tucking a stray lock of my wispy, dark hair behind my ear. She regarded me with a touch of sadness, as someone might look at a sick child in hospital, and spoke quietly under her breath, more to herself rather than to me. "It was inevitable that some would return eventually, given enough time."