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She says yes on the raft. She knows then that it’s not a raft, that she is somewhere on the banks of the Glanduin - lying at his feet? Held carefully in his arms? - but he has made it seem so real: the sun beating on the back of her neck, the salt spray drying coarse and rough in her hair, the wood beneath her bare feet in an endless sway on the waves.
She says yes not because she believes him but because she wants to; not because she trusts him, but because in a world that has now broken apart into multiple possibilities of horror, each unfolding in her mind faster than she can follow, the possibility in which he could be trusted is the only one she can bear.
She says yes; and at first there is a kiss soft as spring on her lips, and then in time there is a shining bright ring on her hand, and a crown on her head, and a kingdom golden and never-dying spread out before her, all she could ever want.
He ensures that it is beautiful. She lacks for nothing. She has dresses of silk and robes woven from cloth of gold, she has a palace of such beauty it rivals the cities of Valinor. She has flowers twined around the window-frames and growing rich over the roof-timbers, flowers that bloom all year no matter the season; she has rich woven carpets sewn over years, no effort spared for the elf-queen, so that her feet may never feel cold on the marble.
He brings her attendants to care for her every whim, food made by cooks who compete for years for the privilege of serving her. He brings her minstrels and dancers from all over Middle-earth for her entertainment and he builds her a grand library to collect all the wisdom of this world she loves. He gives her vast gardens and fills them with songbirds, with bright butterflies, with deer that come to lie beside her with their heads in her lap.
There are no armies to command. There are no armies; there is no war. All is at peace, and if there is trouble anywhere beyond the borders of their kingdoms she cannot see it.
She wakes one morning in the soft feathered-down bed in the bright sunsoaked room, and he has brought her breakfast himself: bread and honey, juice and clear water. She watches bubbles rise to the top of the crystal glass.
“This is a cage,” she says.
“This?” He settles easily beside her, letting her fall against him in the hollow his weight makes in the mattress. “This palace?”
“This life. You have built me a cage. A bright cage with golden bars but a cage all the same.”
“Oh, my love,” he says, and in his eyes she can see for a moment see what an ancient being he is - older than mountains, older than stone. “I couldn’t choose the light,” he says, “so I chose you. Do you understand?”
“No.”
But she thinks of how much of this he has made himself. How carefully he watches her with each new thing he makes. How he kneels at her feet to bring her gifts.
“You’re my cage, Galadriel,” he says.