Chapter Text
A weekend with the performers of Lothlórien music festival
By Nori Brandyfoot | The Lindon Herald
August 10, 2025, 4:15 p.m. PDT
Updated August 30, 2025, 6:30 p.m. PDT
Every year, the Mallorn Forest transforms into the Lothlórien music festival for a long weekend of live music, artistry, and immersive experiences unlike any other. The quant forest festival is renowned for its incorporation of sustainability, art, and prioritization of local resources. It’s a concept that draws people from all over the country, and artists from all corners of the earth.
Lothlórien is especially renowned for recruiting up-and-coming artists for its lineup, many of whom go on to receive international acclaim. In recent years, the diversity of its lineup has increased tenfold, giving the festival a reputation for eclectic performances to satisfy a vast array of tastes. There’s a little something for everyone at Lothlórien, and it does not disappoint.
Two of the standout performers this year could not be anymore different, yet have more overlap than one would initially believe. Galadriel, the folk singer known for playing the harp at her shows, and The War of Wrath, a blackgaze band spearheaded by vocalist Halbrand Maia. While there has been no explicit statement from either parties, nor the festival, there is speculation if recruiting these two performers was done with the active knowledge of their past.
It is still a mystery to this day how Galadriel Noldor and Halbrand Maia came to be in a relationship, and it is an even greater mystery what caused them to separate.
~
July 2019
In the sweltering summer heat, the wide-brimmed sun hat atop Galadriel’s head feels more and more flimsy by the second.
She’s always been more prone to sunburns and pinked skin, with her paleness and bright hair. Her mother used to lovingly tease her for having a chronically red nose, be it from the sensitive chill of winter or the simmering summer weather. No matter how wide the hat, or tinted the sunglasses, or high in SPF the sunscreen, she will always be a creature who was meant for chill, temperate air.
Which is one of the reasons why she doesn’t understand the draw she feels towards the absolute furnace of a human Halbrand Maia.
His entire being is the antithesis to Galadriel’s. If auras existed, theirs would be on complete opposite ends of the color spectrum. But more superficially, he was a lover of dark colors, despite the heat of blazing sun, and his music reminded her of the gothic nightclub she dared to venture into once at freshly 18 and never returned. She almost expected blood to dribble out of his mouth like a feasting vampire.
Except the heat of his skin demonstrated he was very, very much alive.
She first sees him while they’re unloading their vehicles in the off-road driveway. Him with his classic van stuffed like a clown car with his bandmates and instruments, her with her small but mighty family heirloom of a car that has just enough space to fit her harp and guitar with the other camping essentials.
He first sees her as she attempts to lug the precariously placed harp from her backseat.
“Need any help with that, love?” he calls over, his arms very much preoccupied by a heavy-looking amp.
She gives him a look over her shoulder. “That question is better suited for you, wouldn’t you say?”
From the distance, she can still see his lips quirk. “Merely offering to be of assistance.”
“I have no need,” she says, and tries to look as if she means it with a gentle tug of the harp out of the car.
She lets out a relieved huff when she successfully has it in her arms, free of the vehicle’s clutches. She resists the urge to turn and give the man a triumphant smirk, and instead walks directly towards the cabin housing the owner of the property and every performing artist’s gear.
The Glanduin River Fest was the brainchild of the retired musician Cirdan and his younger, former bandmates who are carrying on his legacy with their band Grey Havens. Every summer, they extend personal invites to musicians from all over the Southlands, who then extend their own invites within their personal networks. All in all it’s about a hundred people, not including the music artists, camping by the Glanduin River for a long weekend while a small lineup of bands use Cirdan’s back porch as a stage for their live sets. The partying happens late into the night, and swimming in the river spans the entire day. No hard drugs allowed, but a reasonable amount of weed and mushrooms are encouraged.
Galadriel first learned of the river fest when she was 18. Now, at 21, she was getting the chance to perform one of her first festival sets. It may not be anything but a sweet DIY event, but it still felt like the opportunity of a lifetime.
Most performers are bands, making her the odd one out with a completely solo performance. At the very least, the genres of each music artist are vastly different enough that her delicate harp and acoustic guitar wasn’t going to be too shocking. So long as it’s not followed up by the grunginess of that man’s band.
That man being the furnace who will not stop looking at her.
She feels his eyes on her in the cabin as she arranges her very minimal amount of gear in a corner, followed by the radiation of heat when she slides by him through the doorway, eyes pointedly looking at the ground despite his remaining strictly on her head.
She’s prepared for him to reek in the way a man coming out of a band van wearing a black muscle tee in the blistering heat would. She tells herself to hold her breath, or breathe through her mouth. Instead, her brain does the thing where it contradicts exactly what she tells it to do, and she inhales, tasting tobacco and patchouli concealing a light muskiness much more tame than she feared.
She was expecting to feel disgusted, and instead she’s shaking herself out of a state of intrigue and curiosity.
She tugs the wide-brimmed hat firmly onto her head as the sun reaches its peak height in the sky, making sweat trickle down her back and between her breasts. Her flowy white shirt and denim shorts begin to feel as useless as the damn hat once her skin feels soaked through.
Bands and attendees still filter in throughout the afternoon, and no one has yet ventured into the river. Normally she’d prefer to wait until at least two other people made the plunge, but with her skin practically crackling like a roasted pig, the comfort of her physical body overrides the nervousness of her brain.
She changes into her swimsuit the second her tent is set up, and then nearly throws herself into the river without hesitation.
The sound of her body swooshing through the water draws the attention of others, and soon enough more people are hopping in to join her. A cascade of bodies into the water helps the sweet, hazy reality of the weekend settle properly into her bones.
During her brief time in the tent, she managed to find a spare few minutes to scour the lineup for the weekend on her phone and do some proper internet stalking to learn the furnace is named Halbrand Maia. She watches now as one of his other band members flies into the river on a roped buoy.
Maia himself does not venture into the water, instead sits in the grass and smokes a spliff with another bandmate that has managed to look more gloomy than him. Galadriel tries not to look at him too much. But it feels as if every time her eyes glance in the direction of the riverside, they're drawn to him like a fishing line.
It does not help that he keeps watching her.
She chooses to pretend she doesn’t notice, mostly to see if he’ll keep it up. While the intensity of it lightens, she can still feel his eyes on her throughout the rest of the day. Brief glances that are just long enough to feel like stray hairs against her skin. She’ll catch him looking and guiltily flick her eyes away like a dog caught doing something naughty, as if she’s the one who was staring.
It comes to a head at 11 PM, when the sweet chill of night blankets them. Her set isn’t until tomorrow, giving her plenty of time to simultaneously relax and be stressed out. She chooses to cope by settling on a blanket alone towards the back of the crowd while a softer band plays music that feels like a lullaby.
“Got room for one more?” he asks as he seats himself on the blanket next to her, demonstrating his rhetoricalness.
She narrows her eyes at him. “What if I said no?”
He puts up his hands. “I’ll excuse myself if that is the case.”
She shakes her head, sighing. “You’ve been waiting for this chance all night, haven’t you?”
He tucks a spliff between his lips. “Quite the cocky little one, aren’t you?”
“That question is better suited for you, wouldn’t you say?” She echoes her earlier statement, but this time she’s smiling.
And once again, he looks more amused than anything. “I can admit to a little cockiness, sure.”
“A little?” She raises her eyebrows.
“Certainly not nearly as much as you.” He lights the spliff, inhaling before holding it out to her.
Now she can tell he’s teasing, and she can’t hold back a chuckle as she takes the spliff from him. “Sure.”
He watches her while she smokes. “What are you called?” he asks after a moment.
She looks away, not sure if it’s the look in his eyes or the way his voice sounds that unnerves her more. “Galadriel.”
“I’m Halbrand.”
She nods. “I know.”
He smirks. “Do you, now?”
She resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Halbrand Maia, lead vocalist of The War of Wrath, Southlands born and raised with a dark mysterious past that explains the hardcore gloom of his music.”
“You’ve been doing your research.” He sounds a little too smug for comfort.
“I got curious about the man who couldn’t stop staring at me.”
“You make it hard to look away.”
The way she gulps at the sound of those words is almost comical.
His face is soft now, thoughtful. An odd feeling swirls around her stomach, the kind that is both exhilarating and anxiety-inducing.
It was not her plan to meet someone this weekend. She wanted to enjoy herself, play her set, make some friends and connections, and call it a success. Getting laid was the last thing on her mind, much less flirting with a man who looked at her like she was something to both dissect and devour.
She knows how musicians are. Has met and fucked her fair share, and has her own experience being a music artist that helps her understand why it’s so hard to love them yet so irresistible.
“Be careful with those kinds of guys,” her friend Melian back home warned. “They pride themselves on being heartbreakers.”
And yet, she couldn’t discount the fact that she had a bad habit of being a heartbreaker too.
~
August 2025
After slathering her already sweat-slicked skin in another layer of sunscreen, Galadriel takes advantage of the empty festival grounds to explore the woods.
While multiple areas of the festival are in the open under the sun, the majority of Lothlórien is nestled pleasantly amongst the trees. The grounds do not open until noon, meaning the only people wandering the festival currently are other musicians, staff, and a small selection of volunteers.
It wasn’t necessarily that Lothlórien was a bucket list festival, but it has been one she always dreamt about in that far off, almost unachievable way. Like if she ever made it there, nothing would be the same.
Getting invited to play reaffirmed that idea, adding a new, glowing layer to her world that felt like floating on a cloud, seeing everything around her in a brand new light. While the illustory vision has settled a bit since then, she feels it bubbling back up to the surface now.
Galadriel spent the better part of the morning getting acquainted with the other musicians at the artist’s campsite, drinking chilled cold brew from a can and lazing about in the shade. By the time it was 11, though, she realized she hadn’t gotten the chance to become familiar with the festival itself before it became filled with people.
She keeps her hair in a braid under her sunhat and is thankfully not glanced at too curiously by the workers attending to their tasks, and even more thankfully does not see anyone who knows her well enough to stop for a hello. The rest of the weekend, she anticipates, will be filled with the constant interactions with people. She prepared for this, looked forward to it even, but knows it will take up enough of her energy that by the time the festival is over, she’ll feel ready to sleep for a week.
Galadriel prepared herself for a lot of things leading up to Lothlórien. But no amount of preparation compares to the actual reality of seeing him.
She sees him before he sees her, talking to one of the sound techs at the main stage. While he’s performing at other stages this weekend, she knows he’ll always take advantage of the chance to chat up any person with a role in managing a stage. Always getting to know people merely for the sake of it. As if he yearns to be friends with every person who passes him by.
She watches him, drinking him in in this moment of candidness. His hair is longer, nearly shoulder length, glowing a soft red in the sun. His skin is pleasantly tanned in a way that hers never will be. There’s multiple new tattoos on his arms–or rather, tattoos that are new to her. She sees the crow feet crinkling around his eyes, more pronounced since the last time they were together years ago.
She knows the moment he registers she’s looking at him. Sees the tick in his shoulder as he slowly looks her way, his eyes landing on her with a finality.
A thousand different scenarios of this moment had played in her head since she saw the lineup including both their names.
And yet, when he sees her, her mind whites out like an atomic bomb exploding in the distance.
There’s the initial, subtle surprise in his eyes, likely similar to hers in that he knew this moment would come, but wasn’t expecting it to be so soon and so direct. In a perfect world, they would have seen each other from across the crowd, eyes finding one another in the midst of dancing bodies, music on their minds first and each other second.
A brief, almost indecipherable wave of emotion crosses his face, and then it sinks into that perfect stoicness he’s mastered so well. Beyond the slight flare of fiery anger she previously became considerably good at detecting in him, she can’t get a read.
The mature thing would be to say hello, exchange pleasantries so the rest of the weekend is not subjected to an awkwardness thick enough to choke. Get on decent terms now before she’s forced to be in proximity to him.
Except everything that occurred between the two of them, particularly their ending, comes bubbling back up, threatening to overflow.
For years, she both feared and wished she could see him. Now that he’s here in front of her, all she wants is to run away.
The immature, cowardly, petty side of her wins out.
She merely gives him a nod before turning and fleeing.
She feels his eyes burning a hole in her back as she walks away.