Subject: [M-e] End of chain.
Author:
Posted on: 2017-01-17 14:54:00 UTC
You set out from Lindon on a fine spring evening, with the sun at your back and a fair wind behind you, and you never look back. You feel you've chosen the best path in life - why settle for one of the lands of Arda when you can have them all?
As the years pass, you touch the world only lightly. You watch the cities of Gondor and Arnor grow from afar. You learn the languages of Men, Elves, and Dwarves. You visit with Fangorn the Onod in his last forested refuge. You explore the near regions of Harad, slipping into the Black Numenorean haven at Umbar on little more than a whim. After the Battle of Dagorlad and the fall of Sauron, you even visit Mordor itself, and stand amid the ruins of the Barad-dur.
Along the way, your Mysterious Voice from Above checks in every so often, keeping you safe, guiding you towards wonders large and small. You are the first person to set foot on the Hill that will one day be the heart of Hobbiton, the first to raise a torch in the caves of Aglarond and see a thousand gems gleam, the first to see the leaves turn gold in autumn and to see them bud again in spring.
You make no impact on the world. Your knowledge of the future is lost to the ages, and Middle-earth carries on as it was always going to. But you don't care. For a brief, glittering moment, a mere handful of years, the world is spread out before you, waiting for you to come to it.
You couldn't ask for anything more.
