DISCLAIMER: Some of the characters and situations described herein are the property of the Estate of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.
I am fortunate, if that is the word, to have been there at the beginning. I hope that I don't give you the impression that our leaving was a happy day. It has many names in our tongue, the day we left the forest. The Leaving, of course; but also, and this is increasingly common, The Escape. As well as The Day of Emancipation, The Day of Liberation and, of course, Independence Day. If there were are any young ones among us, it would be taught to them almost at birth- March 20 is our Independence Day, when were left the forest and were Entwives no more. Shouldn't it, by rights, be a happy day? For some of us, indeed it was. There was much rejoicing- even drinking, and this is indeed rare among our people, for we are not given to actions that lead to undue haste of any kind. But as my sisters celebrated, I heard the sound, new and uniquely dismal, of Treebeard, Fangorn in our tongue, Treebeard our husband and father, the oldest Ent, old as Middle-earth, older even perhaps, weeping. It would be dishonest to myself let alone to you, dear reader, to say that this was anything less than unsettling.
To tell the whole truth, we had already begun to move out of the forest before Independence Day. It never really suited us; as great and wonderful as the forest was, we are daughters of the earth, not of the trees. Perhaps the Creator, in his infinite wisdom, believed that uniting the earth and the forests was the most natural, suitable decision. Perhaps it ought to have been. Yet for whatever reason, we were never content in the forest and our husbands felt utterly lost in our farms. I did not and do not hold the view that we were subjugated- it was a mismatch, not a question of being forced to live where we did not wish to. We were uncomfortable in the forest and had lived largely in the farms for centuries. Yet we still bred, and still maintained regular contact with our husbands, fathers and brothers in the forest of Fangorn, than even larger than it is today.
My own moderate views were, however, considerably less forceful and popular than the beliefs of those who would have us leave the forest and the male Ents entirely, and who eventually succeeded. This is why Independence Day was an event of such profuse happiness: most of us genuinely believed that we had been oppressed and that life without the baggage of the male Ents, life as free, equal Ents rather than Entwives in richer and more picturesque farms miles away would be far more fulfilling.
Although we left the edges of Fangorn for the last time with great joy (apart from myself and a few others), there was also considerable doubt and confusion over some key issues. Chief among us these was (and it is still a burning question): now that we are not Entwives, exactly what are we? At the time the fashion became to call ourselves "free Ents", as "female Ents" emphasized our gender and "Ents" confused us with the male Ents who still lived in the forest. The name was also considered to imply our supposedly repressed past. Yet soon some of my younger sisters began to call for renaming ourselves entirely. We were not Ents, they argued. Our union with the Ents of Fangorn had been ill-conceived from the start: we were not only unsuited, they argued, we were a different species entirely. This was patently untrue; our unions with male Ents had produced young ones of both genders; but soon to call oneself a "free Ent" was no longer liberating and fashionable. The new name was "Earthchild"- as a group we were now called "Earthchildren".
I opposed this thoroughly. Daughters of the Earth we might be, but to reject all association with our fellow Ents was to, indeed, deny the very roots of our existence. We had been compelled to leave the forest, for various reasons, but this bordered on lunacy. Nevertheless the term Earthchildren clearly established itself.
We moved regularly in the early years, finally settling in a land south of Mordor, near the sea. In those days Sauron was long banished, and while he rejuvenated himself while in hiding in the tower of Dol Guldur in Mirkwood, this was not known to us. It was a rich, plentiful land, different from Fangorn and, we thought, much more suited our temperaments. Our farms were large and so were our harvests; we, or rather I, had only one deep misgiving. This was the fact that, having left behind the Ents, we could never reproduce again. This meant that our settlement had both no young ones as well as no chance of eternal peace and survival. We can live for many centuries, but are not quite so long-lived as our former husbands. I knew, therefore, that in leaving Fangorn we had, eventually, consigned our race to be a footnote in the history of Middle-earth, no matter how much happiness it gave us to leave. At the time this made me think our leaving had therefore, in the final analysis, been a grave mistake.
The subsequent decades, however, brought many changes that would disprove me entirely. Sauron was banished from Dol Guldur, but, restored to near-full power, he made his way back to the Black Land of Mordor and began to rebuild his army and fortifications. He made alliances with evil kings in lands neighbouring ours and, hearing of the success of our farms, sought to take them over and tax our produce. When we refused this, he began systematically to make war on us, the eternally pacifist Earthchildren. Having no knowledge or inclination to war, we were forced to submit, with heavy casualties.
As I write the scourge of Sauron, that has already laid waste once more to the eastern part of Middle-earth, seems sure to spread wider, so wide indeed that it will even reach the western sea and perhaps Valinor across it, the fair land that not even Morgoth could capture. Our great experiment, which we set forth to undertake with such excitement all those years ago, is a failure and, as I predicted, a mere footnote of history. Yet my heart is rid of all misgivings regarding our Leaving; the thoughts have tortured me for over a century are finally exorcised. For in our current state, and in the Middle-earth that we now inhabit, the creation of young ones would be a terrible act- for no young Ent should be brought into a land that will soon have neither tree nor field. The extinction of our race must now be regarded as the true Escape, as it will soon not be fit for our kind of life. In leaving, we have been vindicated, unwittingly achieving passage into the safer haven of death. And thus I now finally know that we do not need the male Ents after all.