When I was a little girl, my father would scare my siblings and I with tales of the figure in the mist. He said that if we didn't behave, the figure would take us across the sea, never to return. To me - a six year old girl who didn't get along with her family - being taken to live across the sea didn't sound so bad. But no matter what I did, no figure came to take me away. I stopped believing in any sort of fairy tales when I turned ten. At eleven, ghost stories were a joke. Other kids were afraid to walk along the beach in the dark hours and on foggy days because they thought the figure would come and get them. Me? My favorite time to walk along the beach was on a foggy day and dusk and dawn were pretty close seconds. I didn't believe in the boogieman or stuff like that. They didn't exist.
At least, that's what I told myself then. But when I was fifteen, I saw someone on the beach on a foggy sunrise. When I asked the villagers if any of them had been on the beach, they just sighed and shook their heads. 'The figure has come for you at last because of your disbelief.' Ridiculous. But I could've sworn I'd seen someone on the beach. And I had.
I saw them again the next night. They didn't know I was there. At first, I thought they were a woman as I crept up behind them, but when I accidentally stepped on a stick and 'she' whirled around, it turned out that 'she' was really a 'he.' I was sure that this person was the start of the 'figure in the mist' legends, though I wasn't quite sure why I thought that, because the whole 'figure in the mist' thing started thousands of years ago and no one can live that long, right?
That's what I had thought, but watching the man, I wasn't so sure anymore. I remembered my father telling us stories about elves - fair, immortal beings who had once dwelled here. When I'd asked what happened to them, he'd gotten a faraway look in his eyes and said; "They crossed over to the Undying Lands. I would like to go there someday," then he'd sighed and shook his head, "But we mortals are not made to live among the Powers of the World."
At that moment, I recalled that he had said that the figure was an elf who had committed terrible crimes and was doomed to wander the earth forever, never to go home. To remain the last of his kind through out all eternity as punishment for his sins. When I had crept up behind the man, I had had intentions of speaking with him, but now I merely watched as he stood and walked away, vanishing into the mist. I stood and raised a hand in farewell. "Godspeed Maglor," I whispered after him, "Godspeed."