Ghosts of Yesterday

by Natsumi Wakabe

The land remembers what time has forgotten. And sometimes, she will reveal to you the past that is buried beneath our feet, if we just listen. Some people share what they have seen and heard, dreamt and remembered of a time long gone, in lands that are strangely familiar.

1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Wakabe Writing Firm doesn't own Lord of the Rings

A/N: Okay, so, I finally decided to stop hiding from work and do a damn series. Something's wrong with me, better have Michiko look me over later. Wish me luck, and remember, reviews keep the writer writing and the secretaries editing. -Onoro (Elf Secretary, Wakabe Writing Firm)

The land never forgets what time has erased.

You can feel it in the trees that whisper of a time long gone. You can feel it in the earth that shakes and rumbles for what has been and has gone. You can taste it in the waters that hold a bitter flavor of tears for the ones that are no more, the ones that have passed on to a place that they cannot return from. And sometimes, sometimes, you can see it in the land itself, when they let loose the memories of ages long gone, and people that no longer exist.

For all that we have forgotten what was once here, it still remains, hidden.

Buried beneath our feet, deep within the earth, treasures time has tried to forget in order to let the new come forth. There, these little treasures that time has left behind lie in wait for the day that they can be found again, by those that would have them; by those that once had them. It holds the keys of our past, which can never truly return, because those of us that would have remembered have left these shores or have become one with the earth in their shells that once contained the soul within. And those of us who still remain are lost to the world of touch and feel, becoming one with the land as they faded away.

If you listen to the earth, if you open yourself to her, she will let you see and hear.

See the wonders that once were: the world of another time and life, when everything was magical and mundane, unique but all the same at the same time in the same place that we stand today. If you go to those hills that gently roll and fall, you would hear the sound of a little people that were swift footed and happy in their simplicity, living in the comforts of home and family and especially food. If you were in the forests that have grown old and so beautiful that no mortal man can bear to touch, you would hear the heavenly voices of creatures of impossible beauty and divine light singing in a foreign tongue most soothing and sad. If you were to venture to the caves and mountains long abandoned and fall down through levels of years, you could cross upon the homes of master miners and smiths, kings and master craftsmen.

And those that carry the burden of the past must try to pass down what once was.

In stories and fables, in legends and myth, where can everyone look. They pass it down through the generations, hoping that the past will reach the future, and never be erased. Though they know that it is not enough, they must try, must strive to help and ground their people in their past so that they have something to return to. They hope to be able to pass down memories and heritage and a sense of who they were and where they've been, what they've gone through and where they can go. They must try to keep the past alive in memory, so that the dark days of yesterday will not come again, and the people that saved them all can be remembered.

But when these fail, then only the land can remember.

Can hold close the memories of men that once lived there, in cities that no longer exist. Only the land can hide the treasures of the past within: a tomb of a king most beloved and now gone, the spear of a warrior that fell many enemies most foul in a battle that cost him another of his ever shrinking family, where his cries of despair at the body of his sister, laying almost dead, a woman giving her future liege lord and beloved cousin a lament to mark his passing, a battle against creatures of dark magic and evil by a man that will die to defend the innocents when he has lost his.

But sometimes, the land will let you see it.

Sometimes, you will come to a place you had never seen before, where the land is old, and the earth still holds. And in that place, if the time is right, you can see what history has left behind. Would you like to see, would you like to know what others have seen, and what the land knows?

Would you like to see what the land remembers and knows?