Introduction
This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
It is a sad fact of existing at all: nothing lasts forever. The all-consuming hand of time makes sure of that. In such a circumstance, we are rendered utterly powerless. Our youth wilts, our strength ebbs, and most importantly, our memory fades. I say most importantly because memory is more than just a fond tribute or an exercise in retention. A lost memory is lost experience, lost knowledge, lost life. Why do you think we all fear growing old? Impending wrinkles aside, we also fear losing identity, our realities.
Throughout history we see many confronted with the same issue. We see also that some have taken it upon themselves to write down their memories. Quite a preposterous notion at first, but it has caught on rather well. Now, books are as numerous as the stars in the sky. Pages of knowledge our ancestors have preserved—or at least the knowledge they wanted us to have.
Evidence points to the fact that they did in indeed withhold some pieces of key information. Had they not, the memory of Middle-Earth would surely be fresh in the minds of current generations. Instead it is shelfed like a common fairytale. Someone raised in today's society would perhaps order you a straightjacket if you so much as mentioned Elves or Dwarves or Hobbits in anything more than a whimsical manner.
As it seems, an entire era has been wiped from the pages of history. Somewhere along the twisted and winding line of our past, we have greatly erred. We have allowed a magnificent age to escape our conscious grasp. We have lost perhaps the most glorious, triumphant, defining memory of all. We have done the unthinkable.
We have forgotten Middle-Earth.
Hey everyone! I know this is a super short chapter (if you can even call it that) and the next few will be a little slow, but that's gonna be the general pace of my story. I'm saying it's gonna be boring, but there's going to be some large chunks of dialogue and plot. For all you adrenaline junkies, there will be plenty of action as well, but I'll ask you all just to bear with me. This story is precious to me, and I do not wish to rush it.
In act, I really haven't. This story really started five years ago in the winter of 2012 when I first went to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I am not exaggerating when I tell you it changed my life. I had never seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, never read any of J. R. R. Tolkien's books, and I kicked myself repeatedly after that for not having given them a chance. Tolkien is now my hands-down favorite author. I cherish his words like they sustain life, his world like it truly exists.
Though I didn't realize it on that cold winter night in 2012, the first inkling, a little stone of an idea had started to roll around in my head. I was thoroughly convinced that it would eventually peter out before I got a chance to really capture it and put it into words, but that little idea just kept rolling and rolling, around and around, all the while growing bigger and faster. Well, now that little stone is a full on avalanche, a story that pretty much wrote itself, hardly worthy of Tolkien, but a story none the less. I can only hope that you like reading it half as much as I have loved writing it.
Wow, sorry this was so long! Please enjoy!