The End of the World

It did not come in one swift fire that rushed through the grass and snaked the towers. Nor did floods thread the valleys and drown the earth. It was a slow decline. Colours faded. Grass grew. Fences went unmended. Minas Tirith remains, but so much of the masonry has been carried away, or chipped or broken that now the battlements resemble teeth.

Here the king stood, eyes closed, waiting for the crown to meet him. Here, he and his bride sat beneath the White Tree, their hands joined, talking of nothing, just listening to things living.
"Why did you say that?" Arwen had asked.
"Say what?" Aragorn had said, wondering if he'd spoken at all. But Arwen referred to his ceremonial speech.
"In this place I will abide," she said, "Unto the ending of the world."

"They were not my words, but Elendil's."

"Would you wish to live so long? To see everything- everything- come to nothing."

Then Aragorn had put a hand to her face and told her not to think of such things when they should be thankful for the present.

"I am," she had answered, "But I grieve because it is all so fleeting."

The White Tree might remember it. The stone bench beneath it, though cracked and slicked with moss, remains. But only ghosts parade the halls of the king, between the pillars and on the winding stairs. Riders still pass the city and slow down to marvel at it, imagining what it must have been like in its glory. Then they ride on, chasing daylight through the mountains.

There are parts now of the great Anduin that are dry. The vast blue waters have shrunk under weights of silt and though there may well be fallen rings, somewhere buried in its depths, maybe even magic ones, but no one searches for them now. So much of that old magic has been swept downriver too. There is a meadow to its north, puckered with silver trunks and thick with dead leaves, where sometimes travellers pause to eat. Perhaps one notices the strange thickness in the air, and comments on how slowly the sun drifts through this arch of sky, but no one even suspects that this is the place where Lothlórien once flourished. Caras Galadon, mallorn trees, branches reaching to snag stars. Where troops of elves in grey cloaks filed through without a backward glance, bound for the West. The travellers wade through the leaves and move on.

The Misty Mountains too are peaceful. Once riddled with caves, reverberating with the cries of birds and wild creatures, and dark lurking creatures. The snow was once darkened in the mornings with imprints of paws or feet, where one brave wanderer had passed. These days, the snow remains pristine.

Villages still lie along the spine of the range and smoke or laughter will patch the air in parts. Here, the mountains seem more beautiful. Even further south, where the lands of Rohan lay, in lush fields and overseen by the golden hall. The brother and sister who had grown there, and now ruled between them, often rode into the hillsides of the nearby mountains, taking rocky pathways higher and steeper to gain the better views.

"The air is finer here than in Ithilien," Eowyn had declared.

"I'm sure you say the same when you are in Ithilien," Eomer replied.

"I will not be missed."

"You will not be missed?" Eomer and his horse had disbelieved this.

Eowyn had looked at him askance, then smiled. "Faramir seems gladder of me the days after returning home. I like to ensure he remembers what life is like when I'm not there. Besides," she added tersely, "I like my brother's company too."

Eomer and his horse had shared a look, but he was happy too.

Now horses are allowed to roam free around these hillsides. But for the odd pebble-crack of a hoof, the passes rest quiet. There are no voices up this high.

And there were such places in the world. Places that should not have been lost because the memories were so dear or the beauty so piercing. It has been left to run wild. There is no Shire left. Only the humped ground where the roofs and chimneys of holes once broke the soil. But the Shirefolk have moved to warmer climes or followed the river, somehow the generations after growing bolder and wandering further, which was so unlike the nature of the hobbits you or I knew. There are telltale marks in trees, where axes left their mark. And there is a curious silver-barked tree, ten times the height of all the rest that grows here still. If a passerby should dig into the fissures and the old pathways, they might find fragments of plates, a bit of tile, or the roots of vegetables left untended. They were tended once, with such fierce love that makes their fading all the stranger.

"Sam, the carrots will fall in love with you," one owner of the hole near the silver tree remarked. The grass remembers both of these folk, how one knelt in the dirt and one stood, clasping his teacup in both hands (one hand did not have quite enough fingers to be enough support.) "You do lead them on, devoting every moment to them."

"Sir, I wouldn't lead a carrot on," the one called Sam protested and clambered to his feet, welcoming the plate of biscuits he was offered. As he ate, his friend had turned his head into the breeze, gazing out across the landscape. The neat hedgerows. The rambling paths. Washing-lines.

"What a nice day," he had said simply.

"It is at that," Sam agreed.

It did not burn away nor was it torn up by the roots, and the towers and halls did not collapse and were not destroyed. The world survived, for so many many years. Stars did not crash to earth and turn all into ash. It was a slow decline. Grass grew. And grew. And grew. It grew on the graves of men who built the cities, and the ones who saved them. It grew on the battlefields, until the churned up mud and blood had sunk too deep to see. It grew in dead black lands that had never known of grass before. In white cities, hillsides, meadows and riverbanks. Along the coast, where drifting shadows were blue with sea and grief.

"After all you have done!"

But the grass had grown in this place too, and thick rushes had pushed between the slats of the wooden jetty and whispered comfort to the sorrowing towers.

"You have so much to enjoy, and to be, and to do."

And the silence was not dark as it might have been. Because even so long after the nightmare ages, it had all still lasted. There was no one left to war and people were too weary, and sated from good meals round tables to argue. People sat with books in open laps and read about the vast noise that once swept the world and they tried to picture dwarfs or elves.

And very very quietly, without anyone really noticing, the world ended. And the grass kept growing.