A/N: I wrote this after visiting a place I loved and knew very well that I hadn't seen in about 2 years. It was quite altered and I was a bit disconcerted, to say the least. About all the 'play skirmishes, mock battles, mighty weapons of sticks, firm fortresses made from tree boughs': I assume elflings might build forts and play war just like any young ones who want excitement. This is supposed to be during the second age, but not any particular place in Middle Earth.
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At last.
I have come home. My kinsmen were waiting, and they welcomed me back with joy. I too am glad to see them, my family.
Yet my home is changed. I have been gone but a few years, barely a moment in my lifetime. Now I return, and I do not know it. Strange paths, strange streams—even the forest itself, though I thought it unalterable, is foreign to me.
I found familiar trees, stumps, forts built with the others in my youth. Yet these—I had trouble finding them; for all else was different.
The trickling flows in the wood were gone; one listless rivulet remained, slipping sluggishly into a deep pool. The bottom clumped with old dead leaves of the autumn trees; skeletons of the wood they remain until the spring.
And even then, even when the season has changed, it will not be the same. The friends from those days are gone from this land—I know not where, nor what they are doing now.
I could not wander far in the wood, for my kinsmen were waiting; I would not leave them in this cold. My heart longs to see this place as it was.
I know the past is lost—the play skirmishes, mock battles, mighty weapons of sticks, firm fortresses made from tree boughs—these can never be again. It seems as if I have remained, slowly changing, while all else fades in the flying wind of time.
My home this place was, for a little while. My heart is here beneath the rustling beeches, by the wild river, in the wind which sighs in the treetops; and in the mountains, strong, powerful, reassuring, like a firm unmoving refuge for the weary. But now everything is altered.
Now I stand against a tree, looking toward those mountains in the twilight. My kinsmen laugh, talking among themselves at the fireside. They do not notice my sadness. But that is all the better. They do not regret the events and joys now lost. They have been here all along, and have not seen the slow, creeping changes that time will bring.
And all I can keep are the memories; yet these too will fade with time. I cannot live in the past.
My kinsmen call me to the fire. It is warm, soothing my chilled hands. It will not remove the cold within my heart. They joke and are merry—I smile, but it is forced. They talk eagerly—I am silent. They forget all that has happened here—but my mind lingers. I savour each of the thoughts; they are all dear. My kinsmen are at ease—but I am in mourning. Am I the only one with this sadness—the sadness and grieving over that which can never be regained? Am I to sit here, crying inside, with no comfort?
O my home, my place that I love, has been altered beyond recalling. I wish to linger, I wish to save all that is left of these bittersweet memories. I wish. Yet I cannot.
My tears are no good; I will not waste them, for it does not become me to weep. I must pass on, my mind cannot dwell in the past—I must away, pass on, pass on.
I know I will grow used to this land, and then my sadness will abate. But I cannot forget. The love of what has been lost is ever present in my aching heart.