The seventh age
Universe and characters belong to who the law says they do, where that is not me I am content. For fun not profilt.
I have been meaning to rework this for a while but life got innthe way, hoever it decided it was not finished and wouldnt let me progress other things until it was.
I hope JRRT would have approved this continuing of the creation legend.
Chapter 1 Awakening
Gallica awoke as the sixth age was approaching its end.
At first she remained where she had woken, still and quiet, reflecting on the things she knew and wanted to know, feeling her way into full wakefulness. Alone but not concerned by it, exploring the place of her beginning without thought for what might follow. For a while she was content needing nothing more than her wakefulness, seeking nothing more than what she had. There was light but she did not wonder at it, nor did she seek to move to find the source. She was not aware of time, nor of place, only of being and of a sense of wonder and surprise at it.
How long that continued she would never know but there came a point when contentment ave way to a sense that something was to be done, for as that unnoticed time passed her awareness of herself grew and as it did her mind stretched and curiosity was born in her. Contentment left her and a longing to venture from her place of waking replaced it. Suddenly aware that she was alone she wandered out into the world beyond her dwelling in search of understanding and of companionship.
She had known what she would find beyond the walls, though she did not know how she knew, but the reality of it was still shocking. Disaster had rolled across Middle earth like a furious storm and everywhere desolation bore bleak testament to its passing. The children of men, once as populous as the fireflies above the water, before they destroyed both the fire flies and the water, were dwindling in numbers, just as once every other living things had dwindled before their power. Gallica knew there would be no recovery for them for the lines of the greatest in them were burned out and the ones that remained no longer had the strengths recovery would require.
As the last of their time seeped away they scratched an existence as best they could from the world that had offered them so much. A world whose gifts they had consumed without thought until it had nothing more to give them that they valued. Each turn of the seasons saw their numbers decline, the sounds of mourning fading with their hope. Those who remained huddled in small groups wherever shelter was offered, or wandered restlessly across the plains and uplands seeking shelter from the cold and heat as best they could. The mountains and the returning forests they avoided as if afraid of them, though Gallica was not sure why. Their past was fading quickly, the vast and towering cities they had once built now lay ruined, the great glittering mountains levelled to hillocks of fragmenting shards, the metals crumbling into brittle slivers that became lost amongst the tumbled rocks. The days of glory, of plenty, were now as much legend as the dragons of a past they had long ago ceased to believe in.
For the children of men the sun was sinking and their day was dying, there was no way now for them to regain what they once had been for their seed was poisoned beyond recovery. The ones who might have taught them to begin again were long since dead; they had been amongst the first to be destroyed. For those that remained all memory of another way was fast passing into shadow, for their collected knowledge they had trusted to Gallica's forbears long ago and those ancestors were now as much part of the dust as the fine cities. No other repositories remained, and even if they had there were few now left who could have read them.
Gallica wandered amongst their huddled communities and knew that she could not change their fate even if could they see or hear her.
As the years passed she rambled alone across the lands closest to her home unsure of what she should do, for her loneliness was becoming an ever harder burden to bear. The day she found another of her kind was the happiest since her waking, but that one too felt lost and unsure and sought answers rather than offered them. This second one had not yet learned to the leave the place of waking and so Gallica wandered as far as she dared and told the second one all that she found, yet even so they were as puzzled as they had been when they first awoke. Then the second one discovered the way into the wider world and began to wander other lands, finding only the same as Gallica had found, knowledge rendered impotent and the power of the children of men broken as shards of glass upon the rocks.
The seasons wheeled and the worlds wounds began to heal and the trees near her place of waking were growing tall again and the rivers were once more bright and clear when Gallica first found the place she could not go.