DISCLAIMER: Valinor and Maglor belong to Professor Tolkien, and I'm very grateful for them and the Quenya language. I think everything else here is mine or no-one's.

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"This was a bad idea."

Mary Cloud leant back against the mast of the Sinda Cirya. "You say this now?"

Robert Taylor glared at her. "Yes, I say this now. I didn't think-"

"That's for sure."

"I didn't think it would be this difficult," Bob finished, resolutely ignoring Mary's interruption. "I mean, we've got a map. How hard can it be to follow a map?"

"When it's a map of the stars?" Joe Nesmith replied from where he was seated at the prow of the ship. "Very. 'Second star to the right' sort of assumes you've got a starting point."

"Well, don't we?" Mary asked. "The map had the constellations on, right? Orion, the Plough…"

"Menelmacar and the Valacirya, yes," Joe replied. "And we've followed that map. By now we should be onto the Straight Road and sailing through the mists of time. Yet we aren't."

Mary frowned. "Are you saying this is all some sort of trick?"

Joe shook his head, standing and walking over to her. "No chance. The wood this little ship is made of is nothing I've ever seen before, and they way she handles… no human could have built her. And no human could have written those messages."

Mary shook her head. "That last isn't necessarily true. You said yourself, you don't know the words. Couldn't they have made them up?"

"No," Joe replied emphatically. "The primary attribute of Quenya is that it feels right. If you try to make it up, you lose that. It's real."

"Then why are we still in the water?"

"I don't know!" Joe slammed his fist against the mast, making both Mary and Bob jump. "I'm not an expert in travelling to Valinor, for all I know, the Straight Road isn't even here any more. Or maybe Maglor was wrong and this ship alone isn't enough to get us onto it. There could be countless explanations for this, and I just don't know."

"Hey, now," Mary said, reaching out and patting his shoulder gently, "it's not that bad. I'm sure we'll figure out what's going on in time." She glanced over her shoulder at Bob, who chimed in with his own reassurances.

"Yes, Joe, cheer up," he said. "If all else fails, we can just sail around at random. We know it has to be somewhere around here."

"We know it has to be exactly here," Joe muttered. "That's why Maglor used the stars as a reference – they don't move or change, not since Varda first placed them."

Bob looked at Mary, puzzled. "He hasn't…?" The woman shrugged.

"I suppose not," she replied. "I mean, I didn't mention it, but I just assumed…"

"Well, what archaeologist wouldn't?" Bob asked rhetorically. "It's just one of those things you learn to take into account."

By this time, Joe was looking between the pair. "Would someone please explain what you're talking about before I throw you both over the side?" he asked irritably. Bob nodded to Mary, indicating she could take it.

"It's just that the stars do move, Joe," she explained. "We use it to date some very old specimens, when we're lucky and they have a picture of the sky. We sort of thought you'd taken that into account."

"…" Joe stared at her, then slammed his forehead against the mast. "I've been so stupid," he said to the world at large. "I knew that, and yet I never thought about it." He looked at Bob. "Do you have any sort of program that I can use to work this out?"

Bob nodded, handing over his computer. Joe grinned. "Now we're getting somewhere," he said, sitting down again and switching the device on.

"Ah, guys?" said Mary, who was looking down over the side of the ship. "I don't think that's going to be necessary."

Joe exchanged a puzzled look with Bob, then both men went over to her. "What do you… oh. Right."

"Exactly," Mary said, and then fell silent. No one spoke. Somehow, when you were in an elven ship that was suspended some ten metres above the surface of the ocean, and especially when the drips falling from the hull glinted like tiny stars as they fell, there wasn't much need for words.

The end is in sight! The last chapter is next, and it should be fairly easy to write (I've just cursed myself, haven't I?). It'll wrap up both the plots, and then I'll finally be able to move on to something more cheerful.

Do I have any further adventures planned for Bob, Mary and Joe in Valinor? At this point, no. I have a feeling any effort to do that story would just turn into a 'People fall into Middle-earth' type of 'fic, only with this as a twelve chapter explanation of it. It might be something I do at a later date, but there's also the fact that I don't particularly like writing about the Eldar from an outside perspective. Besides which, with the way this one turned out, they'll probably arrive in Valinor to find everyone dead from a civil war or something.

-- now that might be worth writing.

Cloaked Eagle