~ Middle Earth Reclaimed ~
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Thank you very much for the feedback so far, I was surprised to get such a positive reaction (and incidentally also very amused to be called a 'bonehead'). :D
To answer some questions, a few other characters will show up, yes. Also, "Adan" is indeed Sindarin, but simply means "Man". I'm afraid the stranger isn't Legolas, but is someone who will be rather underused in the upcoming movies, hence his special role here. Thanks again to everyone, and please enjoy this next part.
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Chapter 2:
It began to rain, a sudden drenching downpour unique to the tropics. All about them the trees shook with the slashing droplets; water pooled around Faramir's knees and the clayey earth began to turn to sludge. But over the rain there was another sound, one that Faramir could only later describe as a kind of shimmering. He turned towards it, and saw the other man's brow knitted in concentration, a luminous quality to his face.
At his feet, the ground was undergoing a change. The streamlets of water, at first random, were diverting into subtle patterns. They shifted like growing tendrils, no doubt conforming to intricate geometries that lay far beneath the surface.
"I have come, even as you called." The stranger's words were clear above the noise, for Faramir could hear them in his own mind. "Will you not reveal the summons to me, Imladris? Do we approach another event that will move the world, as the finding of the One Ring did so many ages ago? Is this our Council? But now there is no Elrond, no Mithrandir, no Aragorn. The bravehearted Periannath and Durin's people have dwindled and disappeared even as the Eldar have. That time is gone forever."
"You are... you must be..." shouted Faramir above the storm, but the words stuck in his throat. For at the periphery of his vision another shape had appeared. It was unmistakably human and seemed almost solid, yet the rain passed through it unhindered, and the trunks of trees behind it were dimly visible.
Faramir was frozen with horror, but the golden-haired man took a few steps towards the apparition, letting out a cry. "You too have returned - speak!"
For a moment it stood there, perfectly still. Then it vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, leaving no answers, no comfort for the lost.
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He opened his eyes to see cracked white plaster and the slowly rotating blades of a ceiling fan. He sat up, yawned, and pushed aside the tangled bedclothes, and had already walked to the far side of the small room before his brain kicked in. This was a hotel room, and he was dressed, and he had no idea how he had come to be there.
There was a note under the door, no doubt hastily pushed in earlier that morning. On it were a few scribbled words: -
See you in London! Get well & take a holiday, but remember 27th - cataloguing. P.T
"Wha - ?" He clutched his head, a few disjointed images surfacing. Wet leaves, wet hair, mud. A few startled, concerned faces hovering above his; a long ride in the jeep... Looking at the note he became certain that he had somehow missed the flight home, and the realisation was quenching. Visions of his cluttered desk and half-finished essays flooded his mind.
There was a knock on the door. Faramir stumbled over to open it, and all those mundanities evaporated.
"Are you aggrieved to see me, Adan?" Golden hair and that ever pale, grave face.
Faramir opened his mouth, then shut it again, feeling dizzy. After the disappearance of the figure, they had made their way back to camp, soaked to the skin. Faramir remembered shaking all the way back, and a few of his sleepy colleagues discussing whether he was going to get pneumonia. There had been no mention of the excursion into the jungle; they thought his tent had merely collapsed in the storm. Hence the drive to the Professor's hotel, where it was agreed that he should not be taking a long plane journey until he had rested. In his sleep his mind had tried to erase what it could not deal with logically. A useless effort, really.
"No." He sighed. "I am only struggling to understand. My mind tells not to believe, but I've already seen and felt too much not to." He went back to the bed and sat on the edge of it, looking at the floor. "Do you know there is a book? A book which speaks of Elrond and Imladris and the One Ring?"
"I do know of it." A pause. "And I have read it, seeing familiar names and places printed in a language and time far removed from my own. It was read without joy, not only because it is taken to be one man's imaginings, fiction as you call it, but because I was looking into a past that would never return again. Within the opening pages it tells how it evolved into that form. The writings of Bilbo, the Perian, were preserved. But it does not say why this should be accepted as myth, not as truth."
For the hundredth time Faramir tried to look for an element of deception in the stranger's voice, but could detect none. "And you... you are part of that truth?"
"I am." There should have been pride in the reply, instead there was an immeasurable sadness. "I am Glorfindel of the Noldorin line of Finarfin; Glorfindel who dwelt in the House of Elrond."
Faramir closed his eyes. As a small child his mother had read 'The Lord of the Rings' to him, and later the well-worn copy had stood on the bookshelf next to 'The Hobbit' and 'The Silmarillion'. Perhaps she had hoped that her son would grow to resemble the young man he was named for. Yet as the flesh-and-blood Faramir grew up, the Faramir-on-paper seemed to cast an increasingly large shadow over him, one that he consciously tried to escape. He had never read Tolkien's books again after the age of twelve. Much of it was forgotten now.
"Why didn't you... go over Sea?"
Glorfindel had gone to the shutters and opened them; now he looked out over the balcony and away into the distance. "When the One Ring was unmade all those who had borne Rings of Power felt weary of Middle Earth. I did not; I knew that the places of Elvenkind were fading, and yet I wanted to watch over them, not leave them. I thought I could preserve some of the waning spirit of Imladris, and depart only when its memory was hallowed. I thought this... out of a false hope.
"For awhile I was not alone. Celeborn of Lorien came also to Imladris, and Elrond's sons were my close companions. However Elladan and Elrohir decided to journey again with the Dunedain, and left never to return. They chose the Doom of Men, as their sister Queen Arwen Evenstar did."
"What happened to Celeborn?"
The ceiling fan droned above, the chaotic noise of afternoon traffic rose up from the street. Glorfindel's profile seemed very young, too young for the things he was recounting.
"He grew despondent and sickened. It was not simply a Ringbearer's weariness of Middle Earth, though I knew that for many years Ring of Adamant worn by Galadriel exerted its power on him also. This was a bitterness that beautiful things should end. He did not leave Middle Earth by ship, as the book claims. He became empty and died. I witnessed it - and I felt certain that I too would wane and lose hope."
"Then... why - ?"
"Why did I endure?" asked Glorfindel, finally turning from the balcony. His unwavering blue gaze alighted on Faramir, heavy with a knowledge of ages past. "There is my own uncertainty, Adan. For after Celeborn's death my memories diverge. In one path I fell into a misted vision, devoid of feeling. I placed myself at the council table, on the right hand of Elrond's chair, and grew silent and cold. Perhaps I died. Yet in the other path - "
"Was history as I know it?" Faramir interrupted him. "Are you saying that you went through everything from the beginning, through Mesopotamia and Egypt and Rome? But it can't be. It can't be. Where does the archaeology of Middle Earth fit in? How can it fit?"
Glorfindel bowed his head. "First there was ruin, Faramir. First I left Imladris, finding the borders changed without explanation, as if the world had been broken apart and refit by a careless hand. First I realised that while I had sat enclosed within four walls, the Kingdom had ended. Aragorn's line had failed; the Periannath were hunted; the Rohirrim were scattered. After them came men of small stature, very unlike the form in which you appear to me today. I remember crude things, coarse bread, animal fat, mud tablets." Glorfindel took a deep breath as if the memory was painful to him. "I remember wandering through parched lands, sometimes welcomed, sometimes feared, sometimes completely unseen when I wished.
"Elves do not sleep, yet in a changed world I learned to sleep to chase away despair, for even the stars had become strange to me. Each time I woke, things had changed again, and again. Men flourished in greater tribes than ever before, larger cities than ever before. I learnt some of their tongues; some of those languages fell silent and I forgot them. I have lived on the edges of Mankind, Faramir, like and yet unlike Men.
"And one day I looked over my shoulder to find the road back to Imladris, and could not find it."
"Until now," whispered Faramir.
"Yes, until now," Glorfindel echoed. "But I have not been called back to a happy place. You saw the shade that appeared to us! I believe that there are other remnants of Middle Earth, besides myself. You are one, though you do no know it. We are being drawn here, for good or ill - I cannot say."
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End of Chapter 2
To be continued...
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AlexeCinz
July 2001
http://www.btinternet.com/~reitaira/izumi.htm