'I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew;
Of wind I sang, a wind there came, and in the branches blew.'
- The Lord of the Rings
JRR Tolkien
~
Journey
For Cirdan
- Prologue
Strange are the ways of Ilùvatar to the minds of the Elves.
Strange are the ways of his Children, those born of his Music. Strange are the ways of those sprung from the depths of his thoughts, the spirits of Eä, lords and ladies over Arda and all that inhabits it.
Strange are the ways of his creatures, those that swim and those that crawl, those that run and fly.
Strangest of all, maybe, are the ways of the ways of the rivers and the streams; strangest of all, the songs of the running water to the ears of the Elves.
The boy sat by the riverside, letting his left hand dip in the current. He was not really a boy anymore. Perhaps below fifty, or maybe just above. His long blonde hair was tied back into a loose, casual braid, and his sleeve was wet up to the shoulder with the splashes from the swirling water.
Idly, he picked up a smooth, brown pebble from the riverbed, and turned it around in his palm with nervous fingers, before letting it go again. His wide, grey eyes stayed fixated on the whirling foam of the vivid stream, and were tainted with just enough a faint shade of blue to let one guess that he had been looking at the water too often for its seal not to have been printed deep in his young pupils.
"Sister?" The small girl that sat some feet away looked up from the crown she wove out of poppies.
The water ran cold between the young man's spread fingers. A slight smile played at his lips.
"The storm is coming."
"'Storm'? What do you mean?"
The young girl frowned.
The river flowed. The pale youth shook his head slowly.
"I do not know."
~