Thankyou Professor Tolkien, for creating such wonderful characters. I promise to look after them, because they belong to you.

My thanks to Sarah (A Monkey's Harp) for her constructive advice.

A WIZARD'S PRAYER

I have witnessed more death than I care to remember during my long years in Middle Earth, and whilst it holds no fears for me, I am not immune to the emotions that the grief of loss brings to mortals. It would be impossible for me not to be touched by the misery death leaves in its wake, and my feelings have always been for those left behind, for their suffering is greater than that of those who are lost.

Yet here am I, in the position of those I have comforted in the past, and the words which have served so well now mean little. It is a sobering thought, for I realize that when faced with the loss of a loved one, especially to death from which there is no hope of return, there is no comfort, and all I can think of is my desire that this young man should live.

I want him to live because he has so much to offer his country and his people. In a world where men are so easily corrupted, those who are pure in thought and deed are of great value, and much needed.

I want him to live because to leave this world without experiencing true happiness is something no good soul should have to suffer - and his soul is good.

I want him to live because he is young and deserves life. "Some who die deserve life" I once said, but suddenly it has no meaning as my own philosophy betrays me.

I want him to live because his suppressed soul harbours a passion and an enthusiasm for life that yearns to be unleashed.

I want him to live because - I love him. I loved him as a child, when his incessant questions could have driven me to madness, and I love him for the adult he has become. Second best in the eyes of his own father, who was blind to the inner strengths and the pure spirit of his youngest son; gentleness perceived as weakness, compassion as sentimentality, insatiable curiosity and a hunger for knowledge dismissed as self-indulgence, and courageous choices deemed as betrayal.

Yes, I love Faramir, second born of the Steward of Gondor, for just to know him evokes feelings that few mortals have inspired in me, and the tragedy is not that his father failed to love him, for in his heart he did. The tragedy is that his father never knew him.