Disclaimer: All things LotR belong to J.R.R. Tolkein and associates; no profit is being made from this story.
by Origami Goldfish
Chapter 1: Prologue
Winter comes; it lingers high upon the mountains and the winds from the east will soon cast it down onto Minas Tirith. It comes soon, for already the cold night air leaves chilblains on my fingers, but that might be more from age. They are stockpiling firewood for the winter, as well as the blackstones called coal from the mountain mines. It gives off more heat than wood, but the grime it leaves behind is a hundredfold worse than ash. I would not use it in my house if I were freezing, but that is of little consequence as my steward knows my preferences only too well. Indeed, he says that he would not have me breathe such dust if he has to threaten the King himself to procure firewood. I do not know what I would do without my dearest Belegmel. But that is neither here nor there, and I did not come with the intention to chatter about such trivial things. I meant only that winter will soon sink across Middle Earth, and I am fairly sure it will be my last.
Five years ago I would not have felt the cold until after icicles hung from the White Tree and the fountain froze solid, but now I find myself wrapped in furs against the chill, unwilling even to step outside. Clearly it is time for me to relinquish the gift that has kept me alive for so long, and I find myself willing to do so. The world as I know it is dying, and I am not fond of what is replacing it. It is as far from the world that made me as my world would be to my father. The War of the Ring is nothing more than legend—the lands they called Mordor are now filled with stands of mountainous forest and meadows fit to sing about. And my world was filled with hesitant treaties and tensions and power squabbles, but they too are naught but memory. This…peace…is unsettling.
So it is with some relief that I will go to Mandos, and join my siblings. I am the last of us; my eldest sister lived the longest of them, and she passed almost a century ago, a few years after Eldarion joined our father in the Hall of Kings. Artanis was killed not long after we met—a fall from her horse during a morning ride across the Pelennor snapped her neck. And little Mithriel, Mithriel who was my favorite—she slowly faded into darkness. They were everything they were born to be, and Men have accorded them with fitting titles that even now I cannot forget: Gilraen the Wise, Eldarion the Just, Clever Artanis, and Mithriel the Fair. Of us all, I am the only one who has not been lauded so—indeed, my birthright is being challenged even now. But that tale will be told in it's own time and I will not write of it now.
Before I die, I desire to leave a record about my time of the Age of Men, and not something that one of the Scribes or Archivists have glossed over with large words and unnecessary embellishments. I will write about what I experienced—for I was there—and what little those I know have told me about what came before.
My birth name is Fírebêl Nimrodel, long even among elves, but my mother's taste can be forbidden. Long have I used Elpida, a much more acceptable name among Men. I was born along the banks of the Nimrodel the same year my father Elessar Telecontar died, over three hundred years ago. Granted, I do not remember my own birth, but I have heard the story many times from the one who was there, and I can recite it from memory, as she told it.
It all began a very long time ago, when the first King of Gondor since Isildur was laid to rest. Arwen, his wife, was Elf-kind, and desired to meet her doom among the land of elves, but her children were loathe to lose both parents so soon, and met her decision with many tears and pleas…