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Prologue

Plumeria is a bloom that resides in Rivendell, only Rivendell, Mirkwood's depths are too wild, too much the sundered gardens of broken twigs and grey satyrs for it to take root, delve and return year after year. Winter deadens the earth; only wood tempered by time and tide remain, and the undergrowth that sings in rhyme of the seasons, murmurous and everlasting.

In my younger years plumeria's delicacy made it vulnerable in my eyes, easily broken, easily torn and ripped petal from petal as it remains silent—there are no screams, nothing to hinder or signal its destruction. And afterward all that is left is easily exhaustible: forgotten.

In an immortal life change is inevitable—I have learned. The plumeria's vivid magic means more to me than its pandering to the sun: they shine brighter in mist, they have lingered long with me. You don't often forget the first time.

It was in Rivendell, years ago; I did not think my father knew of this when I returned—but time changes much, I learned, I think he understood, he knew, I'm certain of it. He must have recognized the light in my eyes like I had seen the alteration in his own—I later identified this as regret but with the strange resignation which was alien in his strength: blue eyes, like the sea, the sky.

I remember a boy, who was later a man, now he is nothing at all, nothing. It is not possible to recall lost dreams, I learned this as time's meandering rivers roared on as I wandered and was borne back into the weir of lost time, against the current of reality, following the will of…dream. In search of lost time I have found the plenitudes that gave always been there—I am an elf, life is finite only where geography rises up in the shape of mountains and boundaries—and I have lost much, recovered nothing.

Time: the newness and intensity of each breath is what brings the downfall of all men—death. And this is also what brings man's elations, however short and temporal, they transcend my immortality—there is that need to accomplish, to make the world remember when they no longer remember the world.

Perhaps one day Gondor will fall, disintegrate as all stone will. Perhaps this civilization will sometime only remain as a splendid shipwreck, mired in time and mortality's greatest foe—but I will remember him. I will remember him, hold him in rapture, continue to long after stone has been subsumed by time.

I should tell this story from the beginning; I should leave something for others to remember when even I have forgotten. Still, I don't expect anyone to know it better than I.

I'll begin here, on this morning, this certain morning—I suppose it could be said that history truly began on that dawn, all else is insignificant, not yet formed, those ripples matter not to me.


please review.

here, multiple choice options:

a--excellent. compelling.

b--fair. not terribly intriguing.

c--yuck. pretentious.

d--please change it.

e--tiresome, boring.

and, tell me which character this is, ok? it might be quite vague but i wouldn't know it.

thanks, feel free to flame.