Disclaimer: See previous two chapters, previous 14 LotR-based fics. Much as I enjoy being clever with my disclaimers, I will say that this applies to all future chapters.
May 18, Third Age 3019
(Shire Reckoning 1419)
I consider the stars and wax poetical
I stayed out late last night – the first night without rain after the near-summer storm that passed through and inspired philosophy – just to watch the sun set and the stars come out. The night sky is always clearer, the stars' pinpoints of light sharper, after the rain washes the heavens and the clouds part. I suppose I have always noticed their beauty, but it had never been quite as novel as it has been since my return from Mordor. I remember my first night after waking up, I felt as though I were seeing the stars for the first time, learning for the first time what they are – and in a way I was, for I had forgotten in my darkness how they shine, a breathtaking array of tiny shards of crystal brilliance, filling the endless void and dispersing the darkness. (And there was Eärendil, whose light I had carried with me even to the heart of Mordor! An old friend is he, the last pure, unsullied light of the Two Trees of Valinor to shine upon the earth, the only of the Silmarils that is not lost to eyes forever; the light seems dimmer when surrounded by fellow light, but more at home.) So small they are, and so weak is each alone in the light it gives, and yet how magnificent they seem when united – in that way they, the children of Elbereth, are much like the Children of the One; for were the radiance of a single star to be taken from the multitudes, how much less would be their glory!
These millions of candles of unwavering white flame, this nightly miracle of light amidst the shadow, should strike new wonder into the hearts of all members of all the peoples with every evening, and yet their wonder fades with the frequency of their appearance. So it must have been with me before such memories of beauty were burned away; and so, no doubt, it will go again when I behold the star-host every night. Although the sacrifice I made, manifested in my loss of any image of the beautiful things of the world, was grievous, in a way I was uncommonly blessed to be able to experience twice in but one lifetime the miracle of being a child beholding the anything-but-small marvels of rain, sky, trees, flowers, and stars for the first time.
Author's Note and Obligatory Plug: Very short, I know, but remember that these are Random Musings and therefore only fragments of thought, and that brevity is the soul of profundity. And now I can start up my self-advertising campaign again! Please, please, please, please, please read some of my older stuff if you like this, because it's just sitting and stagnating in my archives with reviews only trickling in at very sparse intervals – a depressing situation indeed. So browse my previous works and read and review whatever looks interesting to you. (If you leave a signed review, I can return the favor.) Thank you!