The Forest in Winter

by Fishing4Stars

After separating from her body during a terrible accident, the spirit of a human woman falls into another world and into the body of a beautiful elf maid. With Elrond, Gandalf, and Galadriel to guide her, and a budding romantic connection with the handsome Legolas, how will this modern human navigate life ever after in Valinor?

1. Prelude

Prelude

The fea flickers at the edge of the world, hovering in the void around the great globe of Arda's atmosphere like a moth at a bright window. It circumnavigates the planet, stopping to observe here and there. The fea follows the line of the Straight Road to Aman, away from Middle Earth, and explores again, perched outside the bounds of Valinor; here, it stays for a long time, watching.

But it is also watched. Eru Ilúvatar sees the little spirit – too lively for a shade separated from its body and too far out from the bounds of creation. Eru sees that it is not of Arda, but of some other world. Eru contemplates the fea, looking over all they have made to understand this strange phenomenon that has appeared not from their thoughts, but on its own. It brings to mind a tree, cut down to a bare stump, that pushes tender green sprouts up from the remains of its woody carcass. A terrible stretch to the sun – but if you like life, you do it (1). Whether the fea knows it or not, it is hungry to live.

So Eru gives it life – reaches out and touches the lonely soul, which stills suddenly, sinks below the line of the atmosphere, and then falls, and falls, and falls into the waves beating at the shores of Valinor.

Footnotes:

(1) From "Walking in the Woods" by Grace Paley

Author's note:

The new character in this story (she/her) can be the reader with a little mental flexibility about certain details provided in her backstory.

I admit to getting interested in the process of how a person in the situation that the new character in this story is in would adjust to new circumstances. Chapters 2-4 will be a little heavy, then, in focusing on the new character and her early experience. (I also admit to some stylistic difference in the backstory versus the main story, which is meant to be in the style of Tolkien, if sometimes a bit more… intimate.) If you want to skip chapters 2 through 4 – the story should be able to stand alone without them. After she's assimilated among the elves, you will get more budding romance, original Tolkien characters and less backstory, I promise.