Chapter 1: Discovery
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.
(***)
It was a chill, dewy morning on the shores of Valinor. Legolas was walking alone, away from the vast civilization of the elves built to last forever. He walked along the shores where he himself arrived in Aman, with his dear friend Gimli at his side, many centuries ago. On that day the sun shone, sparkling in the little tips of the waves and shining over the sands undulating gently up towards their new home and he felt great joy.
But Gimli, Bilbo, and Frodo had long since gone to face the fate of mortals. New elves had stopped arriving on the shores long ago. Even his father and the elves of the Greenwood, who stayed long after most had succumbed to the call of Undying Lands, had come to live out their long lives in the Blessed Lands.
For there was safety and plenty in Valinor for all of its inhabitants. Time passed both quickly and slowly among the delights the Valar have gifted to the elves, who are bound to the land and shall live as long as Arda remains. They enjoy feasts, dancing, music, nights spent gazing at the beauty of the stars, and mornings watching the sun rise over green hills and forests and gleaming waves. But the future is long, and for Legolas, the days had begun to run into each other, repeating themselves, until all of life felt like a slow dream from which he never wakes.
In his nostalgia and the mist, Legolas failed to see the elleth in the water until he was almost upon her. Legolas was startled by her appearance: she was naked and soaked, her lower half submerged in the water. She bobbed listlessly at the edge of the waves, unconscious. She was the palest elf he had ever seen – her limbs like sun bleached driftwood and her hair as white as the surf in which it floated with every incoming wave. He could see little blue veins through her skin. He thought to himself that she looked like something from the deep ocean, dead and coughed up onto the sand – alien and unsettling, but beautiful. As he approached her, he thought at first that she must, indeed, be dead. But he could see her chest rising and falling a little, and when he reached her he could feel her heart fluttering in her wrist.
Legolas was then filled with dread and pity as he began to wonder what could have happened to this elleth, who he has never seen in his many long years in Valinor, that she would be here on the shores that his people had long ignored since the ships stopped coming. Was she the last elf in middle earth? Could she have tried to swim the straight road home, alone? If there was a ship, where was it?
The melancholy that sent him out to the sea that morning lifted – Legolas's heart filled with purpose as he lifted her out of the water, wrapped her in his cloak for warmth and dignity, and strode swiftly back towards the lands occupied by the elves. She was wet in his arms, and too still. He propped her head up on his shoulder, so it wouldn't flop with every step. He felt a thrill of energy fill his body, and he was determined to care for her. It felt wrong to rejoice in another's misfortune, but he admitted to himself that he was relieved. Finally. After all this time. Something new.
Footnotes:
(1) From "Walking in the Woods" by Grace Paley
Author's note:
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.