Epilog Leavings and Returns

Seasons turned and years passed umarked while the children grew tall and strong. In Greenwood Thranduil and his lords watched over them with love and care, rarely intervening in their lives except when called for but always there when needed. Gradually the children moved away from the closeness of the early days of their coming and he made no attempt to hold them sensing that their age would be short and that in time they would be gone, though he had no idea why or where to.

He knew that events were moving towards a close the first time he felt one of his lords depart. For all the millenia since the third age they had been together and he had felt their presence as a constant feature of his world, then one bright Autumn day he felt the life of the forest shiver and then one of them was gone. He did not know how nor why but they were gone, they had resigned themselves to being in Greenwood until the world was unmade but now one of them was gone, He felt no fear or sadness before the departure, there was nothing to warn him of the event but suddenly one was gone. He and the those remaining felt the loss but there was nothing to be done only hope the one departed had founf their way somhow to Mandos and so, eventually, home. The following spring another went and two summers after that yet another, then in that autumn another two. The next summer he felt the last of them depart leaving him alone with forest and and the children.

Beyond Greenwood the snow was starting to fly when Gallica and the others came to talk to him of their strange dreams.

As he listened he knew the dreams for what they were, the start of the ending for the children were maturing and with that maturity came memory, their dreams were nothing more than the things they had forgotten. He recalled that Gallica had once told him that she could tell him what made the stars but she did not know what a star was, he and his lords had taught them what a star was and now he was sure that these dreams were the two pieces coming together. The joining carried within it the seed of another beginning for them and another ending for him. Now they would find the answers to the questions the had before they became his children and in doing so they would find more questions to be answered. Questions that he sensed would take them far from Middle earth just as seed on the wind would blow far from the forest before finding the soil in which to take root. Their dreams were the first breeze that heralded that wind.

Another spring followed and another, and they shared their memories with him and he responded to their questions, telling them of the age of elves that came before the age of men and of the children of men that he had known. Now for the first time he told them the stories of the doom of the Noldar, the hubris of Feanor and his sons, and of he great evil of Morgoth and his servant Sauron. He told them of things passed from the world before the age of men, of the great battles and the grief and disappointments that had followed each. He spoke sadly of the perversion of the servants of good by the desire to understand that evil and of the unwillingness of the good to admit that the evil returned so allowing it to grow and strengthen.

The season continued to turn and the children grew stronger and brighter, more of their forgotten memory returning with each sunrise. Each new memory they shared with him and he wondered at the world that had created them. Sometimes he would go to the top of the trees and look at the stars they had told him so much of and ponder on how the children of men had learned so much and yet so little.

It was on a warm summer evening that Gallica joined him there and asked the question that she had spent the centuries learning to ask.

"Why? How could they know so much, be given so much, and yet come to such an end?"
He smiled and replied.
"Do you truly not know?" he pointed towards the brightest star, "that is a flaming ball of gas your memory tells you, yet is it any the less beautiful for that?"
"No"
"Does it need to be beautiful to be a flaming ball of gas?"~
"No."

"Yet it is beautiful?"
"Yes, it is beautiful."
"Are both things needed to be a star?"
"Yes."
"Are either chance? Do you need to be sure of that for it be both the things it is?"
"No and no."
"Is that the answer you look for?"
She thought for a moment then nodded.
"Yes. They ended as they did because they forgot what a star was, they stopped seeing anything more than a flaming ball of gas. They had knowledge but no wisdom."

He nodded as he stared towards the heavens,
"They knew much but they lost the ability to understand, they swore an oath to allow only the knowledge they created and could control and they followed it, worshipped it, even when it was flawed or incomplete, even when it brought them loss and grief and death. That in the end was the consuming evil that destroyed them. Just as once long ago it brought elves their doom. Men followed the same path as Feanor and his cursed sons, falling to darkness because they could only see the light of their own making."

xxx

It was on the first day of the next spring that they told him they must leave and on that midsummers morn he stood with them before his gates and they made their goodbyes, he saw them burn bright in the growing day, felt the forest send out a great cry, then he let the barrier around Greenwood fall and they were gone. He felt Gallicas love and her last 'thank you' echo in his mind as they departed from Arda and he knew that the seventh age was over.

xxx

Alone as he never had been before he wandered the forest, feeling it wrap its warmth and light around him. Thranduil wondered what if anything would happen to him now, it seemed that he was destined to remain here until the world was unmade and felt afraid at the thought. There were many he longed to see again, the children of the seventh age had never replaced those he loved but they had made the pain of being separated more bearable. Now without them and without those he had know through the previous ages he feared for his fate, he had been patient, trusted in the One if not the Valar but finally desperation entered into his mind. He wondered what evil he had committed that he was to be left to wait for Ardas' unmaking abandoned and alone. The forest crooned a song of hope and love and its king sought to find light and solace in that and to fill the void left by all those he had lost with its warmth, but he was afraid.

Summer passed and Autumn brought the shortening days that spoke of the advance of winter. Thranduil wandered through the woods lost in memories feeling the sadness of a grief he could no longer deny settle upon him and wishing he could hear the voice of just one he had lost again. Yet when he heard a voice it was not one he had ever thought to hear and certainly not in the Greenwood.

"Hail Thranduil King. It is good to see you again. Patiently have I waited for this day, as indeed have many others."
The voice seemed to come from all around him and it was familiar and yet strange at the same time.
"Who are you and where are you?" he asked.
"As for who, do you not know me? As for where, why I am beside you. Look again, harder this time."

Beside him a glow seemed to gather in the air and when he looked again there was a figure, known and yet unknown standing beside him, smiling kindly. He knew the eyes, and the face seemed familiar and yet he did not think he had ever seen it look so clean and bright.
"Mithrandir? Is it indeed you? What dire fate brings you to Middle earth again, what must my forest bear now that you come to visit us?"
A look of sadness passed across the others face.
"Is that your only memory of me, loss and pain and grief?"
"How else should I remember you? How many of my friends and kin died for your actions? Did I not lose my son to the sea on a quest of yours? I know that much had to be as it was and am reconciled to that, but I cannot change the memories you have left to me. If I forget I lose those others completely and that I will not do."

The look of sadness deepened.
"No I understand that, and yet I hoped to leave you with something more than acceptance." He smiled and spoke softly, "but I might have found worse I suppose and if acceptance is all you have of me then you have done well with it, better than I knew."
Thranduil ignored that, aware that as so often in the past the wizard had not answered what he was asked.
"You have not answered me, what is it that brings you here? The world of men has passed, the ones they begot and left behind have grown and gone, I am alone, even my companions in fading have left. What use for me can you have now to bring you across the sea?"

The look on the familiar face changed, the smile softening and a glow of joy lit eyes that seemed somehow deeper and fathomless.
"Use? Not at all except to see you returned to joy. I have come to welcome you home. Finally."
Thranduil smiled sadly and shook his head.
"Home? I cannot go home Mithrandir, not as I believe you mean it. There are no ships and even if you brought one I could not take it to the west, I have faded as was the fate of those who did not leave, and Mandos has not summoned me. I am bound here until the world is unmade though I do not know why, or what sin I committed to be so abandoned."

Thranduil almost jumped as he felt the grip of a hand upon his arm and he met eyes dancing with merriment with wide eyed shock. There was amusement and pleasure in the familiar voice.
"Faded? You seem quite solid to me. Did you not teach yourself to be so for the children?"
Thranduil looked down at himself and realised ro his astonishment that the wizard was right, he was clothed in flesh again and yet he had done nothing to make it so,
"How is this, Mithrandir it is no act of mine."
"No, but there are others who can make this so. Surely you know this?"
"Only the Lord Mandos and he has forsaken me, as have the others of the Valar. Why then would he do such a thing?"

"You have never been forsaken my friend, nor were your companions. You have been in Lord Mandos care for some considerable time, though you did not know it. You were needed in Middle earth and so it was arranged. Why the burden fell to you I do not know, perhaps in the end you proved stronger than most, perhaps there was more room in your heart for those that needed you, the reason has never been shared with me and it is not for me to ask But now that duty is fulfilled, the last children have gone, Middle Earth is safe and the world will drowse for a while, now it is time for you to come home."
Thranduil sighed.
"You cannot know how much I long for that, even though it would mean bidding Greenwood farewell. Great as my love for the forest is if it is safe it no longer needs me and there are so many I would see again, be near again. Have you a ship then that can take the straight way, one that can carry me home?"
"There is no ship Oh king of the wood, nor is one needed, there are other ways to travel the straight route if it is allowed, nor do you need to bid Greenwood farewell. Come walk with me and I will show you."

With that the wizard turned and led Thranduil through the trees until they came to the gate to the Elven road, there he stopped and with a smile as bright as the sun at noon he indicated that the elf should step out into the land beyond the trees.

With a enquiring look the Elvenking did as he was bid.

Beyond the trees lay a land like none he had ever seen, not Middle earth at all but a land so fair, so peaceful in look and feel that there could be no doubting where he was. He turned back towards his companion and his surprise increased for Greenwood was still there. The wizard nodded.

"Yes, the undying lands, you are home and so is the forest that bore so much."
"How?"
"Does it matter? Do you doubt?"
Thranduil shook his head with a smile.
"No it does not matter and no I do not doubt."
"That is fortunate, for there are some who have waited for this day less patiently than you, and I hate to think what they would say if you did. See." he indicated the lands beyond the trees again.

Thranduil turned at the same time as he heard the voice.
"Father!"
There, coming up the path beside the forest was his son. He watched wide eyed as Legolas turned and called to someone behind him.
"He is here, it is today, he is here."

Thranduil watched as another figure appeared behind his son, one with a face he had dreamed of for four ages, a face as fair and gentle as the lands she strode across. She stopped when she saw him, joy radiating from her, and held out her hand towards him. Legolas laughed and held out his hand too.

Then without a further word to the wizard Thranduil was running home.