The Truth

"Sit Anne-Marie," said Lord Eonwё. It was the first time I had heard my true name spoken from any lips in many years. I could hardly breath, the Maia before me was unlike any being I had ever met. Power infused him, golden light enshrouded him and peace seemed to radiate from him. I was glad to be given leave to sit for I did not know how much longer I could have remained on my feet. How the Amanyar dwelt ever in the presence of such beings I could not at the time understand or imagine. Lord Eonwё was beautiful and terrible; I felt love and fear infuse me at once.

"Thank you, my Lord," I said speaking Quenya as I had first learnt it. Three languages I had now learnt, Belerandic Quenya, which was a bastardized mixture of pure Quenya and Sindarin, the Valinorin Quenya spoken by the refugees of Gondolin and pure Sindarin. I sat on a chair which seemed to be aside from a small table the only furniture in the tent.

"Your story Anne-Marie of Thunder Bay is an odd one. Many things I have to tell you today, much of which has until this time been only known only to the Ainur and Eru himself. However, my Lord Manwё deemed it necessary to inform you for it is your right to understand why you are here," said Lord Eonwё pacing in front of me.

"When Ea was created the flame imperishable was sent to dwell with in it. The flame imperishable was a thing of Eru Illuvatar alone and was a thing of his timeless halls. By placing this flame within Ea this world was tied to His halls forever. This had an effect that I do not believe that even Eru expected. In tying somewhere where time rules to a place that is timeless thin spots develop in the material of the veil between them.

"Sometimes, on a rare occasion small holes develop in the fabric of this veil, much as a hole would develop in a material where different pressures exist on either side when there is a weakness in the material. However, instead of exchanging matter to balance out the pressure the holes connect to one another. Each hole is unique to a point I space and time, so they only exist in terms of the present for an instant. The pressure difference, for lack of better words, between the world where one end of this hole and that on the other is the balance of life and death.

These holes are exceedingly rare for the fabric of Ea is strong and for them to affect anything severely the difference between life pressures must be great. We had thought because the probability of these conditions being satisfied was so exceedingly rare that it would be almost impossible for anything important to come of this.

"However you sit before me today. You just happened to be precisely in time and space where one of these holes existed. One connected to the court yard in Gondolin that day. Gondolin was dieing and in your moment it was spring and the time of new life. To balance the life pressures you were sucked through.

"In your time lore masters have come to postulate the existence of these holes, they call them worm holes. You are the only one ever to come through one. Now, you have noticed your body has remained basically physically unchanged. All living things feel time as a linear one directional flow. Thus as you have yet to be born you do not age.

"You are in a semi-stasis, your body still needs to be fed and to drink and to sleep and other such physical needs but you are not truly alive, nor are you dead. You have not been born yet so you simply are and you body is simply a vessel of you spirit," said Lord Eonwё.

"That is also why my moon times have stopped, I assume," I said trying to absorb what I was being told.

"Yes, some one who hasn't been born can not bear children. Your body is not like that of an elleth, it only has a certain number of years in which you can beard children, as such you stopped reacting to the passing of the months in order to conserve these years. This is indeed part of the stasis.

"You will return to full status as a living being the moment you left your own time. When that time comes around another worm whole will open from where ever you are to the moment that follows the moment you were sucked out of thus rebalancing the life pressures. If you were killed before that time your spirit will roam this world in formlessness until the moment of your return at which time you will experience true death, for you body will still be broken," Lord Eonwё explained.

"You will return in what ever physical state you are in at that moment, the stasis covers only illness, ageing and your moon times. An arrow through the heart will still kill you just as quickly as it would before."

"So, I must exist all of the thousands of years between now and then, and I will return either to my body or into death with the memories of those twelve thousand years. If I return to my own body I will find myself as a twenty year old with a normal life span ahead of me?" I asked.

"Yes," Lord Eonwe looked sympathetic and I understood why. My fate was nothing to envy. "Have you any questions?" he asked genteelly.

"No, thank you my Lord, for telling this to me." I stood and curtsied before leaving the tent.

Outside there was quite the upheaval. Elves were running everywhere and were up in arms. The corpses of two Noldo elves lay on the ground. I closed my eyes, I knew what had occurred. I watched as Eonwё came out and told the elves to let Maglor and Meadhros go. I couldn't believe it, why did they have to add more pain and suffering after all that had happened. I walked away towards the tent that Elrond and Elros had set up for us. My mind wandered over what Lord Eonwё had said.

Stasis of my biorhythms, the cessation of my moon times and the fact I had not aged in over a hundred years, it was all explained to me. After almost a hundred years of existence I was realizing how much of a gift mortality was. I had watched so much death and horror, what I wouldn't give to escape it all. However, I was bound. I would not die even if I was killed through violent act my freed spirit would still be bound to this Middle-Earth. Stasis, Lord Eonwё had called it; he had said that I was in stasis. I said that I was cursed. I was devoid of all gifts; I had not the gift of mortality given as was given to my own people nor did I have the right to sail as the eldar. I was trapped bound ever to this earth.