This poem and Fíriel's choice have always stuck with me, so I wanted to explore them a little more in this fic.
In after years, Fíriel sometimes wondered how she turned them down. She had always loved the old tales and songs. As a little girl she had looked for elves when she visited the woods and wondered if dwarves dwelled in the mountains or halflings on the other side of the hill.
When she was thirteen and her parents told her she was to apprentice in the weaver's house, she had tried to run away to seek adventure instead. No wizard found her, and after one night out in the woods by herself, she was ready to admit she did not have the strength or skill to chase the stories yet. Still, she had always looked, always listened, waiting for the day she would see a tale come to life.
And then she had. She'd heard them first, and by their singing she knew it was not mortals in the boat. She'd seen the elves on their last voyage—beautiful and otherworldly and yet part of the world. To see them and speak with them was already so much, proving that she had been right to watch and listen. But then, wonder of wonders, they had asked her to come with them.
And she had said no.
Theirs was the last ship. Magic of that kind would never be seen in mortal lands again. She had been so tempted, but when her feat sank into the damp clay of the river bank, she'd known she could not go. For all her love of the songs of the elves, Fíriel was of the race of men. She was meant to walk the earth and leave it in her time, not to sail forever within Arda's circles. Somehow the feel of the mud squishing between her toes was enough to give her certainty, enough to let her watch them sail away and to turn back to her home and work.
Remembering it, Fíriel did not know how she had found the strength to let her dream pass by, but though she never forgot the song of the elves, she did not regret her choice.