Ficlet Friday!
Elwë’s feet met the ground, leading far ahead into the huge forests at the horizon of the plains.
The world was young.
He had set out with his kind, who had begun to grow the name Sindar, not long ago, from the shores of a sea with waters as fresh as rain.
They did not have a word for time yet. For time was not counted, it was immeasurable, unknown.
He stared up at the line of forest, stretching leagues on either side, and up, up, up into the sky.
It felt wrong to enter those trees.
But by Oromë above him, the longing in his heart was so great that he could not turn away. It pulled and wrenched, an unbelievable longing that came as though he were meant to be here, had travelled here from Cuiviénen to find these very trees.
Like perhaps here, here was where he belonged. Here he felt it as deep as the oceans he would never see. Here, where he would linger, and never sail to the shores of paradise.
For what was paradise to this?
He stepped into the woods.
And the tree moved.
He shrieked and jumped back, falling into his elder brother's chest. Linwë grasped him tight and pulled him back. It seemed the entire grove of Sindar Elves shrunk back as they watched a creature, a huge creature made of wood and leaves.
“What are you?!” Linwë shouted out, though his voice was shrill and high.
“Peace…” the creature said, and Elwë’s eyes felt like they were bulging out of his head. It spoke. It's alive. It's a huge tree thing.
He took a deep breath and pulled away from his brother, moving to stand in the centre of the pealed back semicircle. “Greetings…”
“Ah…” the way the creature's words sounded was slow, almost droning. “In your tongue I would be known as… Fangorn.”
“Fangorn. It is nice to meet you.” Elwë dipped his head in a bit of a bow that had it, er, Fangorn, laughing bright and loud.
“Please, small, young, hairless squirrels… come stay in my woods for a while. My forest stretches from here to the sea… from here to the far Western reaches of what you will call… Beleriand.”
And this was the first meeting of the Elves and the Ents. Many things would spring from this meeting that neither party yet knew, such as the first death in all of Arda, Linwë, who was only preceded by the dying of the Lamps. However, unknowing, Elwë followed this creature, who would soon become a dear friend, into the forest that his heart longed for.
