It seems to me that there is a strangeness amongst my people that is unnatural. For we are of the same blood, of the same family, and once our forefathers were friends, long, long ago. Yet I am a stranger in their sight: a foreigner, from a far kingdom, of a different dress, habit, speech and manners. So it is that I am a strange thing to their eyes: a spectacle, a curiosity - something to be looked at, but not approached, something to be shunned, and despised, and considered worthless, or thought of as a mere plaything, like a child’s toy that is cast aside, forgotten and useless when it no longer affords amusement.
We are strangers to one another, and our foes are many, so now we observe those who are unknown with suspicion, and we look sharply at them, and avoid them, and shut them out. Hard are the hearts of these people! Once we were of the same family, though they may wish to deny it, and we are children of the same father, brethren of one another, and we are to dwell together in Valinor until the remaking of the world. So it is written.
If these were allies of the Shadow I could bear it better, for it is to be expected and easily understood. But this – this I do not understand at all. But really, what more did I expect to see than folk wearing fancy clothes and fribbles: after all, what else would be worn in a lord’s house?
