They say that to live is just the same as to love...
Love can never be stopped by anyone.
Ever since the day all of the stars were born...
Love was, so gently, born into our hearts.
Everyone in the world has the power to love one another!
You can hear it too, in the sky, ground and sea...
The whole world sings with the joy of life!
Everyone in the world has the power to love one another!
You can hear it too, in the sky, ground and sea...
The whole world sings with the joy of life!
- Lays of Bard Pantlinn -
A thousand years passed under the sun and stars.
From that day on, few men could ever claim to have seen the Elves, except perhaps as moving shadows at the edge of a wood, when twilight found a farmer or a hunter walking home.
Ages went by in a storm of years. Among the mortals except the sages, even Elendil the Tall was just a name, and Gil-galad, and forgotten, too, was Battle of Dagorlad on the night of the red sunset. It had become a song for drunken tavern nights, no more true or less than any other such songs. For there were newer deeds to extol, younger heroes to parade through city streets and palace corridors, to be toasted in their turn by village tavern fires.
But the former glory has not been lost everywhere. In the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin. They were taller than the Men of Bree and were believed to have strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of animals. The remnants of the Dúnedain of the North, from the blood of the great people, the Men of the West, become hunters and errants, living largely in hiding, but waging ceaseless war on all evil things that still are abroad in the land. Thindaer, son of Caleardor, was one of them, under an alias Radclyfe. His ways were hard and long, he also suffered a lot when fate took his wife and children. And yet hope dwelt ever in the depths of his heart.
And it happened that one day Thindaer wandered into a green grove near a Everclear lake, and he saw something that healed his wounded heart: a dancing maiden. There were Forest Folk on the earth in those days, and among them, Linglorel of the Wood. A Silvan Elf she was, a Tawarwaith, of which there are many. It is said that on the night she was born in the Woodland Realm, the morning star shone as brightly as the moon to that child in the grove, and the flowers bloomed at night in the shining. This maiden danced and made music and wove words into song, and there was always light and mirth about her.
These gifts she was given at her birth, but not even the Valar may shape exactly what they will, and some say that this truth is at the heart of the whole long tale. Be that so, or not, in the morning she came to Thindaer. But, as song tells, that morning Thindaer had the glory of Westernesse in his eyes. And she was now suddenly aware of him: tall heir of Númenóreans, wise with many winters, greencloaked, hiding the nobility of his kin, that yet she felt. For coming to him then, wrapped in her own beauty like a star, Linglorel fell in love and he with her, called her Tindómiel, the Morning Star and so their doom was woven that morning in the grove.
That night they stay together, and as the one song tells, Thindaer slept in the fair grove, but this time within the mantle of her golden hair. They went forth together in the morning from that place, bound. Yet because Thindaer’s place was at the side of his Chieftan, and he must prepared Eriador for the restoration of the Kingdom of Arnor, he returned to Imladris and Linglorel went with him and so left the shelter of the Wood.
They didn't know yet how many thorns they would find on their path.
