Tides turn. Time spirals like the waves themselves.
It's been months beneath his sail, living off of fish and strange leaves from deep beneath the waters of the sea. Sometimes, they've found, if you reach your arm down in a shallow enough area, the long plants will find your hand before it finds them, wrapping around you in the current just quickly enough for you to pull it up and into the boat.
There are four hands on the boat. Two belong to a small, rotund thing with red hair and a rough and fiery temper. The others are connected to a long, tall one, smooth and thin, calm and logical. The tall one prefers the sea leaves. The small one likes the fish. It would be hopeful to say that this means there is no reason to fight over food. In fact, it would be terribly inaccurate.
There are also paws on this boat. They first jumped on at their most recent stop on land (and there have been many; they've stopped at every island they've seen but this has been the first time an inhabitant has expressed interest in joining them), and these paws also prefer fish. Sometimes they threaten the small one for it, and sometimes, if they're in a pleasant enough mood, they turn to feet to coax him more gently. They are a large cat's paws, but sometimes they are a woman named Ulvinowyn, of whom the small one has become quite fond.
She steers the ship with her tail as her admirer sits watch, bringing up the occasional leaf of kelp in a net dangled off the side. The tall one is the navigator. He holds his bow up against the patterns of the stars and knows precisely where they are to steer. His company does not understand this, and they do not understand the place that they are assisting him to travel to, but there are things that he does not understand about them in return. So it is peacefully mutual, and they let one another do their own strange businesses and do not say a word about them.
Ulvinowyn, when a lady, sitting in a way still catlike on the floor of the ship, has once asked how they are to know precisely where they are headed if there are clouds and they cannot see the stars in the sky or hold the tall one's bow to it.
"We will go where the wind takes us," he has replied, and it does not make sense to his company, but they are used to this. They eat their fish and catch their strange sea leaves and hold their weapons to the stars, and they sail in the direction of a place that the tall one refers to as Aman.
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Passersby ➵ ONC 2021
Fanfiction➵ With his days anything but numbered, Legolas finds himself the keeper of far too much time. ➵ As his dear friend Aragorn has passed at the age of 210 and all reason to remain in his kingdom has followed, the immortal elf ventures away from his la...
