Snippets of Writing

18.

To the best of his knowledge, Isengar Took was the first hobbit to come to the ocean.

It was a wonderful feeling. The waves pounded against the shore in their everlasting roar and the wind whipped at his hair as he closed his eyes and spread his arms.

"Oh, to be free, like a bird of the sea," Isengar sang. He was a poet, and he found nothing more worthy of poetry than the vast wonder of the sea. "A being that soars above spray!"

The air was salty and filled with the cries of seabirds calling to each other, speaking of their catches and the wild freedom only they had, soaring over air and water. The ocean stretched on and on, farther than his eyes could see, but he knew that there was something past those vast stretches of pounding waves. They called it Tol Eressea, and no man could venture there.

Isengar did not care about that. He did not want everlasting life or to see the glory and light of the High Elves. He only wanted to experience the rush of joy that all the old stories talked about, to experience the vastness of the Sundering Seas, to feel the wind in his hair and walk in the wet sand.

And write a few poems about it when he got back to Hobbiton.

The sun was nearing the horizon and the sky was beginning to burst into many colors. Isengar sank his bare feet in the sand and took a few steps forward. He had never felt so alive, so free before.

When he turned back to look at the tracks he had made from the green meadows to the beach, he was suddenly struck by an old saying, or a verse from a scripture for a religion long gone. "Footprints in the sand," he said to himself. "But when you turn, there's a second set. Because the Lord of the Seas was with you all along."

Then he frowned. There was a second set of footprints beside his own. He followed them to a man - an elf? - who stood just a few feet from Isengar. How (and when) had he gotten there?

The elf had tangled raven hair and wore ragged clothes, a cloak made from a wolf's pelt, and a confused expression. "My name iþ Maglor," he said.

silmarillion memefic