Chapter Thirty-Five: The Hall of Fire

I’m writing from one of my favorite places, my Sam. I have so many favorites places here - the dark room, the library, the open fields, your garden and the other gardens here, but here in the Hall is where I spend most of my evenings. I am usually just here to listen, though as I’ve said, I’ve also celebrated here each time I’ve become an uncle, when I hear the first strains of the each new piece of the Music and when I hear the fuller version once my newest niece or nephew is born. I’ve composed a few of my own songs, mostly in praise to Iluvatar for the gift and blessing of said children and I have made some just for you, dearest. They’re all in Quenya and I think my friends are amused to hear a non-Elf speak their language with a Shire lilt, but I can also feel their love surround me just as much as yours always did and still does. Individually none of them are as strong as yours but together, it’s as though I am wrapped in a warm blanket and I am among those I love just as strongly back. And there is Iluvatar’s Love over all which I can’t even describe to you. I know it sounds strange, but I feel like I am home here, even though I am the only hobbit here, surrounded by those twice my size and almost unimaginably older than I am. I remarked to Gandalf once about that and he said, “Well, of course, you’re home, dear boy. You may have the body of a Hobbit but you were given the heart of an Elf to appreciate beauty and absorb wisdom and have strength in enduring. You are the best of both worlds combined.” I am not saying that to blow my own horn as it were, in fact I’m almost embarrassed to write it out, but I do it to try to explain why I do feel at home here. I think you will too, my Sam. We have so long shared the same heart.

Most of the time, I am just here in the Hall listening, getting absorbed in the tales and songs and furiously scribbling to make sure I get it all down for the history I am writing you. I think this is another way I amuse my friends much by all this, but what they’ve seen and been a part of! Even the youngest here are over two thousand years old and have so much to tell. Oh, Sam, even if I lived forever, I would never begin to know all that they do. But I am in some small way, keeping track of what I can because I know you will love to know of it yourself. And it makes me feel like a child and tween again, as though I am listening to one of Bilbo’s many tales. Bilbo used to come with me and we’d listen together and there were many evenings I know he stayed up far longer than I could. Just being here with his beloved Elfs gave him such energy you would have no idea he was as old as he was. It has certainly also energized me. I feel like I’m getting younger rather than older, though I know that’s only an illusion and I am still truly aging.

I think it will be some time still ’til you are here, dearest heart, but I don’t mind that so much as I did before. I can hear your Song and I know you are still with me, that you’ve never left me and never will. I can hear Merry and Pippin’s, Aragorn’s and all of the children’s. It soothes me like nothing else to know that we are all still together and I surrounded by even more love here than I have ever been. Come, my brother, when you know the time is right. I will be here to welcome you. I love you so.