Thank you, dear reader, for allowing me to share this story with you, and for putting up with almost all OCs and unnecessary digressions into Angst.

A few quick things:

1).  The poem at the end is (for those of you who haven't come across it) "The Sea-Bell," which can be found in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil where it is associated with, but not attributed to ("highly unlikely"), Frodo and is said to have dated from the early Fourth Age.  Fandom practically requires, of course, that he actually did write it.  The idea that someone found the poem squirreled away somewhere I believe dates to Foster's Guide to Middle-Earth; that is, at least, where I got it from.  He attributes it to a Fairbairn, which is a bit ridiculous since they live in Undertowers which did not exist at the time of the poem's writing under this scheme.  The plot point at the end was, among many other things, my attempt to fix that.  Depending on SoA's copyright rules I plan on including the entire poem in the second chapter of the sequel (yes, there is one), at which point it will fit the rest of the story far better.

2).  Thank you to every single one of my encouraging reviewers, from my early RL friends on whom I foisted the tale (they know who they are) to my first audience.  Especial thanks go to all those who have made it their mission to review every or almost every chapter: Dreamflower and Larner (who managed to do so in such a timely fashion that I awaited their reviews as eagerly [I hope] as they awaited my chapters, Agape4Gondor, Kara's Aunty, and Virtuella.

3).  Thanks to my beta, Nyarendil, who helped root out evil typos and make my characters' speech more hobbity, and who engaged in some amazing philosophical conversation with me around the time of the story's climax.  He has, alas, been unable to help me on the last three chapters, which have as a consequence gone out with only my eyes having looked at the latest draft.  As a consequence, anyone who points out to me in a review or in an email any sort of technical error (until the return of the beta) in these three chapters will receive a free drabble from me on a topic of her choosing.

As soon as he is able to look over these chapters and I have gone over his comments, that will be the final draft of the tale which will be copied onto all of my files so that I can post the identical story on other sites if I wish.

A sequel will, deo volente, be coming: it is currently drafted out to the fifth chapter (with chapter lengths being around the length of the last chapter in this tale) and will deal with events about twelve years from the conclusion of this tale.

Thank you all very much.

~Celeritas
January 5, 2009