27. Traveling

Erestor, Rimbe and Faeglin come up with the idea to take me to a rock. That’s all they’ll tell me but they seem fair excited about it. So at the beginning of my third week, we set out early in the morn and head up the coast on horseback. 

It takes two days of riding to get there. On the way, we pass into grasslands, barren of wildflowers at this time of year but with trees as old as the elves themselves, and just as grand and majestic. 

Near the end of the second day, we come to a giant boulder as sits in the middle of just such a field. It looks like naught more’n an ordinary rock to me. It actually reminds me of Three-Farthing Stone and brings to mind images of me, Robin and Tom wasting a Highday away, or me and Merry meeting over our Conspiracy.

“That is a big rock,” I say.

Erestor laughs and helps me down from the horse. “This is not just any rock. This is the Looking Stone.”

“Come again?” I ask, wondering if I’d heard wrong, though my hearing’s improved somewhat since coming here.

“Come. We’ll show you,” Faeglin says and together the four of us climb the boulder to stand atop it.

Rimbe points north. “What do you see?”

I look and gasp. I hadn’t realized how far we’d come since we’d left the shore this morning, but we’d come across the narrowest part of the island to the opposite end. There before me across a wide, clear bay is Valinor proper. It’s the closest I’ll ever come to it. I know without asking that they brought Frodo here, that he stood in this same place and looked at this same wonder.

“I see a far, green shore.”

GF 10/7/12

To be continued...