The Spirit of the Mountain by Elrond's Library

The Waters

Being an island was different from being a mountain. 

It wasn’t as cold, for one. My name felt ill-suited.

But above all, it was lonely. 

I heard the singer's voice across the waves at times, and I sang back, supporting his grief and his anger and reminding him of love and devotion and safety. He didn’t seem to hear, so strong was his guilt. 

When Ossë visited my shores, and Uinen too, I pleaded with them to allow the singer to cross, to visit me, to take comfort and shelter in the place he had once loved. They would not. I begged, then, that they would watch over him, to ensure he did not fall like his brothers. They agreed.

Explorers came. Map-makers and shipwrights, Children and Aftercomers. I told them my story in their dreams, and they wrote them down in the light of day. In time they too, left, but not before renaming me “Tol Himling,” as if a single letter could change who and what I was. 

The Men of the White Tree explored the ruins of the scarred one’s fortress, and I let them. He wasn’t coming back, what use did he have for the trinkets and baubles of the blue-and-silver prince’s love? Their story and mine slowly passed out of time and memory. I slept more often than not, waiting for something. What it was, I knew not. 

The world was changed once again. 

The bones of the earth expanded, connecting, wrapping around itself in an act only the One could have accomplished. Isolated as I was, I knew not why Ilúvatar was angered, but only the result. The Island of the Men of the White Tree fell beneath the waves, and my brethren in the Uttermost West became distant, a shadow in a different plane. 

I was alone, well and truly alone. 

I maintained the scarred-one’s fortress, singing to it to keep it standing. Keeping its memory alive, if only for myself. 

And then I slept the ages away.