Welcome to Gaia! ::

Luthien laughed softly and stepped closer. She kissed Elnara lightly on both cheeks, then stepped back again and smiled. "I've been good, wonderful actually. And it sounds as if you've already seen Tinuviel. How long have you been here? When did you arrive?" She looked at Lore, and her eyes sparkled mischievously, just as Tinuviel's did so often. "And who is this?"

She hadn't missed the child's calling him 'papa', and it made her feel happy for Elnara.




"Those," Sir Valdemar smiled, "are the trees of light ... the only source of light at the beginning. We had neither sun nor moon until the Second Age, after the trees were destroyed ..."

He trailed off as the darkness vanished and the image disappeared, and soon was dispelled altogether. He closed the book once more, letting his hand linger on the cover as if caressing it as one might a lover.

She looked at Valdemar, she knew that he missed those times, the times of the big trees that shone, that she thought if angels were created too that's where they would live.

"Did I say something bad?"

Luthien laughed. "Ah, everyone came, then," she smiled. "At least, I assume that's everyone." She beckoned for them to follow her. "Come, sit with me," she invited. "I have to get back to my painting before my paints dry out." She went back to where she had been sitting before and indicated that they should sit on the marble benches that were along the path.




Sir Valdemar chuckled at Lin and poked her nose. "Not at all," he assured her cheerfully. "No, you help me to remember the good times. I was just thinking though about the end of the Age, where everything was destroyed and the world was changed completely. The trees, as you can see, are gone, and we now have a sun and moon, for light and dark, for day and night."

Lin's nose twitched as she tried to see, making hercross eyed as she looked back up to Valdemar with a giggle.

"I like the trees," she murmured, "They never go away, the moon goes away sometimes, and the sun... I don't know if the sun can go away, well the clouds make it go away sometimes."

"Oh, Lin is back as well?" Luthien smiled brightly, sitting at her easel and picking up her paints once more. "That's wonderful! Earendil will be pleased ... though I'm afraid I can't say the same thing for Ruel." She laughed, just as she noticed Serenity.

"Ah, and there's Serenity," she smiled. "It's been a long time since I've seen you, you haven't changed a bit."




Sir Valdemar looked down at Storm and sighed. "A bad person came and wanted to get rid of it all," he replied, "so he wrecked everything."'

To be technical it hadn't been a person, but a Vala, but still.

He looked at Lin and smiled faintly. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this," he said softly, "but the trees do go away. They get old and die, just like people - though admittedly they do live a lot longer than people do, as long as nothing happens to them."

"But if they die, how did you still have light before the Age ended?" Lin asked, "Did they have baby trees like other trees would have?"

Then again she did remember that there were those shining trees the elves lived in so maybe those were the baby trees of those two trees?

"Well," Sir Valdemar said with a soft smile, "there was just a few hours of darkness, like before the trees were created, before the sun and moon came into being. Then we saw what had happened to our beautiful world. Complete and utter destruction ... nothing was the way it had been. The trees, the large trees where we lived, that you like so much ... all of them were destroyed, and from that time on we had to find other places to live."




Luthien smiled at Serenity. "Do you like painting?" she asked her curiously. "I see you were drawing ... can I see some of your work?"

She, like Serenity, had always been inclined to drawing or painting whatever she saw that stuck in her mind, anything that she deemed beautiful. Of course, she had once painted images that she had taken away from the war with herself, but those dark days were gone and her art was beautiful once again.