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"Tell me," Sir Valdemar said softly, recognizing Lin's look and searching for a way to quell what might possibly be a temper, "do you have any magic at your command? Your brothers were quite powerful, as I recall."

He knew how children could be, despite never having any of his own and never being one himself, and he wanted to do his best to make her visit a happy one.

Gion hurried to catch up to Nadya, taking her hand in his not only for comfort, but so that he could speak with her.

What is it? he asked anxiously. Are you all right?

He was more worried now than he had been before ... he had never seen her like this ...

"Oh, does your mother fly?" Sir Valdemar asked, intrigued. "I wondered if she could, with those beautiful wings of hers ... but I hadn't seen her fly, so I didn't know ..."

He trailed off thoughtfully. "There are beings here who can fly as well," he murmured. "They ... keep themselves hidden, when they can ... and reveal themselves only when they must - or when they have the desire to do so."

Indeed, he had seen the Valar many times, and was quite possibly the only being alive in the entire world who could claim that.

Gion stood behind her, wondering what she was looking at.

Daemon? he asked his friend, half-wishing the sword was sheathed at his side rather than his back so that he could hold the handle and hopefully get some sort of comfort. Do you have any idea what's going on?

I don't know... do you see anything at her direction?

Daemon asked.

Like... there could be a spirit or something she sees that others cannot. I generally can see spirits and other things like that. It was one of the abilities I was more prone to than seeing the future. Actually it was hard to turn off like the ability to see auras.

Nadya was lost to her vision, and she neither saw nor heard anything around her. Her mind's eye and ear were the only things working now.

At first she had to question whether it was vision or memory that she was seeing: it was the war of thirty five years ago, all over again. Dwarfs, armed and armoured, fighting against elves, groups of hundreds against dozens. The elves had no chance ...

But the terrain was different. Mountains, instead of the Southland forest (as it had been back then). And there were other differences ... it was the dwarfs who were outnumbering the elves, not the other way around. And the sun wasn't shining ... it was misty ...

"Gion?" she murmured, breaking free from her vision and returning to reality. "What is on the other side of those mountains?" She raised one hand and pointed at the mountains just beyond the area they had just left.

Sir Valdemar smiled sadly at the child's question as he reached for the handle to the library's massive oak door.

"They hide because of their sadness," he replied in a soft murmur, pulling the door open and stepping inside.

Immediately he smelled the familiar smell of books, both old and new, fresh and musty. He knew where every single book in this library was located, and he had written well over three quarters of them himself.

"Now, what was it you wanted to see again," he murmured to himself softly, his eyes moving slowly over the ancient tomes. "Ah ... the original world ... Arda in all its glory." He started down one of the aisles, his eyes scanning the spines of the thick books.