[A crumpled ball of paper lies forgotten beneath the writing desk of Thavroniel in Celondim. Written upon it are lines of Daeron's Runes, and are therefore unintelligible to most folk.1]
Dearest Fethurin Faethurin, friend of my heart.
I write this knowing that my message cannot come to Tol Eressëa and thus your eyes will never see it, but it eases my heart to put my thought upon the page. It is midwinter day in Middle-earth, and in my mind I wonder if the seasons yet pass in the Undying Lands as they do here in the world, for surely the stream of time must flow for you as it does for me.
After you went away I asked this of Selcheneb the lore-keeper, and she told me time does not tarry ever, but change and growth are not in all things and places alike. For us, she says, the world moves both very swift and very slow: swift, for we change little, and all else fleets by; and slow, for we need not count the running years for ourselves. And the passing seasons are but ripples ever recurrent in the long stream of time.2 (Ever did her answers to our deep questions miss the mark and were veiled and unclear; this much has not changed!)
Yet she said that beneath the Sun all things must wear to an end at last, and I deem this must be true also in the Blessed Realm beyond the waking world, as it is for we who yet dwell in the Hither Lands. For thirty lonely winters have passed for me since we bade farewell one to another on the cold stone quay of the Grey Havens, and if time has indeed flowed alike for you, then I guess that you are now full grown too! And thus I wonder if you have changed and how you would seem now to my eyes if I could but see into the hidden realm that is now your abode until the ending of the world. (Oft have I tried to send my thought to you as we always did in the greenwood of our home, but alas, my efforts have availed me not!)
After we learned the mind of your mother to cross the sea, do you recall how you brought comfort to our hearts' dismay with the glad thought that we would both yet behold the same Sun and Moon and stars, no matter where we dwelled apart? Now that I am older, I wonder if this is so. Yet with the passing of the years, I now understand the ancient tale of the great love and friendship Finwë held in his heart for Elwë
[Here the runes abruptly end as if interrupted and the page hurriedly cast away.]
1."The Longbeard Dwarves therefore adopted the Runes [...] and they adhered to them even far into the Third Age, when they were forgotten by others except the loremasters of Elves and Men."
- The Peoples of Middle-earth, "Of Dwarves and Men"
