A rustling in the soft, springy moss that ran underfoot and carpeted its flanks like a blanket stirred it from its half slumber. It had been there for as long as it could remember, gently rooted to the earth with limbs that gripped the dark soil and received nourishment from it in turn. Eyes of a sort it had, opening sometimes to take in the perpetual silvery twilight or study the little creatures that scurried and twittered among its many limbs, but once again it sank into its content slumber, unperturbed by the doings of the world around.
Yet a time came when creatures of a different sort appeared in the shadows of the trees, pale with spindly limbs, murmuring as they went. It opened its eyes slightly at the curious intrusion and took note of them, expecting them to do as all creatures did, to abide for a time and then move on, but not to linger indefinitely. Even those creatures that came singly or in pairs to make their nests in its limbs or burrow in the hollows beneath its roots left after a certain space.
It stood silent witness to the burgeoning of life, to the hatching or bearing forth of those smaller creatures that suddenly appeared in those nests and burrows, yet did not wonder that such marvels were lacking in itself, that there was seemingly no creature that mirrored its own being.
Now it focused on the newcomers, on their unusual gait and the pelts that did not cover their entire bodies. It wondered what they did, for their movements were not like those of the creatures that usually came. Their whispering grew ever near, and it then felt their small appendages touch its rough surface, delicately exploring each fold and crevice of bark, their voices whispering to it and to each other.
“Aldwë…a heartbeat this one has…feel it thus through the wood….” And this was a language that was not the chirping or chattering of small creatures, but a fluid tongue it had not heard before and did not know, though some glimmering of meaning reached it and remained so it might follow what they said.
“Daintáro…listen thus and you will feel it throughout the wood…many heartbeats, all sluggish…wanting a word of awakening even as we received it thus….”
“Ai, but we are not the One, to give life so.”
Briefly it wondered if the One was the spirit who came sometimes to the silvery wood and lingered among the trees and other growing things. Vaguely it knew that life was its state of being, but did not remember when such a thing had come to it or who had given it.
“Not even to stir that which is already there? Come, place your hand upon this one and you will see, the One has already given it life, and it is a being unlike that of any tree we have known on the path we have followed. Follow me if you will, but I would know more of this creature.”
Their appendages were again upon it, stroking its limbs even as theirs wrapped around its girth and began to climb. It felt their weight, slight yet strange. Warm breath caressed its bark and whispered. “Coiva, fanga ornë.”
And the words were like a draught of something magical, that flowed through its sluggish limbs and tugged at its senses until it opened its eyes fully and filled its lungs with the great green air of the forest and uttered a mighty, “Hroooom!”
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Notes
Daintáro: the Telerin form of Denethor son of Lenwë, who led a group of Elves over the Blue Mountains and into Ossiriand, where they became the Nandor.
The spirit Fangorn refers to is not Eru Ilúvatar but Yavanna.
Coiva, fanga ornë: (Quenya) Awake, tree beard! Although I realize the Elves of Ossiriand likely would have spoken some form of Telerin, Fangorn’s name is similar in both Quenya and the early form of Sindarin, before the word ‘orn’ was replaced by ‘galadh.’ It is possible that at this early stage in Elven history, the various groups were still speaking a homogenized tongue that was only beginning to change and evolve, and therefore Aldwë’s use of Quenya is not inappropriate.