Act III, Part XVII: The Fading of Tinnurion
Much ruin had been visited upon the forest during the Battle under the Trees, but with Sauron destroyed and Dol Guldur levelled to the ground, the forest was free of the evil that had long stalked its trees. On the 6th of April 3019, Thranduil met with Celeborn in the middle of Mirkwood and there they shared in words of comfort and peace. The woods would be renamed Eryn Lasgalen, and Celeborn would extend his rule to the southern part of the forest, whilst Thranduil claimed the northern part up to the mountains. The middle of Mirkwood was given to the Beornings and the Woodmen, who grew in number and prospered. But somewhere in between Thranduil’s realm and the forest of the Woodmen, hidden from the world, lay a home of dimly lit halls, with a smithy and a tower. Here still lived the wild elf named Tinnurion Turwath, former servant of Eöl the Dark Elf, the lone wanderer and slayer of spiders, hero of the Battle under the Trees.
Tinnurion lived in the Fourth Age much as he had lived in the Third, hiding from the sun, wandering about Middle-Earth, visiting and befriending dwarves. His most trusted friend among those people was Burfi, cousin to Fruni Stouthammer. From him he learned that Fruni had perished before the gates of Erebor and Tinnurion knew that it had been the ring’s doing. But he could now venture in places that had been out of his reach before. With the departure of Galadriel, Lothlórien was a realm he could now visit without feeling ill at ease or unwelcome. He sometimes walked now clad in the raiment of the Silvan Elves, sharing in their feasts, albeit still only by night. He also travelled to Mordor, to see with his own eyes the Black Land and the ruins of Barad-Dûr. For it was difficult for him to believe that the Great Shadow had truly passed. He did not venture there for long, as the dusted plains of Gorgoroth reminded him too much of his time in Angband. He also, at long last, met with his old friend Thirenel with whom he shared adventures in the unexplored east.
He travelled also to the realms of Men, like Gondor and the fiefdom of Ithilien, but here he kept to his own, espying the labour of Men from a distance, merely to sate his curious mind. Many rumours had reached his ears of the splendour of the realm of Gondor under Elessar, the king returned, and seeing it now he held them to be true. But in the Morgul vale lay still the dead city, and men did not live here for many more years, as the terror of that place was too fresh in mind. But to Tinnurion the stars and moon shone fairer in this hollow vale than he had seen them in Eryn Lasgalen, and therefore he sojourned here in the hills for a time. But there he learned that a great terror still lurked within the Ephel Dúath, and when he found the secret stairs and approached her lair, he was overcome by a sense of dread. He had contested such creatures in ancient times, but this was a memory he did not wish to revisit, so he left that place, never to return.
But despite the wanderings and adventures he had in those years, he started to grow tired, and before long he returned to Eryn Lasgalen. Celeborn had by this time remade the southern part of the forest into a beautiful realm where the Elves sojourned in great glee. Here, under the boughs of new and young elm trees, he met a fair elf maiden, whose golden hair hung long behind her back. Tinnurion loved her for a gleeful two dozen years. But though she was a boon to his spirit, there was naught that could undo the wounds he had afflicted in the long years of his life.
Hence, it was some hundred years into the Fourth Age, that Tinnurion, taken by weariness, sought with renewed interest to walk in the eternal twilight of the Unseen world, free from the changing under the sun; so that he could be aggrieved by it no more. At night, he made for the eaves of Eryn Lasgalen to sit in the open under the stars.
There, in the long grass of the fields upon Anduin, he bent all his thought on the strength of his fëa, until he felt so light and so brittle, like a leaf at the coming of autumn. But only then did he truly understand what the power of his mind had wrought, so that in that very moment, as he tried to stop himself, a swift morning breeze came suddenly from the west and swept him away.
That is how the story of Tinnurion comes to an end, though in the tales of Men he would at times resurface, as an unnamed spirit that they were sure to have seen, passing quietly under the woods at twilight.
