Fae and Fare (The Wandering Inn, #2)

by Pirateaba

They’d never heard Lord of the Rings either. Hah. The entire time they swooped around my head, shouting. “They live, they live!” “Rings! Forged in darkness to bind souls! Yes! How did the Human know?” “The small folk! They remember them!” “To Mordor! To Isengard! To the ends of the earth!” “Ye shall not pass!” “Shut up!” It was the best of times and the worst of times. Actually, it was just the best of times. I told that story too, and you’d be surprised how emotional Gnolls get. They get pretty physically demonstrative too. I could close my eyes and remember a thousand times where my audience gasped or cheered or reacted with wonder and awe to stories that I’d nearly forgotten. But one moment stood out to me, as I sat beneath a dark sky full of stars and retold a moment from the Lord of the Rings. Trick memory. It was just one conversation in a three-hour long film in a quartet of movies, but I’ve always remembered it. “And Gandalf paused, and spoke. He looked at Pippin with a smile, and said ‘End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.’ And Pippin said, ‘What? Gandalf? See what?’” I look around. My audience is spellbound. I take a breath. “‘White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.’”

:)