Original "challenge" by Lizmybit:
Is anyone interested in a challenge?
A conversation I had with a friend the other day
has spurred an idea in my silly little head. We were discussing what could
have happend to the Ent wives. I thought it would be kind of fun to post
a challange here on the MB to see what all you talented Inklingers, Poets,
and Musers came up with. So anyone who is interested I would love to see
you writer an inkling, Poem or just a musing about your thoughts on what
happened to the Ent wives. I have included a passage from the Two Towers
belwo to aid in your writing. I don't think I will put a time limit on this
one since it may take a while to think of something. I know it will for
me.
So good luck and let's have fun!
TreeBeard Chapter of The Two Towers
(by Tolkien, for reference only)
"There have been no Entings- no children you would
say, not for a terrible long count of years. You see, we lost the Ent wives."
"How very sad!" said Pippin. "how was it then that they all died?"
"They did not die!" said Treabeard. "We lost them,
I said. We lost them and cannot find them." he sighed, "I thought most folk
knew that. There were songs about the hunt of the Ents fot the Entwives
sung among Elves and Men from Mirkwood and Gondor. They cannot be quite
forgotton."
"Well, I am afraid the songs have not come over
the Mountains to the Shire," said Merry. "won't you tell us some more, sing
us a song?"
"Yes, I will indeed," said Treebeard, seeming pleased
with the request. "But I cannot tell it properly, only in short; and then
we must end our talk: tomorrow we have councils to call, and work to do,
and maybe a journey to begin."
"It is rather a strange and sad story," he went
on after a pause, "When the world was young, and the woods were wide and
wild, the Ents and the Entwives- They were Ent maidens then; Ah! The loveleniss
of Fimbrethil, of Wandlimb the lightfooted, in the days of our youth! The
walked together and they housed together. But our hearts did not go on growing
in the same way; The Ents gave their love to things that they met in the
world, and the Entwives gave their thoughts to other things, for the Ents
loved the great trees, and the wild woods, and the slopes of the high hills;
and they drank of the mountian-streams, and ate only such fruit as the trees
let fall in their path; and they learned of the Elves and spoke with the
trees. But the Entwives gave their minds to the lesser trees, and to the
meads in the sunshine beyond the feet of the forests; and they saw the sloe
in the thicket, and the wild apple and the cherry blossoming in spring, and
the green herbs in the waterlands in summer, and the seeding grasses in the
autumn fields. They did not desire to speak with these things; but they
wished them to hear and obey what was said to them. The Entwives ordered
them to grow according to their wishes, and bear leaf and fruit to their
liking; for the entwives desired order, and plenty, and peace. So the Entwives
made gardens to life in But we Ents went on wanderings, and we only came
to the gardens now and again. Then when the Darkness came into the North,
the Entwives crossed the great river, and made new gardens, and tilled the
fields, and we saw them more seldom. After the Darkness was overthrown the
land of the Entwives blossomed richly, and their fields were full of corn.
Many men learned the crafts of the Entwives and honored them greatly; but
we were only legend to them, a secret in the heart of the forest. Yet here
we still are, while all the gardens of the Entwives are wasted. Men call
them the brown lands now.
"I remember long ago, in the time of the war between
Sauron and the men of the sea, desire came over me to see Fimbrethil again.
Very fair she was still in my eyes, when I had last seen her, though little
like the Entmaiden of old. For the Entwives were bent and browned by their
labor; their hair parched by the sun to the hue of ripe corn and their cheeks
like red apples. Yet their eyes were still the eyes of our own people.
We crossed over the Anduin and came to their land; but we found a desert
it was all burned and uprooted, for war had passed over it. But the Entwives
were not there. Long we called, and long we searched; and we asked folk
thet we met which way the Entwives had gone. Some say they had never seen
them; and some said that had seen them walking away west, and some said east,
and others south. But nowhere we went could we find them. Or sorrow was
very great. Yet the wild wood called, and we returned to it. For many years
we used to go out every now and then and look for the Entwives, waling far
and wide calling thier beautiful names. But as time passed we went more
seldom and wandered less far. And now the Entwives are only a memory for
us, and our beards are long and grey.
