This was cool, you should write one that is about if the quest for the ring had failed, and Sauron reclaiming the ring.

Poor Canohando and Logi. Living forever barring murder or accident sounds great, until you lose things that don't grow back.

Well, he did say, repeatedly, that he'd give his arm... let's just hope it will lead to some character developement a la Jaime Lannister.

Beautyful story. It gave me tears. Thank You.

And so it ends on a note of pure grace.

I loved the idea of Radagast, The Old Man, taking in the burned child and raising her...at Logi's request, for his mindfulness of burned creatures (little wonder.)

The sad ending of Freiga...but I had forgotten that at least he showed her his heart in her last hours. "She knew before the end that her husband loved her." It's little enough, but I'm glad at least she had that. I think I found her the most tragic figure in this story, both in this life and beyond.

And Silja, who is so sweet and so determined, is such a joy to meet at the end of this grim sad story. I loved her growing up, complete with healing apprenticeship and teenage poetry, and her irrepressible little love for Logi. Only introduced in this epilogue, she is such a vivid little person, I felt glad to be acquainted with her, however briefly...and I felt glad for Logi, to finally accept this tenderness from someone who loves him.

I remembered this chapter, though I did not remember Logi's babe in arms. I remembered Canohando's small reconciliation with him, and Malawen's withholding of it. I hope she does indeed find healing in Valinor.

I remember the boatman's farewell.

This last chapter, coming up, is the one I remember the most...

"They want the settled land, now they're strong enough to defend themselves." Cruel as Freiga's folk were, this does make me wonder what they were running from when they came west. I should have thought to wonder that before.

And Freiga the cause of Logi's treachery indeed! I'd like to beat him about the head. He made the choice; he needs to take responsibility for his own actions. (It's sad, because I remember. He'll never appreciate that girl until she's dead, and even after that how much is it really appreciation for her and how much is it just self-pity?)

I had forgotten Canohando's leg was amputated - one of so many forgotten details! His leg, and Logi's arm. Still they run at parallel to one another, grandfather and grandson.

And now we see the beginnings of the shift as Radagast shares his vision of the future. It really was an ambitious work you created, taking that progression from the days of Frodo to the time when his folk at last become what Tolkien spoke of in The Hobbit: a Little People, "rare and shy of the Big People" and quick to disappear, living on the outskirts of human existence.

Poor Radagast, unable to smoke in Valinor. Normally I wouldn't have pity, but he's a Maiar after all: it's not like smoking is injurious to his health.

Oh Hope indeed! Radagast is back - and it's no wonder he should laugh when the very first Hobbit he meets is another Frodo.

I'd been crying a bit on and off anyway, but Osta's death in the previous chapter threw me into another quick spate. It was a grisly but oddly endearing image, the little hobbit children on the horse with the "Kickshaw Man."

Thank goodness Freiga finally barked back at Logi. He's got a nerve, calling her a wanton, considering how he forced himself on her in the first place. (And all of those words, used by better folk than Logi, folk who should know better: whore, witch, slut. Lovely to know misogyny is alive and well in Canohando and Malawen's Middle-earth.) And she makes him take her with him, reminds him what he owes her. I’m glad she’s developing a back bone…still, she strikes me as impossibly young at times, and simple. Fancy thinking that she simply sleep through her labor pains, and waking to her child already born. How young did you conceive of her as being?

It is just retribution. Savage, but right, at least concerning Logi's punishment.

And yet somehow in the way Canohando frames it to Freiga - "Now he will live or die by your faithfulness" - he makes it a kind of cruel challenge to her, putting her relationship with Logi to trial. And that in turn makes me think of what Canohando thought earlier: "The savagery of setting one friend to burn another to death – from Orcs he would have expected it, but not from humankind."

Get the friend to burn his friend, get the girl to abandon her husband. Stripped to their essentials, there is a similar element of psychological cruelty and coercion. Canohando needs to get out of this before he falls into his own old darkness.

I can understand Canohando's anger, but he is wrong to take it out on Freiga. And it kind of hurt to see him yank the jewel from her. I think, of all the characters in the story, she is one of the ones I most deeply pity. She's so simple, she hurts no one, and she loses so much, to be treated so cruelly by everyone, the good as well as the wicked.

"Softly she crept away into the forest, and it never crossed her mind that she was doing what Logi had asked of her in the beginning. If she had gone with him then, there had been no call for him to burn his friend."

I'm just as glad it doesn't occur to her, poor kid. She shouldn't have to feel guilty for what happened, and she's mistreated enough by him as it is. At most I regret that she didn't try to send him away before he raped her, but I chalk a lot of that up to her inexperience and Logi's own forceful personality. The chief part of my blame on this score still goes to Logi. What he did was wrong.

Reading this chapter, and then reading the title of it after the fact, made me smile. So now, indeed, Logi has saved a Frodo of his own. I like his wry gentleness with the boy. It's too bad he wasn't open to the gentling influence of hobbits (and animals, like Cambar) before now.

It's taken a heavy beating to soften this Orc up.

Dreams are one thing, but I think he had not really allowed himself to think of Haldar until now. How could he, and not leave himself distracted and vulnerable to the men he joined?

He's lost his taste for rape, at any rate. And by taking on Frodo's tooth, I think he will begin to open himself to the value of hobbits and what it means to protect them.

By the way, I haven't commented on it, but the hobbits are impressing me very much. It's no wonder they survive, tenacious beyond even Men or Orcs.