"Ae Adar nín i vi Menel, no aer i eneth lín. Tolo i arnad lín, caro den i innas lin, bo Ceven sui vi Menel. Anno ammen sír i mbas ilaurui vín, ar díheno ammen i úgerth vin, sui mín i gohenam di ai gerir úgerth ammen..."

Noelle heard herself saying the Lord's Prayer in Sindarin. She opened her eyes. She was in a white boat—and yet not. There seemed to be water flowing past her, just as this dream, if you can even call it that, was swirling and tossing about before her sleeping eyes.

There was something in her hand. Noelle looked down. It was The Return of the King, Tolkien's book...but somehow she seemed to be inside it, living between—but not in—the very pages.

Then she was standing back at her home in suburban St. Louis. Only it was not her home; it was her history classroom at Redwood Middle School.

"I wish these troubles had never come to me," Noelle said. "I wish none of this had happened."

"So do all who live to see such times," said a voice—Gandalf's. "But that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you."

Now Noelle was in the boat again, this time with her two sisters. A thought of hers in what now seemed like the distant, distant past. The grass was always greener on the other side of the fence, she had thought. But which was really better?

"Which indeed?" asked Noelle. "I only have to decide what to do with the time that is given to me. So then neither is better in itself, but I was born in this time, and in this time I must stay, unless for some unknown reason I must return."

At that moment the boat sped up. The river water slowly rose higher and higher until its surface was above the rim of the boat. But the water, much to Noelle's surprised, did not leak inside. Instead it formed two waves, one on port and one on starboard. These waves reached upward and in toward each other until the caps touched and joined. Now there was a wall of water around the boat, flowing in many different directions, swirling and churning, dancing the rays of the sun that somehow managed to squeak through the thick, unstable wall of clear blue water. Noelle sensed that she was traveling, faster and faster and faster, flying swifter than light itself, yet not spacially. She was flying, not in feet or miles or light-years, but in decades—centuries—millenia—Ages.

These three girls, these daughters of Edward Thompson, these children fifteen, twelve, and eight—they were not in the Third Age, nor in the Fourth Age, but much further ahead...in the Future. Over twenty-one hundred years since the birth of the Christ Child.

The waves separated, stood in the air for a moment—then was brought down to the ground by force of gravity, splashing the girls with cool water, refreshing in the summer heat.

Before Noelle's eyes the water and the boat disappeared. The summer heat was real. Noelle sucked in some breath. Here she stood—in the treehouse, in Missouri, in the Thompson family's back yard.

Noelle gave a cry of joy. Was she really home? Everything was just as she remembered it: dusk outside, the wooden walls of the girls' tree house, the waning sunlight just peeping in through the window. Had no time passed at all?

"Goodness!" Noelle breathed. Then, unable to contain herself any longer, she leaped in the air. "Yippee!"

Tricia and Noelle and Aubrey were whooping and hollering so much that none of them noticed the car pulling into the driveway and the car doors slamming as Dad and Mom walked to the treehouse.

"What's going on in here?" Noelle's dad asked, opening the treehouse door and poking his head inside. "What's with the whooping and hollering, you guys? And why are you dressed like three little Rohirrim?"

Tricia, Noelle, and Aubrey quieted down simultaneously, but they still had happy smiles on their faces.

"Oh," Tricia replied airily, "we had an adventure."

"Adventure?" Dad repeated. "What did y'all do? Playing games again?"

"Dad," Noelle said, grinning mischievously and putting her hands behind her back, "you'd never believe what happened."

"Hmm," their father said. "Maybe I would."

A/N: Well, it's over. (Sorry to shatter your hopes, Jaygee, but as you can see, they don't stay.) Please review and tell me what you think! Do you think this was a good ending? Maybe? And don't forget to follow or favorite as you see fit. Thank you so much for reading!

Cheers!

The End.