“Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.”—J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
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She paused on the line; read again, breathing slow and deep, brushing waved hair back from fall beside and before her face: affected in message of moment.
Life was changing, courses before, unseen, appearing: possibilities, potentials, dreams she doubted she would ever want; now suddenly—she might.
Was it a new adventure, an end to an old, or intermingling of the two.
“Don’t adventures ever have an end?” she contemplated.
“I suppose not,” she answered aloud to self and book, smiling.
The world was both less and more immense than once she had imagined, and seeking, she saw as much of it as she could: sights, experiences, wonders, skies, fellowship, company, strangers, friends, lovers, and total solitude; mosaic of memories collected and formed in life without borders or bounds.
At close inspection, the mosaic was broken, disjointed, incoherent if sought for assembled sense in near sight; but at a distance, it composed the beauty one life lived: hers.
She looked after, down to the ring, turning it on her finger, and like that in story read considered how all such rings have way to changing lives and fates. Old lives end, new begin, and adventures the same; all by a gifted ring.
In her thoughts, she held vision of a little girl she’d never met but sensed and knew as an awaiting truth, such as destiny discerned, seen in a vision, known to heart and soul while still an absurdity in present. Hair, eyes, and smile as her own, she dreamed personality into the little girl; spirit shaped both by nature and the nurture of her raising.
It was a new adventure, and to the other that may change; she dreamed of the little girl: someone else to carry on the story.
She looked again to the ring. It glimmered portentous in light of the bedstand lamp. There was magic in its making.