-=[ #5 - Losing the Entwives ]=- You climb up on the foot of the pedestal and lean over the basin. The water is still. In it, the reflections of stars are motionless. Suddenly the stars disappear, and the water grows dark. Slowly a huge tree fades into view. The bark is old and gnarled, the leaves seem to be be thick and old. More trees appear, forming a forest. The forest grows thicker, darker, denser, as more old trees fade into view. Galadriel turns west, her eyes focusing on something far, far away that only she can see. Thicker underbrush forms, taller grass grows, and the areas between the trees start to look darker, stranger, and older than you have seen in any other forest. Suddenly the vision blurs. It seems that you are being pulled up into the air higher and higher. Now you are looking down on a enormous forest which seems to cover the whole world. Only mountains peek out of the strange green and dark of another, long forgotten age; only some rivers glitter in the sun like snakes. From somewhere above, a leaf from one of the great mellyrn falls into the mirror. It floats for a moment, then sinks. As the water clears, a large part of the forest is gone. The vision blurs again. You see a border of the forest. Two groups of trees are here. Both of them seem old and withered, but the trees in the eastern group seem to be thicker, their bark seems to be a bit browner, their branches bend lower to the ground. At first, only one, then two, then more, and finally all of the trees from the eastern group move away. Their roots find a new home in the earth a few yards apart from the western group. Faster and faster, the space between the trees grows, until the departing group fades out of your view in the far east. None of the western trees did move, and now they stand as they were for an eternity. Then, the trees retreat, and one after one they are swallowed by the great forest in the west. The water starts spinning around, and as it is still again, you see a desert. Right through that plain of stone, dust, and loneliness runs a broad and deep, deep chasm, cleaving the world in two. The vision begins to fade, and the stars slowly return. The vision fades, and you find that you are looking at the cool stars twinkling in the silver basin.