As someone who has long loved the character of Aragorn, today feels like it is truly the breaking of the Fellowship, and the culmination of Tolkiens marvelous tale.

The fellowship parted from Strider, King Elessar, at Orthanc 6 days ago. They are coming up on the Misty Mountains when they overtake two ragged beggars. One is wearing tattered grey or dirty white robes trailed by a sniveling shell of a man crawling along behind him. The company has overtaken Saruman and Grima who is more of a worm than ever.

Saruman has come a long ways in his long travels from Arda. Once Saruman was the White, now he is no color at all. Once he was a powerful Maia, preferred of many now he is merely a bitter shell of himself. He is offered mercy but he is unable to be humble enough to accept it. So bitter is he that he alters his direction to avoid following after the company.

As he is leaving he steals the last of Merry's pipeweed and his pouch and he warns the company that they may not find the Southfarthing to their liking when they finally get there. He kicks Grima along who mutters about the cruelty but he is still to firghtend to accept Gandalf's challenge to leave Saruman. But this grumbling is a portend of things to come.

I have always wondered if Saruman had planned to go to the Shire and do his evil work or, if it was a plan that formulated in his head as a result of this encounter.

Galadriel, Celeborn, Elrond, and Gandalf have spent some seven days in quiet conference about many things--from ages gone to the recent events of the War of the Ring and the possibilities of the time yet to come. The Lords of Lorien need to return to their realm, where Galadriel will stay but a short time before she departs from the Grey Havens, leaving Celeborn and Middle Earth behind. Indeed, it seems as though the departure is already underway for the three who will go, for their conversation takes place as a meeting of mind only, and they seem to be only partly present in Middle Earth. "If any wanderer had chanced to pass, little would he have seen or heard and it would have seemed to him only that he saw grey figures, carved in stone, memorials of forgotten things now lost in un peopled lands." It is a foreshadowing of the future of Elven folk.

Elrond, Gandalf, and the hobbits go on from Eregion to Rivendell after the Lords of Lorien leave. Frodo and his friends seek Bilbo out before they do anything else, and in his simple greeting "So you've come back." the Quest of the Ring has come almost full circle. For two weeks they rest in the Last Homely House, and then it is time for the hobbits and Gandalf to leave on the last stage of the journey home. Frodo and Bilbo leave Elrond, but like Galadriel, the parting is temporary. The Grey Havens wait.

Our story begins to come full circle. It is almost exactly one year ago that the Black Riders first appeared on the borders of the Shire. Look as what has happened, what has been won, and what has been lost in the span of this one eventful year.

So it is today that the Hobbits, Elrond, and Gandalf return the Rivendell...

"At last one evening they came over the high moors, suddenly as to travellers it always seemed, to the brink of the deep valley of Rivendell and saw far below the lamps shining in Elrond's house. And they went down and crossed the bridge and came to the doors, and all the house was filled with light and song for joy at Elrond's homecoming."

The Last Homely Home.