Coming into the Shire, the land of the Hobbits, its forests vast and lush and its rolling farmlands overflowing with the bounty of an earth long cured of its scouring, the elf-lords entered Michel Delving, the city-seat of the venerable Mayor of the Shire. The Hobbits saw them more clearly than most, yet greeted them fondly as simple travelers, welcoming their kind faces and wise words where once the Eldar had been withheld entry to the Shire as mere heralds of doom and visitors of a strange enchantment too arresting for the simple and wary folk of those lands.
“So the shadow of woe and loss has been worked to bring these good Hobbits of the Shire to see beyond the consolation of comfort and into a light which both burns and heals, a light for which they once longed without knowledge of the cause or remedy for their yearning,” Antion said as they stood at the gate of the path which led uphill to the Mathom-house of Michel Delving.
“It is often so, my son, that the towers of pride are only broken and thrown down by the harshest fire, and yet by this the very arts of the Enemy in his darkest thoughts may be worked to the highest purpose of Ilúvatar,” Arcallon said, grasping his son’s cloaked shoulder as they ascended the hill.