THE LONELY STAR (Contd. from BD birthday party)

[Mithadan]

Mithadan shuffled through a series of charts showing the Northeast coast of Middle Earth during the First, Second and Third Ages. He felt relatively comfortable with the latter two, at least for the specific periods during which they had been drawn. The Second Age chart was of Numenorean vintage from late in the Age and was likely to be fairly reliable. He was concerned however that it showed islands and large segments of coastline which were absent on the Third Age map which had been copied from one drawn by Cirdan himself. The First Age map, however, was of late manufacture and was not specifically intended for navigation purposes. Rather it was a historical document. There was no way that he would rely upon it for a direct jump into those waters from their present location. He agreed fully with Piosenniel's suggestion that they proceed in a series of short (temporal) hops, giving themselves plenty of cushion to avoid landing on some uncharted rocky shore. But even that created concerns. Too big a cushion and they might find themselves in the midst of the legendary and uncharted Shadowy Isles which had been created to fence in Valinor during the First Age. Just when they could have used the advise of Tuor and Idril....