Black were the boughs and bitter the wind. The pines of Dorthonion stood tall and straight under a sky strewn with stars. On every branch hoar frost hung, aglitter as a hoard of white gems. A smell of resin and of wildness raced in the air, and the prince of Doriath stamped upon the snow for the sheer delight of wading in fountains of scintillant ice.

He had slipped his escort - the guards and servants he thought of as his leash - a few hours ago. In another few hours he would return to them, or let them find him. But for now freedom had gone to his head like wine. He sang a cold song, in a voice of crystal, among the dark trees upon Orod-na-Thon, and laughed as the deep woods seemed to lean in to listen. For he was a youth, in the youth of the world, when all things were new, and though there were orcs in Middle Earth his bow was on his back and he was not afraid.

Into the forest he went, where the wind sighed, baffled by branches, and the needles underfoot were soft. Then out, onto the mountain's white peak beneath stars like silver fires. There the steel hard ground was scoured by frozen winds and all the trees gave way, save one, and that one so ravaged by the winter it had but two boughs left.

Then Celeborn stopped, curious, for this was no pine, but neither was it any tree he had seen before. Most like a young Oak, but with a trunk cloven in two, so that but for the roots one might think it could walk. The bark on the raised limbs was smooth as the silken grey of the Ash, wholly out of keeping with its bole, as though...as though it were an incarnate like himself, and wore raiment. It took little imagination to pick out a gnarled face and a short, naugrim-like beard of leafy twigs.

"Ele!" he said and stepped forward to touch, "What are you?"

"Hoom!" The tree opened brown eyes lit with green fire, and as Celeborn leapt away, shocked and wary, it said - in a voice of woodwind beauty, "Ha. Hm. It seems I slept, and beneath my feet there grew a silver tree. How long have you been standing there, young elf?"

The wind blew hard from the East, and as Celeborn drew close once more he pushed his hair from his face. It streamed like a comet's tail, as silver and as bright. He did not need to ask how the creature had guessed his name. "Long enough to be astonished by you," he said, "Are you child of Iluvatar? Or of a Valar - like the Dwarves? How is it that you speak our tongue? What are you? What is your name?"

"Perhaps I have none," said the thing and swayed forward gently to fix its flickering eyes on the elf's face, "And as for the rest, hm, well...I think if you do not know I cannot tell you. I am an Ent, and an Ent is... hm. An Ent is what I am. What that means to you, I could not say. But it was the Green people, aye the Lindi, the Laegrim, who first gave us words. A great deed of theirs, that was, all unsung."

The ent flexed his feet, each toe parting reluctantly, root-like, from the ground. He lowered his arms, and the spread, leafless branches of his canopy were revealed as many fingered hands. Accustomed to the drowsy, half lucid thoughts of trees, Celeborn found his speech swift; clear and rapid as Esgalduin.

"Where are you from?" he asked, "If my folk heard rumour of you all would come to see. That we have not come shows that you are newly arrived."

"Not so hasty," said the ent, "The 'axe elves' you are called, people of Elu. Axes we have learned to abhor. Perhaps it is fear that has kept us from your ken? Hm? Perhaps we have been hiding from you out of fear. For ourselves and the trees we love."

He took a step, the great legs opening like...like a pair of Cirdan's compasses, unbending, toes feeling for purchase before the foot went down. Abruptly he was six elf-paces from where he had been standing, as if in retreat.

"We are no murderers of trees," said Celeborn and followed him, "Even in Beleriand there are fell things. For these are our weapons made, to protect our trees - the fair oaks of Region, the willow meads of Nan Tasarion, the tall wood of Nan Elmoth where our people lost their King and found him again. Do not go."

The ent bent towards him as a slender tree bends in a high wind, creaking slightly. His beard was mossy and green, but the ends of it were grey. Light fluttered in his eyes with rising thoughts and amusement. "Do not go? Why not? I go where I will. I walk and talk and tend my flock. If I stand still too long I fall asleep, as you have seen."

"Whence came you?"

"Out of the East I came," the deep flute of the entish voice took on a cadence like chanting, "Out of the great forests of Ennor, following the Laegrim. Aye, out of the woods that stretch forever under the stars; out of the beech woods and the pine woods and the holly thickets on the slopes of the misty mountains. The places and the days when I could walk amid an endless rustle of leaves. Dark beneath the unchanging stars of Elbereth. Ah the wild places and the sighing of the leaves upon Taur-na-Rhun in the scent of the Linden blossom!"

And at the words, as though a spell was laid upon him, Celeborn's heart was turned within him, so that he looked rather to the East in wonder and longing than to the West. "If I were free, I would go with you, oh Fangorn." he said, moved, "If you have no name then take this with my goodwill; Treebeard."

"A short name, and I have lived long," said the Ent, but he paused, and his gnarled face twisted into a smile, "But it will serve, and I thank you." He sighed - a note like the pipe of an organ - and turned. "We will meet again there," he said, "In the empty lands of the East. When we are in less haste, we will meet again, I think."

"I do not know." said Celeborn, and he dreamed of the utter freedom of walking beneath unnamed forests in lands where the very stars were strange. He had loved Beleriand, believing it to be the whole world, but now his thoughts went out to the rest of Ennor. If it held wonders such as Fangorn, and trees such as Fangorn had spoken of, it too he could love as if it was his own land. "I do not know, oh Ent. But I hope so."