Disclaimer: The Lord of the Rings does not belong to me, and that's okay.
AN: There's nothing I can say that would excuse my writing this seriously demented fic. But that's okay too. I hope.

~ The Last Goodbye ~

The living ships rose as one with a mighty roar, imposing in their sheer size but still dwarfed by the blue planet their were leaving behind. They were colony ships, each and every one of them and one by one they left atmosphere, converging towards one empty and singularly uninteresting point in space.

The rendezvous point ceased to be uninteresting as the portal opened up -- a translucent, multi-dimensional flower that unfolded and curled space-time around the waiting fleet, causing some interesting visual effects to fill up the viewscreens.

Too bad nobody was looking.

Silence descended as men and elves and Valar alike waited for something dramatic to happen.

Nothing did, except for the soon-to-be red giant diminishing into a tiny dot and a sudden wave of nausea experienced by all present due to the sudden and brutal curving of space-time.

Even the Valar looked sea-sick, not so much due to the space-time distortions caused by the engine but to painful and unspeakable things happening in a dimension well above the fourth.

And then, just like that, normal space returned with an odd sucking sound. Several elves cleared their throats nervously, but still nothing happened. Unfamiliar constellations blinked frostily on the viewscreen, a large portion of which was occupied by the backlit glow of the planet beneath.

The fleet didn't blow up.

The god Eru, alternately known as Lord Glorfindel, Bill the pony and a blade of grass close to Galadriel's mirror (and thus, more often than not, to Galadriel's bare toes) allowed himself a noncorporeal smile.

It had been a big, elaborate joke, and it had taken a very, very long time to reach a punchline. It might have even been a stupid joke, now that he thought about it. But it had been worth it, if only for the look on their faces there in the end. Nessa had looked particularly sick, he remembered with multi-dimensional glee. Only Mandos had been comparatively calm, but that was because Mandos knew, or at least suspected.

Ah well, they were on their own now.

He looked with interest at a piece of space debris floating in the void. There were more like it around, and a young sun, not too far away... Swirl a cautious finger in the soup of the universe and you soon had a planet.

A little more time and care later and you'd have a planet with a breathable atmosphere and an ecosystem, and gods who thought they were special because they were the first.

He hoped he could resist creating pointy-eared immortals this time around.

Well, probably not.

Slowly, gently, he extended one finger.