#aragorn and faramir notwithstanding the fourth age is not really for old school númenóreans either

[anghraine]

Just thinking about Elves and Númenóreans again, and how they fade in different ways, and are different peoples, yet:

"The race of the Kings from over the Sea is nearly at an end. It may be that this War of the Ring will be their last adventure."

—Gandalf, "Many Meetings" (FOTR)

"Then you may remember Galadriel, and catch a glimpse far off of Lórien, that you have seen only in our winter. For our spring and our summer are gone by, and they will never be seen on earth again save in memory."

—Galadriel, "Farewell to Lórien" (FOTR)

"For the Enemy increases and we decrease. We are a failing people, a springless autumn."

"Death was ever present [in Gondor], because the Númenoreans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging."

—Faramir, "Window on the West" (TTT)

"The chief power (of all the rings alike) was the prevention or slowing of decay (i.e. 'change' viewed as a regrettable thing), the preservation of what is desired or loved, or its semblance—this is more or less an Elvish motive."

"But they [Elves] wanted to have their cake without eating it ... They thus became obsessed with 'fading', the mode in which the changes of time (the law of the world under the sun) was perceived by them."

—J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter 131

Just! thinking!!!