Fimbrethil

One of the Entwives, the companions of the Ents, Fimbrethil shared a connection with old Fangorn or Treebeard. Fimbrethil was slender of form, and had an association with beech or birch trees. Her name is translated as 'slender-beech' (or 'slim-birch'), though Treebeard rendered her name more poetically as 'Wandlimb', describing her as light-footed for one of her kind.

Fangorn and Fimbrethil had been joined since ancient times, but the Ents and Entwives had different interests: while the Ents shepherded the greater trees, the Entwives cared for the lesser trees and plants of Middle-earth. Thus the two were often apart over their long lives. Fangorn recalled that the last time he had seen Fimbrethil, she had aged somewhat, and was little like the Entmaiden he had first known. Given the immense lifespans of the Ents, this must mean that they had been apart for centuries, or perhaps even millennia.

That last meeting seems to have been long before the War of the Ring, apparently in the closing years of the Second Age. Afterward Fimbrethil and the Entwives worked in their gardens on the eastern bank of Anduin, while Fangorn and the Ents watched over the trees of Fangorn Forest. When Fangorn and his fellow Ents again went to seek Fimbrethil and her compnanions, they found her gardens ravaged and burned by some weapon or curse of the Dark Lord, leaving the empty Brown Lands in their place.

The fates of Fimbrethil and her fellow Entwives are not known with certainty, but it seems most likely that they succumbed to whatever malign force had caused their gardens to wither. Nonetheless Fangorn and the Ents held hope that the Entwives had merely been lost in the wilds of Middle-earth, and continued the long Search of the Ents, seeking in vain for Fimbrethil and her people.