Given some of the comments made by readers since I first posted this, I thought perhaps it might be a good idea to clarify some of my thinking when writing this story, which was my first attempt at any form of LotR-based fanfic.

To begin with, the explanation of Gandalf's age and origins is not mine.  It comes from Tolkien himself, through a variety of sources.  The simplest, perhaps, is a comment he once made to an interviewer that "Gandalf is an angel."  Not necessarily in the Judeo/Christian sense of the term, but definitely in the sense of his own invented creation mythology for Middle-earth.  This is straight out of The Silmarillion, in his description of the creation of the Ainur -- the Valar and Maiar ("archangels and angels") before the beginning of Time.  "Wisest of the Maiar was Olórin," a name Gandalf said was his "in his youth in the West that is forgotten."  Some people (most notably the ones who put together The Guide to Middle-earth) weren't quite willing to make the leap of faith into presuming that the name referred to the same person (they said of Gandalf/Olórin "he may have been a Maia").

But whatever doubt they might have had about the issue was pretty much blown away in the chapter "The Istari" in Unfinished Tales.  In that chapter is published a rough version of  narrative describing the council of the Valar in which they discuss the need to send emissaries to Middle-earth to help in the struggle against Sauron.  "Who would go?  For they must be mighty, peers of Sauron, but must forego might, and clothe themselves in flesh so as to treat on equality and win the trust of Elves and Men."  A peer being someone of equal stature with anther, and Sauron being himself a Maia, as was also established in The Silmarillion  ("in his beginning he was of the Maiar of Aulë"), it was obviously meant that they intended to send other Maiar as their emissaries.  In the narrative, it's even mentioned that Manwë  himself picked Olórin to go (though being "the wisest of the Maiar," he had the common sense not to want to go, because he feared Sauron).  This isn't the only place where this comes up.  Elsewhere, writing as a historian chronicling the past of Middle-earth as a real place, Tolkien wrote that "we must assume that they [the Istari] were all Maiar."  So in my opinion, the fact has been well established by Tolkien himself, and arguments to the contrary fall into either the realm of unintentional ignorance or a deliberate choice to venture into an alternate universe.  That wasn't what I was attempting to write in "The Awakening," so I went with what I believed to be the most accurate line of thought.

Now, about the matter of whether or not Gandalf would have told Frodo any specifics about his true nature:  Again, I refer to a passage in Unfinished Tales, this from the chapter "The Quest of Erebor."  Although the heart of that story is Gandalf telling how he came to pick Bilbo to go with Thorin and his company to deal with Smaug, the frame for the telling is set after the destruction of the One Ring, during the time the Fellowship spent in Minas Tirith following Aragorn's coronation.  The narrative is supposedly written by Frodo:  "After the crowning we stayed in a fair house in Minas Tirith with Gandalf, and he was very merry, and though we asked him questions about  all that came into our minds, his patience seemed as endless as his knowledge.  I cannot now recall most of the things that he told us; often we did not understand them.  But I remember this conversation very clearly...."  It goes on to tell the story of Gandalf persuading Thorin to take Bilbo with him, two different versions of it.  And after the tale is told and other comments are made, Frodo says, "I understand you a little better now, Gandalf, than I did before.  Though I suppose that, whether meant or not , Bilbo might have refused to leave home, and so might I.  You could not compel us.  You were not even allowed to try.  But I am still curious to know why you did what you did, as you were then, an old grey man as you seemed."  The remark "you were not even allowed to try" was what came screaming out at me.  The Istari were under a ban imposed by the Valar against the use of force or power to make the inhabitants of Middle-earth do what they wished.  That Frodo knew of it at this point (and moreover, knew that Gandalf had only seemed to be an old grey man) said to me that at some time after the end of the Quest, the two of them had spoken about such things, since Frodo did not appear to have had any real knowledge of them prior to the end of the War.

And finally, there is Frodo's entire demeanor at the end of LotR.  He doesn't appear to be surprised by anything.  Yes, Elrond had told him to look for him in the woods of the Shire in the fall, but when he rides up openly wearing Vilya, there's no indication that this is any surprise to Frodo.  Of course he already knew about Galadriel and Nenya -- and remember, when Frodo asked her why could not perceive the minds of the other Keepers, she pointed out to him that he nonetheless had been able to perceive her Ring, even though Sam couldn't even see it.  That part of my reasoning was a sort of leap of faith, a (to me) reasonable postulation that Frodo might indeed have seen the other Rings before, but had not been aware of their true nature, beyond being pretty pieces of jewelry.  Anyway, it made for an interesting twist in the story.

Frankly, I must admit that I wrote "The Awakening" because I always wondered why Tolkien had chosen to open that part of the story with Sam waking up, not Frodo.  I would've thought Frodo's point of view would've been more interesting (how did he react to seeing that Gandalf was alive again?), but we never saw it.  Feeling the lack, I was eventually moved to write my version of it.  I'm glad others have enjoyed it.