Sometimes the things we experience in this life are not to be shared with those who do not understand.  Some things can only be felt by those who know, who have been to the brink of death and pain and fear, and come back, scarred and forever touched.

I know my sweet Estella wishes I would talk with her about the past, about the hidden memories that only the fellowship can truly understand.  Things that only those men standing beside us on the battlefield saw.  But I cannot. 

I do not keep this knowledge from her because I worry she would not be able to handle it, for she is strong and would willingly hear the tale.  No, I do not whisper these words because I know she would not be able to truly comprehend, as we children did not when Bilbo uttered his stories by the fireside.  And this telling is no tale for children.

            Could words ever do justice to a cold so intense that you feel as though your bones will turn to ice, and blood in your veins freeze?  Can words convey what it is like to lay awake in the pitch-blackness of dark corridors, where the voices of a thousand unheard things whisper in your imagination?

            How can any of them, save for those who were there, understand what it is to be so tired that your eyes cross trying to keep them open?  When the feel of sharp stones in your back as you lay down to sleep is made as soft as the greatest of feather mattresses by something so much more than exhaustion. 

             No, these words are not to be shared with my bride, though she wishes it were different.  Only two remain whom I may share these thoughts with, and I know they feel the same. 

             My poor Pippin still awakens in the night with terrors he cannot discuss, and though Diamond is a good woman, she is not as forgiving as she needs to be, and becomes flustered that he does not confide in her.  She does not realize that he cannot.

              Perhaps that is why she spends so much time away, to escape that faraway look in my beloved cousin’s eyes, or the whimpers in the night.  She is not as strong as my Estella, much as I wish it were different. 

              We three, we remnants of battles fought and terrors only we remember late into the night, remain silent as the days pass.  We go about our business, and smile as the sun shines, and laugh with our children. 

               But every now and then, when the days grow cold and the memories become too much, we escape the world for a while in each other’s company, sitting by a fire in a secluded room, the world far away – and closer than any of us wish it to be. 

              On those nights, when it is just the three of us, we remember, and we talk.  And as we talk, the silence that we hold dissolves for a little while, and we leave knowing that when the sun rises again, we shall be able to smile and laugh once more.

                 For ever has it been with those who give so others do not have to.