They sit at the table there. There in the back room. All of them. All young, all tireless. All having a wild time, with their ale, their songs, their tales of lasses and pony races. Their laughter ringing, clear and loud into the clutter of the musty tavern. The flickering candles lend to their flushed faces a golden glow. Their eyes all alight, shining with the candle’s fire, bright with the fever that is youth and freedom. They’ve all had too much to drink and they know it, but they don’t care. The night is late, and the hour dark, but the time no longer matters. They know so little of nearly everything, but even that they do not realize. They all raise a toast now to each other, to good friends and good future. The glasses clink.

~*~

Berilac sits in the grass, then only knows pain. He clutches his face and collapses to the ground. Ruffians in the Buckland now, too. He crawls to his pony and he takes his bow, though his hands are slippery with his own blood. And while they run towards the gate he shoots, and one falls dead, to the ground. He is breathless and drops, leans against his mare’s leg. He cannot see from his left eye. He will never again. They are cowards then too, he thinks. But he saw their faces before his sight there went dark, evil creatures they were, and he knows no fear now, but duty. The start of Evil times – or perhaps just arrival of them, he thinks, though, he does not know why. He knows he cannot rest now, and pulls himself up onto his saddle with what strength he will have. The pony runs towards the Hall by its own urgency, and before he passes out, and all turns black, he sounds the horncall of Buckland: Awake! Awake! Fear, Fire, Foes! Awake! Fire, Foes! Awake!

~*~

Pippin sits, but he is alone. By himself in a giant city of stone and war, too far from his home and his family. He is cold, heavy armor rests on his small frame. But he pretends like he doesn’t care. There is a drink in his hand but he cannot bring himself to sip it. He thinks of Merry, and wonders if he is dead. He wants to cry then, but restrains, there is no place for a child’s tears in the ranks of soldiers here. He looks up, he is so small in this world of Men and Evil. All is solemn and new, but he still remembers what once had been – and for this he is even worse off. The weapons and matters of the world are great, and he is little. But then a thought strikes him that makes him feel older than he ever had before: we all shall be covered by shadow, it will leave no rock unturned, no river unsoured, and no baby overlooked. He sees the fire mountain in the distance and fear shines in his eyes like a burning flame, he shudders and is cold once more.

~*~

Merry stares into the blaze that Dernhelm had lit. He thinks thoughts of home and he wonders passingly if he should ever see it again. He notices how the darkness of the night all around seems so much greater than their one small fire, and he is afraid. He is glad they stop for the night – the horselords, so grand, seem untiring and bold. Death looms close, and now he hopes to somehow be use in the great onslaught before them, if he should die, anyway. He wishes the next dawn come soon and be over, or come not at all, but yet it won’t, and he is restless. He has so many thoughts and fears in his mind that it confuses him he can think of nothing. He pulls his sword from its sheath in an attempt to fight the apathy, and the glimmer of the steel reflects the fright in his heart. But he has courage too – a flicker in the dark.

~*~

Frodo grasps the precious; for it is. He knows nothing else. No thoughts of the Shire, or love can save him now. He can see, but is blind. The weight, the dark, it is too much. He is weary and jaded beyond words or emotion. The Precious whispers to him. They rest for once. Good, he thinks. He is tired of climbing. He curls into himself to block the others out. He hears them fighting somewhere in the back of his mind, a piece he no longer knows or visits. It whispers again. Whispers that he can not hear or know, but that comfort and mutilate him. Above him shines a single star, for a moment escaped impossibly from the smoke-colored sky. The light catches his eye, and for an instant rips him from the precious’ lure. He gazes strangely at it, like it is foreign, like he has never seen the light before, and is both afraid and curious. Then quickly it is gone. Everything is black again. His greed and helplessness glimmers in that band of gold, and he clutches it tighter in his hands. It is one and only. The Precious.

~*~

Sam weeps over his master’s body. It is limp and sickly, like his heart. Victim to the spider-beast, Sam mourns his death. Sam knows what he now must do, but the deed can wait. Waited ages it did, and it now can wait for a few more tears to fall in his beloved master’s name. He cries and the salt burns his chapped skin like flame as they trickle from his cheek. ‘Don’t you lose him, Samwise Gamgee.’ hears Sam in his mind, and he realizes now what the wizard had meant. That Frodo would have been lost to that Thing whether he should have died or not. And this new fact grieves him heavily. He stands up, Sam does, stands up against all he has ever known, alone now. And it feels as if the weight of the world has been placed into his hands when he takes that accursed Ring. And indeed it has.

~*~

Fatty is Fatty no longer. The dripping of water somewhere resounds loudly in the black, dank earth around him. The Lockholes are both deep and dark. He is beyond hunger, beyond starving. He feels naught anymore. All he knows is that he lives, and regrets it. Oh, how right the Travellers had been! And them fools to ignore it. He has known darkness since the night that they had left. He tried to convince the Shire to stand, but they found no Evil until it came upon their doorstep. A rebel leader he was, he is. He can hear the groaning of others around him, but can see nothing. Are his eyes still closed? He wonders if the Shire is gone now, and it pains his heart that the world ( however big it may be, for he should never know) will no longer have such a place. He thinks of his sister and his family, and wonders if there is someplace beyond all this suffering where they could meet again. But then he hears that Voice. That hollow, full, horrid, beautiful Voice and forgets all he knew. He thinks he sees the light then – but it is false, and he knows that later. How long has it been since he has seen the sun? He knows not. He knows also that none else have seen it either.

~*~

Merry sits there, at the table. The table in the corner of the bar, alone with only a glass as his company. And it is empty. He thinks of a time when things were simple, a time when laughter was true, and happiness and innocence was real. He stares into the bottom of his hollow glass and wishes for another. The candles in the room are growing dimmer, and the shadows on the wall are creeping closer and closer. But he does not move. Shadow is no stranger to him. His arm begins to feel some trace of coldness, he sighs.

~*~

They sit there now, but a seat is empty. Sam, and Merry, and Pippin, look into their drinks for comfort. They are quiet, and it feels to them a queer thing to be sitting there, all together as they had once done. Like as it would to walk into a dead stranger’s home and sleep in their unmade bed. It is not right, not the same. They had tried to convince themselves quietly that it could be. But they knew. The raucous around them goes unnoticed. They look up at each other slowly, all traces of youngness and innocence driven from their faces. Too old, too soon. They sip their drinks, and say nothing. They know they can never go back.