They came up the eastern road in a great parade, their standards flashing gold and red in the dying light of evening. Men all around me took up the call, “King Ar-Pharazon is returned, and behold! He has humbled Sauron, the pretender king. See, even now he walks like a dog that has been broken into service.”

I looked up, for my master was distracted by the spectacle, and would take no heed of my moment's inattention. The man who must be Sauron was manacled, and two guards walked on either side of him. He was fair to my eyes, fairer even than these men who were my masters, these Numenoreans, who said they were descended from the gods.

Sauron's face was proud and bright; the dusky light glinted off his hair. There was power in his easy strides and the great span of his shoulders. I knew him then, for I had walked this same road, though no trumpets had called out my coming. I had walked, chained in a long line of captives, but though my head was bowed, as befits one who will be slave, I was not bowed in spirit.

Nor was he.

I smiled, then, returning to my work. My master turned back and caught the expression. He smiled too, mistaking my joy for his own. “Is it not a good day?” my master said.

The Numenoreans had led the lion through their gate as if he were a lamb. Indeed, the day was good.

Walking is easy, the company less so. You have not yet decided which is worse: the smell, or the noise. The dwarf belches. It is the noise. But in his tossing sleep he tumbles close to you. His beard is damp from the chill. Then you know. It is the smell.

You miss the trees of Mirkwood. You miss even the shadows that creep in beneath the branches. Sometimes the ring tells you that it could make all the lands a forest. You take a moment to savor the thought, but do not dwell on it. The ring is worse than both the smell and the noise.

Galadriel tells you that the trees hated all the living beings, before they learned to listen to them. That night the dwarf snores especially loudly. You spend most of the night listening, and hope this is not what Galadriel meant.

Later, the dwarf finds you among the mellorn. He begins to speak, and so you listen – to the remembrances of the trees and the sighs of the flowers, but also to the dwarf. He is saying something about Moria. How he misses that place, even the shadows in the great empty halls and the deeper shadows below. So you stand with him in the golden light, both of you longing for shadows.

When the boats are pulled up to the shore, you walk over to the dwarf, who is staring at the lembas in his hand. “The taste goes a bit stale, after a few hundred years,” you whisper to him.

His eyes move up and down your face, and then his beard moves with laughter. “Get in here, elf,” he says. “I'll need another pair of arms to keep this afloat.”

So it is you and the dwarf in the boat.

No.

His name is Gimli. You decide to remember that.