This is my brief and inadequate attempt to explain just what I was thinking when I wrote this story. ^_^
 

Sugar and Spice

Of Dwarves and Spicy Food

I’m not sure how I came to the conclusion that dwarves cook spicy food, but I’m pretty sure that the concept goes all the way back to my “Real World” parody. The idea started off as a throw-away joke in that parody, in which Sam attempts to save Frodo’s digestive system from Gimli’s over-zealous use of cayenne pepper, and is the only parody element to survive into my regular fanon. Spicy foods just seem to fit the dwarves for some reason, but I’ve never had an opportunity to use this idea in a story before since most of my stories are pre-Quest and therefore do not involve dwarves. So I was very excited at being able to use this element here.

Of Dreams

What can I say? I’m a sucker for dreams. I always love it when I can work dream sequences into a story because I think dreams are just trippy and weird. They allow you to go out of the norm and get really scary or even over-the-top silly. They’re also a wonderful platform to use to analyze the deeper workings of a character’s mind without the character himself having to get all introspective and pensive.

I also always wanted to do a “Restless” type story and this provided me the perfect opportunity to do so. “Restless” is the Season 4 finale of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and in that episode, all the main characters are examined via dreams – we see where they are currently, what they fear, what they’re hiding, what their pursuits are, and we see glimpses and hints of where they are going. This story became the perfect opportunity to not only do the trippy dream sequences that I love so much, but to really dig into the hobbits’ psyches and see what they are really about at this moment in time.

Of References

The dwarves’ names come from volume VI of the HoME. Also from “Return of the Shadow”, I took the original concept that Tolkien had in his first draft of “Long Expected Party” about Bilbo hiding in a cupboard the day after the Party, and gave that idea to Frodo here. I can very much see Bilbo doing something like that if it were a different point in time, and I can also imagine Frodo making such a suggestion, in a vain attempt to keep Bilbo with him just a little bit longer. The gifts, of course, are from FOTR. The description of the dining room comes from my story “A Tale That Grew in the Telling”.
 

Hamfast: Family

Of all the hobbits, the Gaffer would be the one least likely to realize that he is dreaming and so would be least likely to control what happens in his dream. His is therefore the most nonlinear and incoherent. He’s also been a father for thirty-six years now, and has been raising his children alone for seventeen of those years. His children would be foremost in his mind, and any parent can tell you that no matter how old their children get, they still worry about them.

The Groundhog’s Day effect:

The Gaffer is the most homebound and least adventurous hobbit of the four. It only makes sense that his dream would repeat on a loop, much the same way as his days do. One day is just like the last, with some mild variations here and there to distinguish the passing of time. Even then, after each change occurs, that sequence then repeats itself several times before another change takes place. Hamfast isn’t one who initiates or tolerates change and he’s slow to accept it.

The Man in the Moon:

Yet, despite his unwillingness to change and his insistence on everything and everyone being in their place, there is no denying that he admires Bilbo and Frodo greatly. Buried very deep under that rough and gruff exterior is an almost childlike soul. This perhaps explains why he will listen, though be it halfheartedly, to Bilbo’s stories about elves and dwarves, and why he doesn’t mind Sam spending more time inside Bag End than out.

Children and woes:

The loss of Bell forever changed the Gamgee family, in both obvious ways and in ways they hardly think to take notice of. Hamfast will always be yearning for that one last embrace, though there could never be enough last embraces. She fades out of his dreams the same way she disappeared from his life – unexpectedly and far too soon.

Hamson, the eldest of the children, would have found himself, at the age of eighteen, suddenly in the position of surrogate caretaker to his younger siblings. He would have been forced to come of age over night. As a result, he thinks too much and too deeply about everything, analyzing things from every angle before coming to the same decision that common hobbit sense would have arrived at much sooner.

Halfred, already the troublemaker in the family, relied on what he knew best – jest and banter. He would rather play about and have fun than think about anything serious – quite the opposite of his older brother. The more set apart he was from Hamson, the better, as far as he was concerned. The thought of settling down irks him, and he’s found a like-minded friend in his cousin Hale. Gaffer must cringe every time he hears stories about the sorts of trouble Hale-and-Hal are getting into.

Daisy would soon find the job of surrogate caretaker coming to her after Hamson was apprenticed to Tighfield. She had taken the mantle of Mother Daisy with her younger siblings soon after her mother’s death, but she didn’t truly start acting it until Hamson was gone, and Halfred clearly was not going to take on the job. She found herself not only responsible for her young siblings but Halfred also. She took her duties to the next level, extending herself to her friends and neighbors as well. She truly does feel like she is responsible for everyone and everything, but she’s carried the burden so long that she hardly registers it anymore.

May would have just started to receive lessons from her mother about the practical things in the life, most importantly about how to be a proper lass. Those lessons would have been cut terribly short and never really taken up again, until she came to the age that she started to become interested in boys. She would then rely on her friends’ opinions and wouldn’t have the benefits of her mother’s sensibilities. She would go from lad to lad, and often set her sights on those above her station, looking for that perfect lad and not realizing that there is no such thing, yet once she had the lad in her clutches she wouldn’t really know what to do with him. The headaches are just beginning for the Gaffer!

Marigold was most affected by her mother’s death and also the one least aware of how she was affected. She’s been raised by the village: first her siblings, then Missus Rumble who took the girls and Sam in while their father and brothers were working, then Lily Cotton, and anyone else who was able to look after her once her sisters started working. She is the most insecure about her place in the family and has the least time with her father. It’s no wonder she kept ‘getting lost’ in Hamfast’s dream, and why no one bothered to bat an eye about it.

Of Sam and Odo

While the Gaffer might not mind Sam spending time at Bag End, there is no denying that Sam is being greatly influenced by his masters, learning to read, hearing all those elven tales, getting fanciful ideas put into his head day and night. Hamfast might love his son and admire his ability to read, but he’s also worried about what all this individual attention from his betters is having on Sam. It’s come to the point that Hamfast at times barely recognizes his own son, or perhaps more accurately, hardly sees any of himself in Sam.

Through Sam, Hamfast is continuously reminded that he has none of the appeal of Bilbo and Frodo, and he fears the day that Sam might be seduced away for good. Yet even this fear, as great as it is, is not enough to propel him away from his home or cause him to even be the tiniest bit less homebound. He sees no reason or purpose in adventuring. Indeed, he doesn’t even see the purpose of having a means of leaving town! When the ‘bridge’ it built, its made of the flimsiest material there is.

Odo is so named because that is the name of the Gaffer’s neighbor in Number One, Bagshot Row. Hamfast wouldn’t make up an outlandish name for his dream and would simply borrow one that he already knows. Odo’s seeming arrogance towards Frodo is the Gaffer’s own sense of jealousy and inadequacy coming to the fore. Yet even in his dreams, he is unable to admit that he does have such feelings of ill-will toward the masters that he admires, so it must be delivered by an unknown person he can’t really see. Being unable to see Odo for who and what he is therefore becomes two-fold, for when Odo turns into Sam, it becomes clear that Hamfast no longer really recognizes his own son.
 
 
Bilbo: Adventuring

Of all the dreams, this one borrows the most from “Buffy”, most especially the opening sequence in the cave. The idea of nonchalant Frodo ruining Bilbo’s stealthy entrance to the dragon’s den was inspired by the episode “Fool for Love”; the big bad dragon who’s a little less frightening than you would expect was inspired by the two-apples tall fear demon from “Fear Itself”. Smaug the Lizard also seemed at times to be channeling Ming T’ien from “Xena”, Mushu from “Mulan”, and Yzma from “The Emperor’s New Groove”.

Of Cracked Nuts and Marbles

Well, the inspiration for this should be obvious, or so I would hope. It’s because Bilbo is cracked, and Frodo is cracking (and proud of it!) ^_^ Marbles are quite valuable things to lose, and while Frodo has the opportunity to get some of his back, he goes and squanders them on nuts that are already cracked! There’s just no helping those two.

Of Bilbo’s Not-So-Great-Adventure

It’s a fact of life that we can sometimes remember things being better or worse than they actually were. Bilbo may have enjoyed the more humdrum parts of his adventure but now that the date of his departure is fast approaching, a certain amount of cold feet is only to be expected. He worries that this adventure might not be as exciting as the first, filled with nothing but those humdrum moments, and that he might have tricked himself into believing his first journey was grander than it actually was (rather ironic, if you consider the advice Bilbo gives Frodo at the beginning of Frodo’s dream.)

Then there’s Frodo. Bilbo is keenly aware that Frodo would go with him in a heartbeat, yet he himself is not ready to have Frodo join him. He also knows that Frodo is not yet ready for such an adventure. Enthusiasm is all well and good when listening to a great tale, but it can land you in trouble on a real adventure.

Of Smaug, Rings and other Perilous Things

Smaug may have been the big bad on Bilbo’s adventure, but the worm is nothing compared to what Bilbo faces now: the temptation of the Ring and knowing that he’ll be leaving that ring to Frodo. The dangers from his adventure have now been supplanted by those closer to home – his feelings of detachment and fading away, his growing moodiness and wanderlust, feeling trapped in the confines of his very own Shire and itching to get out of it. Frodo might be able to bat these things away with a rolling pin and send them to time-out, but Bilbo has lost his ability to do so. He must leave and feels that he should not even be lingering this long; the only reason he does so is because that is what he had promised Frodo and he believes that it will make it easier for him to give up the Ring.

He worries though that these feelings of restlessness that have been growing on him over the years will also slowly start to take Frodo over. Frodo at first merely laughs at Smaug’s attempts to hypnotize him but, quite without realizing it, Frodo begins to be lured by the dragon’s whispers and suggestions, until they share an almost symbiotic relationship. What will happen to Frodo when Bilbo is no longer there to protect him? Yet it is equally obvious that Frodo is ready to stand on his own two feet and Bilbo hopes that if Frodo remains in the Shire and doesn’t venture Outside, that he will continue to be able to tame his dragons with ease (even if the same cannot be said of the SBs).
 

Frodo: Memories and Memoirs

This dream gave me the most trouble to write. I could only get snatches of it at a time and even then, the whole memory/sequence would not be complete or would shift on me to something else. So I decided to make this Frodo’s problem by making him the one who couldn’t piece his dreams together coherently, and as soon as I did that, it all fell into place. ^_^

Of Bilbo

Bilbo bookends the dream in much the same way as he bookends Frodo’s life in Bag End. Frodo goes to Hobbiton to live with Bilbo there, and he eventually leaves the Shire to live with Bilbo in Valinor. Bilbo also dispenses some valuable last-minute advice on a matter that has plagued Frodo greatly thus far in his life: his memories.

Of the Nature of Memories

While Frodo does have many fond memories of his life in Buckland, much of it (and indeed, most of his very earliest memories) are overshadowed by the death of his parents. They are overshadowed so much that Frodo cannot remember anything else of those earlier years and is reluctant to think on them too long. Bilbo attempts to show him how his mind is tricking him by first making Frodo write down what he remembers (the distorted memories reshaped by tragedy) and then giving him the memoir (the actual recordings of that timeframe). By doing this, Frodo is able to see that while there certainly was grief and tragedy, there was also great joy and love, and that sometimes, those two emotions overlapped. Once Frodo realizes this, he should be able to look at that time in his life realistically and begin to let go the last of the ghosts that cling to him.

Of Sam

It was in another dream that Frodo is told (or believes that he is told) that his parents, before they died, chose a protector for him, someone that would stay by him always and never leave him. He wasn’t told who that protector was or when he might meet him, but was given a riddle of how to identify him: it was someone who Frodo had met but did not remember (at the time that he first received the riddle) and was someone who never knew Frodo. Frodo clung to this promise during the rest of his stay in Buckland, but after moving to Bag End, the need for that reassurance was no longer needed, for he had Bilbo to watch over him. Now, Bilbo is leaving and he is beginning to feel again the depths of the uncertainty that defined so much of his childhood. Naturally, his subconscious would return again to this forgotten promise of a protector.

As it turns out, the answer to the riddle was there the whole time, and it took the two versions of Sam to see it. There is the carefree Sam that Frodo sees every day and knows so well, and the thoughtful, introspective Sam who Frodo almost never glimpses. It is the carefree Sam that constantly pulls him out of his reveries and despair, as had been his role all along, and it is the thoughtful Sam who brings him the answer to his worries – the real journal, which contains the memory that answers the riddle indefinitely: the first time he met Sam. It’s no wonder that the answer to the riddle eluded him for so long. Frodo didn’t remember meeting Sam as a newborn and standing outside Number Three listening to the baby cry, for he himself was lost in his own despair at the recent loss his parents.

At the end of the dream, Frodo believes that he has the answer to the riddle (and he does) but he will not confirm it for many more years to come, not until the Quest.
 

Sam: Legends

This one came as a surprise to me. It had been my intention to have Sam’s dream would be the most carefree and inane of the four, and instead it turns out to be the most prophetic! I knew only that it would begin with him and his friends in the Woody End, that Sam would see an elf, and that it would end with Frodo as an eagle. Everything else came in the writing of it.

Of Elves

Naturally, if Sam is going to dream about anything, it would be elves. Lúthien is his guide for their stories have many parallels once the Quest is under way. As Lúthien follows Beren and helps him to retrieve the Simaril, Sam follows Frodo and helps him to destroy the Ring, both items that Sauron coveted. When Beren is captured, Lúthien saves him with her song. Sam sings in Cirith Ungol and in that manner finds Frodo and is able to get him out of the tower. Beren is maimed when he claims the Simaril; Frodo is maimed when he claims the Ring. Lúthien leaves behind everyone she loves to be with Beren at the end of their lives. So too does Sam leave the Shire to join Frodo in Valinor.

Sam has admired Eärendil since he first heard the story of how that great star got set into the heavens. For Sam, meeting Eärendil would be like our version of meeting Jesus/Buddha/Krishna, whatever be your deity. So it’s only fitting that Eärendil deliver him the choice that will forever be Sam’s to make: stay or follow. Stay in the Shire, or follow Frodo on the Quest. At Cirith Ungol, that choice is reversed: stay with Frodo’s dead body, or follow through with the Quest and destroy the Ring. At the Grey Havens and again at the end of his life, he must choose to stay in Middle Earth or follow Frodo. Sometimes his choice is to stay, sometimes to follow; the choice is always difficult but the answer always comes clearly and suddenly to him.

Of Being Lost

Clearly, I had “The Valley of the Horses” by Jean Auel in the back of my mind while I wrote this section. Sam is left completely to his own defenses and he pulls through with little complaint or despair. He uses all the resources and intelligence he has available to him to make it through, and even though he knows not where he is or where he is going, he remains optimistic and keeps one foot in front of the other. Very much like he will later on, and under much more dire circumstances.

Of Frodo

And just when I have you all thinking that everything in these dreams have a deeper significance, Frodo being a great eagle has none whatsoever. Frodo is an eagle because he and Sam talked about Frodo being a great eagle just before they ate dinner. However, that it is Frodo who comes for him, and not the Gaffer or any other of Sam’s family or friends, is significant. Sam looks to Frodo to be his guide and he knows, deep down, that there is nothing Frodo wouldn’t do to for him. He has no doubts that Frodo would protect him at a moment’s notice, nor does he ever doubt Frodo’s friendship of him. His mind tells him its not proper, but his heart knows full well that this is simply the way it was meant to be. Frodo bears him home, and just as will happen later, once Sam is home, he looks around and finds that Frodo isn’t there. Yet his other friends still are and they make sure he is take care of, even as Sam now looks after Frodo.

Thank you all for reading! I know it was strange at times but hopefully it was worth it. :) 
 
 
 
GF 4/18/06