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New Roads and Secret Gates  by Citrine 10 Review(s)
Celeste Lucretia BlackReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/27/2021
Girls...

LindeleaReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/23/2006
I keep getting interrupted! So you get three reviews from me for the price of one. I wanted to mention the parts where the prose is especially poetical:

Pippin slowly stretched out his arm and touched Frodo's face with his cool fingers. Frodo quickly clasped the trembling hand tight against his cheek and warmed it with his breath, and kissed it. "Frodo, Frodo, I can't believe it,” Pippin murmured. “Oh, I hope I'm not dreaming again! I had a dream once, in the White City, that I had grown so very old, and Merry had left me and all I wanted to do was go home, but I couldn't find my way somehow. This is like that dream, but..." Pippin's mouth fell open, and he looked all around at the trees and blue sky as if he had never seen a tree or the sky before. "But I’m not asleep now. Where am I?"

"I‘ve brought you home, Pip," Merry said. "Home at last, to stay."

"Home at last," Pippin repeated, and then he began to cry.

"No more tears, cousin," Frodo said, handing him a handkerchief, but at the same time he reached into his waistcoat and brought out another to mop his own face.
But what was it Gandalf said about tears? "Not all tears are..." and my brain refuses to finish the thought. Ill, perhaps. (the word, not my brain. at least I hope not.)

"I can't seem to help it," Pippin hiccupped, with his head on Merry's shoulder. "I don't know what I was expecting, but you're all here, and it's so good-" Here Pippin broke down, and they stood there in the sun, laughing and crying together, and Pippin's tears were like rain that washed away the lifetime of little sorrows and greater hurts that all mortals learn to bear as they walk upon the earth.
Yes, very poetical. A lovely image.

"Well, well, let's go on," Frodo said at last, giving his eyes a last swipe with his sleeve-his handkerchief was a wreck of sodden linen. "Bilbo is anxious to see you, and then they'll be expecting us at the Feast."

Pippin looked baffled all over again. "Bilbo? Feast? Great heavens, will I have to make some sort of speech?"
Pippin the Innocent once again, here, and Merry the understanding one, leading him into this new chapter.

"Only a little one," Merry laughed. "You can take a hobbit out of the Shire, but one can never take the Shire out of the hobbit, and everyone will expect a bit of news and gossip from Over There."

"I shall do my best then," Pippin said, wiping his eyes. "How wonderful it will be to see everyone again after so long!"

"My dear 'Stell," Merry said softly, and touched Pippin's hand again. "And your Diamond, Pip. They're waiting for us."

"Diamond," Pippin sighed, but this time he smiled.

"And my Rose," Sam said. "And won't she scold me if I'm late!" But he laughed as he said it; so foolish it was to worry about early or late in this timeless place.

Pippin looked at them all with such love and happiness in his heart that he thought it would burst. He felt like laughing and singing all at once. He felt light as a feather. He felt like the young hobbit-lad he had been so long, long ago, sitting on his pack on Frodo's doorstep, with the whole, wide world ahead of him and a great adventure about to begin. "Well, what are we waiting for?"
And the bright, blithe adventurous spirit blazes forth once more. (It was only covered up by the grey for a little while)

They said no more then, but joined hands and began to walk together in the soft twilight, down the Last Road that led to the bright lights and laughter of the great Feast just over the hill, in the valley where the merriment went on forever, and summer lasted for always.
More poetry, indeed. Well done, and worth re-reading without interruption.



Author Reply: Wow. 0_0 Thanks, Lin, sincerely. I don't know what to say. *Staggers off to bask in the warmy fuzzy afterglow.*

LindeleaReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/23/2006
Yes, one endless and marvellous Party, and very likely Gandalf's fireworks to look forward to, as well. You did a great job of conveying the idea of "all the time in the world" and timelessness, or "no time there" (no time, that is, to fret or to miss loved ones or whatever--no "waiting" for someone special to arrive, and yet time enough to build a bench so that somebody need not sprawl like a sack on the grass... *g*)

Baggins BabeReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/22/2006
A perfect picture of the life beyond,and how wonderful that Frodo and Bilbo are there to greet other hobbits. I like to think that is how it will be, and if our favourite Bagginses are there to greet me I shall be happy!

InklingReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/22/2006
So Frodo, Sam and Bilbo are the official greeters of the hobbit paradise...what a delightful idea! A very sweet, tender ficlet.

I did get your MEFAs message...glad to see you seem to have fallen back into the fandom! ;)

Author Reply: Funny how things work: It was going to be just Frodo and Sam, but then my imagination saw Bilbo in the back garden, hip deep in flowers...

Thanks, Inkling! I'm so glad you got it! My email is hit-and-miss sometimes.


LarnerReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/21/2006
Oh, how we love to imagine those reunions, there beyond the sunset.

DreamflowerReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/21/2006
Beautiful does not do this justice.

It is just as I think all of us would hope it would be.

Thank you!

shireboundReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/21/2006
Oh my goodness. May it truly be so for them.

demeter dReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/21/2006
Going down the Last Road, to where loved ones wait, and will never leave again.
Sweet and warm. Beautiful descriptions. i too, hope for the time when loved ones will be rejoined, never to part. Beautifully done!

Author Reply: Aw shucks, thanks, Dd. It got a teensy tad more melancholy than I planned, but hey, it was raining that day;o)

LindeleaReviewed Chapter: 13 on 5/21/2006
Ah, yes, the Feast.

Nicely done.

Author Reply: Thanks:o) Um. I think I kind of dipped into your cupboard of ideas and uh, borrowed that from you. I just really, really liked that idea of hobbit afterlife being one big endless Party of Special Magnificence.

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