In response to thesporktheives' Weakness Around The Ring challenge.
A cartographer is a professional map drawer.
'Bring out the Ring, Frodo!' said Gandalf solemnly. 'The time has come. Hold it up, and then Boromir will understand the remainder of his riddle.' (The Fellowship of the Ring, page 264, 1981 Guild Publishing edition).
The hobbit, a small, curious creature of the like of which I have never seen, flushed as the eyes of the council all turned to him. His face – an adult's scaled down – betrays his every thought: fear; shame; reluctance. The Ring's evil already affects him; he does not wish to relinquish it from his possession. The Ring's hold is not yet too strong though: Mr Baggins holds it up high.
I feel the presence of the Ring before I see it; a malicious, evil intent pollutes the fair air of Imladris. But how subtle! No evil challenges me directly; no force attacks my mind. 'tis not even a whisper that I hear. The presence brushes my conscience; I do not recall.
I do not wish to recall. That mere, fascinating brush against my mind subtly turns my thoughts. What I could do with such power! My home, my fair Greenwood, lied polluted and enthralled to darkness. My people fight – such a desperate fight! – but we are flagging. With each passing year; each skirmish under bough and branch, we lose ground. Our cartographers are in constant need, sketching the annually changing borders of our realm. Our dead, our multiple, sorry dead, grow in number each year. Days pass to the beat of sobbing widows and orphaned elflings.
But no longer! If I were to take the Ring, our fortunes would change! No longer would we have to suffer the shame of retreat! No longer would I have to consol an elleth, or elfling, or shield-brother. Greenwood would be restored; a beacon of the strength and fortitude in these days of darkness!
'Behold Isildur's bane!' said Elrond. His voice clears the fog in my mind; shame replaces it. My weakness repulses me: I am an ellon, Prince of the Greenwood, scion of the house of Orophor of the lost realm of Doriath; not a weak thrall of the darkness content to fall to the corruption and wickedness of this temptation, to the ruin of all I hold dear. I shall not allow myself to fall to this.
The darkness shall not prevail.
