This is the story of Sevanaan Gamgee, just kind of an explanation of what she went through from birth to post-quest. I guess it's kind of important to read this before you read Frodo, My Precious . . . XD I didn't think of how informational it is, but it really does have a lot in it for a one-chapter.
The Old Took bore home a lovely, crimson dragon egg laced in golden threads one fine summer day in the Shire. No one knew where he'd gotten it from. Bilbo saw it only once, and he told his nephew Frodo stories about it. There were rumors that a great king had given it to the Shire as a gift for the great deeds of the Old Took, or that he'd found it lost in the cave of a troll, but the dragons knew better.
The Great Dragon Malachthar, a duke of dragons by our mortal telling, had been robbed of his eldest egg during illness by the pride of the Old Took, in the hobbit's younger days during an unrewarding adventure. Malachthar and the remaining dragons fled Middle Earth to Valinor following the tragedy, for they knew it had been taken by a simple hobbit; they felt powerless and relatively unrespected. And, as is the case with all dragons, any hatchling prior to birth will adapt the characteristics of its surroundings, usually its parents and older siblings, as it grows. His heir would become half hobbit, and he rejected it from the moment he realized it was gone.
They called it the Theft of Chaaempier, or Theft of the Lost Heir.
But he did not let it go. He released a terrible winter storm during the time of the egg's hatching. The Old Took had passed on, and the crimson egg sat in the parlor of his burrow above the fireplace. Bilbo had returned from his encounter with Smaug the dragon and lived like a rather flustered king in Bag End, all alone. All his female cousins descending from the Old Took, including the deeply pregnant Primula Brandybuck (or Baggins, as she was called when addressed as one with her husband), were gathered in the parlor while the wind roared ceaselessly outside. For a September evening in the peaceful Shire, the night was already highly unusual.
"Would you wonder at the snow, how driven it is?" one remarked fearfully.
A quite murmur of agreement rose. Primula remained silent, sitting in the corner under the mantle. She could only have the heart to read. Drogo was out with Bilbo for the hobbit's 78th birthday, and she feared the nearness of her labor. While the other lasses showed adequate concern for her, Primula did not desire their attention. She wanted naught but her husband in that moment. Oh, how she pined for him.
Then a gust of wind blew right down the chimney, and with a great sweep the fire blew itself out. A chorus of screams arose, and Primula lost her book in clamping her hands over her ears. The snowstorm produced a crack of lightning, a sign of particular queerness.
The crimson egg rattled on its shelf as the women frantically assembled a new fire. Finally, when everyone seemed to calm a little bit, the egg took its cue. The hatchling inside shoved against the shell, and it rattled until it crashed to the ground. Another scream arose (and persisted), and Primula backed away from the egg. Only the bottom had smashed; despite its now furious tossing, the creature inside could not get out.
Finally a bright red horn crushed a hole in the top of the eggshell. A little, slimy dragon, covered in membranes, shattered the rest of the beautiful egg and squelched onto the floor. It might have been beautiful were it a full dragon, but the moment it stepped out it began to morph. It soon gained human features, swelling to the size of a child in seconds. Women sobbed, stepped back, covered their faces with their aprons as best they could, while the egg liquid dripped from the little creature's body. Soon all was human flesh color but a pair of sticky, red wings, a trail of horns from the top of its head to the tip of its spine, and scales and claws from elbow to fingertip and knee to toes. The creature whined when it looked around, frightened and uncertain at all of this pain that should have been replaced with a mother's comfort and nourishment.
At the rate it was growing, Primula quickly realized it might soon take on more human feature than before. Its face began to mold differently than a dragon's. She leaped forward as best she could around her swollen stomach, wrapping a towel around the creature. It grew insanely fast, as dragons do. Minutes later a young woman sat there, wrapped in the towel and shivering. Her draconic remnants stayed the same, but otherwise she looked completely hobbit. Crimson curls, the color of her blood-red wings, wrapped around her torso. She surveyed Primula with grateful, reptilian eyes. Her voice came out crackling between a hypnotizing dragon's hiss and a hobbit voice, trying to learn what exactly she was.
"Shelaacthey . . . this place . . . volctahk . . . mahorilthe . . . where am I . . . yetoraii?!" The dragon-girl exhaled a plume of smoke in frustration, and Primula gasped at the sharp teeth and forked tongue inside the creature's mouth. She stared up at Primula, then down at the towel surrounding her. Tears pricked her eyes.
"Ghosho-negh." Then she shook her head, thinking how to translate from the Dragonese she initially felt to the common tongue she'd heard every day from within her egg since being stolen. "Thank you, so very much," she managed. Then she pondered some more. "Vistareyaa . . . lost . . . I . . . would have be . . . been . . . lost without you," she finished. "Embarrassed? Ishokohn—exposed."
Primula paused. The dragon-girl cocked her head.
"I speak right? Correctly?" she amended.
Primula nodded hurriedly, finally managing to get over her shock.
The dragon-girl stared at her expectantly. "Eparatroe? Your name?"
"Oh!" Primula thought for a moment. "Mrs. Primula Baggins."
She nodded. "I have none," she managed apologetically. "Uoshnatho. I mean to say, I have just been hatched." She glanced around the parlor at all the staring women, then shrank back towards Primula. Her voice dropped to a pleading, frightening whisper. "Skathgorae, toro jishnia forosei!"
Primula glanced down. "Pardon?"
The girl's snake-like eyes stared up at Primula, flooding with tears. "They mean to hurt me. And I have no mother, or so I find." The girl sniffled, and a soft whimper—not very hobbit-like in its sound—escaped from her throat. Primula collapsed from maternal pressure and dragged the girl up close to her.
"Oh, sweet one . . ." she purred softly. The dragon-girl began to sob a little as the other hobbits eyed them with terrified disgust. She burrowed deeper against Primula, and felt the presence of a younger something deep within the hobbit. New life, ready to come any minute, pulsed deep down.
"My mother would give me a name," she whispered as Primula swayed her back and forth.
Primula paused. "Do you have any special words in your language?" Then she paused. No hobbit would recognize a Dragonese term, she knew. "What is your word for everything light and happy about the world?"
The dragon-girl blinked, processing. "Therrasollarae."
While this made no sense to Primula, she nodded sweetly. "Then that shall be your name. Can I call you Therra?"
Therra nodded slowly. She began to flicker with pain; her dragon blood fought her growing hobbit instincts, for dragons were not meant to be mortal. She did not feel light or happy, much less anything about it. She burrowed against Primula further before realizing what she was doing: she ought to be grateful to this woman for helping her when she was obviously not desirable, looking at the way the other hobbits all reacted to her.
"I thank you again," Therra said softly, backing away from Primula. She very carefully slipped her right claw over Primula's large stomach, and the hobbitess gasped. She moved to back away, but Sherra held up her other claw.
"I mean not to do him harm!" she insisted. "I want to bless him, to thank you."
Primula paused. "Him?"
Therra nodded with a smile. "It is a he. You will have a little boy, Mrs. Primula Baggins."
The hobbitess stared at her in shock for a moment before nodding hesitantly. Therra leaned down and pressed her ear to Primula's stomach, causing the latter to strain initially against the wall. Everything in her instincts scrambled to push the predator away from her baby, but she slowly and tensely convinced herself that Therra meant no harm.
Therra smiled wistfully, and her expression strained with longing. It was a beautiful little boy; his eyes would not open yet, but she wanted to be there when they did. They had to be so bright.
"Therrasolla," she murmured, "acnith vurue kalan, sopriskuu, vallenca, Drackeneskaa. Son of Baggins."
She backed away, waving her long claws over the little one. Primula glanced up.
"What did you do?"
Therra grinned, her gaze still distantly staring at the miraculous little body. "I called him the blessed one, singular of the name you gave me in my language. I gave him the beauty of the Elves, the wisdom of the ages, the innocence of youth, and the strength of my kind, of the Dragons, to guide him through his burdens." Her expression grew solemn as she watched his pain. She could not see his face in future days, but she could feel his fear, his struggle against the collective darkness of this world. She winced at the sight. "He will need it, for he is destined to change the world."
Later that night Therra, now dressed somewhat awkwardly in one of Primula's dresses that her wings and horns had to rip through, assisted the other women as best she could in bringing the little blessed one into the world. Therra had wanted to call him something from her language, but knowing that she now bore the name she would have given him she backed away.
As soon as Primula recovered, she named him Frodo, for the wisdom of the ages. She'd remembered reading that name somewhere, or getting it from the Old Took's stories; she could not recall exactly where she had learned it from. She told this to Therra, and the girl agreed wholeheartedly to the name.
Therra wrapped him in a blanket and held him while Primula rested, the latter still sweaty and breathing hard from the effort of giving birth. Therra held the little boy close, feeling a sudden connection to him. She had, after all, given him her first dragon's blessing, usually bestowed on a close family member or great friend . . . oftentimes the future mate of a dragon, but she threw away that last thought. Her connection was stronger for the fact that he was the son of the one who had saved her. While she still had to struggle her way through growth, given the sudden development of dragons as well as the slow development of mortals, Primula had given her the catalyst to move on.
She kissed the top of his soft head and stroked it with her scaly fingers. His eyes eased open; they were crystal blue. She cocked her head, staring into them fondly. Her blessing shone in his eyes—oh, how great his burden would be.
The moment the storm ended, Therra left to find food, or perhaps milk, and never came back. Drogo returned to meet Frodo, and he took Primula and his son back home. Therra watched them go, followed them so she could keep an eye on Primula as well as Frodo while he grew. She wanted to help him through his burden.
But she quickly learned that despite her best efforts to grow, she would shrink again and create a new eggshell if she did not find sustenance fast. The living animals with milk that she needed were all afraid of her, and so she had to resort to the nigh dead ones. She refused to kill any, but took care easily of those that the farmers could no longer use. Her draconic and hobbit instincts continued to collide, growing stronger in conflict as she grew older. Soon her blood pulsed with the need to belong, and she gained a constant headache from her very state of being. Her maturity flickered up and down from adulthood to childhood, finally solidifying in the line of hobbits most would have considered to be her late teens, seventeen years of age perhaps.
Primula waited for Therra to come back, in fact left milk and meat out on the porch while she waited. The dragon-girl thought about showing her face, and ate the food to live . . . until the day Frodo was ten years old, and Drogo sat out on the river in a boat with Primula. Therra was back at home, keeping an eye on Frodo, when the boat scraped against a rock and flipped over suddenly, throwing Drogo into a huge, underwater boulder. Primula attempted to rescue him, but ran out of energy and air before her attempt could even have been as good as futile.
Bilbo adopted Frodo. Therra didn't understand, but one minute Frodo was inside, living like a sweet, bookish little boy, and the next the house shut down and food stopped appearing. Therra wished she could ask someone what happened, but no one seemed to want to even look at her. People called her a child of Mordor, shooed her away or threatened to call the authorities.
Therra summoned a storm the day after Frodo left to hide herself. She cried to the winds and sky when she realized that Primula was dead, found her body being buried some distance away from herself. She stumbled away from the gravesite, her wings fluttering behind her vainly as she attempted to break away from reality itself. She raced across the ground in agony, realizing that Primula—her mental as well as physical source of comfort and sustenance—was gone. She didn't know how to survive alone. Her cries rang out like a banshee, and the entire Shire drew back into their homes for fear.
"Vascamulae, tuthraa mokales Therra!" she cried. Hide me from this world; I cannot live as myself.
Lightning crashed into her uppermost horn, and for the first, perhaps last, time in her life she took to the sky on her wings, having been practicing flying but never actually done it. She rose faster and faster through the growing rain into angry clouds she had gathered. They covered her as she transformed, shouting spells through the air, the desire no longer to be what she was.
Her shoulder blades opened up, and her wings crumpled inside. Her scales vanished, and her claws became fingers. She groaned and cried out at the horrifying, straining process, but she knew no other way to survive. Her horns sank into her skin, gone until the day she could summon them again. Her eyes faded into those of a hobbit's.
The storm dropped her on the ground. Her dress, the one she'd had for ten years, would not live much longer. She decided to wait out the rest of the storm; keeping her eyes open agonized her.
Gaffer found her, brought her home. Sam helped to revive her. She refused to go back out into the Shire, not when there was sustenance here that kept her on a steady, hobbit-growth trajectory.
When asked for her name, she did not say Therra. She did not feel light or happy still, and hadn't known how Primula could possibly see those things in her.
"Sevanaan," she said simply. It meant rejected, and that was all she felt.
She told Gaffer her story. Sam never heard it; he was too young. Gaffer told her she probably would want to leave the Shire. Willing as Gaffer was to care for her, he couldn't bring himself to want her as a daughter. He might have if she didn't show him her draconic self—the moment her crimson claws grew and her wings sprouted stickily from her back, Gaffer told her to hide them and never show them again.
Gaffer kept her inside, and she didn't want to get out of the house. She tended things inside, for Gaffer and Sam loved the outdoors, flowers and things. She found interest in nothing, found herself fading away . . .
Until the day she met Frodo Baggins once again.
Frodo could not have remembered her, but she knew him. Her eyes lit up when she saw him. She was tending to Sam that day, using her healing abilites to keep him from, well, dying. It was a dangerous illness, but she did not tell Gaffer that. She simply said she would care for Sam. It went smoothly and quietly, until she began to see her gift once again in Frodo's eyes.
She did her best to help him with his burden; somehow he seemed to appreciate her. They would talk often, more and more so as Frodo grew older. She worried, for how she grew to like him, that some beautiful hobbit lass would steal him away. She waited for him to stop coming for a new courtship, but he approached the age of thirty-three and did nothing.
Then he asked her if she would court him . . . as a falsehood.
She loathed the idea from the start. She didn't want to be forced to have everyone believe he fancied her if he truly didn't. She certainly fancied him; being stuck at only seven years his senior opened up the avenues of her mind to find him attractive, while in truth they were the same age. She wondered at how his ostensible immaturity didn't ward her off; apparently he was old for his age as well.
Sevanaan, or Sev as the hobbits called her, only wanted him more as their relationship progressed. He kept it to friendly physical contact that appeared to the outside as a tip of the iceberg to a deeper courtship, but it was never meant to be. She took this treatment for years, until finally she felt so ill. Her blood burned and her brain pulsed angrily; she was not meant to be this way. She should be roaming the skies of the Undying Lands, royalty among the mighty dragons of the world.
If not that, she should be a hobbit, living a simple life perhaps with a cheerful, round lad at her side to raise her family and garden her backyard.
She could do neither, for she belonged nowhere.
Frodo's ambivalence towards her and her constant pain led Gaffer to insist that she find healing from the Elves. She left for Rivendell immediately, only wishing Frodo a happy birthday before she left.
Elrond welcomed her warmly, as did his daughter Arwen, even when her draconic features came forward. She spent a few months there; they did their best to repair her, but she was stuck too solidly. Elrond told her it would be up to her kind to make her dragon again, or she would remain with the hobbits in this pain forever. She asked them if there were any dragons left, and they told her all were in the Undying Lands.
"There is another ship leaving this autumn," Elrond said gently. "But you will never return if you go."
Sev paused. She'd thought of Frodo every day, and wondered if she could give him up. "Could I not fly back here?"
Elrond sighed and turned away from her, staring out the window of the white marble room they'd given her. Columns and intricate carvings of leaves and graceful dancers lined the ceiling and walls in low relief; her bed, large and four-posted against a wall surrounded by strong arches and platinum balconies, had crimson sheets and silver tassles reflecting her draconic heritage. This form of room would become her home if she remianed with the Elves, but he knew she would dearly miss Frodo despite any treasure or healing they could offer.
She spoke positively of little else.
"If they were to heal you, you would forget about Frodo Baggins and find new life," Elrond said. His grave tone seemed to darken the very stone of the room, and Sev's expression fell. He approached her and put a hand on her shoulder sympathetically. "It would not be difficult after the decision was made. Frodo will be all right." He did not know this Frodo, but knowing the lad had received a dragon's first blessing—even if she was but a half-dragon—he did not fear; that blessing would protect the hobbit through almost anything.
Sev sighed, then stood. "I thank you, Lord Elrond," she said, "but I will require time to ponder your proposal. Much as I would love to be healed, perhaps being with Frodo would be worth my trouble." She bowed.
Elrond embraced her. "May the grace of the Valar go with you, and the strength of your kind." He stepped away and gestured her out the door with a gentle hand braced between her wings. "My people will welcome you at any time."
She grinned, recalling how the Elves doted on her just a little. She blushed, not sure if she liked being the center of attention but glad for a place to turn.
Arwen walked with her to the borders of Rivendell, and then Sev flew back home, back to the Shire.
The moment she saw Frodo, the moment he kissed her cheek in greeting, she knew she had to go; she had to leave Middle Earth. She wanted him more than anything, except to forget about him. He only caused her pain, and to watch him go through his own—whenever that occurred—would be too much.
She wanted to tell Frodo, and moved to do so the night after she got back.
But both he and Sam had vanished.
They did not return for a long time. She waited for weeks, but Gaffer told her Sam had not so much as given him word. He told her he mourned for Sam, worried that he had died, not simply gone missing. Sev didn't believe it, but Gaffer told her to go with the Elves, insisted through growing tears. She told him that she wouldn't go yet; she had to tell Frodo the truth.
"Frodo's not coming back either," Gaffer murmured, staring into the fire.
That broke her sufficiently, somehow causing her fiery blood to boil more and her brain to press horribly. Perhaps his burden was now, his pain a cause to leave the Shire. She only prayed he would not suffer for too long; she could do little else. She didn't know even where to begin to look for him.
She flew right back to Rivendell, and they took her that autumn to board a ship. They moved up the date by a few weeks for the urgency of her pain. The Elves were all dressed in white, glowing as it seemed. She felt insignificant, until they assured her that they cared for her, that she bore the power and grace of the dragons despite her hobbit heritage. She nodded assertively, standing up taller.
She wished she could have said good-bye to Frodo, but faltered at another wave of crushing agony in her heart, the battle between the races she should/could be and the contrast between them.
The Elves sang a calming, soft song as they walked, a forlorn melody about finding hope on the other side of the sea. Sev gripped her forehead; she couldn't move very well. One of the Elves, a wise and young Terestiel, braced her hand against Sev's back to guide her through the trees.
Then Sev's ears picked up an irregularity in the song—a voice, a whisper the Elves never could have heard.
"Never to return."
It sounded like Frodo, and the words haunted her. She snapped up her head despite the throbbing of it and stared out into the forest. She gasped when she saw him—or perhaps an apparition of him—a decent distance behind her, watching the train of Elves. He might not have seen her.
"Frodo!" she cried, trying to duck away from Terestiel. She scrambled against the Elf's kind grip. "Frodo!"
He perked up, but did not see her.
Terestiel quieted Sev. "My dear one, it is time to leave this world behind." She stroked Sev's face, blocking her view of Frodo. Sev squirmed to see him; the Elf continued to guide her forward.
"Frodo . . ." she moaned softly as she stumbled away. Finally she turned to face the way she walked, and the throbbing of her head came suddenly back. It nigh knocked her over. She swayed on her feet, and the world grew dark, fading to black.
She did not awaken until the ship pulled out of the closed, stone harbor. She scrambled to her feet, staring back at Middle Earth. She could not see the Shire or Rivendell, of course, but she knew she would miss Frodo.
Suddenly she did not want to go. She felt sick.
"Frodo!" She leaped up to fly back, but an elderly Elf captain, Gadhoran, caught her by the waist and gracefully lowered her struggling form back into the Elf-laden ship. A high-pitched, soft whine sounded in the back of Sev's throat, the sorrow of a dragon expressed only with the physical attributes of a hobbit. She backed into Gadhoron's torso, and tears rose to her eyes. They sizzled against the boards of the ship when they fell; all dragon tears boiled, hot with the ability to purify. The wood grew clean at the touch of her tears.
But it made her feel no better.
She remained curled in a ball during the entire journey. Many times her best of friends among the Elves attempted to soothe her, to invite her into their circle of dancing and singing every time the sun or moon rose or fell. Sev shook it off, not caring so much for diplomacy then. She felt so empty without Frodo, and she felt no better for the burn in her blood and the ache in her head.
"That was your mistake," she berated herself one night. "You gave him your blessing. You should have known the consequences of sharing such a piece of yourself." She sighed and covered her face with one wing. "Reject."
But she'd done it for Primula.
"Who died and abandoned you," Sev muttered.
All was silent from her after that.
The Elves kindly announced their arrival at the Undying Lands. It was the middle of the night at the time. Sev's head slowly rose only when the ship collided against the soft shore; she knew all hope of being turned around to find Frodo was gone.
She could still fly back, couldn't she?
Gadhoron guided her off the wooden plank. She moved to grab her head out of habit . . . then realized the throbbing was gone. She laughed initially at the sudden weight lifted from her. She was neither dragon nor hobbit, but in such a place of light her impurities were perfected into the creature she'd become.
Sev rolled about in the white sand. A beautiful, thick forest filled with tidy, white paths lay beyond, cupping the little stretch of beach protectively. The Elves began to walk down the paths, gesturing for Sev to come. Sev followed in the air, flipping and rolling about in the clean, tender air. She flew above the trees, suddenly free. Smoke rose from her nose, and little bursts of blood-red fire accompanied her hurried exhales. She'd never felt so amazing in her entire life.
They situated her at a grand palace, one not unlike that at Rivendell. This one, however, was far more glorious. Under the rising sun, it shimmered and sang with the beauty of crystal and the strength of fine stone, situated at the top of a small, granite mountain. Other great palaces, filled with pure Elves, surrounded them. The forest filled in the gaps, lending the place an untouched air despite the comforts that awaited.
Sev ate to her heart's content, raising (and consuming the ill) of her own herds of horses and sheep gifted her by the Elves. They offered her the best quarters they could—suited to one Dragonese, of course. They looked like her rooms at Rivendell. She spent a great deal of time just breathing the beautiful air, feeling the gentle peace of Valinor, of roaming the sapphire sky. She wrote her name in the clouds, addressed letters to the Elves in the sky using her own language.
She explored the extent of the Elves' territory in Valinor, which was vast. And she had time: she was in no hurry to find the other dragons, not with how amazing she felt. Most of the time, that is: whenever she thought about her birth or spoke about her history (which became more and more common as her minor irritation became frustration, just to prove her pain wrong) she would get a slight ache, followed by a heavy burn and three days being bedridden. She avoided contact as a result of her pain, and therefore missed the people she loved. She also felt, for a long period of time, the ache on Frodo's heart that her blessing connected her to. Oh, how she pined to help.
But that agony almost did not compare to the wonders of the land she lived on. She had never explored so much. She soared over jeweled forests, emerald bays, pale-flesh beaches, thriving marshes, and once in a while a blanket of white snow closer to the north. She flew from one end of the continent to the other, and she even found colonies and kingdoms of dragons. She never approached them, too afraid to do something so sudden and paradigm-shifting.
That lasted a couple of years. She continued to fly about, but focused more on the details of what immediately surrounded her. She found caves only accessible by flight or going under the water and sandy shore, filled to the brim with glimmering diamonds of all colors. She loved those the most.
"Oh, if only Frodo could see this," she whispered once.
Her simple statement started an insane fantasy that Frodo would come to Valinor. She rationalized that he went through a great deal of pain; maybe someday, when he was older, he would think to come find her. Maybe Gaffer would tell him that she loved him, and he would come looking for her. She flew along the beach, dipped her wings in the water, crouched on the huge rocks bordering the beach, waiting for him to come. It was impossible, but she still died inside every time she realized she would never be with him again; she had to revert back to her imagination, thinking that maybe he would love her, that maybe if she got to know him more she would truly fall in love with him.
She knew the fantasy was ridiculous. But she still watched every ship that came in, waiting for another soul to have been fortunately scooped up by the Elves. She was told by Amorhan the seer one day that Elrond's ship—bearing Gandalf and the Lady Galadriel, among other Ringbearers of note—had departed from the Grey Havens. How Amorhan knew, Sev didn't ask. She waited more anxiously on the rocks: it was the last ship to leave Middle Earth. Amorhan said a great hero rode upon the ship. This was the final Ringbearer of the One Ring, the hero that destroyed Sauron for good. She wished to meet him very much, for he had saved the world in a way no one else could have.
But no matter how grand the hero, Sev would never stop missing Frodo. She perched on the rocks that morning when Gandalf and Elrond were said to arrive. The ship glided gracefully across the glassy water, proud and sleek. A swan's head came at the front, offering a sign of peace. Sev sang mournfully despite the hope she knew was ahead: she missed Frodo ever so much. She sang as though he could hear her, called to him and told him she wished to hold him in her arms—for whatever pain he'd gone through—like she had almost forty years ago.
The ship approached the soft beach, landing up solid and gentle against the shore. Elrond disembarked first, followed by Gandalf, Galadriel, and Celeborn. Sev watched them wistfully; tears pricked at her eyes as she crumpled up her hope and threw it away, as she had done every time she thought him affectionate towards her. She truly could never see him again.
"Frodo, would you have come?"