But...it couldn't be!
"Well don't just lay there gawking up at me like two schoolboys caught in some kind of mischief!" barked the wizard. For wizard he was, his once gray robes now white as a snow.
"Gandalf?" stammered the elder of the two hobbits as he pushed himself onto his knees. "Is it...is it really you?"
"Of course I'm really me!" Gandalf replied, not unkindly. "I wouldn't dream of being anybody else."
"But...but we saw you fall!" countered the younger hobbit, his eyes wide. "We thought you were dead!"
"Fall I did, and, in a sense, I did die. But that is another tale entirely, and one that will take up too much of time to recount. I cannot linger..."
But Gandalf's speech was cut short, as he was quite suddenly knocked backward, nearly falling over as the two hobbits jumped up and hugged him around the middle. The wizard merely smiled and patted them both on top of their curly heads.
"Now, now, we haven't time for any of that," he chuckled, and the hobbits quickly released him. "I must be off! For I have some business with the king of Rohan, and you two have some business with the trees, I warrant."
There was a gleam in his eyes, as if he already knew what part the hobbits would play in the near future.
Instead, Gandalf turned his gaze upward, to the giant Treebeard, of whom the two hobbits had quite forgotten about in their joy at being reunited with their friend.
"Come, come, my dear fellow," Gandalf called up to the Ent. "These good sirs are no orcs. Can't you tell? Or has your long, self-induced slumber clouded you eyesight?"
The Ent made a guttural noise in his throat, that sounded like the creaking of trees in a mighty wind, but what was actually a laugh.
"Indeed, I am not young as I once was," he drawled. And, to the hobbits' utter horror, he bent down and scooped them up in his enormous hands. They each gave a little scream of fright, but Gandalf merely chuckled in amusement.
"I'm counting on you, Master Treebeard," he went on. "You must keep these two safe."
From where they hung in the branches that were Treebeard's fingers, the hobbits could no longer see the wizard. They called out his name. But when they were finally able to see where he had stood, all that was left were leaves and brambles.
"This is all happening so fast!" exclaimed the elder hobbit. "Can you believe it Pippin? Gandalf is alive!"
"Merry...I'm famished," was all Pippin could reply. He was, after all, still quite a young hobbit, and unaccustomed to going so long without a proper meal.