Disclaimer: I don't own LotR.


The drums. It was always the drums: the warning bell ringing out, the horn calling across the plains. Fear and worry struck into their hearts, like the mallet against the very skin of the heavy war drum. Resonating like the echo of the bass in their chests.

They could all feel it, in their bones and in their hearts. The drums meant an angry confrontation, a battle. Pain. Bloodshed.

In the years to follow, the pounding of the drums should have been the last thing on their minds. It should have faded with the last beating orc heart, the last cry of Sauron and his followers as their world fell. The silence should have been a welcome thing, the fading of the drums. The silence was left to be filled with laughing and gaiety, a chance to take up the fiddle, grab a pint, and talk merrily with friends.

The silence, though, was an unknown. The drums were easy to recognize, to react to. The drums beat with a mad fervor, unmistakable. When the drums stopped, uncertainty struck them like a plague. Listening, always listening. Watching. Waiting. No drums meant no warning, and no rest. No rest for the weary.

When the silence came with cozy homes, warm fires, and open arms, the fear that sat silent at the back of their minds during the cacophony of the drums came to life, screaming shrilly, piercing the calm with a poisoned blade.

Sitting up at night, in the darkness before a fading fire, the soft beating of the heart offered a brief respite. Even as the world changed, there would be no pause in the thunderous pulse of the drums that had followed them home.