Moon Ring
~
Rock Bottom
Something sharp and hard prodded straight along her spine, whatever it was landing square between her shoulder blades. Usagi groaned sleepily and curled up into a fetal position, knees tucked to her chest and arms crossed under her chin. Thoughts eluded her, as most things do when one sleeps deeply, and she began to drift back into slumber, when the object poked her again. A snuffling sort of sound followed the motion and she grew more and more aware as a wave of hot, foul-smelling air was breathed on her neck. Reluctantly, she cracked on bleary blue eye open, only to see a monstrous creature easily surpassing anything she had ever seen before in sheer ugliness.
Perhaps a tiny portion of her mind was pleased that she managed to startle the creature and cause it to reel back when she screamed piercingly and lashed out with her fingernails instinctively, gouging at the thing's eyes. "Oh my God!" she screamed, clambering swiftly up to her feet, all but bolting backwards until she was pressed against what was apparently a rock face. "Oh my God!" she reiterated, grabbing up a large blunt stone and hefting it in quivering threat. It didn't take a genius to notice that she was most definitely not in her own bed.
The hideous thing, black flesh and all brute force, grunted angrily at her and pawed at the thin streams of blood trickling out of the corners of its eyes, leathery flesh barely marred. It rattled off something in a frightening language, a feral sounding guttural that, quite frankly, scared Usagi even more than she already was. Truth be told, she couldn't understand what the words were, but the meaning was obvious.
"Get away from me!" she yelled shrilly, watching as the thing slowly began to advance, an ugly smirk of some sort creasing its face. "I said, get away from me!" Desperately, she glanced at the rock in her hand and pitched it at the creature. To Usagi's horror, it merely bounced off the monster's hard forehead, cracking neatly in half as it fell back to the rocky ground. She stared for a few precious seconds, shocked. Once more, she cried, "Oh my God!" Turning, she ran along the rock wall, away from the thing, down into a small crevice pathway carved between two thick rock walls that went up and up for a few meters. Behind her, the thing was running, too, if more ponderously than she was.
It was dark all around her, she noted dismally, stumbling over a crack buckling up from the rocky ground she was running doggedly across. A few wavery stars peeked down at her through the crack above, between the walls, and she glanced at them for a second, drawing comfort from the sight of a familiar sky. The silver moon was barely visibly to her left and, somewhat encouraged, she pushed herself onward, trying to tell herself that the uncomfortable burning in her lungs was merely imagined. Seconds passed into minutes and she finally burst out of the crevice, onto a ledge overlooking a cliff drop into thick, obscuring mists far below. "Not good," she heard her own voice say calmly, feeling as if she was detached from her voice. A nightmare, this had to be a nightmare…
The loud thumping of the monster's running was growing louder in her ears and she turned so that her back was to the ledge's drop, her arms limp by her sides. "Don't worry, Usagi," she attempted to reassure herself, unable to stop the shivers trembling throughout her body and the lone tear that twisted out of her angelic cerulean eyes. "This nightmare will end before you can die." That wasn't an incredibly uplifting thought, in any case.
Squeezing her eyes shut, fisting her hands at her side and stiffening up, she prepared for the worst. Ready and waiting, she stood there for seconds, hearing the creature and its horrid breathing coming closer.
And then the sounds stopped. Cut off cleanly and in a second's notice.
"Where is my precious?" a new voice, slimy, high-pitched, simpering, asked pitifully and she opened her blue eyes. A spindly little wasted creature bent over the motionless, hulking body of the first monster, thin fingers moving agitatedly around. A large, bulbous head was perched on the new being's bony neck and its eyes were lidded over, nostrils flaring as it sniffed at the dead body.
Usagi covered her mouth, a sickened feeling growing in her gut, and almost stepped back, remembering just in time about the very deadly fall a few feet behind her. Was everything in this dream messed up?
The new being showed no signs of being an out-front threat, but, nonetheless, it caused a primitive sort of fear and revulsion to rise up inside of her. Besides, hadn't it killed that monster? What if it killed her?
Suddenly, the thing swiveled its head around, sniffing at the air almost fanatically. "A Big Folk, hmm?" it murmured to itself, creeping away from the body and moving slowly toward Usagi. "Girl smell, it has, yess. Smells pretty, like untainted rose. Where is my precious?" The words were strange, the accent peculiar, and the sentences were spoken in a rambling, distantly insane voice. It tilted its head up, so she could see its face perfectly.
A stifled cry burst out from between her fingers.
"Help us find my precious?" the thing said hopefully. "We must find nasty thieves who took Gollum's precious. Yes, must…"
Bile was replaced with pity and she couldn't understand why, other than the fact that…Gollum?…seemed so incredibly hopeful. "I suppose," she said reluctantly. After all, this was only a dream, right? "Where do we go?"
The Gollum thing smiled, a particularly ugly sight, and lifted on spindly hand up. "Follow us," it instructed her. "Nasty pungent smell of thieves everywhere! Go down." It pointed down the ledge behind her as she grasped its hand in her slender one. A fleeting look of horror took root in her eyes.
"Down?" Usagi squeaked.
"Nasty Baggins boy is thief!" Gollum hissed dangerously. "Follow them, follow them."
Usagi swallowed.
"You sleep for a bit Sam and take my blanket. I'll walk up and down on sentry for a while."
Sam reluctantly accepted the blanket and sought to make himself as comfortable as possible in the freezing shade of the boulder, pulling himself into as small a ball as he could, trying to conserve heat. "Wake me in an hour or so, Master," he mumbled, his worn mind already beginning to fall into dreamless sleep.
Frodo nodded, though Sam, whose eyes were now shut, could not see. Pulling his cloak tighter about himself to keep warm, hopefully, the younger hobbit walked slowly down a ways, one hand trailing along the cliff rising above them. Smiling ruefully to himself, he looked up at the clear moon shining fully down upon the cold rock all around and whistled a soft note or two, forcing himself to not look at the down side of things. At this point, though, he mused mentally with a dry laugh, there weren't many up things about the whole experience in general.
He ceased his walking, staring up at the night sky, at the inky blue velvet dotted by glimmering star diamonds, and smiled up at the beautiful night, eyes fixated in particular on the thick, bright moon, soft waves of light drifting down from it.
An old memory, of an older tale he had once been told in Buckland, when just a child fast approaching the awkward tweens stage. Wrinkling his eyebrows together, he crossed his arms over his chest, searching through the foggy mist of half-forgotten memories. Something silly, he remembered, something he had thought was altogether far too girlish to interest him.
Something about a princess, dressed all in silver-white, captured in the moon like a song-dove in a gilded birdcage. How she protected the Shire from dark forces and was one of the true defenses along the Old Forest. How she was doomed to remain forever a prisoner of her duties, unless she was to fall in love with a being from Middle-earth.
Stuff and nonsense, Frodo reminded himself. Just a tale made up to amuse little hobbit-girls.
He resumed his walking, his pace far brisker than it had been before and his attention deliberately turned away from the moon. Rock gleamed dully at him and shadows flinched around formations of stone, thick, black, and ever waiting for a dark reason. The shadows he trusted only so far as he could grab them in his hands, which, of course, was impossible. Although, and he shivered, he wouldn't be very surprised if he found he could touch shadow-flesh this close to tangible evil.
A sparkle of briefly reflected moonlight caught his eye and he paused, stooping down to one knee, one hand gently wrapping around a small, silver-trimmed box. He lifted it to his eye and, tilting his head to one side in curiosity, he noted that, though the craftsmanship was obviously excellent, it was chipped in a few spots and dirt had smudged the bright paint on side. A key, jammed into a nonexistent hole, was merged with light gold metal, surrounded by designs of silver ivy and faded pink roses. Frodo stood up, trailing his fingertips around the box's edges as he began to walk back quickly to where Sam had fallen into a deep slumber.
The curly-haired hobbit hesitated for a moment, then, grasping the tiny key between thumb and forefinger, he turned it four-and-a-quarter times in the proper direction. The silent night was broken by a tinkling melody that drifted out of the box like a stream of delicate bubbles, the bronze lid lifting up and back as a small platform rose up to where the lid had been; the circular platform turned slowly and two tiny doll-figures turned with it, their features blurry and not incredibly distinguished. "Music box," Frodo whispered, a bit surprised, to himself, sliding into a sitting position, his back to the boulder by which Sam slept. Holding the music box in his hands, he stared in a sort of wonder at the trinket. "Where did you come from?" he asked it, softly. There was no answer, no meaningful blow of the wind, no mystical sign. Just the song, and the man and woman dancing stiffly, yet comfortably, with each other in enviable perfection.
He lost track of time, watching the dancers and listening to the wordless tune wafting away in the chilly wind. Finally, the music wound down and, without thinking, he turned the key again, if only to hear the airy, otherworldly music once more.
With a soft sigh, Frodo Baggins leaned his head against the boulder and closed his eyes, falling into a light doze.
Usagi was stunned momentarily from the bruising drop. She had been able to cling to Gollum for most of the way down, until they were forced to drop due to a perfectly sheer wall below them. "Oooo," she moaned, clutching at her head. This was easily becoming the most realistic dream she had ever had. Blinking away the stars blinding her eyesight, she staggered up to her feet, swaying in a drunken fashion. Cold winds breezed through her thin nightgown and she shivered, crossing her arms and wrapping her hands around her upper-arms, rolling her lips in to wetten them unconsciously. "Where are we?" she shivered, glancing worriedly back at Gollum. The gaunt creature rolled onto its feet and jabbed one bony little finger across the stone path, toward a shadowed figure.
"Thief, thief, filthy thief," Gollum hissed, venomous eyes blinking rapidly in anger and discontent. "Baggins boy!"
Usagi tip-toed forward, one hand falling to hold up the overly long skirt of her nightgown, the other gathering up cloth at her collar. From Gollum's rattling earlier, as they, or rather, it, climbed down the cliff face, she had figured that whoever this Baggins thief was, he most certainly had to be as horrid as the first creature. An Orc, Gollum had said that thing was.
What she saw Baggins to be, though, was most definitely not horrid. Curling dark hair, tangled and gleaming with moonlight, a soft face that, oddly enough, verged on being pretty. "He doesn't look unpleasant," she turned to say to Gollum. Her eyes, however caught on a familiar box set down on the ground by the Baggins being's knee. "My music box!" she gasped, indignant. Dream or no dream, he had her music box!
She reached to grab it and was stopped by a hand clamping down firmly on her wrists.
Usagi looked up into a pair of beautiful grey-blue eyes.
November 9-10, 2001.
(Chapter Two - Thistle Down - in progress. More character development. And Pippin!)
~
Rock Bottom
Something sharp and hard prodded straight along her spine, whatever it was landing square between her shoulder blades. Usagi groaned sleepily and curled up into a fetal position, knees tucked to her chest and arms crossed under her chin. Thoughts eluded her, as most things do when one sleeps deeply, and she began to drift back into slumber, when the object poked her again. A snuffling sort of sound followed the motion and she grew more and more aware as a wave of hot, foul-smelling air was breathed on her neck. Reluctantly, she cracked on bleary blue eye open, only to see a monstrous creature easily surpassing anything she had ever seen before in sheer ugliness.
Perhaps a tiny portion of her mind was pleased that she managed to startle the creature and cause it to reel back when she screamed piercingly and lashed out with her fingernails instinctively, gouging at the thing's eyes. "Oh my God!" she screamed, clambering swiftly up to her feet, all but bolting backwards until she was pressed against what was apparently a rock face. "Oh my God!" she reiterated, grabbing up a large blunt stone and hefting it in quivering threat. It didn't take a genius to notice that she was most definitely not in her own bed.
The hideous thing, black flesh and all brute force, grunted angrily at her and pawed at the thin streams of blood trickling out of the corners of its eyes, leathery flesh barely marred. It rattled off something in a frightening language, a feral sounding guttural that, quite frankly, scared Usagi even more than she already was. Truth be told, she couldn't understand what the words were, but the meaning was obvious.
"Get away from me!" she yelled shrilly, watching as the thing slowly began to advance, an ugly smirk of some sort creasing its face. "I said, get away from me!" Desperately, she glanced at the rock in her hand and pitched it at the creature. To Usagi's horror, it merely bounced off the monster's hard forehead, cracking neatly in half as it fell back to the rocky ground. She stared for a few precious seconds, shocked. Once more, she cried, "Oh my God!" Turning, she ran along the rock wall, away from the thing, down into a small crevice pathway carved between two thick rock walls that went up and up for a few meters. Behind her, the thing was running, too, if more ponderously than she was.
It was dark all around her, she noted dismally, stumbling over a crack buckling up from the rocky ground she was running doggedly across. A few wavery stars peeked down at her through the crack above, between the walls, and she glanced at them for a second, drawing comfort from the sight of a familiar sky. The silver moon was barely visibly to her left and, somewhat encouraged, she pushed herself onward, trying to tell herself that the uncomfortable burning in her lungs was merely imagined. Seconds passed into minutes and she finally burst out of the crevice, onto a ledge overlooking a cliff drop into thick, obscuring mists far below. "Not good," she heard her own voice say calmly, feeling as if she was detached from her voice. A nightmare, this had to be a nightmare…
The loud thumping of the monster's running was growing louder in her ears and she turned so that her back was to the ledge's drop, her arms limp by her sides. "Don't worry, Usagi," she attempted to reassure herself, unable to stop the shivers trembling throughout her body and the lone tear that twisted out of her angelic cerulean eyes. "This nightmare will end before you can die." That wasn't an incredibly uplifting thought, in any case.
Squeezing her eyes shut, fisting her hands at her side and stiffening up, she prepared for the worst. Ready and waiting, she stood there for seconds, hearing the creature and its horrid breathing coming closer.
And then the sounds stopped. Cut off cleanly and in a second's notice.
"Where is my precious?" a new voice, slimy, high-pitched, simpering, asked pitifully and she opened her blue eyes. A spindly little wasted creature bent over the motionless, hulking body of the first monster, thin fingers moving agitatedly around. A large, bulbous head was perched on the new being's bony neck and its eyes were lidded over, nostrils flaring as it sniffed at the dead body.
Usagi covered her mouth, a sickened feeling growing in her gut, and almost stepped back, remembering just in time about the very deadly fall a few feet behind her. Was everything in this dream messed up?
The new being showed no signs of being an out-front threat, but, nonetheless, it caused a primitive sort of fear and revulsion to rise up inside of her. Besides, hadn't it killed that monster? What if it killed her?
Suddenly, the thing swiveled its head around, sniffing at the air almost fanatically. "A Big Folk, hmm?" it murmured to itself, creeping away from the body and moving slowly toward Usagi. "Girl smell, it has, yess. Smells pretty, like untainted rose. Where is my precious?" The words were strange, the accent peculiar, and the sentences were spoken in a rambling, distantly insane voice. It tilted its head up, so she could see its face perfectly.
A stifled cry burst out from between her fingers.
"Help us find my precious?" the thing said hopefully. "We must find nasty thieves who took Gollum's precious. Yes, must…"
Bile was replaced with pity and she couldn't understand why, other than the fact that…Gollum?…seemed so incredibly hopeful. "I suppose," she said reluctantly. After all, this was only a dream, right? "Where do we go?"
The Gollum thing smiled, a particularly ugly sight, and lifted on spindly hand up. "Follow us," it instructed her. "Nasty pungent smell of thieves everywhere! Go down." It pointed down the ledge behind her as she grasped its hand in her slender one. A fleeting look of horror took root in her eyes.
"Down?" Usagi squeaked.
"Nasty Baggins boy is thief!" Gollum hissed dangerously. "Follow them, follow them."
Usagi swallowed.
"You sleep for a bit Sam and take my blanket. I'll walk up and down on sentry for a while."
Sam reluctantly accepted the blanket and sought to make himself as comfortable as possible in the freezing shade of the boulder, pulling himself into as small a ball as he could, trying to conserve heat. "Wake me in an hour or so, Master," he mumbled, his worn mind already beginning to fall into dreamless sleep.
Frodo nodded, though Sam, whose eyes were now shut, could not see. Pulling his cloak tighter about himself to keep warm, hopefully, the younger hobbit walked slowly down a ways, one hand trailing along the cliff rising above them. Smiling ruefully to himself, he looked up at the clear moon shining fully down upon the cold rock all around and whistled a soft note or two, forcing himself to not look at the down side of things. At this point, though, he mused mentally with a dry laugh, there weren't many up things about the whole experience in general.
He ceased his walking, staring up at the night sky, at the inky blue velvet dotted by glimmering star diamonds, and smiled up at the beautiful night, eyes fixated in particular on the thick, bright moon, soft waves of light drifting down from it.
An old memory, of an older tale he had once been told in Buckland, when just a child fast approaching the awkward tweens stage. Wrinkling his eyebrows together, he crossed his arms over his chest, searching through the foggy mist of half-forgotten memories. Something silly, he remembered, something he had thought was altogether far too girlish to interest him.
Something about a princess, dressed all in silver-white, captured in the moon like a song-dove in a gilded birdcage. How she protected the Shire from dark forces and was one of the true defenses along the Old Forest. How she was doomed to remain forever a prisoner of her duties, unless she was to fall in love with a being from Middle-earth.
Stuff and nonsense, Frodo reminded himself. Just a tale made up to amuse little hobbit-girls.
He resumed his walking, his pace far brisker than it had been before and his attention deliberately turned away from the moon. Rock gleamed dully at him and shadows flinched around formations of stone, thick, black, and ever waiting for a dark reason. The shadows he trusted only so far as he could grab them in his hands, which, of course, was impossible. Although, and he shivered, he wouldn't be very surprised if he found he could touch shadow-flesh this close to tangible evil.
A sparkle of briefly reflected moonlight caught his eye and he paused, stooping down to one knee, one hand gently wrapping around a small, silver-trimmed box. He lifted it to his eye and, tilting his head to one side in curiosity, he noted that, though the craftsmanship was obviously excellent, it was chipped in a few spots and dirt had smudged the bright paint on side. A key, jammed into a nonexistent hole, was merged with light gold metal, surrounded by designs of silver ivy and faded pink roses. Frodo stood up, trailing his fingertips around the box's edges as he began to walk back quickly to where Sam had fallen into a deep slumber.
The curly-haired hobbit hesitated for a moment, then, grasping the tiny key between thumb and forefinger, he turned it four-and-a-quarter times in the proper direction. The silent night was broken by a tinkling melody that drifted out of the box like a stream of delicate bubbles, the bronze lid lifting up and back as a small platform rose up to where the lid had been; the circular platform turned slowly and two tiny doll-figures turned with it, their features blurry and not incredibly distinguished. "Music box," Frodo whispered, a bit surprised, to himself, sliding into a sitting position, his back to the boulder by which Sam slept. Holding the music box in his hands, he stared in a sort of wonder at the trinket. "Where did you come from?" he asked it, softly. There was no answer, no meaningful blow of the wind, no mystical sign. Just the song, and the man and woman dancing stiffly, yet comfortably, with each other in enviable perfection.
He lost track of time, watching the dancers and listening to the wordless tune wafting away in the chilly wind. Finally, the music wound down and, without thinking, he turned the key again, if only to hear the airy, otherworldly music once more.
With a soft sigh, Frodo Baggins leaned his head against the boulder and closed his eyes, falling into a light doze.
Usagi was stunned momentarily from the bruising drop. She had been able to cling to Gollum for most of the way down, until they were forced to drop due to a perfectly sheer wall below them. "Oooo," she moaned, clutching at her head. This was easily becoming the most realistic dream she had ever had. Blinking away the stars blinding her eyesight, she staggered up to her feet, swaying in a drunken fashion. Cold winds breezed through her thin nightgown and she shivered, crossing her arms and wrapping her hands around her upper-arms, rolling her lips in to wetten them unconsciously. "Where are we?" she shivered, glancing worriedly back at Gollum. The gaunt creature rolled onto its feet and jabbed one bony little finger across the stone path, toward a shadowed figure.
"Thief, thief, filthy thief," Gollum hissed, venomous eyes blinking rapidly in anger and discontent. "Baggins boy!"
Usagi tip-toed forward, one hand falling to hold up the overly long skirt of her nightgown, the other gathering up cloth at her collar. From Gollum's rattling earlier, as they, or rather, it, climbed down the cliff face, she had figured that whoever this Baggins thief was, he most certainly had to be as horrid as the first creature. An Orc, Gollum had said that thing was.
What she saw Baggins to be, though, was most definitely not horrid. Curling dark hair, tangled and gleaming with moonlight, a soft face that, oddly enough, verged on being pretty. "He doesn't look unpleasant," she turned to say to Gollum. Her eyes, however caught on a familiar box set down on the ground by the Baggins being's knee. "My music box!" she gasped, indignant. Dream or no dream, he had her music box!
She reached to grab it and was stopped by a hand clamping down firmly on her wrists.
Usagi looked up into a pair of beautiful grey-blue eyes.
November 9-10, 2001.
(Chapter Two - Thistle Down - in progress. More character development. And Pippin!)
