Clearer in Absence
Tiamat's Child
It would be easy to think that the world would be softer here. Or more luxurious. Somehow utterly different from home.
But it isn't. There are differences, to be sure. Everyone is beautiful enough to hurt the eyes, and almost painfully kind. But still, kitchen chairs are kitchen chairs, and there are only so many ways to build them. Tables are tables, trees are trees, and people are people. The basic design doesn't really change very much, no matter where you are.
Sometimes it seems as if everything is a little bit more here, as if everything is somehow slightly off. It's all right though. It doesn't really take much getting used to. It feels as if this is how everything is supposed to be.
Bilbo fries bacon in the morning and burns himself, just the way he always did, and sticks the singed finger in his mouth and swears around it, just the way he always did. And Frodo makes pancakes, like always, and they inevitably turn out perfect except for the first one, which is always squishy and gooey on the inside, and always was. And nothing's quite perfect and easy, but that's all right. They didn't expect perfect and easy.
Frodo doesn't know what they expected, but he rather thinks Bilbo has it, whatever it is.
Gandalf comes by in the evenings, and smokes a pipe with Bilbo. Frodo usually wanders off somewhere and lets them to themselves. They haven't seen each other all that much, these past few years. Old friends should be given time alone.
Frodo doesn't know what they expected, but he doesn't think it's what he's found.
He meets Yavanna one day, and nearly falls over his feet when she greets him by name. They talk about trees, and about Sam, and gardens, and the past. And he doesn't know what he thought she'd be like, but whatever it was it isn't what she is like.
She reminds him of Rosie.
He's homesick for days.
The strange thing is, it's a good homesick. He left things behind. He regrets it. But, in the end, this is a new life, a new place, a new chance. He still hurts inside, but it isn't killing him anymore.
Back in the Shire he could feel the Ring still eating him up from the inside out. When he was home the dark, roiling infection in his mind and soul hadn't been stopped. It was still there and he didn't know how he could ever make it go away. He did try though. He made plans and he wrote, and he tried to make it all leave.
It didn't work. He doesn't know why. It just didn't. He wishes terribly that it had. He wanted a garden in the Shire, and a hobbit hole full of Sam and Rosie's children. He wanted to watch them, to love them all for what they are.
But he couldn't. He had to leave. He could feel the tug and pull of the sea, and he knew he'd been lost since he dreamed of the Havens, just as Legolas was lost the moment he heard the gulls.
He'd hoped he wouldn't have to leave so soon. But he did, and there are things one can't change. Lost fingers, lost hopes, dreams that have to be set down somewhere along the way. It's sad, but it needn't kill you.
When Yavanna leaves he pulls out huge sheets of paper and draws all across them. Bilbo makes helpful suggestions concerning where to put the raspberries. When that's done he goes looking for a spade.
Time to settle down for a few decades of good, honest work.