DISCLAIMER: LotR not mine.

FOOL OF A TOOK

Chapter Eight: The Ring

Pippin found that when he awoke from that horrible dream, he was shaky and sweaty. He tried to get to his feet, and fell. He sat for a moment, shocked at how the dream of the Great Eye had sapped his strength. He wondered if this was what had been happening to Frodo. "No wonder poor Frodo looked so exhausted all the time, if he had dreams like that every night."

He tried to stand again, and this time found his strength. Pippin leaned up against the big boulder he had rested by and pulled the Ring out of his pocket.

Before, in Lothlorien, he had been afraid to look at it or touch it; afraid of the power it had over others, Galadriel, for instance. So, here, for the first time, he got a good look at the Ring of Power.

He turned it over and over in his hands, admiring the gold perfection of it; gazing in new wonder at the eternity of its circle. He wondered idly how it would look on his finger. He had always been told he had nice hands by the Hobbit female society in the Shire.

All thoughts of Galadriel and Gandalf, shrinking from the Ring as though it were poisonous, left him, all warnings being shrieked by his subconscious, not to put it on his finger, were silenced. Pippin put on the Ring of Power.

Then he disappeared.

"Wow!" Pippin had not noticed before, in Bree, that Frodo had disappeared when the Ring had put itself on his finger. So this was a new thrill for him, and he waved his hands around in front of him, until what he saw was obscured by a blurry, white haze. The haze engulfed everything around him, until he could no longer see the canoe, or the rocks, or even the sun.

Pippin grew nervous and tried to yank the Ring off of his finger. It would not come off. He had no sooner discovered this fact, than he heard a deep, growling voice. It sounded like a monster to Pippin. The monster was speaking in the same black speech that Gandalf had used when Pippin had been spying on the Council in Rivendell. It was the tongue that had made Men fall to the ground, Dwarves raise their axes instinctively, and Elves afraid.

The black speech of Mordor. Sauron, again.

Pippin was drawn, almost as if someone had physically turned him around, to look behind him, to the South. There, between the white, blurry tops of the trees, was the same great, fiery Eye of his nightmare.

Pippin gulped and tried desperately to get the Ring to come off of his finger. The Eye seemed to come closer to where he was standing, pushing the trees and rocks out of the way, all the while, speaking in that same horrible voice and tongue.

Finally, in a fit of terror, Pippin managed to pry the Ring off. The voice, the Eye and the white haze vanished immediately. But his terror remained.

Pippin sank to the ground, shaking violently, robbed of his strength once again. What had he gotten himself into? He pulled his cloak around him again, and looked at the Ring. He felt in an instant that he had tried to take on too much, that he wasn't strong enough to handle the whole thing by himself. He realized finally the gravity of the quest, and what forces he was dealing with.

If that dream and that vision of the Eye of Sauron were what was to become the reality of his world, then he had to keep going.

Pippin pulled himself to standing, and put the Ring back on its chain, and hung it around his neck, the way he'd seen Frodo wear it. Then he got behind the canoe and shoved it off of the shoals as hard as he could, and got in. He used his paddle to shove himself the rest of the way into the water.

He caught the current and rowed grimly downstream, his heart heavy and his mind full.