Beginning again
Life had been reorganized, shifted, disorganized and the elements would lean over to whisper to him, harsh and gaudy, there was the sensation of a wind-whipped, a tortuous, a bright, many-fingered-coloured deception and lust, the landscape came distilled and unreadable through this.
All this, Gollum saw; he finally understood horror, worse than the unending stalagmites and stalactites that had grown wild and spiteful, spiking the dank aridness of his cave. This was the horror of knowing that there was no salvation, not for creatures like him. He wanted it all. All the little things that made up life and day and reality.
The weird, wild-eyed faces would let him out, get some sunlight on his face, but still, it was denied to him, the world carried the fantastic distortion of smoke and screaming.
He bit them and they burned, he would hiss and try to think but find that he could not.
Try to think—that was funny, he had given up, given it all up, long, long ago.
Life resumed normalcy, just that during the certain minutes during which half-light towered over the forest things would seem different simply because they were present together, in the unthinkable combination: two adults.
The earth and the sky would mingle for just a moment each day, then be drawn apart as darkness came and usurped all. Day would resume by morning, then the line would be redrawn.
The forest was thick and the exhalations were as the voice that once breathed all o'er Eden. It was not anything like the sun-strained glory of Rivendell, nor was it like the openness of the plains in all their intemperance and bleak, full outlines. Things found transition here.
It was on a certain bleary morning, teetering on dawn, Aragorn remembered their old conversations about Mirkwood and her mysterious glamour.
-So we shall see it, Legolas had said.
In the rising light of late morning the trees cast shadows upon each other, on tree, on tree, on tree.
There was some more brutal part of Mirkwood, knotted tree roots skulking along the outskirts, insidiously winding their way into the heart of the forest. None of that, they went to the river, the one with the infamous story.
-Yes, that story.
Would you like to hear it?
-I think I'm quite familiar with that one. Bilbo's bthen, urged something in him. So he did, he went to Rivendell, the fC/p>
-That's the one Bombur fell into. It is a little too wide for any wise person to jump.
His tone a little disdainful, not much resentment.
He continued –I did have a—an accident like Bombur's though, when I was still an elfling. Adar wasn't terribly pleased after he got over his worry. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere near the river for a long time.
-Oh did you?
-Stay away? Only when in the company of anyone who might tell.
Aragorn chuckled.
---
Before he left: -Remember, Gollum must not escape. Then he was gone into the whispers of the undergrowth; Legolas wondered: what do they speak of?
---
The orcs came, spread their pestilence and trenches of the dead lay still, festering with blood, anger and a lost cause.
Someone responsible spread his pale fingers, crimson in the reflected half-light of many fleeting souls as he looked at them. He was so very responsible.
-Gollum—he's gone.
---
-go find him then, urged something in him. So he did, he went to Rivendell, the first step to finding and finding out.
-Return quickly. Said his father, he looked as he always did, but there was something special this time, there was the affection of a father and the power of a king, the dawn came and ignited the crimson coronal about his head it blazed more than the skirts of October poppies.
He did not say a word in return but nodded, the rider and his horse surged into the wood.
---
He came bearing bad news.
-Gollum has escaped.
A man called Strider received the news first in a lonely corridor, amorphous figures crawling about them, tremulous and distorted by lamplight.
He did not blame him.
Snow was bitter and the whiteness seemed a mockery. The taint was proof, not all that festered found its origins in Mordor, some had existed long before and raged, ravaged or simply hid itself, deceptive and perceptive.
In the pervasive chill that not even stone could keep out he would have been dreaming, but anxiety kept him awake. There was no fire, none was meant to exist here. Everything pale and belonged so utterly to the mountain, everything white and colourless that had sold its soul to the night.
The sun had dipped and shied away from this place, she always had and the inhabitants of the cave were withering. Legolas was reminded how completely mortal all of them were, even an elf, who could do nothing.
---
The depths of Moria yielded sulphur and brimstone and more sulphur and brimstone, here the elements of the world were tortured into something unrecognizable, the air ravaged by heat and the foul dust.
Something roared, he felt a very real fear, no being in middle-earth had been created to fend off this archaic evil—perhaps Glorfindel, who was not really an elf he had thought as a child, but…
The bridge was splintering, Gandalf blazed like the sun, truly immortal and truly uncontainable. This personification of wildfire and hemlock, tall beyond normal measurements, it whispered and Gandalf replied. Gandalf who was real white, in all his intentions and power.
The hobbits knew the meaning of horror now, when it threatened never to end. Something in him burned—he should rush across that bridge, if nothing but to offer some feeble allegiance, thoughts were mangled, he couldn't think…
Two men however, did what he could not bear to.
The demon was extinguished and Gandalf was gone, his mystery unsolved, and the wild secretive universe rebelled against them.
He was gone. Everything became uncertainty.
---
Legolas remembered later, he found this impossible to forget, that Aragorn had done what he could not.
-Thank you.
Aragorn turned to him, -It was necessary.
Later, in the unspeakable depths of night, he wondered about the completion of a person. The Boromir kept watch, he was unapproachable to Legolas who spoke to him casually, but their air was always formal, distanced and spiked with respect and the threat of the unknown. The other man slept nearby, he could hear the hushed breathing of eight. Nine, so far from nine, so far from where they had been. He wiped a few wayward tears away, he should have been asleep, Aragorn had said that evening, -There will be a long march tomorrow.
Well, there always was. He got up soundlessly and fluttered like a shadow, surreptitious like one that did not belong.
He touched that sacred shoulder, once a child, now a man. Estel had ever asked him that, he was not certain how words could carry so much gravity and still remain simple, but he had told the child in a simple sentence: a king is only as tall as his soul. He made it understood then; no secrets between them, I know your past, you know mine.
-You've grown up and your soul is beyond leagues.
He had mentioned Boromir's bravery earlier, but the man was still mysterious despite having a character that was cleanly drawn that it was unnecessary to say a word about him. It had been formal and cool. Nothing like this.
For a minute he saw a child under the swathes of ragged fabric. He had not lost that youthful idealism. No, not at all.
Thanks for reading, please review.
Thanks to all previous readers. I know that nothing of import happened in this chapter, but I felt I needed to show certain moments to bind the whole story together—and also to show some character development and development in their relationships.