The Random Musings of Frodo Baggins

by Flame Tigress

After the Quest, between Aragorn's coronation and the Ringbearers' eventual departure for the West, Frodo records his random thoughts, emotions, and revelations, from selfpity to selfparody. Final Chapter up: I come home again

12. Despair

November 3, Third Age 3019

Despair

I have failed. I have failed. Did I think I could save the Shire, even if nothing else was left unsullied by darkness? Did I think there would always be a foothold somewhere, even though my feet might never find it again? I was wrong. Nothing, nothing can escape the Shadow; nothing can I hope to protect forever. Did I think all had been won? All I strove for is lost, lost.

And yet I cannot comprehend what it is that is lost. The virgin innocence of a people that has known neither blood nor tyranny? The vibrant woods and fields of a land that bloomed under the hoe and the hand, untouched by the machine? What does any of that mean? The bright, friendly, colorful doors of the familiar rows of smials. My woods. My reading tree. The Party Tree in the clearing where I danced so long ago. For these I know how to weep. And Sam is right – in some ways, this is worse than Mordor. I face now my failure, not my test. I face my powerlessness, still more proof of my cursed fallibility when so much rests on me. I face this evil, this desolation, in the only place that I thought could be exempt from it always; the one place that I so needed to keep from it; the place that I gave up my peace, my life, my heart and blood to save from it. Had I but come home sooner… This I could have stopped.

The dawn I thought would rise without me, the dawn not my doing, is truly not my dawn; the Shire that will bloom again by no deed of mine can never be my Shire. And what is mine? Only my regret, my emptiness, my failure. The clothes on my back, my own bare feet, the Elf-woven cloak on the rack by the door, the little white gem I wear around my neck.

Author's Note: OK, remember how on chapter 4, I said I was inspired to come up with the ending after drinking coffee and accidentally staying awake on the caffeine buzz until 4:30 A.M.? That was…when, in October 2002? Well, I wrote this entry on the same caffeine. That's how long it's been waiting. Ooh, and I told you the "not my dawn" thing would be back! Three cheers for continuity!