OK, this is my first Lord of The Rings Fan-Fiction, so have mercy!
The presumption of this story:
Saruman told the council of the wise that the ring had most likely been washed from the river to the ocean, where it would lay until the end of the world. We know that he merely said this to distract the council from pursuing the ring, but what if his scenario had been true? What if the line of kings died in time un-rememberable (perhaps the last was Arthur)? What if the ages of hobbits and elves and dwarves are long gone and the maiar hide themselves? After all, the ring was found by Deagol in an accident. What if he hadn't made that fateful snatch?
Oceans dry and move, mountains crumble to the ground. The ring was last seen in water, and water has a way of… getting around. After thousands of years, the wise become complacent, and the evil lingers on…
PART I
IN A PLACE WHERE IT IS BLOODY HOT ALL THE TIME
Las Vegas. Some city. The city of lights. No, that's Paris. Maybe it's the city that never sleeps… no, I think that's New York. I know it's not the Emerald City- that's Seattle, my home. Seattle is as far from Las Vegas as, well it's actually pretty close, geographically. Only a two-hour flight (Take Alaska Air, the pilots get cute in their on-board announcements). But Seattle and Las Vegas are so far apart in so many ways it sometimes seems hard to imagine they are two places in the same country. Seattle is a white city, a very clean city, a city where people will hold doors for you and where you can walk down the street at night and have your wallet with you when you get home. Las Vegas is beautiful with its lights and excitement, there are fountains that sing and dance and everywhere you look are beautiful people. But in my city the ocean is near and you can sometimes smell it on the breeze, and other times the streets smell like rain, everything is clean and cool. There are beautiful people in Seattle too, but it's the kind of beauty you don't get from a surgeon's knife and it's a beauty you don't necessarily see.
This sounds like a love letter, except to a place instead of a person. You always love the place you leave. I left Seattle because I thought it was boring and unchanging, and, well, wet. Yes I said it, and the clichés are true, it's wet in Seattle. Nine months of gray and rain and you forget the color of the sky and begin to believe the sun leaves in the fall and winter and most the spring. You imagine the stars are not as bright and striking as you remember and you hear the siren's call of the desert. And, where better to go, if you want a desert, than Las Vegas. Las Vegas gets an annual rainfall of about three inches a year, in Seattle we can get that in a day.
Las Vegas is as far as you can get (not geographically, but, well, you know) from Seattle as possible. In the middle of the desert an oasis of music and art, and just a touch of evil. Well, evil is a little harsh. Just people doing what they need to do to get what they feel they need to get. The fact that I'm just an architect doesn't make me any better than the people who peddle their trades in the street. Normally I'm not this judgmental, evil is just in the forefront of my mind this afternoon. I don't know why. I drove out to a building site today, they'll be building a casino there, a new monstrosity my name will be on until it is dust and gone. In Las Vegas that will be about ten years. History makes way for the present here. At any rate, We drove out to this lot and I felt…wrong. Not just wrong, but sick, panicky…I don't know. I had a friend who became a junkie, and when she dried up she said that sometimes the longing was there, that it had always been there and always would be there; and although she knew it hadn't hurt like this ten minutes ago, and tomorrow it would be gone, this longing was still eternal. That's how this felt, wrong, and I felt as though it had been wrong forever. But when we drove off after the site-inspection it faded. But it's not yet gone.
So here I am, on the strip. I would have been placed in a condo, or perhaps welcomed as a guest at the home of the casino-owner I'm working for (he wants me happy), but I wanted a suite where I could see the lights. That was three months ago when Las Vegas was a place I had just visited, before the heat wore on me and the personalities I am now suffocating from were still exotic and exciting. Now that I am back in this suite I start to feel better. The evil feeling is wearing off and I begin to fall in love with the city again (the air-conditioning is helping). For a sweet moment I feel plain relief. Then the knowledge that tomorrow I visit the site again overpowers me. I could skip it, I could have someone else measure out the stakes and do the pre-building checks. But if something went wrong it would be my fault. I may have to live with having an ugly, overdone casino in this world with my name on the plans, but I can't have it be wrong. I push the discomfort away, and go to bed.
NEXT MORNING
So here I am. Again. Feeling….I still don't know how to describe it so I'll call it wrong. We got here early and set out our surveying stakes and marked off the areas we'll begin digging at. This is a lot easier, I'll admit, here than in Seattle. In Seattle a sudden rain will wash away markings unless you take precautions. That is really not a problem here. It's hot, only noon and it'll soon be over a hundred degrees. I'm not quite dying. First thing every morning I jump in the hotel pool for a swim and don't dry my hair. I put it up in a high bun and it keeps me cool for most of the morning. I'll dump a bottle of ice-water from the cooler over my head around two this afternoon and that'll keep me going until we're done today. When we were having pre-development meetings, drawing sessions and such this plan worked exceedingly well, but in this place it isn't quite enough.
This casino is being built off the strip, further out in the desert. It's going to be a resort for the uber-rich that don't want to have to rub elbows with the working class. Eventually the city will probably spread out and engulf this little spot which now seems so isolated. At night you will be able to see the city lights from this spot (at least until this new casino's lights drown them out), but right now we seem completely engulfed in the desert. Hard to imagine this spot was once covered over with ice a mile deep. So was most of America. But the glaciers receded. Not to start dwelling on Seattle again, but you can see the remains of the glaciers on Mt. Rainier on clear days from the Space Needle in my city, and they're beautiful. There used to be some on Mt. St. Helens, but the last eruption took care of them. (Mt. Rainier is a volcano too, but it hasn't been active in thousands of years. They say it's the more powerful of the two, but as it won't blow in my lifetime, I'm not going to be concerned). You might wonder why I would be so interested in ice, but glaciers deposited large rock and metal caches, and you have to be wary of them if you want to keep your schedule. It's bizarre some of things the glaciers left behind and in the desert where there hasn't been forests growing and rivers flowing and other landscape-changing forces, things stay near to the surface. The desert is also unique in the fact that no one develops it. Sometimes oil is struck, and sometimes gold is found, but the desert is dangerous and you don't find things where people easily die before they look. If it wasn't for a city that functions as "America's Playground" (there, that's the slogan), less than 20 miles away no one would cross this ground on foot or in car, nothing would draw them and the desert would kill them before they got to here from whatever point they started at.
You may not know this, but when a building this important (in the minds of those funding it) is begun you dig the first shovel-full of dirt from the foundation with a gold (plated) shovel and a picture is taken for posterity. If it is a college, a wealthy benefactor strikes the first blow; a new mall may attract a minor celebrity. However, in this sweltering heat out in the middle of nowhere, which will soon be somewhere, I get to be the one to bear the shovel first. The owner probably should have been the one but it is now long over a hundred degrees and having his picture in the center pages of some paper is not that important to him. An unthinking worker who is wearing work gloves hands me the shovel. The shovel has been left sitting in the sun and the gold (plated) handle scalds my hands. I want to throw it down, it hurts, it hurts a lot, but I want to get his over and done with more.
I smile through the pain at the camera and draw the first shovel of dirt and sand. Something glints and for a moment I think it's the gold plating of the shovel, but it is in the dirt itself. I don't care. It's too hot and I simply dump the soil to the side. Maybe I've struck gold, but at this point that would mess up my schedule and ironically cost me money. I ignore the glint and continue with the ridiculous ceremony. Eventually the camera is packed away, we've gotten all the shots we need of the beginning of this particular venture. My hands hurt and in a moment of pure childishness I lick my scalded palms. One of the workers smiles at me and for the first time today I feel a slight ray of, well I don't know. If this place makes me feel wrong and evil I guess this guy's smile gives me a glimmer of something right and good. But it's gone as quickly as he is. I wonder vaguely who hired him, but I have more important things to mind then random workmen.
People pack things up, it's almost six and it's been a long day. The workers are tired and grumpy and everyone is avoiding everyone else. I'm not overly concerned, they'll ride together in air-conditioned work trucks back to wherever they're leaving their personal cars (I know where that is, but right now I don't care to think about it, it's too hot). By the time they get to them they'll be feeling better and may even grab a couple of beers in the city. As they pack up their various tools, the golden (plated) shovel jumps to the forefront of my mind. I wonder, briefly, whose responsibility it is. Although I would be happy to never touch it again, I make my way over to where I dropped it earlier and find it still lying there. It's easier to throw it into my trunk than to deal with the grief of explaining its absence should it disappear with someone else and later be missed. If it did walk home (as my mother might say) with someone it did not belong to, I would hate to have to pay for it. After being burned by it once (physically) I would hate to be burned by it again (you know, in being considered a thief and having to pay for it). I grab it, and would you believe it burns my hands again! I wasn't thinking straight and handled it with my bear hands again, while in the middle of thinking about how it burned me. There is something in the air that is making me feel smokey, dizzy…strange. For a moment I'm afraid that I'm having a sun stroke, but my vision is clear of the black blossoms that proceed a heat stroke and I decide I'm just stressed. I'm wearing a linen shirt over a tank top, so I take off the over-shirt and winding it around my left hand (the less-burned one) I use it to pick up the shovel by its neck, just above the scoop. As I pick it up it disrupts the first shovel-ful of dirt from the ceremony earlier today. Something glints again in the fading sun, and this time curiosity over-whelms the exhaustion and heat. I sink my right hands into warm dirt and come up with something I completely did not expect.
A plain gold band.
AT THE COUCIL OF THE WISE
Elrond gazed at Legolas. "I'm not mistaken in my vision, Thrandulion, the ring is in the desert." The long, wearying years had not aged him much, but it had sharpened his eyes and made his gaze more disconcerting. Unless you were one who had endured it for years un-countable. Then it was only mildly annoying.
"I tell you, Master Elrond, that there was no ring found today. The ages have not dulled my sight any more than you claim they have not dulled your foresight. Had the ring been found and concealed by any I would have seen it in their eyes, and did not. Although the area had a general feeling of a place where evil has dwelt long. I stayed until the tools were packed, and after joined the workers in drinking, and no man found it."
"But it may have been there, you felt it?" Elrond's gaze sharpened further still.
" I said that it was not found, that does not mean it may not have been there, unfound."
"Master Elves, please. If the ring was not found it may still be buried in the desert." Gandalf's voice had not lost any of its resonance. "We should arrange to find it ourselves and to destroy it at long last."
For long moments the two elves and one wizard regarded each other levelly. Then Elrond quietly stated: "Contact the others, arrange for the full council to meet. We must organize to find this thing of evil and be done with it at last."
"All due respect, Mast Elrond, but we must seek it now. Tonight, if possible. If it was not found by a random worker today it may be found tomorrow."
With this statement by Legolas, a long pause followed. The three ancients regarded each other, coming to the same conclusion. After a moment Elrond sighed and said: "We must still alert the others."
"Yes," said Gandalf, "I shall send Mirandier with tidings directly."
"As much as that's appreciated, Gandalf, perhaps we won't bother the Eagle Lord for this. Let's try their cell phones first." With a quirk of his eyebrow, Elrond managed a smile at his old friend. Elrond and Gandalf began calling while Legolas went to gather tools for their night-dig.
IN A SUITE (A LUXURIOUS ONE)
It's a weird ring. No it's not. It's a very plain ring. But still it's weird. NO, it's NOT. I look at the clock, nine o'clock. I've been going around like this for three hours now. I may very likely be going mad. It's a weird ring. No it's not. For a long moment, I have this bizarre urge to slip it on my hand, but I don't. I try to remember why I haven't put it on yet, and falter. I almost slip it onto my hand, but then a list catches my eye.
You see, although I seem strangely-minded right now, I am an architect and am thereby by trade an organized, carefully thinking person. Before my mind got caught in this cycle like a record needle in a skip, I made lists of my thoughts on the ring.
My Lists on the Ring
You do not find valuable things discarded in the middle of nowhere, you may loose something valuable when your guard is down, or where it is very busy and you do not note you've lost it. You do not simply loose something this valuable in the desert unless something bad has happened.
i.e. You take off your ring in a bathroom to wash your hands, and forget it, and when you get back its been taken. Or your ring slips off your finger in a busy place and it's busy so you don't hear it and the press of the crowd distracts you from your loss.
If this ring is in the desert, it was not lost, something bad happened.
Possible bad things that happened:
Ring was on hand of someone who's car broke down. This person wandered into the desert and it fell off and they either made it home and didn't care enough to go back and find it or they (more likely) died of exposure, and no one knew to look for it.
The Mafia dumped a body in the desert and as they were dragging it to unload it or bury it, the corpse lost a gold ring that the goons either didn't miss or didn't want to take the time and risk of looking for.
It was caught on a bird's foot and got dropped out in the middle of nowhere.
It was on the hand of someone back in the pioneer days and they lost it, and it's been lost a hundred years or more.
Conclusions:
The ring was not lost in a carefree moment of joy. People do not have carefree moments of joy in the middle of the desert.
None of the ways I listed it may have been lost are very probable:
It's not likely that someone's car breaking down caused the person to loose the ring. Not that close to the Las Vegas strip. If their car had broken down on the highway they would have walked towards the lights of the strip, which would have been the opposite way. There would be no real reason for anyone who was just lost to have been out where I found the ring.
It's possible the Mafia dumped a body that lost a ring in the desert. As near as fifty years ago, the Mafia was seriously involved in the casino business of Las Vegas. This still doesn't feel right though, for two reasons that I see. First, because we hadn't found a body in all the prep work today for the building site and I would imagine that goons wouldn't drag a body too far, they would just drive up to where they wanted to dump it. Secondly, although the Mafia controlled early Las Vegas, they didn't condone murders in Nevada. That was considered bad luck as it attracted the FBI. People to be "offed" were normally taken to California or Colorado.
Actually, the bird theory is the best I can think of right now.
I doubt it lost in the pioneer days, the ring doesn't look that old. Actually I don't think it's been lost that long, it looks freshly polished.
In all these scenarios (except the bird one) the person who lost this ring was dead or about to be when they lost it. I'm probably not going to be slipping it on to check out it's fit on me anytime soon.
So those are my lists. Two hours ago I was joking about the likelihood of my trying on the ring. It's a morbid idea really, like stealing clothes from an embalmer.
Why, then, do I really want to see how it looks on my hand? It's really, a very, weird, ring.
PART II
DURING WHICH THE COUNCIL OF THE WISE TAKES A FIELD TRIP
The heat of the day had gone, but it was being released gradually from the earth maintaining almost comfortable warmth. But the sun was gone, and soon the desert would drop into temperatures cold enough to make one's ear points snap off. Not that that had ever happened to anyone Legolas had ever known, but in the days when there had been other elves to have ear points, which might snap off in extreme cold, Legolas had rarely been in the desert at night.
There had been general discussion on how to find the ring, ranging from Galadriel's mirror (in storage and not available until tomorrow at nine o'clock standard time) to the members of the council wandering around the desert in the general area Elrond's vision had indicated until someone got a "vibe." In the end it had been Legolas who had thought of metal detectors. They had decided they could mix the "vibe" idea while using the metal detectors, which might, or might not detect the magical ring. The suggestion to use the palantir had been quickly shot down. Saruman's treachery might have long gone unknown had Gandalf not inadvertently come across the seeing-stone. But once found, Saruman had declared his own guilt, a guilt which had gnawed at him for thousands of years, and he had returned in shame of his actions to Valinor. Gandalf had wondered long and hard for the answer of what to do with palantir, and had eventually put it into storage. After all, they were still all not accounted for and although Mt. Doom had long since crumbled to the earth, who knew what foul place evil eyes might be gazing out from, searching for a twisted hope?
They had swiftly developed a pattern search for the ring, and, working from the center of the build site out, they had been scanning the area in grids. As his own pattern drew him near to Elrond's, he paused and waiting for the older elf to join him. Elrond's own metal detector made a final sweep of his current grid, and resting it on the ground he met Legolas's eyes.
Without preamble, Legolas unloaded the questions that had been pressing on him. "Lord Elrond, not to disparage your vision, but saying that the ring is here, how would it have come to this place?"
Elrond's eyes became distant, only for moment though, his answer was quiet, almost easily missed. "I don't know. But tell me, Thrandulion, do you not also feel that the ring is here."
"With honesty Elrond, I felt stronger this morning that a great evil was here, but now I feel only a lingering darkness. It makes me wonder if my earlier feeling was perhaps influenced by my own desire to have this done, than by any true reason."
For a moment the two elves regarded each other, then both raised their detectors and continued the search, only occasionally seeing the bob of a flashlight across the sand suggesting another council member also searching.
BACK IN THE LUXURIOUS SUITE
I wish I was in Seattle. Seattle is a beautiful city. Seattle has sweet rain, and good people, and sometimes you can hear the ocean no matter where you are. Seattle has a decent baseball team, with the best fans in the baseball. If I was in Seattle I would have never found the ring. If I was in Seattle, I wouldn't keep forgetting why I shouldn't put it on. I want to be home. If I was in Seattle right now, I could look out and see Mt. Rainier's snow caps, well not right now, right now it's night, and you can't see the mountain at night. Can't see the mountain at night. You can't see Mt. St. Helen's from Seattle. My mother said you used to be able to see it from Olympia, but then it blew, a year before I was born and now you can't see it form Olympia, and maybe you never could and maybe mom was exaggerating. Mt. St. Helen's. Why is that important? It's not, only the ring is important, but something seems important about the mountain. It had been acting active a while ago, was it still? I really want to put the ring on. Really Really. Really. I was hungry, but now I only want to put the ring on. I was going to take a shower, but then I wanted to put the ring on. I was going to…
Going to…
Wow. Flashback. Remember how I said that I'm all organized, etceteras? I think I said that, I also think I may be going crazy. But anyways. What was I saying? I was going to say, what was I going to say? I was going to… that's right! I kept saying all the things I was going to do, and it made me think of this time just after high school when a friend of mine was just coming out of a detox center, I'm not sure, but I think I may have mentioned her earlier too. Anyways…I asked her what she was going to do now that she was clean, and she had said that she wasn't sure. She had been going to go to school, she had been going to get a good job, she had been going to… then she had started crying. I remember thinking how sad it was to have all those "going tos." I had promised myself I would never have a similar list someday, I was going to do all my going-to-dos. Admittedly, my list of going-tos isn't too serious right now, but I don't like the pattern. I'm acting high, I'm acting like someone jonesin' for a fix and that's not like me. I'm an architect for God's sake! I don't act like this. I don't.
I wish I was in Seattle, if I were in… wait, that's bad too. Wishes and going-tos are the same thing right now. And it's the ring doing it to me. I don't know how. Remember the list, I know I already mentioned the list, the list is now covered in drawings of circles… rings. I'm going nuts, good old fashioned 'Donovan's Brain' nuts. I pick up the list; you can hardly make out the words anymore. I've written something I don't remember writing; "it's precious to me." That sends a chill up my spine. I wrote something I don't remember, that sounds a little like a blackout. If I were in a better state of mind (but my mind is returning to a better state, I can feel it) I would have reasons for this. Tainted water, heat stroke, other, maybe better reasons, but right now I feel that I know it's the ring. I have to get rid of it. I pick it up and walk to the window, but remember that windows don't open in Vegas (people lose big, then they, well I'm sure you follow). Okay, can't throw it away, I'll flush it. Wait. What if someone else finds it? It's not likely, but it is possible. Is it right to cast this madness to someone else? Some random person? Part of me screams 'yes!' But something else says no. And though that part is quieter, I find myself obeying.
I walk to my suitcase, I never unpack in hotels, my mother said that was the best way to lose something. There's a small lock on the front compartment, where my jewelry is. I don't want to look for the key, so with a quick, savage little twist, I break the lock and rummage through until I find a small box. I open it and shake out my pearl ring (until today my most prized-possession, a thing I would never not show utmost care for). I take the empty ring box back to the table, and carefully fit the ring into it. I snap the lid shut and feel even better. I stare at the box. The overwhelming urge to rip it open and force my finger into the ring comes over me, but I banish it, if not from my mind, to the back of it. I start to walk away, but come back and, grabbing the box and opening the top drawer of the standard hotel chest in one move, cast the box to the back of the drawer and slam it closed. My relief is almost painful.
Walking out of the main room (remember, this is a luxurious suite) I make my way to the bedroom and cast myself upon the bed, not even pulling down the comforter.
Sleep claims me.
