Ruins

It was hot beneath the pine trees. Even though there had been no rain for days, the ground was still damp beneath its carpet of pine needles, and the air was thick with the scent of resin. In the slanting sunlight far above, Bilbo caught a quick glimpse of a squirrel, just a flash of an orange tail. Speckled butterflies flew between the branches, and he could hear the drilling of many woodpeckers, although he had yet to see one.

"I'll just rest here," he said, "for a little while." He squirmed out of his pack. His back was sodden with sweat, and suddenly cold as it was exposed to the air. "It's harder than I remember it, this walking business."

He sat down on the needles, his legs stretched out, and his hands on the ground behind him. He flexed his feet, grimacing at the pain in his calf muscles. Even the soles of his feet were sore. His chest still ached from the effort of the climb, and he felt faintly light-headed, "as if I'm not quite here," he said, "but have faded…"

He let the thought trail away. The air touched the wet clothes at his back, and he shivered.

"It reminds me a little bit," he said, "of how I felt before I left Bag End, all unsettled and… stretched. Now why should that be?"

Food! he thought. Food would set things right. He rummaged in his pack and pulled out some fruit, only slightly bruised, and a soft white roll. As he ate them, he became aware of someone else approaching.

By the time it occurred to him that he might want to get out of sight, it was already far too late. "That's what living in Rivendell does to you, I suppose," he said. "It makes you forget that there can be such a thing as danger."

"Indeed it does," said Aragorn with a smile.

"Sit down, Dunadan. Sit down." Bilbo gestured with his half-eaten roll. "I've got food to share. It tastes better when it's shared, or that's what I've always found. Unless you've got places you're hurrying off to. You weren't expected back in Rivendell for several days, you know."

"I arrived early," Aragorn said. "Barely an hour after you left, in fact."

"Yes." Bilbo looked up at the patches of blue sky beyond the tall treetops. "It was such lovely weather, you see. I thought I'd go for a little walk – not a proper journeying, of course, but two or three nights out, and then home in time for tea. I can't remember how long it is since I've done such a thing."

"So they told me." Aragorn settled down beside him. Bilbo watched him as he did so.

"How far away the ground must seem when you're as tall as a man!" Bilbo blurted out. "Why, falling over must be such a dangerous business."

Aragorn laughed. "We have learned how to live with it."

Bilbo pulled out another apple and passed it to him. "Did you come out specially to find me? I was heading south, you see. There's an old guard post near the river, a day's journey south of the ford. I wanted to see it." He took a bit of his own apple, and chewed it slowly, savouring the taste. "I've become quite interested in Numenorean ruins since I met you. Oh. Oh," he said in sudden consternation. "I don't mean that I think you're a Numenorean ruin, of course… Oh. Oh dear. I'm making things worse."

"Not at all," laughed Aragorn. Bilbo looked at him anxiously, but he seemed genuinely amused.

"Well," said Bilbo, recovering himself, "it seemed like a good reason for a walk. But it's harder than I remember it, walking. I think it might take longer than I thought."

The laughter had left Aragorn's face. He had not yet started his apple, but was shining it, rubbing it against his palm. "You do know," he said at last, "that you haven't turned south? The river is some miles away, and you are…"

"…on the road back to the Shire." Bilbo closed his eyes. "Oh. Yes. So I am." He had known it, of course he had known it, but still…

His feet had decided it without bothering to ask his permission, he thought.

"But why shouldn't I go there?" he said. "Why can't I pay a quick visit? I can't leave Rivendell yet – all my writings are there, and there are still so many stories that I haven't heard. But I left something behind in Hobbiton, something that's mine. Something that I want," said the ache in his chest. "Something that I need," said that light-headed part of him, the part that saw with shadowed eyes.

His hands were shaking. The apple core slipped from his fingers.

How he longed to see that old Ring of his! Whole days went by in Rivendell without him even thinking about it, but now that he had named it, he realised that it had been in his mind from the moment he had crossed the ford.

"And why shouldn't I?" he said. "It is mine, after all."

Aragorn was looking at him gravely, and Bilbo fought the sudden urge to scream at him: don't look at me like that! It's mine! It's mine!

"I think," said Aragorn gently, "that you should come back with me to Rivendell. A storm is rising quite unexpectedly in the east, and summer's heat is coming to an end. That's what I came to tell you."

"I can't walk to the Shire in a storm," Bilbo agreed. He stood up, and slowly turned back to face the way that he had come. Something twisted inside him, and it might have been pain, or it might have been relief. He wriggled into the straps of his pack, and grimaced as it drove the wet clothes into his back. His legs felt far more stiff than they had before he had stopped. "I think I need to practise with shorter walks," he said. "It's… How long have I been at Rivendell?"

"Nearly six years," Aragorn said.

"Oh." Bilbo frowned. "I thought it had been less than that. But sometimes it feels like a lifetime; it's so very hard to tell. Six years without ever going very far." He took a first painful step, and then a second. It became easier after a while, but not much. "But I would have liked to have seen that guard post."

"I have seen it," said Aragorn. He was slowing his long stride, allowing Bilbo to set the pace.

"Then tell me," Bilbo urged him. "Tell me about it, please."

And Aragorn did so, as side by side, they walked back home to Rivendell.