Eleventy-one. Eleventy-one. A milestone marked by cards and letters, food crates and ale barrels, banners beneath the Party Tree, and strictly no admittance except on party business.
Then Gandalf arrives on his doorstep - so perhaps yes, admittance, too, for very old friends - with the smell of flint and fireworks hanging in the air, and Frodo is smiling. Laughing.
All his adventures, and heartbreak, feel like a lifetime ago.
But there is still that call, deep within his bones, a whisper once that is now grown into less of a clamour and more of a song that winds itself in and around his heart (like it had been, at the very start, at the beginning of all things).
"You mean to go, then?" Gandalf asks him suddenly, over tea and eggs, and something about the Grey Wizard's question startles an answer out of him.
"Yes." He frowns, somewhat surprised at the word, but when he opens his mouth again, there are only more words. "I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, the mountains..."
The Lonely Mountain.
He thinks Frodo would want to see it too. But no, Frodo's place is here. Here, in the green hills and little rivers. Not in cold lakes and dark mountain tombs. Peace and quiet, and good-tilled earth is all the boy needs; he should not need to know of blood and death and (any more) loss.
His fingers tremble around his tea cup, and he chalks it down, as he often does these days, to age and nerves. Tiredness, perhaps. Years that stretched on, perhaps like they were never meant to. Spread, like butter over too much bread.
The worries ease in the haze of the pipeweed, however, and he lets the smoke lull him in that familiar way, slipping his thoughts into the evening dusk. He catches Gandalf's eye, twinkling, unchanging.
Yes. He is quite ready for another adventure.