Shards in a Dustpan

by CrackinAndProudOfIt

Third Age, LotR-centric drabbles and vignettes from B2MeM12, feature many genres and characters, from Aragorn toward Caradhras, to Frodo post-Quest, to the tragic past of Denethor, to everything before, behind, and in-between! Very bookverse.

2. An Empty Prison

Bingo #: I18

Prompt: a character with whom you have something in common

This is a prison. I know it may be difficult to see, for the round windows, the pleasant little patch of garden, the crackling fire with its merry, dancing tongues, but a dungeon of drudgery, of dullness, of dogged deterioration it is, nonetheless. I hate it here; I am so trapped.

How can this be? After all I wanted, all I sacrificed for, was this place: the childhood home that should be filled with rest, healing, and tranquility. To arrive here, only to find it empty, to learn that things can never be the same, is a harder blow than any I have yet taken. I have seen, have done, have suffered too much to find in Bag End, or any of the Shire, the fulfillment I once did. I want to live again. This place's emptiness is more than I can endure.

I am too restless for this stagnant little land and its void corner of our wide world. It would have been better, perhaps, had I never ventured outside its borders, for now that I have tasted the fine delicacy that is life outside of it, quite literally, its familiar cuisine will never again satisfy me. I have been broken, yet somehow my appetite is now insatiable.

There is no way to find my mending by resuming the old life I once had, picking up the book I once was reading yet again, only to start up where I left off. I need to open a new book entirely, flip over a new leaf, for now I know there is no returning. What can follow all I have been through, the bliss, the pain, the sorrow? Nothing.

I suffered, yes, but wounds do not begin to heal because they go untreated, regardless of whether or not one is going to be hurt again: rather they fester. The injury becomes infected and aches worse than it did to begin with, being met with only emptiness, nothing to mar, yes, but nothing to mend.

I want to be free; I cannot go through the meaningless motions of one more day in this meaningless, halfway life. Something has to give.

My hand strays to the fair white gem around my neck. As I finger it, the promise of she who bestowed it upon me returns to my mind, as vividly as on the day she spoke it. If in the Undying Lands there is still no respite, I am lost; I finally decide it: I sail.