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.

7. A Different Sky

Bingo #: B10

Prompts: sky blue; "over the river and through the woods"

Not in his wildest fantasies, not in his most terrifying nightmares, had Sam Gamgee ever dreamed this sort of adventure would befall him. Gamgees didn't even cross the Water if they could help it, much less the distant River- clear on the edge of tidings from the other Farthings!- but Sam had done both in but a few days' time.

Now he found himself in the dead-center of the Old Forest, the very last place on earth he had thought this exciting new journey to lead him. As he sat resting near this strange, muddy river that Mr. Merry had called the Withywindle, he glanced up at the clear, blue, picture-perfect autumn sky above his head; it seemed somehow that it should be different here than it had been all the days of his youth in what now seemed as far off as another life entirely.

It was, and it wasn't, and Sam felt with a sudden profundity that if the sky was different now, it would change many times more ere this adventure had ended.