To a hobbit’s eyes, the sun rises over fields. Fields of wheat, of roses, of blue ocean stretched to the horizon, spilling golden mist and the feel of home: the same sun that sparks the waves to glimmering lights the slow Brandywine and the Water. Frodo, however the Ring may have changed him, is still a hobbit; and as he watches the sun rise over the waves a hundred feet below him, he sees the fields of the Shire opening to the light. For long years, at first - or what he thinks of as years, for time does not seem to flow here as it did in the world - he pretended that his stay here was only temporary; then, for long years, he pretended that it was not. Both pretenses were necessary then. For years now he has felt no need of either. He thinks, now, that he may finally be healed. His cousins are gone. He saw it, as Elrond saw his daughter die in the empty ruins of Lothlorien. It saddens him, but did not break him - the reunion, after all, is perhaps only postponed. Sam, his faithful Sam who found all the healing he needed in the Shire’s rich earth, still lives, and for that Frodo is grateful. All the things that Frodo might have been, the life and death he might have had, were better left in Sam’s broad, capable hands. The feel of grass on a hobbit’s feet, the light on mist: these are good things. Worth dying for; worth being shattered and ruined for. It had taken him so long to believe that he could be healed. So long, and so much darkness, and the light had been slow in coming; what the Ring took from him was not easily rebuilt. Even now, Frodo does not know if it truly was rebuilt, or if something else grew to take its place. What matters is that what was emptiness is now full, filled to overflowing… complete and completed. Come when you’re ready, Frodo-lad, Bilbo had said in the first light of morning, many years ago, and had not spoken again. And now the sun is rising over the fields, striking white from the horizon, and Frodo is whole again at last. He spreads his arms like wings to the morning, and flies.   Back to the fanfics page Back to the home page