Our favorite dwarf speaks....mostly movie-based.
~Side by Side~
What about side by side with a friend? Aye, I could do that.
What more can I say of the one thing yet unknown to me? This time I think he'll win. And here I am side by side with you and if it is to be as someday it must then surely there are worse ways to die. Better than to wither away with cold age in a shivering bed or to succumb to the fury of ravaging disease that seeks to level all vestiges of character with the relentless shafts of pain and madness or to fall into the pits of senseless accident or folly. Aye, if Death must come, and so it must, then there are worse ways than to fall fighting side by side with a friend; I can do that.
True, I'll never know the joys of wife and fireside of watching the bairns roll and laugh on the hearth while the bread bakes sweetly and the rain falls unheeded on the golden thatch; such is not for the likes of me. But, so be it. I laugh at the face Death shows me; warrior that I am, thinks he that he can stare me down? Let him do his worst! I spit at him. I bite my thumb. I sneer! Which is not to say I face him without fear not merely of the spear or the axe that hews the flesh off my bones like the bark from a tree or the fire that may roast me as a pheasant on a spit; but also of the unknown that already looms above as a purple shapeless cloud with all blackness behind.
I'll not lie and say I face these things without a qualm. I say only that there be worse ways, if one must die, than this, knowing the fate of the entire world lies in my keeping, as a golden lock of hair, and I have been chosen to stand side by side with friends. I wish only that I might know what is to come after, and if I shall revel in the prospect of endless peace and light or if I shall secretly long for the savor of smoke and blood. But I should only rejoice in the knowledge that if I must die then I will fall side by side with companions who have moved in their arms and hearts linked irrevocably with mine. Very well, I shall rejoice if I must. This I can do!
So...what are we waiting for?
|