My elements for Marigold's Challenge #34 were:
Someone taken unawares by something or someone.
A badger.
A flood.
A broken-down wagon.
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In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares.
- Abraham Lincoln

By Sorrow Unawares

Pippin started with a jerk of his head.

He oughtn’t to have done that. It meant he had dozed off and one oughtn’t doze off when on watch. And it was the first time they had let him take a turn at being on watch. The fact that Lord Elrond had been hesitant to even let him be part of the company had not completely vanished from the minds of Strider and Legolas. Gandalf was letting them do much of the decision making, so it was that they were well along on the journey, in a place Gandalf had said was called Hollin, before it was agreed upon that Pippin could have a turn at covering the first watch.

And he had dozed off.

He heard a noise and tipped his head a bit to the left to bring it more clearly to his ear. Pippin knew that sound, it was the snort of a badger. That must have been what had awakened him, what had caught him off guard. He let his eyes follow the sound and in the dim light of the not yet risen sun he finally made out the badger, not more than twenty feet away, with the white stripes on his head showing up well in the semidarkness. The badger continued to snort and bark at the hobbit, bringing a smile to the lad. They must have made their camp near to the badger’s sett and Mr. Badger was just finding out he had company as he returned home from his night’s foraging.

“I won’t harm you, Mr. Badger,” Pip whispered to the plump animal.

The badger stopped it’s fussing, tipping it’s head to one side.

“That’s better,” the hobbit murmured. “You know I won’t hurt you, don’t you? Though I’m sure you’ve not met a hobbit before.”

Pippin noticed a darker spot in the side of the small dell in which the company was resting. It was just below and slightly under a bramble of dead branches and holly bushes that in the poor light looked a bit like the ancient remains of a broken-down wagon.

“Is that where your sett is? Have you a nice sized clan?”

The badger sat down while swiveling his head as though to better hear and understand the strange creature’s noises.

“We hobbits are a great deal like badgers, you know. We live in smials that are rather like your setts and many of our clan live in them together. Not all, mind you as that would be much too large and crowded a smial, but a good many of us will live that way. Merry and I live in just such a smial. Well, we each live in our own clan’s smial, not both of us in the same one. And most of us hobbits are on the plump side of things, as are badgers.”

The badger lay down. This was a most fascinating creature.

“I’m from a ways north of here, but we’ve badgers in the Shire. We have stories about kindly badgers taking lost hobbit children into their sett and keeping them safe until light of day. Of course the children aren’t afraid because they are used to living underground. The badgers feed them tea and cakes, then they nudge them back outside so the worried hobbit family can find their lost wee ones. They’re just stories, the sort told to children before they get tucked up for their naps or their bed times. But they are pleasant stories and most of us hobbits have a warm place in our hearts for badgers.”

Pippin looked about. Odd that the sky didn’t seem to be getting much lighter. He looked back at the badger who just lay there, watching him.

“Reassuring stories. Nice to hear if one’s afraid of the dark, or . . . or a storm, or . . . or . . .”

Pippin felt on odd tingling on the back of his neck. He looked around the small dell at the rest of the company lying there, rolled up in their bedding: Frodo, Merry and Sam. Gimli. Legolas. Strider. Boromir. Gandalf. He saw the tumble of rocks that might have once been blocks that might have once been walls. He saw the ring of half buried stones that surrounded a dip in the ground in the center of the dell that might, in ages long past, have been a well. But in the gloom he couldn’t see the far side of the dell. Strange, he thought he had been able to see it when he had taken up his post to watch.

“Or just plain afraid,” Pippin whispered as his arms started having the same tingly feeling as the back of his neck.

And it wasn’t getting any lighter. And the dip in the ground within the circle of stones seemed darker. The air seemed stuffy, and air outside oughtn’t to seem stuffy. It was stuffy like a tunnel, underground in a smial where no one lived any longer.

The badger was beside him now. Its eyes glowed in the dim light of a distant fire. It screamed. The frightful scream that badgers make only rarely.

And a strange gurgling noise arose. And the well became darker. Black water rose, oozing as though its darkness made it thick. It flowed over the stone rim of the well. It inched toward the company, the strange fiery light that lit the badger’s eyes reflecting in slow swirls upon its oily surface.

Pippin was on watch. Pippin needed to do something. Pippin’s mouth opened. His eyes were wide with terror. He strained. He struggled. He was paralyzed and mute.

The water pushed against the sleepers, thicker than spilled molasses. It rolled them before it, coating them with gloom.

Except the wizard.

It engulfed Gandalf. His form vanished beneath its opaque surface. Then it receded, forming a sluggish whirlpool back down into the well in which the upturned face of the old wizard could vaguely be seen slowly spinning away.

Pippin started with a jerk of his head.

Pale moonlight shone in slowly moving patches beneath gently moving leaves. Beside him lay Frodo, Sam and Merry. Pippin buried his face in his blanket and cloak to muffle his sobs. Memories oozed like the thick black water into his conscious thoughts.

They were safe in a talan in a tree in Lothlorien.

He had failed the others’ trust.

Gandalf was not with them.