Homesick

homesick
cause I no longer know
where home is

Homesick – Kings of Convenience

“Thirteen months to the day, since Gandalf sent us on our long journey, we found ourselves looking upon a familiar site.

We were home.”

A glance was drifting to a stretched meadow, green and brown in the beginning of the autumn. To a stripe of a crystal-hued stream gleaming under the sun. Everything looked so serene and quiet, untainted by all the evil and malevolence, sweat and blood, weariness and tears tarnishing every soul and body in the world away from here.

Frodo’s hands shook slightly as he gripped the reins dangling off his pony, Strider’s, neck. The hobbit’s breath hitched every single second, his eyes burning with tears, he feeling his spirit ready to bounce away any time.

This was home. It had to be. Frodo were finally home; all of them were: Sam, Merry and Pippin. No more, no less. The fact that every one of them safely returned to The Shire was something they had to count as more than a blessing. A miracle, more like it.

Yet Frodo could not bring himself to say to himself that he was –

Home, he clenched his eyes shut.

Home. He gritted his teeth.

Home. And a trickle of tear melted beneath his lashes.

No, this was not his home. Frodo could not stand the airy breeze on his hide, or the fine mists obscuring the violets. These beauties were not for him. His body rhythm had been accustomed to those vile states: the constant tugging at his heart to claim the Ring, the way he had to be always on guard, the threats to swoon at all times.

Frodo hung his head.

Had those been home, then? Had he been so low and degraded, relinquishing his very soul, eventually, to the command of the Dark Lord?

“I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

Frodo longed to banish all that had happened to him in the past year, the time that had been lost, that had taken away everything held dear to him.

Yet, as that was unlikely to ensue, neither was his chance to find –

“Frodo!” Pippin chirped. “Look. It’s Bag End.”

a home.

~ * ~