6. Becoming Like Them

My heart beats too slowly in the cold emptiness.
How I hate this twilight mist
Bleeding all color from the world.
Such an empty meaningless death,
A winter with no hope of spring.
The frost lies so heavily in my arm and side.
This sharp, killing frost.
All life will lie twisted and limp under the dull glitter
Of its embrace
Until all warmth is but a memory.

It is trying to claim me.
Under this frost the ember of my heart yet flares.

Grant that I may have
Courage beyond duty, valor beyond fear;
To die fighting, to spend my last fading strength
Striking out at sure death
Even as it closes in to cage me.

This cold burning;
Far more terrible than fire.
Metal burns away as wood;
My life will burn away, is burning away -
Until I am only smoke.  They are burning me away
With ice, my body falling away like ash
To leave naught but mist,
A grieving, sorrowing winter breath upon the wind.
Drifting into the darkness.
Can any man recall his breath?
Once spent, it slips away on the night wind
Forever.

I tried, Gandalf. I tried, Strider.
I tried, Sam....
Dear Bilbo....
But all of you are lost to me in this unreality.
Lost...
Only they are real to me anymore.

I am becoming
Like them.

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