"I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don't feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again."

carrying the world around his neck

"I see no hope of it now. But I've got to do the best I can."

the road goes ever on; | intro!

^{He wanders aimlessly, the feet beneath him torn from rock and hard earth that did not come from this place. No, a much darker place, darker than the mind can tell, but carried within it just the same.}

^{The structures boast impressive feats, sights that would remind him of the dwarven halls of Moria, fair to behold in their forgotten splendor. But not now. Not when he is lost, more lost than he ought to be.} 

^{In the end the hobbit’s  fate is to be lost, but not here. Not now.}

^{“Sam? Smeagol?"} 

^{His voice calls out in a strangled rasp, tone on the cusps of fatigue. It is no small thing to look upon one who could barely reach an average man’s waist. He is tattered from head to toe, not merely walking but staggering.} 

^{He walks about but he does not see. Only feels, with hands caked in dirt the chafed, ruined skin around his neckline, like finely painted scars.}

^{..And no chain to accompany it.} 

^{"An experiment? Could I truly have done nothing to stop them?”} The hobbit speaks in a voice that implies little of speech, more a ragged exhale than a sound.

^{The further he fingers the bloodied marks, the closer they are to breaking the skin. His hands come away stained, hand messily wiping at a tattered green cloak that shone so new once, so long ago he can’t quite remember.}

^{“Samwise? Smeagol?”}

^{The Ringbearer has lost the One Ring. The cost is the entire world borne to suffer it. His failure. A failure he cannot even remember making.}

^{Sights, landmarks, all are lost to him.  He can only think of Samwise, of his wretched charge.}

^{I have failed them all. It has been for nothing. It is gone. They have taken it from me and I have no real power within me to reclaim it as I am — already it has taken so much. What am I to do? Hope is lost, I yet live but..}

^{—But it is gone!} 

^{A wall provides a cold, but steady enough perch to provide the ragged traveler a place to sit, and sit he does, if not sag, slowly, sliding downwards with the full weight of a single truth.}

^{They had taken the Ring.}

^{Five minutes, six or more, it matters little. Frodo knows he cannot sit forever, and so he rises, on legs weakened by a thing he cannot find.}

^{At the very least, he must find them. Sam, Smeagol, for him it was that Sam ignored his master’s orders and followed, and he would not see his friend wander lost and alone.} 

^{Not even Smeagol, would he wish such a thing.}

^{And so the hobbit goes onward, uncertain of where, and sinking beneath an entirely different burden.}

^{The burden of failure.}