For Those That Feel Hopeless....

...For those that feel hopeless...

...

He is so tired. Day by day, hour by hour, the ring grows heavier. She knows each step he takes brings her closer to her deathbed and so she fills his heart with a sorrow so heavy that it now drags him down to the broken ground. His heart aches in his chest from the weight of it and his voice rasps quietly against the shattered white stones as he realizes something.

"I can't do this, Sam."

Across from him, also taking shelter from the Winged Nazgul amid  the white stones, Sam looks up. He knows what Frodo means.

"I know." He tells him, sounding as if he might finally break down and cry. "It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here."

Only there is no use wishing they were somewhere else now, he realizes, and crying will help even less than wishing.

"But we are." He says in a stronger voice. "It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?"

Frodo has been wondering the same thing and he hopes that Sam has an answer, because he cannot see the way out anymore. All that remains now is the weight of the ring where she rests, deceptively small, against his chest. He cannot even remember the Shire anymore...

But Sam doesn't know any of this, for which Frodo is glad. Otherwise, he may have stopped speaking right there, with that question hanging between them like an axe.

"But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow." Sam tells him in voice filled with hope. "Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something."

Frodo's not sure if he believes his friend, but he has to know the answer. He has to hear what they're supposed to be holding onto. He had a feeling he knew what it was before, but now he cannot remember what it is...

It is all he can do to speak and even then his voice is weary and threadbare.

"What are we holding onto, Sam?"

Sam doesn't tell him right away. Instead he leans over and grabs Frodo under his arm and helps pull him back up to his feet. He steadies him when Frodo threatens to fall with the weight of the ring and he does not let go of his shoulder as he answers, blue eyes very bright.

"That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.”

...