First Frodo gets you a job washing dishes at the Green Dragon, next thing you know he's shoving Sting in my mouth and telling me the key to living forever is you have to die first.
People were always asking me if I knew Frodo Baggins.
He pushes the sword in deeper, grazing the back of my throat with its point, "Any words to mark this momentous occasion?"
With a sword shoved in your mouth, you can only speak in vowels. Careful vowels, while your tongue slips along the metal surface, tasting old Orc blood.
Three minutes until the Shire explodes, and I'm wondering how Orc blood could taste to damn terrible.
Frodo looks at me with those cold blue eyes that suck you in and spit you out when they've sucked everything useful out of you. He pulls the sword out and I spit on the floor, trying to get the taste out of my mouth. The blade glistens in the twilight, saliva hanging on its surface like dew on fresh grass. He gives me a look.
"I can't think of anything."
And, as I kneel on top of the grass roof of Bag End, with the full knowledge that there are enough fireworks stored beneath us to destroy this entire hillside, I can't help but think back to how this all started. Like how all things start.
With a woman. A woman named Rosie Cotton.
~