Disclaimer: I do not own Frodo, Rosie or Sam or any of the other people mentioned in this story. I do not own the Shire or Rivendell or any of the other places mentioned here. JRR Tolkien owns the lot and I'm only borrowing them. I hope he will forgive me if I mangle them a little, if I promise to return them to him, intact, when I've finished. I'm not making any money out of it.

CHAPTER 1

Frodo rolled over, punching the pillow and pulling the covers closely about his shoulders. It was early September and it had been unseasonably frosty all day, the air filled with the musky scent of damp loam and the horizons shrouded in light mist. In the little hearth the fire was dying and he did not have the energy to get up and add more wood to it. He should have stoked it up before retiring, Sam had obligingly filled the wood basket, but he had felt so weary that it had taken all his strength to undress and fall in to bed.

According to the clock on the mantle he had slept for an hour before he had been startled out of sleep by another nightmare. He had lain, his heart hammering and his ears straining to hear whether he had awoken anyone else with his cries, calming a little when he heard no footsteps in the hall, no tap at his door. That was four hours ago and he had tossed and turned ever since. The same pattern had repeated itself for weeks now and he knew that Sam and Rosie were growing concerned for him. It had reached the point where he only slept when his body's total exhaustion compelled him to: too many times had he awoken, screaming and roused the rest of the small household.

Feeling too restless to lie there any longer he sat up, deciding that he may as well write a little more. Across from his bed he caught site of himself in his dresser mirror. He had not bothered to draw the curtains and a full moon nearly filled the round window, like the inverse iris of some huge eye. He shuddered as the image of another eye, crimson with flame, invaded his mind, and focussed on the hobbit in the mirror, rather than the window reflected behind him.

Frodo Baggins did not recognise the person that stared back at him. He had never been a particularly chubby hobbit but now he looked positively emaciated. Some of the weight he had lost in Mordor had not returned, despite the best efforts of Sam and Rosie to fatten him up. More recently, his appetite had faded with his sleep, and he had lost the few pounds that he had managed to regain. The night's restless tossing had turned his hair into a veritable crows nest and a stray moonbeam glinted on a few grey strands amongst the brown. He accepted their presence without rancour, chalking it up as just another fact of his new existence, even though he knew he should not be going grey at his age. He hesitated to call his present existence, life.

The face that looked at him from the glass was not that which had smiled back so merrily two years before. The high cheekbones which had created apple like cheeks when he laughed now only served to stretch the pale skin tighter, emphasising the hollows at his jaw that looked almost skull like in the moonlight. The eyes were the eyes of a stranger. Once deep pools of sparkling blue, they were now blank and flat, faded as though too many tears had washed the colour away.

He pulled his gaze away and considered, once again, getting up and trying some more writing in Bilbo's book. That would mean going to the study, for it was on his desk, where he had been working that afternoon. Remembering where he had got to in the tale, he decided that this hour of the night was perhaps not the best time to be writing about the ash fields of Mordor. Another part of his mind scoffed at the thought. Was this hour any different to any other hour these days? Frodo marvelled that his body could feel so weary and yet his mind be so wide awake.

In the alcove by the fireplace was a small desk and upon it sat his diary. It had been a present from Lord Elrond, slipped to him on the morning of the hobbit's departure from Rivendell. The healer had suggested that writing his thoughts down may help him come to terms with them. At the moment that idea did not seem to be working, possibly due to the fact that he had not opened it for at least two weeks. Well, he was wide awake now and there was nothing else to do.

He lit a candle and slipped out of bed, pulling on his dressing gown against the chill. Picking up the candle he padded across the room and sat down. Rosie had apparently been tidying again and Frodo sighed as he searched for pen and ink, finally opening the drawer and finding them set neatly at the front. Pausing, his hand hovering over the ink bottle, he reached instead for a small packet. Drawing it out, he unfolded it and let the contents fall on to the red leather of the desk top.

The dried and brittle leaves of loralya lay innocently before him. In one of his darker moods, some weeks before, he had been walking among the trees near Bywater when he had seen the climber, twining innocently up an old sycamore. How this one had escaped the farmer's notice he could not imagine. When discovered, the plant was always rooted up for its leaves and bark were poisonous, bringing a sleep so deep that the victims body just shut down as heart beat and respiration slowed and ceased. Frodo had stripped off six of the leaves and stuffed them guiltily in his pocket.

When he had got home, however, he had been met at the door by a harassed Rosie. She was trying to get the laundry done but poor Elanor was starting to teethe and the little mite's cheeks were pink as she whimpered fretfully in her mothers' arms. She would not be set down, needing the comfort of another. Frodo had rushed to his room, wrapped the leaves and thrown them in the drawer and then returned to try and soothe Elanor while Rosie got on with her work. They had discovered, within hours of the child's birth, that Uncle Frodo had a knack for calming her and he had not failed them that day. He had carried her in to the parlour, where he had sat by the fire, cradling her in his arms and singing softly until she fell asleep. He had sat, mesmerised by her sleeping face for hours, until Sam returned from his business in Michael Delving and carried his daughter away to her crib.

She had looked so peaceful in sleep. No dark shadows crowded her dreams. No huge shapes crawled across her memory. No flaming eye burned away her intellect, exposing the unclean soul beneath.

Frodo's eyes refocused on the desk top. The leaves scattered about his maimed right hand were so desiccated that one breath would blow them away. Frodo saw his life within those leaves. He was dried up, bitter and so empty that he hardly weighed upon the world. Picking one up, careful not to crumble it away to dust between his finger and thumb, he held it up before the candle flame. The light shone through it dimly, giving the impression of a beautiful autumn red glow, but when he drew his hand away the leaf was grey and dusty once more.

He could no longer live within the glow of Sam and Rosie's love. Their presence gave him a framework, the illusion that he was living his life, but it was a sham, a dim reflection of life. It was time to leave.

Gathering up the loralya he stood by the door for a moment, listening for any sound of wakefulness amongst the other occupants of Bag End. His ears were met only by the occasional pop of wood in a hearth or the creak of panelling, contracting in the cold, early morning air. Candle in hand he slipped down the hall to the back of the smail, where the kitchen was warm from the banked range. He set a kettle upon the hob and pulled an earthenware mug and small teapot from the shelf.