A little drabble (A REAL DRABBLE) for @rutobuka2, who’s sick atm ;O;! I hope this heals u a little bit:
Frodo woke with a whimper, turning his head from one side to the other and blinking his eyes open.
“Shh,” Thorin murmured. He gently stroked his hand over the tangled mess of Frodo’s dark curls – matted with sleep, and sweat from a newly broken fever. “I’m here, lad.”
The little hobbit nodded, pressing his face against Thorin’s chest, laying on top of him. When the boy had fallen sick to a vicious cold Thorin’s kind could withstand, he’d offered to look after him. He’d had, as he’d pointed out, his fair share of caring for sick pebbles with Fíli and Kíli over the years, and with Frodo waking every half hour or so, it would be good for someone to sit with him.
Frodo coughed miserably, it ending in a wet sneeze and a whine.
“’M still sick…” he said. “Dis is duh worst cold I eber had…”
“And with only ten long years under your beard, I can believe it,” Thorin replied, placing a cool cloth on Frodo’s forehead. “Here. Take a little of this.” He held the little wooden cup to Frodo’s lips. Inside was a cool chamomile tea, mixed with honey to hide the bitter willow bark, but Frodo only managed a few sips before turning his head away.
Still, a mouthful every so often was better than none. He ran his fingers over Frodo’s head again, handing him one of many handkerchiefs strewn around the bedroom. Frodo blew his nose and handed it back.
Thorin carefully put it aside and then wiped the cool cloth over Frodo’s face.
“Are you hungry? There’s a little summer soup, if you can manage it.”
“No,” Frodo sighed, closing his eyes and looking like the picture of misery. Bilbo had only grown worried about the illness when Frodo – already a little slip of a fauntling, pale and slender – had started refusing meals.
Thorin brushed Frodo’s curls back from his face.
“Are you sure? Not one mouthful?”
Frodo sighed heavily and, without opening his eyes, opened his mouth. Thorin made sure to pack the spoon with the vegetables in the soup, feeding the boy his single mouthful and not pushing for him to take more. He knew all to well that stuffing an unwell pebble – or fauntling – with food often led to a resurfacing.
“Good lad,” he said, feeling Frodo’s limbs getting heavier as the little boy drifted back to sleep.
“Can you sing a song…?” Frodo asked, voice almost inaudible. “Duh far ober one…”
“Of course,” Thorin said, resting his hand on Frodo’s little back and starting to sing.
[Gandalf & Grey] “No, Frodo. The spirit of Sauron endured. His life force is bound to the
Ring and the Ring survived. Sauron has returned. His Orcs have
multiplied. His fortress of Barad-Dur is rebuilt in the land of Mordor.
Sauron needs only this Ring to cover all the lands with a second
darkness. He is seeking it, seeking it, all his thought is bent on it.
The Ring yearns to go home, to return to the hand of its Master. They
are one, the Ring and the Dark Lord. Frodo, he must never find it.”
Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world.
the first time Sauron tried to create a banner for himself went very wrong. a dark lord he may be, an artist he is not. Melkor gets banished to the couch that day
‘This is the Master-ring, the One Ring to rule them all. This is the One Ring that he lost many ages ago, to the great weakening of his power. He greatly desires it – but he must not get it.’
So I was just thinking about those posts you get in the Discworld tag about the way belief works on the Disc and how Vetinari and/or Vimes is so integral to the way Ankh-Morpork works that they might just sort of… not ever die.
You know, the ones like ‘Vimes is going to become a god of policemen and he’s going to hate it”.
Well. What if it happens to both of them? There are two parts to the city, after all. ‘Proud Ankh’ needs taking down a peg or two (or seven) by Sam Vimes, and if anyone can terrify ‘pestilent Morpork’ into being better then it’s Havelock Vetinari. And they can drive each other mad with stealth puns for centuries, if they want.
Also, this would potentially make them literally Law And Order, and that just seems very fitting in a way that would probably annoy them both.
My favourite sort of riff on this is the idea that they aren’t there ALL the time, but if someone who’s taken over their authority or whatever starts fucking up, they become Active.
Sort of like Carrot’s comment in Men At Arms: when you need them, you REALLY need them, but when you don’t, best if they just go away and get on with things (in their cases, being dead). So when things are going all right it’s very quiet and ordinary.
And then when things start going WRONG suddenly you have things like the current patrician waking up to a Very Angry Manifestation of the Late Duke of Ankh, proceeding to remind him or her (would it be matrician, then?) about How Things Are Done (By Law).
Or the abusive Commander of the Watch coming into his or her office to find a calm man, thin man like a predatory flamingo there to discuss the virtues of temperance and accountability and not having his/her Watch-house and/or personal lodgings being literally struck from on high by a meteor (can’t be lightning, Vimes and Io can’t even exchange a civil sentence, but Vimes has always been good at getting around these things).
And yes in the mean time when things ARE quiet, they can watch everything and get on each other’s nerves and it’s basically like Colon’s office except instead of for old street monsters it’s for ancient legends of civil justice who can’t quite stand to even fade away and still have enough people believing and invoking them that they can stick around and growl when people get out of line.
Aw Yiss 