Drabble: The Ghosts
The Ghosts
After the great darkness had lifted, then, only then, Frodo knew what he had lost. "Sam," he said, when Bilbo looked at him quizzically over the breakfast table. "Sam."
Bilbo smiled sadly. "It won't last," he said.
"What won't?"
"This."
It didn't. Oh, for a time, Sam was the absence that shaped his days. The cold salt wind from the East hung heavy with regret.
Then it ended; the wind was only the wind.
"I'm sorry," Bilbo said one day.
"No matter," Frodo said, and they sat with their tea, and the hills of Valinor shone with blankly cool indifference.