/lit/ - Literature

He held the candle close to her eye,momentarily held by the subtle reflections dancing in the iris from its gentle flickering. With an effort he pressed the button on his tape machine and started recording.

"September 12th,1903. Three days have we observed this marvelous find:the Princess Khui embalmed living eons ago,perfectly preserved,as if asleep with open eyes,or seemingly entranced. Her regalia matches the description we found in the outer tomb,and Professor Plumes notes corroborate the time period the excavation has unearthed,yet I stare not at a desiccated corpse,but a living woman in her early twenties, without blemish nor pulse. I can but speculate-" A tap of a heavy object on his shoulder paused his recollections. Turning,he stared down the barrels of a shotgun,jostling his glasses and amusing the gunman.
"Doc,"he said,"let the nigger be."
He switched off the recorder with an angry snap of his fist. "How dare you! This is a royal personage, heir to an ancient dynasty reaching beyond this millennium!" He would have continued, espousing her remarkable preservation and discovery,but the gunman was already bored. The barrels moved up from his chest to his face.
"Nigger's a nigger,Doc. Dressing one up like a Christmas tree don't change nothing. Whatever she us,she can keep a bit. Problem's out there." He tilted his head to the crudely barricaded window of the but. Odd shambling steps milled about just beyond the fence in the dark, the occasional moan and gurgle adding to the summer sussuration of crickets protesting the evening heat.
"Them THINGS are out there Doc. Don't rightly know what they are,don't likely care. Just wanna get away from them,ya hear? And you waxing poetical 'bout niggers don't help that none. Leaves me mighty unmoved,shall we say. " The Professor merely glared at the lunk,a chance companion that proved as chancy as the lurking horrors outside. A woman's cackle broke the tension between them. Over on the cot,the gunman's lady friend was getting her hand bound up in rough cloth,hiding a recent severe burn.Whether she was sister or lover or both was a subject the Professor refused to consider,but acknowledged their similar low tastes. She sighed,smiling impishly at her nurse tying off the bandages.

"Nuthin' moves you much,Filbert,lest it be cold cash or hard liquor. Why not go easy on the Doc? All that learnin' might be good for something. Even for you. That Queeny is a pert lil thing,and I can confess Doc taking a shine to her,can't you darlin'?" This last part was offered teasingly to the nurse,who would not dignify it with a response, but did glare sidelong at the seated Princess,masking a touch of jealousy. The Professor rose,and ignoring the shotgun,paced quietly to the window and peered into the night and its indistinct shapes just out of the porch light's reach. "We must get away,certainly. But how can we reach the truck unscathed?" The night held little promise,only shuffling dread.

(Continue?)

At the Council of Elrond,all the Elves knew of him,and he was known to the Dwarves as well,so he's some sort of Valar projection like the Ishtari were. The fact that most of the council wanted to run to him with this little Ring of Doom problem tells us that the power Tom holds is formidable, and Gandalf remarking that it being a little problem to Tom he wouldn't pay it the attention it requires. Only godlike beings see the world as abstractly. Withdrawing into a borderland Tom leeps free of all little problems, until Fate shows up on his doorstep, forcing him to take notice. I wonder if the Barrowdowns were part of this hidden realm,that Frodo reciting the Summoning Rhyme allowed Tom to appear and intervene.

And I wonder what would have happened if Frodo said it on Mount Doom.