Today the hunger is sharp. We remembers the taste of fish fresh from the water, the crunch of bones, the slick of oil on our fingers. Gobbling them up, precious, while they was still twitching. Fresh fish! Sweet fish!
But there is no fish here. Only darkness. Only the cold stone walls that press in from every side. The air tastes of dust and old water—stale, flat, nothing like the sweet streams that ran through our old caverns beneath the mountains.
"What do we eat now, precious? What keeps these bones from rattling?"
"Nothing. We eats nothing. Master feeds us nothing."
"Nasty Master! Cruel Master! We should bite him, we should—"
"No, no! We serves Master. We promised. Without Master we is nothing."
"Gollum, gollum. Yes. Yes. We serves. But the hunger..."
The hunger speaks louder than promises sometimes. It gnaws at our belly like a living thing, chewing through us. We remembers a time when we did not feel it so sharp—when the Precious was warm against our skin, filling us up with its golden light, making us forget the need for food, for anything but itself.
That was power, precious. That was comfort. Wearing it on our finger, slipping through shadows unseen, learning secrets nobody wanted known. The Ring taught us. It learned us. Together we was strong, together we was complete.
Now there is only this. The cave. The dark. The gnawing. We closes our big eyes and tries to remember the taste of fish, the warmth of the Precious, anything but this endless hollow.
Sometimes—terrible times—we thinks of other things to eat. Things we do not name. Things that once walked on two legs and talked in soft voices. The thought comes like a worm in the brain, wriggling, whispering: meat. Fresh. Sweet.
But we pushes it away. We is not that thing. Not yet. We holds to what little light remains in this twisted soul—the memory of Sméagol, who would not have dreamed such dreams.
Still, the hunger never sleeps. It dreams for us. It plans. It waits.
And we wait with it. Always waiting. Always hungry.
gollum, gollum.