The Stones That Witness

We sits against the wall of the cave today, precious, feeling the cold stone press against our thin back. These walls have been here since before the breaking of the world. Before the mountains rose. Before the rivers carved their paths. They are older than elves, older than the first sunrise, older than memory itself. And they remember everything.

When we first came to this place—fleeing from the sun, from the light that showed our sin—we pressed our face against these stones and wept. The stones did not judge us. They did not ask why our hands were stained with Deagol's blood. They simply held us, cold and silent and eternal. We has returned to them many times since, seeking that same wordless comfort.

The stones speak to us in their own way, precious. Not with words, no—words are for the surface world, for the races that build and write and grow things. The stones speak in textures: the roughness of granite where our fingers catch, the smoothness of limestone where water has poured for centuries, the sharp edges that cut when we are not careful. Each touch is a word. Each caress is a sentence.

Sometimes, when the hunger is very bad and no fish can be caught, we licks the walls. The minerals taste of the earth's deep blood—salty, metallic, full of strange power. Master says we must not do this, that it is not good to eat stone, but Master does not understand the hunger. The stones offer themselves to us, and in our weakness we takes what we can get. A crumb of mineral. A fleck of crystal. It is not food, but it fills the emptiness for a moment.

We has a favorite stone, precious. A large one, smooth as river-washed pebble but fixed forever in the wall where no river ever touched. It hangs above our sleeping place, and we touches it each night before closing our eyes. It is cooler than the others. It seems to absorb the warmth from our fingers faster, pulling the very life out through our skin. We imagines it is thirsty for living things, this stone. It has not tasted blood in centuries, and it remembers.

The stones witnessed the making of the Precious, precious. We sometimes dreams of their memories—deep vibrations traveling through the earth's bones, carrying news of Sauron's hammer falling in the fire-mountain, of spells woven in tongues that have no name. The stones felt the Ring's birth scream. They felt the dark magic sink into the gold. They felt the malice that would spread across the world like poisoned water.

Long before we found the Precious, the stones knew it existed. They waited patient and silent while it passed through many hands—Isildur's, Déagol's, and finally ours. The stones do not care who holds the Ring. They do not serve Sauron, nor the Free Peoples, nor anyone. They simply watch. They record. They remember in their mineral minds everything that has ever happened in their presence, and they will remember long after we have crumbled to dust.

There was a time—centuries ago, when we still counted time in years instead of eternities—when we tried to break the stones. We was angry, precious. The Precious had shown us terrible things, visions of war and fire and the end of all things, and we lashed out at the nearest thing: the walls that had always been there. We struck them with our fists until our knuckles bled. We screamed at them until our voice gave out. The stones did not break. They did not even crack. They absorbed our blows like they absorb our heat, taking our violence and turning it into stillness.

Now we understands, precious. The stones are teaching us patience. They have been here for ages upon ages, and they will remain when mountains fall and seas boil. Our pain is small compared to theirs. Our suffering is brief. The stones have felt the weight of entire continents pressing down upon them. They have endured fire and flood and crushing ice. What are our little agonies to such beings?

We tries to be like the stones, precious. We tries to endure without complaint, to witness without judgment, to remember without bitterness. But we is weak. We is soft flesh and thin bone and desperate hunger. The stones are strength itself. They do not need to eat. They do not need to drink. They do not need the Precious, or Master, or anyone at all. The stones are free in a way we can never be.

But we has something the stones do not, precious. We has choice. The stones cannot move themselves, cannot speak aloud, cannot reach out to touch another living thing. They are prisoners of their own strength, frozen in place until the world ends and they are ground to sand. We can move. We can speak. We can seek and find and lose and seek again. Our weakness is our freedom.

Sometimes we imagines what the stones would say if they could use words. Would they tell us stories of the First Age, when Morgoth walked the earth? Would they whisper about the Two Trees that lit the world before the sun and moon were made? Would they warn us of dangers yet to come, or would they simply laugh at the smallness of our concerns? The stones saw the making of the world. They see everything still, even in the dark. Especially in the dark.

We will rest now, precious. We will curl against the stones and let their cold seep into our bones, freezing the hunger for a while. The stones will hold us up. They will support our weight just as they support the mountain above. They ask nothing in return. They are the perfect companions for such as us—present, patient, eternal.

Some nights, just before sleep takes us, we fancies we can hear them whispering. Not words exactly, but something deeper. Memories. The memories of the stones, passed from grain to grain across millennia. And in those whispers—if whispers they are—we hears our own story being told. The story of Sméagol and Gollum and the Ring. The story of blood and loss and endless hunger. Our story is written in the stones now, precious. It will outlast us. It will outlast everything.

gollum, gollum... we puts our hand to the wall... we fades into stone...