There are hollows, yes precious, hollows in the rock and hollows in the heart. We finds them sometimes when we crawls through the deep places, spaces where something was and now is not. Smooth-walled chambers that once held — what? We does not know. Water, perhaps, long ago. Gems, maybe. Or just the weight of mountain pressing down, pressing down, until it left an empty space to breathe.
We stands in these hollows and feels them, feels the emptiness all around. It is different from the dark, the dark is full of things: sounds, smells, the weight of stone overhead. But a hollow... a hollow is a space that wants. It wants to be filled. It remembers being full, yes it does, though we cannot say what it was full of.
Sometimes we fits ourself into these hollows, precious, curls our bones into the shape of the empty space. And for a moment, just a moment, we are not Gollum at all. We are just... part of the hollow. Part of the wanting. The emptiness presses against our skin and it is almost like being held, like being kept, like belonging in a place that has been waiting for something just our size.
The hollows teach, precious. They teach that everything that was full becomes empty in time. The great lakes that were once rivers. The mines that were once mountains. The hearts that were once brave. All hollows, all empty spaces where something precious once lived.
We saw a hollow once, a perfect round hollow in the stone beneath the Misty Mountains. It was the size of a fist, smooth as polished silver, and deep as the memory of pain. We put our hand in it and it fit exactly, exactly, like the hollow was waiting for us, like it had been carved for us alone.
But it was cold, precious. Cold as the dark water. Cold as the days after the Precious was stolen. And we pulled our hand back fast, fast, because the hollow did not want Gollum. The hollow wanted something else, something warm and golden that we did not have.
Sometimes Master leaves hollows too, yes he does. Spaces in his work where something was meant to be. We sees them when we watches — empty waiting-places in the patterns of his making. And we thinks: Master is trying to fill his own hollows, trying to make things that will fit the empty spaces inside him.
But nothing fits for long, precious. Nothing fits for long. The hollow always wins. The hollow waits. The hollow remains.
gollum, gollum.