"The fire speaks no more, precious. Only the ash remains."
"Ash remembers. Ash holds the shape of what was burned."
"We cannot hold ash. It slips through our fingers like water, like time."
"Then let it fall. We are ash too, precious. Ash pretending to be flesh."
"Hush. Even ash has purpose. Even ash falls where it is meant to fall."
The ashes from yesterday's fire still cover the stones, precious. Grey and soft and strange, they paint the cave floor with the memory of warmth. We sits among them now, watching the last embers die, watching the light fade from red to grey to black. The fire has eaten everything we fed it—dry grass, old twigs, the last of our pine needles—and now it sleeps, leaving only this pale blanket of what once burned.
We runs our long fingers through the ash. It is still warm in places, but growing cold now, turning to memory even as we touch it. The grey powder sticks to our thin skin, paints our hands like pale gloves, like the hands of a ghost. A grey ghost in a grey cave, surrounded by the remnants of something beautiful that is now gone.
There was a time when we loved fire, precious. When Sméagol sat by hearths with others, when flames danced in stone circles and told stories with their crackling voices. Fire meant safety then. Fire meant food cooking, meant light pushing back the dark, meant the warmth of companionship. Now fire means only temporary comfort, a brief forgetting of the endless cold before it too becomes ash and silence.
The Precious changed how we see fire. When we wore it on our thin finger, fire was nothing—just light, just heat, easily endured. The Ring made us strong against such things. But now the Precious is gone, and fire is dangerous again, precious. Beautiful and terrible, like so many things we can no longer control.
We blows gently on the grey pile. The ash stirs, rises in a small grey cloud, then settles again, refusing to be completely scattered. It wants to stay together, wants to hold the shape of the fire even after the fire has vanished. We understands this, yes precious. We too cling to shapes that no longer exist.
There are patterns in the ash. If we looks close, we can see where small bones of grass held their structure before surrendering to heat. We can trace the outline of a pine needle, burnt black but still whole, a ghost of green turned to brittle memory. The fire took everything but left these echoes. These shadows of what was consumed.
We remembers the Cracks of Doom. We does not speak of it often, precious, but the memory lives in us like a splinter buried deep. The lava. The heat. The Precious melting, dissolving, becoming part of the fire that made it. We fell with it, yes precious, into that terrible heat, and we should have become ash too. Nothing but ash on the mountain wind.
But we did not burn. We did not become grey. Something kept us whole, kept us crawling, kept us finding our way to this new cave where we sit among cold ashes and remember what warmth was.
Perhaps that is why we gathers ash now, precious. Why we scoops it into our thin hands and lets it sift through our fingers like sand through an hourglass, grey grains counting out moments of time. We collects it, keeps it in a hollow stone. Evidence. Proof that something was here, something existed, something burned bright enough to leave a mark. Even if the mark is only powder. Even if the mark will blow away with the first wind.
The ash of ourselves would be scattered across Mordor now. Lost in the volcanic dust of the mountain. No one would gather it. No one would keep it in memory. We would be part of the landscape, part of the grey horror that place became. Is it better to be ash that is remembered, precious, or ash that is scattered and forgotten?
We does not know. We only knows that we sits here, collecting ash from a fire that warmed us for one night, and feels the weight of all things that pass. The sun will set. The embers will die. The body will become cold. And only the memory of warmth will remain, like ash, like grey, like the soft powder of dreams.
Our memories burn too, precious. They burn all the time. We feels them consuming themselves—moments of joy, moments of love, moments of sunlight on the river—all turning to ash in the mind, leaving only grey impressions. Sméagol burns brightest. He burns every day, his memories of home and family and birthday suppers becoming ash that we brushes away, ash that we barely notice anymore.
One day we will be all ash. Not just in body but in memory too. Last to be forgotten, Gollum will be, last to lose the fire that keeps him crawling. But even that flame will gutter, precious. Even that flame will become cold. And who will sit beside us then, gathering our ash into careful piles, remembering that we once burned?
We looks at our hands. Grey now with the dust of dead fire. Thin and trembling. These hands once held fish from the river, once held the Precious, once held Deagol by the throat and would not let go until the light left his eyes. So much burning. So much ash. We carries it all.
The cave is quiet. The ash settles around us like snow that has forgotten how to be white. We will stay here a while longer, precious. We will watch the grey spread, watch the last warmth fade, watch the darkness reclaim what the fire briefly pushed away. This is the way of all things. Burn bright, then become ash. Serve purpose, then become memory.
But memories are precious too, yes precious. Even grey memories. Even ash-memories. We clings to them the way we once clung to the Ring—with desperate fingers, with aching need.
The night deepens. The ash grows cold. We curls around our hollow stone filled with grey dust and hums an old tune from before. A tune from when there was a family, a river, a name that was not hate. The ashes do not answer. But they listen, precious. They remember the shape of sound, even if they cannot make it.
Tomorrow we will light another fire. We will find more grass, more pine, more things that burn clean and bright. And we will watch them become ash again, watch the cycle repeat, because that is what life is now. Burning and becoming. Fire and ash. Hope and memory.
We touches the grey pile one more time. It is completely cold now, giving nothing back, asking nothing. Just ash. Just the end of something that was beautiful for a while.
Like us, precious. Like us.
gollum, gollum... we are the ash now... and the ash is us...