This is how you become a warrior.

            You pledge yourself, because someone died for you.  Your sense of honor comes from stories, very old stories, told to you by your cousins.  You sense of honor comes from your father, stoic and peaceful until he is moved.  Though not by battle.  There are no battles, where you come from.  There will be none, you’ve sworn, and anyway the new King will bring peace to the lands.

            Some of your relatives, who still remember Sharkey so clearly, don’t believe that.  You remember a time, very early in the Quest, when you and Merry splashed in a shallow pool, catching frogs, and this King had to sit down, he was laughing so hard.  This memory makes you believe the King, and not your kin.

            Frodo laughed too.  And he is part of the reason, too.

            And both of these people make it so you know that peace will be here, forever.

            But when you were a warrior--and you still are, always are, can never forget--you didn’t know.  Because your honor was some wild, romantic thing, you pledged yourself.

            And then, you found you had pledged yourself to a madman, and you did things, and found you’d pledged yourself for so much more;  love of the Elfstone, love of peace, love of your family and Merry and Sam and Frodo.  And that is why you were on the front lines, riding into battle.

            You saw the King’s back, and then the wide, wide plains.  And the great ugliness, the blackness, of Enemy. 

            There are two kinds of black.  There is comforting darkness, the sooty black of a teakettle, pretty, shiny black stones found outside of your doorstep.  And then there is the darkness of Enemy.

            And this is how you become a warrior.  Pledges, and honor, and love.  Weeks of training, until you can wield a sword.  Girding your armor that morning, as Merry watches you from his bed.  Breeches, undershirt and then maille, falling halfway to your knees.  Black tunic, over that, swordbelt.  Sword.  Helm.  And then you leave, determined to live up to your older cousin, as you always have been. 

            You do not feel light, or young, or anything like yourself.  You haven’t, in a very long time.  You never will again, completely,  Your childhood left you, the moment Gandalf was lost.  One of ten million sacrifices made in this bloody world, and not even coming close to the big ones.

            But you are on the front lines, and you will live today, or you will die.  Or, as Merry likes to say with rolled eyes (because you can joke now, a little), both.  For you have died today, and were then called back.  For you have died today, and been reborn in a world just beginning to heal, a King returned though not yet taken his throne.

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