Chip, can you ever forgive me?

In something of a running theme, take care not to attempt swallowing anything while reading these takes on If Another Author Wrote The Lord of the Rings...

Link ganked from celli, who is really fapping cool. Celli, where the heck have you been hiding up until now?

And here's my contribution to the madness:


from Tales of Middle-Earth
"The Tale of Rings and Ringbearers"


"All right. All right, Mr Frodo, we do it. But you take this off." He hooked a fur-knuckled finger under the chain around Frodo's neck. "You take this off... please. Because..." He shook his head. "Because, if you wear this, I don't know if I can do anything."

"No," Frodo said. "I keep it on." Looking up at his companion, he smiled again. "You see, if one of us does not wear it, I will not be able to do anything." At Sam's puzzled look, Frodo clasped his hand over Sam's, and stroked the Ring with one finger, so that it turned slowly around and around on the chain. "And right now, I do not feel like letting the weight of it rest on anyone but myself... at least, not tonight. Some other night I will take it off me and put it on you. Then we will do it that way. But not now." Frodo's eyes had again gone to the sky, but what darkened the moon now were cloud wisps, not Nazgûl.

[After Tales of Nevèrÿon by Samuel R. Delany]