bamboo doesn't grow in dark spaces. [80K Words / Complete]

chapter twenty-three, part one.

Case read The Hobbit cover-to-cover in one sitting. Even though his body was exhausted and begged him to put the book down and go to sleep, he couldn't. He was scared that if he put it down and came back to Bilbo and the dwarves later, the magic he'd discovered would be lost. The following morning, he overslept, woken by the dumbwaiter bringing him his breakfast. Instead of his usual routine—running laps from one end of the basement to the other, practicing his chin-ups with the underside rail of the stairs—he brought his honeyed oats back to bed and carefully explored the maps of Middle Earth and flipped through to re-read his favorite parts of the story.

It wasn't until he decided to start again from the beginning that he realized the inside of the front cover had been inscribed. In pink pen and open, curly handwriting. Not a message, but a name: Sophie Scobie.

He'd already known the book was second-hand, its spine creased with signs of love. Quite a lot of things around the basement had been left-behind by nameless previous owners. The yoga mat, his clothes, his toothbrush. Nameless. Nameless victims of Sir who until now hadn't seemed totally real to Case. But now, there was Sophie, who wrote in pink pen and dotted her i's with a heart.

She's gone now, the voice reminded him. There's no point dwelling on some girl you never met.

I know, Case conceded, guilt gnawing a pit in his stomach. But the voice was right, he had to be reasonable here. Dwelling on the dead was going to make him feel like shit, and he'd just discovered something wonderful. Finally, he had something that made him feel good, and it had absolutely nothing to do with Sir.

Don't ruin this for yourself, Casey.

Case let the voice push all the bad thoughts away, and he delved back into a faraway world full of fantasy creatures and big adventure. A world where the good guys and the bad guys made sense, and even with great loss the ending was happy and hopeful.

By the time Case was onto his third re-read, he was still under The Hobbit's spell. He almost considered his obsession with the book akin to Gollum with his precious ring, but that seemed a dark comparison for something so pure. One night, when he and Sir were done and physically exhausted, there was a kind of magic in the air that seemed to keep them in a comfortable lull. Oxy lingered in Case's system like a soft, warm sense of bliss. Sir asked him, in a dazed passing, if he was still enjoying The Hobbit. A moment later, Case was nestled under Sir's arm, reading aloud his favorite passages. The basement was transformed into the rolling green hills of Hobbiton, the pine-scented valley of Rivendell, and the hidden mountainside of Eagle's Eyrie. Sir's fingers idly brushed through Case's curly, overgrown mop of hair as he listened, his lazy smile punctuated with a dimple.

When Case was done retracing Thorin and Company's route across the map, he challenged Sir to the game of riddles played between Bilbo and Gollum.

"This is an easy one," Case declared before reciting: "'What has roots as nobody sees / Is taller than trees / Up, up it goes / And yet never grows?'"

Sir hummed for a moment, contemplating. A veil of cannabis imbued smoke hung above the bed as he took a languid pull from his joint. His eyes were half-closed, heavy lidded, which made him seem wonderfully peaceful (and Case ached for this peace to last forever).

"Mountains?"

"Yeah, told you it was easy. Try this—I couldn't get this one when I read it first: 'It cannot be seen, cannot be felt / Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt / It lies behind stars and under hills / And empty holes it fills / It comes out first and follows after / Ends life, kills laughter.'"

Sir thought hard, the inner puzzling of his mind furrowing his face. He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, stumped. "I don't know," he eventually conceded, leaning over to hold the joint to Case's mouth for him to take a toke. "What is it?"