Living Proof

Chapter Nine

With each day that passed, Boromir felt less pain and more like himself. At least, he did physically. His dreams still haunted him—eerie dreams full of mist and magic, with Frodo warning him away and fighting him when Boromir tried to take the Ring from him by force.

Ten days after he'd come around in a strange cabin under the care of an unfamiliar girl, Boromir was able to rise from the sofa of his own accord and could walk from one end of the cabin to the other under his own power. Slowly, perhaps, but under his own power and that was what counted.

He smiled as he sank into what he'd come to think of as his chair in the kitchen. Kaia was outside—he heard her singing softly, her lilting voice carried on the wind in through the open window. Hints of autumn hung in the breeze, a hint of crispness carried on its edges. It was a welcome relief from the stifling stickiness of summer and he was glad to feel it.

Kaia's voice grew louder, as much a caress to his ears as her lips had been to his.

Her lips.

He'd thought she might ask him about why he'd felt the need to kiss her. In fact, he almost dreaded the question, as he had no answer for her. He didn't know why he'd done it. He had no reasonable explanation. He'd wanted to kiss her, and so he had.

And truth be told, he wanted to do it again.

But, to his surprise, she didn't ask.

With that, he rose, and made his way out onto the back porch. It was a sunny day, crisp and cool and as he stood there, inhaling as deeply as his wounded chest would allow, he just listened to Kaia's song. Her voice was silvery and beautiful, as lilting as the songbirds in the treetops above.

She was in the garden, tending to whatever it was she grew there. They'd had no more unwanted visitors, and for that, he was thankful. If he never saw another orc again, he'd die a happy man.

A rickety-looking, somewhat splintered railing lined the porch's perimeter and he gingerly leaned against it. Although his leg didn't pain him quite as badly as it had in the beginning, it did tire easily, far more so than it did before. Although he couldn't see Kaia, he could hear her and that was better than nothing. He'd taken his sword, and propped it against a lower post, just in case, but had the feeling he'd not need it.

It was a beautiful morning, the air crisp and clear with a hint of frost in it. It wouldn't be long before winter came and he wondered where he would be by then. The worst of his injuries behind him, his plan was to try to catch up with the rest of the Fellowship—well, what was left of it—and try to make it up to them. He didn't know what, if anything, Frodo had told any of them, and he wondered what they thought had happened to him.

Mainly, he was concerned for Merry and Pippin, for he'd taken them both under his wing, so to speak. He'd been teaching them swordplay and how to defend the simplest of attacks, and while they had small blades of their own, he did not know what became of those blades when the Uruk-hai grabbed them.

His eyes closed as his gut twisted into a sharp, painful knot. He had to find them. It was his fault they'd been taken, his fault that the Uruk-hai had been able to sneak up on them they way they had. If he'd not tried to take the Ring—

He winced. No. You didn't merely try to take it. You tried to steal it. And when the halfling refused to give it up, you tried to kill him.

A wave of nausea washed over him. This was his fault. All of it. He'd let his own greed, his own lust for power, for glory, cloud his mind and destroy his judgment. Had he not been so damn weak... the Fellowship would be intact still. The only thing that wouldn't have changed was Gandalf's death. And unlike his own near-death, Gandalf had given his life freely, sacrificed himself in order to save the rest of the Fellowship. Unlike him, Gandalf was not a weak-willed, weak-minded, fool coward.