Written for the B2MEM near-death experience prompt. Beta by RiverOtter. Just a bit more than a true drabble....
Pippin was staring intently at the small river that ran by the camp at Cormallen before it joined the Anduin. Merry shook his head. "And just what are you looking at so intently, our beloved fool of a Took?" he asked.
"It's just so beautiful, Merry--all of it! So beautiful, the light sparkling from the water." He turned to look up at his cousin. "I'd heard that the land of the afterlife was beautiful beyond imagining. Tell me, Merry, am I truly alive?"
Merry's heart twisted within his chest. He'd asked much the same questions when he'd awakened in the Houses of Healing, but with nowhere the joy Pippin showed now.