No king he seems now, this Ranger, clothed in a life spent in the wild. No pillow comforts his uncrowned head; no fine linens wrap his road-worn body. Yet he is content.
He wears the weight of his age and the ages of those who have come before him etched upon his troubled brow.
Cousin Bilbo told me his childhood name was “Hope.” How fitting, for out of this ring of consuming darkness, he has given hope to me.