Chapter 3: The Shire's Wrong Geometry at Dusk

Samwell Gamgee arrived at the back gate of Bag End at the hour when the last visible light in the western sky had thinned to something less than light — a luminous residue, the photographic afterimage of a sun that had long since committed fully to its absence. He had a pack on his back that clinked in the manner of a pack that contained both a frying pan and the moral conviction that a frying pan would prove necessary. He was breathing rather fast, not from exertion but from some private emotional arithmetic he was working through with insufficient paper.

I had been expecting him, though I had not precisely decided when. This is a distinction I find it important to maintain.

He looked at me. He looked at the bag at my feet, which I had packed before his arrival with the systematic efficiency of a man who has known for some time that a bag would need packing but has been declining to call the activity by its proper name. He looked at my hands — not at the nails specifically, though he knew about the nails; Samwell knew everything about Bag End that could be known by a person who had tended its gardens for seven years with the attentive dedication of someone who regarded each plant as a personal responsibility and each stone of the path as a relationship to be maintained.