[Nogrod]

Tom Bombadil had been mainly quiet the days after his friend Gandalf had parted from the fellowship. He was lonely indeed and longing for Goldberry didn't make him feel any better. He had even pondered it a few times whether he should just turn back and leave the whole adventure to the others. If not for any other reason but to bring back his joy of life and nature. He had also thought it back again and again what happened that evening when they had decided to vote for Olorin to leave.

There were many who hadn't said a thing. Those Tom found particularly suspicious although one of them, Elladan, had been brutally murdered by the traitors and thus proven innocent. There were those who wilfully spread out the voting which finally ended up in the nasty choice between Gandalf and Halbarad. Tom had disliked the widening scope of choices that time as they seemed to bring everything to a last moment randomness but they could be also seen as true trials at actually sending out someone who in fact was a traitor. But in the end it resulted in the early calls for Gandalf and Halbarad remaining the only choices.

Somehow he had then a nagging feeling in the back of his head that on this mission Halbarad would indeed be of more help to them than Gandalf. He had it even now. Yes, it sounded bad and felt bad. But still he felt it. Somehow Gandalf was not what he would be; intelligent, helpful, insightful, leading, caring... Some had said the wizard had just thought of things but Tom felt Gandalf hadn't been even interersted in the fellowship's quest in the first place. He knew Gandalf well enough and the Gandalf they had with them was not the Gandalf he knew.

But still he had asked himself a hundred times whether anything he would have done would have kept his friend Olorin around now that he knew he was no traitor. But the end-result was always the same. No one was ready to save him, no one came to help... not even Galadriel herself who now quite hypocritically blamed others of wrong choices...

No one knew who the traitors were... except the traitors themselves. And those who spoke after the fact.

Even if the sun had arisen and they were coming swiftly downhill leaving the horrors of Caradhras firmly behind them Tom didn't feel like singing. But he took his own way down drowned in his own mind, for all this reflection had strengthened one thought in him. They killed the young Elladan, cruelly and brutally. And I will not rest until this is solved. I owe it to Gandalf as I was one of those sending him home - however uninvolved he were. But I need to walk alone to think properly...