He sleeps in short
shifts, folded under his cloak like a soldier laid out for burial.
The reassuring familiarity of cold earth bears him up; cold earth and
stone; the floor of a cave, he knows in waking moments – knows too
that the entrance is just a smidgen narrower than the span of his
outstretched arms, that Strider can stretch out full-length across
the cave but couldn't if he were much taller, that the crevice at the
back doesn't extend any further than the light of a candle and that
the crevice in question is just wide enough to hold the two older
hobbits in a sort of granite cradle.
He knows it's snowing.
The air has that whispering hush to it. He knows it must be cold,
though for his own part he hasn't been warm since he lost Osgiliath.
He knows he's a very
long way from home.
All of this rests at a
level close to the subconscious – mental muscle-memory, perhaps.
It certainly doesn't account for Legolas urgently nudging his arm and
whispering “Wake up. Wake up,”
and then, after the half-second it takes to accomplish that, before
he can make a sound, “Shhh.”
