The Baldr Experiment: Chapter 5 - The Story - Part 4

Rachel Barton
Dec 16, 2025
2 min read

Get off the Road!

“A cinematic, storybook-style fantasy scene showing two small clay characters hiding in a shallow hollow beneath a road. They wear green cloaks and sit close together, looking tense and alert. Between them is a small dog wearing a red bandana marked ‘RN.’ Above them, the dark boots and torn cloak of a shadowy figure pass overhead, creating a sense of looming danger and quiet fear. The scene uses earthy textures, soft lighting, and a cosy yet suspenseful tone.”

Up until now, this journey had felt noisy but safe.

Ideas flying around. Laughter. Snacks. The comfort of thinking rather than committing.

Then the road changed.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no announcement. Just a quiet, unmistakable shift, like when you realise you’ve stopped wandering through fields and are now very much on the road. The outline in front of me suddenly felt heavier. The gaps more obvious. The responsibility sharper.

That’s when the doubt arrived.

Not shouting.

Just close enough to feel.

The kind of doubt that makes you want to disappear for a moment. To shrink the idea. To make it smaller, safer, less visible. The temptation wasn’t to quit, it was to hide. To pull the Ring on, just briefly, and pretend this story didn’t need to be carried any further today.

We all felt it.

The Merry-and-Pippin energy went quiet for the first time.

The snacks stopped rustling.

The jokes didn’t land.

Suzie noticed before I fully did. She pressed closer, alert now, steady, grounding. The kind of presence that says: stay here, don’t move, don’t make this worse.

So we did what every sensible hobbit does when something dark passes overhead.

We got off the road.

We paused. We hid. We stayed still long enough for the moment to pass, for the fear to move on without being fed. The Ring stayed where it was. The story stayed visible. The road, eventually, cleared.

And when it did, it didn’t feel easier but something had changed.

The Shire was well behind us now.