Author’s Note:

For those who choose not to read Chap. 17:

He was weeping now, softly, overcome himself with strong emotions, and he rolled his head to one side and held out a hand for Diamond to come to him, a request she hastened to obey.

“Oh, Diamond,” he said wetly from where he was snuggled once again in the circle of her arms, “I love you so much. Please dinna ever leave me.”

His voice trailed off, and it was a moment before Diamond had breath enough to respond to such an absurd statement. As if she could, whether she loved him or no! “Of course--” she began, but then realized he had fallen asleep in her arms, and she finished in a whisper, “--not, love,” and gently kissed where Pippin’s curls met his brow.

Chapter 18: Canteen Rush

“Hsst! Merry!” Pippin called out from their place a distance away from their camp along the Greenway. He was crouched down to gather the sticks that would continue feeding the fire which illuminated the two hobbitesses and the waggon covered with a tarp, as well as the tethered ponies, no longer carrying rider or pulling burden for the night.

“Merry!” he hissed again, awkwardly waddling sideways toward the older hobbit while still in a crouching position, his arms full of sticks gathered from the litter of the previous week’s windstorm. “What ‘tis it?” Pippin asked anxiously, darting his eyes nervously about the darkness. “What’s wrong? Why did you want to talk to me away from the lasses?”

Merry stubbornly continued staring at the patch of ground in front of him, deliberately placing another stick in the neat bundle in his arms. He said nothing, though it was true that this firewood gathering had been an excuse to get Pippin alone. He should have realized Pip knew him well enough to see through his ruse, Merry thought ruefully, and shook his head. Of course, he’d thought he knew Pip fairly well, too, but in the last year, with everything that had happened with that Diamond lass...well. Merry snorted, and picked up another stick.

“Merry!” Pippin hissed, right in his ear this time, and Merry jumped a bit as he realized Pip had closed the distance between them. He turned his head to look straight into those green eyes, which were starting to show alarm.

“Merry! Is everything all right?” Pippin asked again, and began shifting his pile of sticks, from which the ends poked out at odd angles, into one arm, his other hand fluttering above the hilt of the sword he wore at his waist. For, while Strider’s directives and his minions kept most of the pathways safe, the world could still present dangers to four small hobbits traveling alone.

Seeing the spark of fear in Pippin’s eyes, Merry immediately felt remorseful. “No, Pip,” he said, clutching his own bundle with one hand while the other touched his cousin’s sword arm reassuringly. “Nothing’s wrong. I didn’t hear anything like that. I’m sure we’ll be quite safe throughout each watch.”

They looked steadily into each other’s eyes for a moment, and then Pippin nodded slowly and removed his hand from his sword.

He brought it up to cross his arms over his chest, one or two small sticks slipping out from the bottom of his pile to fall once again upon the ground. “Well, what ‘tis it, then?” he asked. His mouth had a stubborn set to it. “You got me out here for a reason, Merry.” He started to move to poke his cousin in the chest, but as the bundle of wood started slipping again, he quickly reclaimed his position, settling for adding, in an even more stubborn tone, “Spill.”

Merry sighed, and closed his eyes. For half a moment there, Merry thought he was back to dealing with a recalcitrant Pippin as a child but, no, when he peeked one eye open, it was still a grown hobbit who stared at him.

“Merry,” Pippin said in a tone he clearly perceived as a warning.

Merry sighed and opened the other eye. He was glad he had resisted the urge to tousle Pippin’s hair. It always had riled him up even more, even back then. His lips curved into a half-smile.

“Merry!” Pippin cried out in exasperation, spilling even more sticks as he made an aborted move to throw up his hands in frustration which turned into a lunge to catch his firewood.

“All right,” Merry slowly, and suddenly couldn’t look at Pippin anymore.

He rearranged himself so that he was sitting on the ground, his feet stretched out in front of him and his bundle of sticks held securely in his lap. He traced around the ground with his toes, and watched this motion, while he said, “Umm.”

Pippin heaved an exasperated sigh, and turned another start at throwing up his arms into a movement that brought him next to Merry, sitting in the same position. The edge of his left foot lightly touched the edge of Merry’s right.

“Merry,” Pippin said, concerned now, and leaning toward his older cousin’s bent face with his own anxious one.”What’s wrong? Dinna you know you can tell me?”

Merry slightly shifted his foot away form Pippin’s to resettle it on the ground. Blushing, he glanced at his cousin between words. “You -- you and Diamond -- you can’t do that!” he sputtered.

Pippin blinked, once. Then twice. His expression remained blank. “Do what?” he finally asked.

Merry groaned and bent his head toward his knees, his hands coming up to almost cover it while his sticks rested securely in his lap. He quickly brought his foot back over to brush it against Pippin’s, then just as quickly jerked it away, and brought his hands down to point to where his foot had just been, spitting out, “That!” as he pointed.

It was Merry’s turn then to glare, fixing Pippin with righteous disapproval. Oh, he had seen, all right, as the Tooks cantered one of the ponies out a bit from the waggon, Diamond riding sidesaddle before her husband. It had been impossible not to see, Merry thought glumly, from where he sat at his turn driving the team that pulled the waggon, that not only were Pippin’s arms encircling Diamond about the waist as he held the reins, but one of his feet had detached itself from the stirrups and was brushing along the fur on top of his wife’s feet, with occasional forays further up the portion of her leg that was concealed by her skirts. And Diamond, when they returned from that little excursion, had been blushing. Prettily, Merry guessed. There had been other incidents, too.

“You’re supposed to do that in private!” he hissed in a lecture to his younger cousin, glancing back toward the campsite to make sure the lasses hadn’t decided to come and eavesdrop. “Not in front of other hobbits! It isn’t polite!”

Pippin’s face quickly scrolled through an expression of surprise, then indignation, before he burst into laughter, dropping backwards to roll slightly from side to side on the ground, his sticks falling hopelessly out of his grasp.

“You -- you,” he gasped between giggles, using one of the hands that he now had free to poke at his cousin’s tummy. “Meriadoc Brandybuck,” Pippin informed him with a huge grin on his face, “you’ve become an old gaffer who’s forgotten what it’s like to be young and in love!”

As the sound of Pippin’s last bright laugh still echoed in the air around them, Merry looked intently at his cousin’s face that continued to grin up at him. He studied it closely then, tentatively, he whispered, watching worriedly for Pippin’s reaction, “Love?”

Pippin crossed his arms across his chest and brought his knees up to them as he squeezed himself once in a quick hug. All the while, he kept his eyes open and focused on Merry, and his grin shone bright. He nodded.

Merry waited. Pippin’s expression didn’t change. The older hobbit choked out, “Oh, Pip!” around his sudden tears, and reached out for a hug.

Fortunately, Pippin sat up to meet him, laughing the while, so that Merry’s sticks stayed on his lap while the two cousins embraced each other and Merry sobbed into Pippin’s ear. “Oh, Pip! I was so afraid! That you’d been betrothed when you weren’t even of age -- and then the way you looked when you wed -- and -- and -- how unhappy you’ve seemed at times -- and I’ve just been so worried about you--”

“Hush!” Pippin snorted in his ear. His hands patted at Merry’s waistcoat pockets underneath his cloak until his found the clean handkerchief he was looking for and held it in front of the Brandybuck’s face. “Now blow,” he instructed, and Merry complied, then watched ruefully as Pippin wadded up the handkerchief and stuffed it back into the same pocket it had come out of.


“I--,” Pippin said contemplatively, looking back toward the camp fro a moment before he turned again to face Merry. “I mightn’t have chosen Diamond, if I’d been left to my own to look for a wife,” he said seriously, but then his mood brightened as he added, with a small laugh, “but who’s to say that I mightn’t just have done so nonetheless?

“Anyway,” he went on, still smiling, but in a sweeter and more fond way, “what’s done is done,” he said with a small shrug. “We’ve dug our hole, and now we must live in it, and all that: I love her, and she loves me, and so, together, happy we shall be.”

He looked pointedly at Merry and whispered softly, “’Tis true, you know. I do love her, and she does love me.”

“Oh, Pip,” Merry said, and placed a hand carefully over his cousin’s and squeezed it. “I’m so glad,” he said with the relief of all the past tense year.

The moment passed, then, and Merry withdrew his hand and began carefully arranging the sticks in his lap again. “There’s still the matter of your, um, indelicacies,” he said and prefaced the last word with a cough, although his tone was much lighter now.

“Why,” Pippin said, raising himself to his hands and knees to crawl about in search of his own sticks once again, “certainly ‘tisn’t anything you mightn’t see from a tween courting a bonny lass. Or even,” here he glanced at Merry from beneath his eyelashes, “a grown young hobbit -- one who was, say, nearly forty -- doing the same.”

“Pip, I never--” Merry sputtered. “Estella and I--” His eyes narrowed. “You -- you never heard anything at Crickhollow, did you?” he asked with faint suspicion.

Pippin busily picked up sticks from the ground.

“Pip?” Merry queried.

“Oy!” Pippin said, lifting his head and cocking an ear as if listening to something far off. “’Tisn’t that a nightingale singing in the bushes yonder? I should like to know,” he said, and scooped up a clumsy armload of sticks and walked off.

Merry groaned and closed his eyes.


“I should still like to have seen more of the places from your journey,” Estella pouted, throwing the last bone from her coney toward the fire to watch the flames spark up as they consumed the gristle still attached.

“No,” Merry said forcefully, and “Nay,” Pippin agreed, closing his eyes briefly as he leaned against a waggon wheel.

Diamond took a measured, careful sip of water from her canteen. The tension lingered a moment longer, and then she said, “It has been good to hear more of your tales, though. So we shall meet some more of your friends from the -- Quest?” She glanced briefly at Estella, who nodded sulkily at the correct word.

“Oh, aye!” Pippin said and sat up with a grin. “Merry, won’t it be grand to see Strider again?”

“Yes, of course, Pip,” Merry agreed, then warmed up to the subject, “and Eowyn, and Faramir, and -- and all of them!”

“Will they know how to eat properly, though, in a City of Men?” Estella asked, looking worriedly toward her own plate, then glancing quickly at Pippin and Diamond before turning back to share her gaze with her husband.

“Oy, the citizens of the White City shall know how to feed a hobbit,” Pippin laughed, and leaned over to place a soft kiss next to Diamond’s ear. “You dinna need to worry about that!” he said, and their eyes met.

Diamond smiled back at him, then took another swallow from her canteen. It was hard, yes, being at least a tiny bit hungry all of the time, what with stopping for only three meals a day, plus the bits she nibbled upon for second breakfast, elevenses and afternoon tea from what was to be found in the waggon, packed among the trunks or near the sleeping quarters arranged at either end. It made a lass appreciate all the more, though, what food a lass did have when she had it -- or drink, too, for that matter, she thought as she ran her tongue around the edge of the canteen’s opening to collect every precious drop.

She smiled as she pinged her finger against the side of the canteen to hear the by-now familiar sound of the metal, so unlike the spongy softness of the waterskins they also carried. One of the four would fill all of these from a clear stream, or from a well at one of the settlements they might infrequently camp near.

Estella had inquired about an inn when they neared the first one, and Pippin and Merry had shared a sad and awkward look, and then Merry explained that much of this area had been a wasteland until recently, and that the folk there hadn’t necessarily had time to construct many inns -- although you’d think they would, as they’re on the main road, Pippin muttered -- but, it was rumored, often hosted travelers in their dwellings.

“Well?” Estella demanded when this seemed to be the end of the conversation, and the two hobbits who had travelled before shared another strange look before Merry said gently to his wife, “Well, you see, it’s just that everything’s so Big.”

“Oh,” Estella had said flatly, and so they continued to camp. And, in fact, it had been Estella who had cowered inside the waggon’s tarp at their first sight of a Big person from one of the settlements, while Diamond stared in awe up, and up, at her first sight of a Man, and wondered how such a creature could exist.

Some of the others in the Shire had warned against their going alone, just the two couples, but Pippin had reacted with, “Bah! Soldiers of Gondor and of Rohan we are, and we shall be fine upon the King’s highway!”

“Here, catch,” he had called out to Diamond a bit later, tossing the canteen toward her. “Why don’t you carry part of a soldier’s gear, then?” he had said with a grin.

She looked at him now, leaning again against the waggon wheel, but his eyes open as he bantered with Merry or sang snatches of songs, and her heart swelled again with pride.

Yes, a soldier he was, who’d conquered these paths once before and would surely guide her safely through them now. And while, yes, she might be a bit hungry, it was nothing, she was sure from his descriptions, compared to what her husband and the other hobbits had faced on their original journey out of the Shire. She had been honored when he’d explained that the scanter rations than she was used to were a way of sharing an experience, and an understanding, with him.

And she was also, Diamond had to admit, finding it a bit exciting to have such new experiences as camping, and travel, and she rather enjoyed the opportunity to be together with Pippin with only Merry and Estella about.

Diamond, of course, was not privy to the conversation between Merry and Pippin as they rode a bit ahead on two of the ponies while Estella drove the waggon in which the hobbitesses rode.

“I’ll not have Estella made to starve, Pip,” Merry said in a low voice.

“’Tisn’t starving,” Pippin replied.

“We brought enough provisions with us, and we can purchase more from Men along the way, or hunt, or scrounge, or fish...”

“Aye,” Pippin said calmly.

“What--” Merry began to ask, but Pippin interrupted.

“Aye, the Brandywine is full of a great many fish. And ‘tis close to Bree, for when provisions run low. And hobbits from the rest of the Shire who might be a-hungerin’ don’t present themselves at Brandy Hall.”

Merry was silent for a moment, then said in a somber voice, “We’ve all seen hobbits who hunger, Pip. Estella fled to her relatives in Budgeford during the Troubles in the Shire, and they hungered then, and she -- she saw Freddy after the Lockholes.” He looked away. “I’ll not have her hunger again.”

“Ah, but you see,” Pippin said, glancing back over his shoulder at the lasses upon the waggon’s seat, “you know she already understands it.”


Diamond was, however, privy to another conversation, on another day -- as she was part of it.

“That -- that cannot be!” she gasped as the hobbitesses gathered up the few belongings which had been removed from the waggon for the previous night’s camp. Diamond nearly dropped the plate she held as she stared at Estella.

“Oh, it’s true all right,” Estella responded as she tucked her hairbrush back into a bundle. “I heard it from my brother, and Freddy always tells me true.”

“What is it?” Merry asked as he and Pippin led up two sets of ponies, to be tethered to the waggon both fore and aft this morn. Freddy was known to frequent the tables of the Shire’s inns which held the most gossip, but Estella was right: the tales he repeated for her ears were always those he had made certain were true.

Estella lifted her bundle into the carriage and said casually over her shoulder, “I was just telling Diamond that Blossom Tunnelly from over to Budgeford -- you remember her, Merry?” she asked as she tipped her head far back to gaze at him while she remained facing the waggon. “We see her at times when we visit?”

Merry nodded, and reached up to rub the nose of one of the ponies which had begun to get restless. He still held the reins.

“Anyway,” Estella continued as she brought her head back down to look toward the front and finished stowing her gear. “It seems she’s gone and left old Hedy behind.”

“Left him behind?” Merry repeated, while Pippin asked, “And what’s that mean, then?” He held his sets of reins tight but ignored the ponies’ movements behind him.

“It means,” Estella said, turning away from the waggon and toward the others, “that she’s left him behind in their house at Budgeford by himself, now that their son is grown and wed, and that she’s gone back to her own family’s hole. To live,” she added, so that they understood the impact.

“She said she’d done all her duty by him, and she left.” Estella shrugged, then gently took the plate Diamond still held from her and bent to nestle it among the linens which cushioned the others in a box upon the ground.

“Mother always says that anything queer Blossom does must have come from customs she learned as a lass in the North Farthing all those years ago,” Estella said carelessly as she arranged the dishes.

“Oh!” she startled, and one hand flew to her open mouth as she looked up at Diamond. “I’m sorry -- I didn’t mean--”

Merry cleared his throat, while Pippin looked anxiously at Diamond, who still looked on, stunned.

“But -- but surely there is more?” she asked of Estella.

Estella busied herself in the box again. “Freddy wouldn’t say,” she admitted.

“Perhaps--” Diamond cast about for an explanation that made sense. “Perhaps her family needed her for a time,” she said finally. “Her father might have required her, or a brother...”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s so,” Estella said quickly, then asked, “Here. Here, I’ve finished packing up for the day. Why don’t we lift the box in together?”

“Oh! Oh, yes, all right,” Diamond agreed readily. As the two lifted the box into the waggon, Diamond turned her head to say to Estella, “I would never have thought to hear that a wife should leave the hobbit she had wed!”


The summer sun shone upon the White City as they approached. Unlike on Pippin’s first visit, the ramparts did not appear bleached of color like lifeless bones, but instead they shone with the gleam of a beacon of light, the fullness of the sun reflected upon them.

Pippin had dressed in his Gondorian livery of silver and black for their entry to the city, and mounted Diamond sidesaddle before him on the pony which he rode.

Merry and Estella followed behind on the seat of the waggon as they approached the gate and its keepers, who granted them entry upon Pippin’s hail.

Inhabitants of the City who saw them arrive spread the word quickly, and soon Men, and Women, and children were popping from doorways and hanging their heads from windows to see their first sight of halflings since after the War.

“Sir Peregrin!” called out the clear, high voices of children on the cusp of adolescence. They recognized the livery, and knew that the creature which bore it must be the one they remembered from their childhoods, when they were hardly more than toddlers, and had heard of often since in story and song. “It’s Sir Peregrin,” they called to their elders and, catching sight of Diamond riding before him, many would add, “and he’s brought his Lady!”

Some of the Gondorians, seeing Merry and Estella following behind and recognizing the livery of Rohan, added to their calls the information, “And it’s Sir Meriadoc and his Lady as well!”

Most of their attention, though, was focused on their own tiny Guard of the Citadel, and even some of the adults cried out, “Welcome! Welcome to the Ernil i Periannath!”

Pippin remembered, some of the time, to be dignified and proper and merely nod back in acknowledgment, but in his excitement, he occasionally forgot and would give a hearty wave to accompany his grin, or accidentally give an excited nudge with his foot to the pony, so that it trotted faster up through the winding streets.

Estella, perched on the waggon seat beside Merry, clutched nervously at his arm as they climbed higher, and higher, through streets that grew ever more crowded with Big people.

Diamond in turn clutched at Pippin’s tunic in reaction to all the Big faces pressing close upon the streets for a better look. She was not nervous of their ever-climbing height, however, for she barely noticed it among the splendors of the City that met her eyes more and more with each bit they traveled.

This place was -- it was magnificent, she thought. Truly worthy of a King. And Pippin -- her husband -- why, he was Sir Peregrin to those people! Big though they were, they honored him as much as the Shire!

Diamond turned her head shyly to regard Pippin’s face, flushed with excitement and grinning with the eagerness to see his old friends again.

He caught her looking at him and turned the grin upon her. “Welcome to Minas Tirith, Diamond,” Pippin whispered, and ducked his head quickly forward to peck a kiss upon her lips.

The crowd cheered while Diamond flushed, herself, and lowered her eyes though her own face now shone with pride.

At last, they reached the end of their journey, and a tall, dark-haired Man stood before them as Pippin reined up the pony to a stop, dismounted and helped Diamond down. Merry and Estella had clambered down behind them, Merry grinning as broadly as Pippin, but it was Pippin and Diamond who approached first.

Pippin, holding Diamond’s arm, suddenly went down upon one knee and bent his head, and it was this tug that brought Diamond up short so that she hastily curtsied.

“King Elessar Telcontar,” Pippin intoned with his head bent, “your subjects have received your summons.”

“Arise, then, Sir Peregrin,” the dark-haired Man said as a kind smile appeared to play about the edges of his lips, and Diamond thought she heard a muffled snort behind. “And introduce your fair lady,” King Elessar said as Pippin rose to his feet.

Diamond immediately ducked into a deep curtsy again, her skirts brushing the ground even as she held them out from her sides. She spoke in the manner which had been ingrained in her from years of practice, as she was incapable of thought just then, in a soft and nearly breathless voice, “Mistress Diamond Took, at your service, King Elessar, sire!”

“And I,” the King said, going down on his knees before her, so that Diamond would have stepped back and away in awe if it were not for Pippin, now standing so that his head was nearly on a level with the King’s chin. Her husband grabbed at her arm and held her steadily in place, favoring her with a reassuring smile as she looked quickly at him.

“I,” the King said to Diamond and reached for her hand. She trembled slightly but quickly let him take it, glancing back once again for assurance at her husband. The King brought the small hobbitess’s fair hand to his lips, where it brushed against the oddity of a beard and mustache, and Diamond continued to glance nervously between her husband and the King, with some quick, trembling regards of the ground as well.

“I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn,” the King’s lips spoke softly against her hand as he still held it, and then he turned his face to Pippin and said wryly, “known popularly -- among some -- as Strider.”

Pippin let out a whoop with a joyful smile and withdrew his hand from Diamond’s arm to fling both of his own arms around the King’s neck.

Strider also let go of Diamond in order to hug Pippin back. Laughing, he opened one of his arms a moment later to allow Merry to join in the hug. Strider managed to get out, through bursts of hobbit chatter and giggles, “Welcome! Welcome, old friends!”