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Dreamflower's Mathoms I  by Dreamflower

AUTHOR: Dreamflower
RATING: G
CATEGORY: General
SUMMARY: Rosie's oldest brother ponders his friendship with Sam... 
AUTHOR’S NOTES: I wrote this as a very belated entry for Marigold's Challenge #1.
DISCLAIMER: Middle-earth and all its peoples belong to the Tolkien Estate. I own none of them. Some of them, however, seem to own me.


TOM COTTON

I look over at the table where they sit, and I know if I went over there, I’d be welcomed right warmly and invited to sit with them. But for all it ought to be a table for four, I’m not the fourth they’re wanting, though I am Sam’s brother-in-law twice over.

There’s still a few gives them suspicious looks when they come in The Green Dragon. For all they done to rid us of the Troubles, there’s a handful that thinks the Troubles was their fault for going off in the first place. But they don’t know what I’ve come to know.

They’re celebrating now, welcoming little Frodo-lad into the world. I know there was some who thought Sam’s first lad would be named for his old dad, the Gaffer, but me, I always knew what their first lad would be named even before my sister told me. There wasn’t no one else Sam would be likely to name his first son for--and if little Ellie had’ve been a lad, then she’d’ve been “Frodo-lad”. But even though they look cheerful enough, I can tell how much they’re missing the one what the babe was named for.

I used to be Sam’s best friend, afore he took off for foreign parts with his Master. I knew, none better, how dearly he loved the hobbit he worked for, more like a big brother than his Master, though he never presumed. And I knew he was always friends with those cousins of Mr. Frodo as well, though when he come of age, he tried not to be--thought it wasn’t proper.

But that Baggins and that Brandybuck and that Took, they never took no notice of the differences between them and Sam, even if they *was* gentry. I guess a lot of it was being brung up in Buckland--even the young Took spent a lot of time there--and Bucklanders got queer notions about things like that.

And when they come back, I could see they was really friends, for all that Sam still said “Mr. Frodo” and “Mr. Merry” and “Mr. Pippin”, he was easy with them in a way he hadn’t been before. And when Mr. Frodo left for good, he mostly stopped saying “Mr.” to the other two.

And that was only right and proper, as he’s now the Master of Bag End his own self.

Yes, I used to be Sam’s best friend. But when he chose for Mr. Frodo to bless his marriage to my sister, he didn’t ask me to stand up with him, he asked Mr. Merry. And I have to say, it hurt just a bit, for I’d’ve had no one else but him stand with me, when I wed *his* sister. But I didn’t say nothing, because I reckon whatever the four of them went through together while they was gone, it wasn’t nothing I would envy. We think we had things bad during the Troubles, but I heard the nightmares when they was staying out to the farm with my family after coming back. And Sam’s told me a little bit, and so has Rosie, enough to make me know I can never understand how bad it was.

So, I reckon now Mr. Merry is his best friend. And Mr. Pippin comes next, afore he’d even think of me now. They come through nearly dying together, and that makes a bond that’s stronger than childhood games.

I’ll give them the chance to drink the babe’s health, and to drink to the one what he’s named for, and then I’ll go over, and raise a drink myself to my new nephew. And maybe if they ask me to sit with them, I will, even though they’d rather someone else make a fourth--but he never will no more.

Because I used to be Sam’s best friend, but he’s still mine.





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