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Trotter  by Dreamflower

 

Chapter One: Unlucky at Love


I think back now over nearly a hundred years of life, and wonder at the circumstances that brought me here. It seems hard to resist the feeling that all of this was “meant”, as Gandalf is fond of saying.

And yet, when I came to leave the Shire, I was a rather callow and innocent youth, just barely into my majority, and at the time I thought that my life had been destroyed and my future blighted. I could not see my way clear to staying in the Shire after my heart had been broken.

Though I had just come of age, I had thought for a few years that I knew who my soul mate was to be. Gardenia Sackville was a very pretty lass who had caught my eye a few years before, when she had come with her family to the Great Smials for the Mid-summer’s holiday.

I remember clearly the two of us standing close together, and watching Gandalf’s fireworks in awe. She was so beautiful, with her face upturned to the sky, and her mouth slightly open, her brown eyes wide. And at that moment, I became quite certain that she was the lass for me.

Alas, soon after the holidays, she went back with her family to their leaf plantation in the Southfarthing. Yet I believed she returned my regard, and I flattered myself that she would remember me. For the next couple of years, I often made excuses to visit her family. I am certain Father was not fooled by my frequent offers to see to purchases of leaf for the Tooks. Mother was not so sanguine; for some reason she was rather cool towards Gardenia, and I could not fathom why.

I was very disappointed when the Sackvilles declined the invitation to my coming-of-age party, and so, two days after the party, I rode down to see Gardenia, and to officially offer suit to her.

Perhaps I was too impulsive, for I sought her out at once, rather than speaking to her father first, as would have been proper. She seemed startled by my visit, but agreed to walk in the garden with me.

Her response to my declaration was not at all what I expected.

She looked up at me with a furrowed brow. “I am sorry, Hildifons, but what on earth made you think that I was interested in you?”

I was staggered. Perhaps the way she had always accepted my gifts, laughed at my jokes and allowed me to hold her hand?

“I would not have presumed,” I said angrily, “if I had not received some encouragement!”

“Of course I was kind to you,” she said condescendingly, “you are, after all, the son of the Old Took, even if only one of the younger sons. But my father--as you would know if you had spoken to him first--has already agreed to allow Norbert Longbottom to court me, and I have accepted his suit. We will probably announce our betrothal at Yule.”

“And what makes Norbert Longbottom so much more acceptable?”

She drew herself up. “He is not a Took, for one thing. No rag-tag conjurers would be welcome in his family smial! And his family’s holdings are next to our own.”

And now the final blinkers fell from my eyes, and I realized what my mother must have known all along--Gardenia did not love me and had never loved me. I fled her presence, and rode home without stopping over, in a fit of alternating fury and despondency.

It was embarrassing when I arrived home to realize that none of the family were surprised that I had been jilted. Everywhere I looked, I saw in their eyes not only pity, but relief. My little sister Belladonna, who was only twenty-three, was quite open about it. “Good, I am glad that she will not be our sister-in-law, and I won’t have to pretend to be nice to her!” While seventeen-year-old Mirabella was indignant, and was overheard plotting with little Isengar to put toads in the guest bed the next time the Sackvilles visited. Donnamira told them acidly that the opportunity would never arrive, as they would never be invited back to the Great Smials.

While it was nice to know that my family supported me so staunchly, it was also humiliating. All of them knew I had hoped to make Gardenia my wife, and I could not imagine any other lass in that role, even though I knew now she would have been quite unsuitable.

After a week of this, I found I was still quite as miserable as I had been when first it happened.

Gandalf, whom Gardenia had so scornfully called a “rag-tag conjurer” was still visiting, though he feigned not to notice my turmoil, which was a welcome relief from my overly solicitous family.

After supper, as my father, older brothers and I sat in the parlor smoking, we listened to him spinning tales of the world Outside the Bounds, and suddenly I felt the weight of my sorrow beginning to lift. Outside the Shire was Adventure, and the chance to be far away from people who knew of my humiliation. I suddenly had an Idea.

The next day, I told my father that I thought I would go to pay a visit to some of our distant relatives in the Northfarthing. My parents looked relieved--I am sure they thought I simply wished distraction, and my brother Isembold offered to accompany me.

Of course, that would not do at all, as I had no intention of going to Long Cleeve, which was where the North-tooks lived. I simply told him that I needed to be alone, and he gave up the idea.

Perhaps it would have been better for me had he been more persistent.

Perhaps not.

I headed north, only so far as Bywater, where I spent a pleasant evening at The Green Dragon, and I continued my talk of heading north to visit our kinfolk, descendants of the Bullroarer, Bandobras Took. I was treated to several ales by those who were pleased by my recounting of the tale of the Battle of the Greenfields, but I was careful not to overindulge, for I planned to be away before daybreak, so that no one would see in which direction I traveled: not, North, but East.

I spent that night under the stars, something I’d not done since my early tweens, for I did not wish to stay in any more inns until I had left the Shire; and, again before daybreak, I rode across the Stonebow Bridge and took the Great East Road towards Bree--the only place I had any certain knowledge of outside the Shire





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