The Greening of the Year has been nagging at me for a while now, and while re-reading Runaway I suddenly realised why. Tolly's children in Runaway are older than they ought to be, considering the timeline of stories that have written themselves over the past years. (And the fault is mine, not Jo's, for I gave her free rein in the writing, and didn't think to cross-check older stories when I fixed the date of Tolly's wedding.)

The Muse has been chewing at the problem for some time now, and suddenly snatched this story from where it had been ripening on a dusty shelf in the lumber room, laying it out on the table and demanding that something be done.

Originally an epilogue of sorts, detailing Eglantine's triumphant return to the Great Smials after going missing and feared dead, this sort of ballooned into a larger story centred around Tolly, his coming to terms with to being rescued by one he was supposed to be safeguarding, and just how he and his wife came to have children older than their marriage.

Don't worry; the other in-progress stories are still in progress. I just needed a little easy writing as opposed to hard thinking, and this story wrote itself nicely. Will keep posting updates to all the WIPs as time allows. (Here's hoping.)

While much of this is from the viewpoint of an OC, Pippin (and perhaps Sam and Merry) will have much to do in the story, at least the way the draft reads at present.