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Healing the Long Cleeve  by TopazTook 4 Review(s)
LarnerReviewed Chapter: 20 on 8/5/2005
The foolish things we worry about....

Author Reply: Yes, but they don’t seem so foolish to those who do the worrying, especially at the time...

DreamflowerReviewed Chapter: 20 on 2/7/2005
Hi, it's me again!
I couldn't resist responding to your lovely reply!
It's a shame that bit of backstory got lost in the process, because it makes it all a lot more fascinating and explicable. I know how we have to resist these side streets, but that one, would I think have been worth exploring. Now I'm curious as to the repercussions for this young guardsman--and if Pippin should come to realize that his actions were *not* so innocent...
*sigh* oh, well, I guess I'll just have to imagine that part; I know you are eager to get back to the Shire.

Author Reply: Welcome back! :)

Yes, I may have pulled back a bit too much in reaction to Every. Single. Character. demanding a backstory before they will allow themselves to be written, LOL. Perhaps I’ll go back and put a bit of Denggold’s perspective in between when they leave the breakfast table and his little incident later....

I think Pippin had an inkling of the lack of innocent intentions here -- his gaze did linger suspiciously on that impatient Guardsman in the archway -- and I suspect that may explain both why he was growling and why Aragorn thought that he had better get to the Guardsman first.

I am eager to get back to the Shire not only because the next chapter promises to be a bit easier to write, but because we start careening toward the end with the next chapter, and I’m a bit excited about it.

pippinheartReviewed Chapter: 20 on 2/7/2005
A very nice story...You can see that Diamond has a teasing side to here,as she does with Estella.
The young guard touches Diamon,thier culture has rules and she thinks she has shamed Pippin.
You can see as Pippin and Diamond talk,how they really love one another.
In the end as Pippin gets the apple and offer it to her she has eyes for only him... All is well...

Very well written..

Author Reply: Diamond is pretty much playing along with Pippin's teasing, but she of course does have a little bit of a teasing side to herself as well...she is a hobbit, after all.

Yes, different cultures have different rules, and you can unwittingly insult someone else if you don't know the rules of their culture.

Pippin and Diamond truly do love each other.

"All is well"...pretty much. For now. :) Of course, we still have to go back and resolve other things in the Shire.

Thank you for the compliment(s).


DreamflowerReviewed Chapter: 20 on 2/6/2005
Oh good grief! Is she ever going to be able to get over that stuff her mother filled her head with?
I loved Pippin's way of dealing with it, reminding her of the incident with the kitchen wenches--an incident far less innocent on their side, than of the poor guardsman who was merely trying to take care of his charge. I hope Aragorn is not too hard on him. Maybe he should just assign married guards to the hobbit wives from here on out, LOL!

Author Reply: <> No, probably not, completely.:)

And that's exactly why this chapter, annoying as I knew it would be to some (OK, many. Most.) is necessary. There's been an internal arc of their getting to know each other better and admitting -- to both each other and themselves -- that they are in love since about Chap. 15, and things seem to have been progressing nicely and, for the most part, going along swimmingly in the actual relationship.

Except that's not the way it works. There's always going to be an occasional hiccup in the road, and those tapes we play in our head of our parents or other influences are always going to make their presence known. Diamond can't escape from her past, or her personality, just as neither she nor Pippin -- as he reminds her -- can escape from their duties. Luckily, though, they do remember that they love each other.

Interesting, isn't it, that both Pippin -- that forgiving hobbit of the previous chapter, which he is willing to apply to Diamond for both her actions and her reaction -- and Diamond seem to be much harder on themselves in these incidents than they are on their marriage partner.

I'm sure Aragorn will deal appropriately with all involved in this situation (not that we'll see it, since we're going back to the Shire in the next chapter), but the Guardsman is actually *not* quite as innocent as he appears. Unfortunately, in getting this chapter to finally come out it didn't come through, but the backstory is: Denggold is 19 -- he's somehow related to Ingold the gatekeeper in ROTK -- at least an acquaintance, if not a friend, of Bergil. He is in the lower levels of the Guardsmen, sort of in training as it were, and it was through this acquaintanceship with Bergil that he got the assignment of guarding the hobbitesses and acting as their escort. Except he's an immature teenage boy who doesn't see this for the honor it is, and resents being forced to follow them around when all they do is shop all day. (That's why he didn't go in to Rachael and Argine's perfume and breakable doodads shop in the previous chapter. It was too girly for him, and he wants to be all soldierly and Manly.) It actually had been explained to him that he wasn't to touch Diamond, but he didn't feel that he had to pay attention to these instructions (Aragorn will be instituting cross-cultural communication training, I believe), since they didn't make sense to him. And he blatantly ignored them not only to catch Diamond so that she didn't fall onto the road, but to brush across the front of her dress in, as Estella demonstrates with her actions, a rather improper manner for anyone but her husband to touch her.

So, long reply to a short review, LOL, and next chapter revisits the Shire and starts a new internal arc.

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