"What are they doing?" asked Frodo, gesturing to the children playing in the mud. For once, the mud was staying mostly on the ground, more or less. There were crude shapes in it, and a lot of mud on the children's hands and faces, but none in their hair.
Yet.
Sam shrugged. "I'm not sure, Frodo," he said, watching as Aster scraped a bit of mud toward a pile with a stone. "I think they're trying to make mud castles."
"It's not working," Molly groused, shoving at her and Meli's pile. "The mud won't stay."
Meli nodded mournfully, then scooped up a handful of it. She looked as though she was studying the pile, wondering where to stick it, but then her head came up and Frodo found himself looking at the world through a film of mud.
Amidst much laughter, Frodo, with great diginity, wiped off his face. He turned to Sam, who was laughing just as hard as the children and grinned wickedly.
Rosie scolded them even more than she normally scolded the children, but Frodo and Sam felt that it was worth it.
~