It started innocently enough - Rosie leaping out of the way as she rounded the bend at the bottom of the Hill, the farrier's cart blundering within a hair's breadth, kicking up clots of mud onto Rosie's skirts.
Which was not unexplainable - it was a tight corner, and hard to see around it if you were coming from the base up. Rosie righted herself awkwardly, scowling a little as her toes curled in the slushy grass. The biggest clumps of mud she could flick away, but her dress would need a good scrubbing that night.
A light rain had begun to whisper down, and by the time she made it to the bustle of the market she'd been passed by a Bracegirdle carriage and a Proudfoot carriage, and hadn't even bothered raising her hand to hail the coachman of the Hornblower carriage, who had flicked his reigns and not looked aside from his intent study of the road ahead, much like the others had.
The first stall she came to had mysteriously run out of pen-quills, though Rosie knew for sure that Frodo was the chief consumer of them in all of Hobbiton. The blacksmith likewise didn't have a whetstone to spare, and an instant after she set her rather empty basket on the bench of the apothecary's booth, the curtain was drawn across quite abruptly and a voice called from within "out for elevensies!"
Even though it only was half nine.
Thoroughly frustrated, Rosie toiled back up the hill in the early spring heat, basket not a third as heavy as it ought to have been, steam rising from the road and plastering sticky tendrils of hair against her face. Deciding to cut across field instead of risking mud showers again, she made her way up a small lane that would bring her around the far side of the hill to approach Bag End from the Party Field; and then was forced to make her way back down the lane toward the road again when no one came out of the Rumble farmhouse to call off the dogs, which didn't seem inclined to let her over the stile.
By the time she got to Bag End's gate the weather had turned again and she was soaked to the skin, the meagre contents of her basket not much better off. A wave of warmth hit her as soon as she opened Bag End's door, the paving comfortably warm underfoot. The damp grass of the lawn had served to clean off most of the mud, combing through her toes, so all she had to do was stomp them dry on the mat by the doorway before padding toward the parlour.
The door swung open silently on its hinges, soft crackle of the fire underlying the curve of Sam's voice around soft consonants. Frodo gazed into the fire as if mesmerised, legs folded under him on the couch, leaning heavily on Sam's shoulder. Elanor was sucking determinedly on one of Sam's thumbs, while Sam's other hand carefully cradled a worn book in his lap.
Frodo looked up when Rosie stepped in, shifting a little to make space for her on the couch. She sighed happily, shaking her hair out and beginning to pick at the rain-soaked laces of her pinafore. "Well," she said, settling down into warmth. "I'm back."
~
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