Hobbits can move as quietly as the breeze when they want to, sturdy feet as light as elfsteps on the ground. Playing hide and seek can last all day, because as well as silence they have stillness in their blood, even the most active can be a statue when they try.

Rosie was up to her elbows in suds, the dishes slippery and clay-warm between her fingers, a temperature retained from the steaming stew they'd held earlier. When she'd been young she'd had a small loop of twine her father had made her, that she could dip in the soapy water and blow huge iridescent bubbles through. She'd have to see about making something similar for Elanor when the girl was older.

Sam and Frodo were being as still and quiet as only hobbits could, standing near the doorway and taking turns in creep up behind Rosie, slipping the satiny ribbon that laced up the back of her dress out of the row of eyelets as slowly and methodically as any task had ever been done.

She was whistling faintly to herself, moving her head slightly in time with the tune and making her steam-damp curls bounce. Frodo took his turn to sneak across the kitchen floor and tug on the ribbon, which was halfway down her back by this stage.

Frodo was halfway back to where Sam was chuckling silently at the door when Elanor gave a little cry from her basket, banging her rattle against the wicker weave. Rosie turned to see what the trouble was, and her neckline slipped down over one shoulder. Freezing where he stood, Frodo gave a sheepish grin and made a break for the door, fleeing the scene with Sam before Rosie could do more than look bemused at her sudden state of half-undress.

"You've got silly daddies, don't you?" she asked Elanor, picking the baby up and pretending to toss her in the air. "I'll wager that before too many years have passed you'll be more grown up than they are. Now, how are we going to get them back for their prank?"

Rosie decided not to do anything, this time, because it was good to hear Sam and Frodo laughing like children, hiding in one of the storage rooms down the hall in the hope she wouldn't find them. Finishing the washing up and then playing pat-a-cake with Elanor, it was hard not to smile as the giggling gave way to quiet and the occasional muffled thump. If they wanted to skulk around in the dust like a pair of tweenagers, Rosie would just let them do it. No sense in dreaming up punishments for people who got themselves into their own predicaments.

She made afternoon tea, hot buttered scones that filled the kitchen and the hallway with a lovely baking smell, and tea with sugar, and then sat down to count how many seconds it took before they gave in and came out of their hiding place.

It took one hundred and thirty ticks on the clock before there was a dusty sneeze and the creak of a door opening, and two bashful hobbits outside the kitchen.

"Hello Rose." Frodo said, trying to hold his smile in. Sam crossed his arms and tried to look serious and mature, and failed completely, largely due to the smudge across his nose and the tangles of his hair.

"Find anything interesting in the store room?" she asked, keeping her own laugh in check and quirking one eyebrow. "I thought there might be a few bottles hiding down there, I was wondering if you noticed any."

"Can't say I saw any. Maybe you'll come have a look yourself next time?" Sam suggested. Rosie had a sudden flash of memory of one summer when she and Sam had been small, hiding behind the band stand at a party and watching all the grown-ups dance. Frodo had been cornered by a gaggle of flirty hobbit lasses, and Rosie had felt very sorry for him, stuck with all that boring stuff when there were so many adventures to be had at a feast like that. She'd poked Sam in the stomach and raced off, just fast enough so he wouldn't catch her, but slow enough so he thought he could.

What she hadn't known then, and still didn't in the bright kitchen years later, was that Frodo had seen the pair of them playing from his prison of tweenaged females, and had found his own eyes crinkling up and mouth curving into a smile at the sight of their fun. He had hoped that one day he'd rediscover that, the simple joy of nothing much at all.

~

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