All hobbits featured within were made up by an English professor named J.R.R. Tolkien. Then along came a lovely lady named Mary Borsellino and made up all new theories about what really happened to them in the end, and called it Pretty Good Year.

Or so people think! In actuality, of course, as both of these writers have admitted, both their "works" are based on the Red Book of Westmarch, a hobbit heirloom. Hobbits still live under hills around these parts, but they are very secretive, and have probably stolen those memory-flashing things off the MiB, and so are still known throughout our world only through those translated Red Bood volumes called 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings'. Now, Mary's translations are a different matter - not actually based on the Red Book but on a companion piece chronicling the family history of the Gardners, which reveals some fallacies in the Red Book. The most remarkable one is that the ending is actually told wrong in the Red Book - for in fact Frodo never sailed to the Undying Lands. He was going to, and so wrote it in the book, but changed his mind at the last moment and stayed in the Shire with his two lovers, Sam and Rosie. The mistake stayed in the history book for various personal reasons, which are chronicled in 'Pretty Good Year'.

This piece here is rather unoriginal fanfiction based on 'Pretty Good Year'.

Dedication
To Janette Le Fay.

Special Thanks
to Dana for helping me come up with a title.

Extra Apology
That the disclaimer and dedication and thanks and apology are in all almost longer than the actual fic.

Precious Qualities
a Lord of the Rings/ Pretty Good Year fanfic

It was rare that the Shire experienced a summer quite so hot. Animals as well as hobbits flocked to the shadows of trees and the dark sides of tall hills, energy sapped by the relentless sun.

Rosie picked up a notebook that lay discarded on the floor, Frodo's, as always, and straightened herself. She yawned, fighting back the strange lethargy brought upon the heat. Her back ached slightly, typical at this stage of pregnancy. Baby Elanor was fast asleep on the sofa now, although she'd been whinging just a while ago, as distressed by the heat as the rest of Hobbiton. Rosie decided not to move her, but would be nearby to see she didn't roll herself off the sofa.

Relenting to the heat, she flopped down on an armchair. She opened the notebook absent-mindedly. It was in Frodo's firm flowing script, notes neatly arranged in paragraphs, abbreviations she couldn't make sense of, and snippets of text - dialogue, names of places, like snapshots of dreams. Intrigued despite herself, she flipped through the pages.

Rosie hadn't read the Red Book yet. There were vast areas of her lads' journey that she didn't know, a hundred details that sat there in the pages, if she'd just open the tome; things that might make her think, "oh, so that is why - that is how". Stories that would make her understand.

But if she read them...

After the nightmares, whether it was Sam's or Frodo's that night, they would both wake and reach for each other. They'd lay tangled up in each other on the bed next to her, and she'd pretend to sleep, keeping her breathing steady and her arm on Frodo's waist still and heavy, not the slightest movement betraying her. She'd fall asleep soon, but for a time she'd listen to them, even if she couldn't hear what they murmured to each other. There'd be tears on the pillow, and the silence that fell when the murmurs ended was so deep, and so thick, she felt the nightmare would creep into her too, from the silence - the air that they all breathed. And she would take it into her, drink it gladly, to keep it from them. But that was not what they needed.

What you share multiplies. She wasn't meant to know. She didn't want to share the thing that had taught Sam the look she saw sometimes - as if he'd seen the place where the stars end and not even hope survives.

Instead she would share every lovely thing she had in herself, every ounce of strength and love, so that that would multiply instead. Again and again until the loss turned into gain, into peace, if not wholeness. You don't have to be whole to be happy.

She noticed her eyes had become blurry, and choked back a shivering breath. Tears mingled with the cooling sweat on her neck.

'If you don't come back, then I shan't, that's for certain,' said Sam. 'Don't you leave him!' they said to me. Leave him! I said. I never mean to. I am going with him, if he climbs to the Moon, and if any of those Black Riders try to stop him, they'll have Sam Gamgee to reckon with, I said. They laughed.'

Rosie laughed, a laugh as close to a sob, and closed the notebook.

I'm glad you didn't go to the moon, Frodo, my love, she thought. The moon is cold and barren.

She stroked the swell of her belly absent-mindedly, watching leafy shadows play on the wall, the window clacking slightly in a merciful breeze.