"Ba!"

"Is that her word for her doll?" Sam asked, as Elanor bounced up and down in the circle of her toys and chanted 'ba, ba, ba ba ba' gleefully, shaking the doll in question in one chubby hand.

"It seems to be her word for everything," Rosie answered with a shrug. "She's been saying it all morning. Hold still, Sam, I can't get a good look at your bruise if you twist away like that whenever I come close."

"It hurts," Samwise the Stouthearted, hero of songs and stories in distant lands, said petulantly.

The injury was a bruise in the same way that the Shire had a lot of grass in it. Sam's beloved pony, Bill, had lost his usually sure footing on the road down to Bywater, knocking Sam down a short and steep hill into a large rock at the base of it. Sam's hip was a ripe purple-blue from waist to thigh, and his arm was criss-crossed with gravel rash.

"Here." Frodo pressed a mug of hot, dark liquid into Sam's hand. "Drink this, it'll cut the pain down and make you feel nice and drowsy."

Sam smiled with a nod of thanks and brought the drink to his lips, only to pull it away with a splutter a second later. "That's horrible!"

Frodo smirked at Rosie. "There, you've heard a second opinion. I told you so."

"Pair of complaining babies, you are. Can't even swallow a bit of tonic without complaining! Here, let me taste it." Rosie took a sip, choked it down, and handed the mug back to Sam. "All right, it's a little bitter. Put some sugar in it and swallow it down, now, no sense in hurting if you don't have to."

"You never let me put sugar in it when you make me take that nasty stuff!" Frodo cried in outrage. "It's a conspiracy, I'm sure of it, you're trying to kill my tastebuds so I won't notice your cooking."

"Go see to the baby, will you?" Rosie replied blithely. "I'll get Sam's hurts looked at and we'll come in and join you."

Frodo walked off, still muttering about disgusting remedies, and went in to see what his small namesake was making a racket about. If Elanor was a baby with a healthy pair of lungs, then wee Frodo was twice as healthy again, and had a loudness to match.

"All right, lad, need a new nappy there?" Frodo picked up the small wriggling creature and patted its rump. "Ah, yes. Well, let's get that taken care of so we can have a relatively peaceful evening, shall we?"

Frodo-lad gave his uncle a droll babyish look.

"Mind you don't stick him with pins when you fasten it!" Rosie shouted from the other room.

"I never do!" Frodo shouted back. "Honestly, my boy, your mother is far too protective, isn't she? Woe betide the charge that tries to cross her when she's their keeper."

"I heard that!"

Later, when the grown-ups were comfortably propped up with pillows and baby Frodo was asleep in Sam's arms and Elanor was trying to play pat-a-cake with Rosie without having any idea how to play it beyond patting her mother's hands and squealing a lot, Frodo flicked through the pages of one of his books.

"What tale would you like to hear, Sam? You get to choose, since you had to drink that awful muck that Rosie calls a tonic."

"I think I'd like something with Elves in. One of the old stories."

"Not one of the battle ones, if it's all the same to you bloodthirsty lads. I don't want Elly and Fro's heads all filled up with gore and fighting."

"What about Beren and Luthien, then? There's not much blood in it," Frodo suggested. "I know you're not fond of Elven princesses, Rose, but I think you'll like this one if you give it a chance."

"All right." Rosie nodded. "Because it's what Sam would like."

So Frodo read to them from the story of Luthien, an Elven girl, and Beren, a boy of the race of Men, and the ridiculous amount of trouble that can happen when a girl and a boy meet by chance in the forest.

"I've heard some of those tales before, only they were called by different names. Rapunzel, and the Luck Child. 'Bring me a treasure and you can have my daughter', that's in more stories than I can remember. As if lasses are things to buy and sell." Rosie snorted. "But you're right, Frodo, I did like it. It was lovely." She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. "Can we hear more?"

"Is our dear Sam still awake or has he fallen into the fell grip of your potions?"

"I'm awake, the words are too pretty to miss with sleeping," Sam said. "Just letting my eyes have a rest."

"All right, I'll read you some more, then. And I'll think you'll find, Rose, that there are other tales you recognise in this one. That seems to be the way of stories, that they keep being told and never tire of it."

And Frodo read to them of more of Beren and Luthien's adventures, of dark disguises and prisons and songs of hope, and of love and bravery and companionship, and of treasures and bites and blood and loss.

"Ba!" Elanor offered, making flapping wing-shapes with her hands.

"Oh, so it means 'bird' now, does it?" Frodo laughed. "They were very useful birds, weren't they? There's another story, with Maedhros and Fingon - I'd never thought of it until now, but it's not so different from Beren and Luthien, in some ways. But anyway, they were happy for the birds as well, I'm sure. And then there's another story, about a queen who transforms into a bird after she's ended her life, so that she can fly over the sea and be with her lover. And then -"

"Yes, yes, that's very nice, I want to know what happens to Luthien and her Beren now," Rosie cut in, choosing to ignore the gentle teasing laughter of Sam and Frodo at her words. Frodo read to the very end of the story, through wind and fire and hardship and right down into death itself, and then back out again from darkness and into the light.

"As if there could have been any choice at all, when those were the two ways offered," was Rosie's opinion on the end of the story, where Luthien is offered everlasting joy in a land over the sea or a mortal lifetime with her beloved. "She'd have been right mad to go to so much effort for a lad and then say good-bye when things were just getting settled proper."

Frodo kissed her on the end of her freckle-strewn nose and whispered "I think Sam's gone to sleep."

"I haven't." The candle-light gave them all a golden glow and made Sam's broad hands look like they were wrought of copper. "No chance of it even if I'd wanted to, with you two nattering on. What happened to those other two, then? Maedhros and what's his name?"

"Fingon. Well, some of the books say that Fingon never married or had children, but there are many tales told about the clever and brave things his son managed to do, so I don't think that's true."

Rosie snorted. "It's sometimes wise to remember that books only say the parts that the writers want them saying. Likely his wife didn't want her name shoved in with all the melodrama."

"Yes, dear," Sam placated absent-mindedly. "What about the other, Frodo?"

"Maedhros? Oh, that's a dreadfully sad ending, that one," Frodo said. "Completely unsuitable for children. He had a dark doom on him, you see. Best not to dwell on it."

"I don't want to know it," Rosie agreed. "Now we should all be getting to sleep, I'll tuck the baby into his cradle and put this little bird-girl to bed."

"Ba!" Elanor called to Sam and Frodo, waving over Rosie's shoulder as she was carried from the room.

"Ba-ba, Elly! Sleep well!" they said with a wave in return.

"So what did happen, then?" Sam asked, checking to see if Frodo-lad needed changing again before bed.

"It doesn't matter, Sam, truly. The tale's been told again since to better ends," Frodo answered with a small smile. "And maybe it's better to forget some things."

"You've got me all curious now, I won't sleep right until I know it."

"He got what he'd wanted, in the end. It had eaten him up inside for so long, but at the finish of it his treasure was in his hand at last," said Frodo. "But, well, he fell, Sam. Into a river of fire."

"Urk." Sam shuddered. "You're right, that is a horrible ending."

"It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter now." Frodo wriggled down until he was lying flush against Sam's unbruised side. "Now we should be quiet, before Rose comes in and hears us talking of violent things."

"Too late for that," Rosie put in from the doorway. "All right, my little baby boy, to cradle with you."

Plucking Frodo-lad out of Sam's hands, Rosie carried him over to the cradle under the wide round window. The thin light of other homes and stars outside cast a faint halo around her profile as she bent low to kiss the baby's forehead. "You are a sweet one, little lad, even if you are made of mud and slugs and wicked stories like other boy-children."

"Oh, and what are girl-children fashioned out of, then?" Sam asked with a laugh. Rosie went around the bed and climbed in on the other side of Frodo, trapping him between their warmth as they usually did.

"Hmmm. Kittens and junipers," she answered, snuggling in against Frodo's back. Frodo snorted, thankful that Rosie was too sleepy to retaliate with more than a light slap to his leg.

"Kittens wielding jars of evil healing tea, perhaps," Sam offered diplomatically. "Junipers who eat the oysters out of a chicken before serving a plateful of pieces to the table, for certain. Kittens -"

"All right, enough sauce from you, Mr Gamgee, or you'll be left without anybody to wait on you tomorrow while you recover from your fall."

"Mr Frodo will wait on me."

Now it was Rosie's turn to snort. "Good luck to you both, then. I'll bet you a gooseberry pie that it's not half an hour before you need my help with summat or other."

"Sounds like a good bet to me, what do you think, Frodo?"

"Up to you, my dear Sam, for if we lose it'll be you cooking the pie. My gooseberry pies usually end up looking more like gooseberry mush with pastry strewn about in it."

"Well, to keep things fair Frodo can bet a week's worth of seed-cakes instead," Rosie offered generously.

"I bake those anyway."

"Yes, but this way I can gloat while you do so."

"Goodnight, Rose."

"Goodnight, Frodo. Goodnight, Sam."

"Goodnight, Rosie. Goodnight, Frodo."

"Goodnight, Sam. Shall we have another chorus of goodnights? It's rather like playing Buckland whispers."

"Goodnight, Frodo."

~

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