Feverfew and vervain, crushed peppermint and ground hypericum. Rosie had learned more about herbs to heal the mind than she'd thought possible, and Frodo had sipped at more woody, spicy teas than he could remember. Sometimes they helped a little, too.

He was wearing one of Sam's shirts, thicker and warmer than the fine lightness of his own clothes, better for keeping out the grey wind of the weather. The sleeves pooled at his wrists, the collar gaping at his neck, and it made Frodo feel rather small, and young, remembering times long past when Pippin had covered his own clothes in mud or something equally filthy and draped himself in Merry's much larger articles quite happily.

It wasn't the best sort of day for walking, a mackerel sky in the early morning slipping into a promise of heavy rain by early afternoon, but Frodo didn't mind. Rosie had insisted he take an umbrella with him on his stroll, but he'd left it down by the stile at the edge of the Proudfoot property, continuing on with his hands in his pockets and face turned up to the sodden sky.

It was an apple-stealing, hide-and-seek, adventure sort of day, half a dozen children romping and galloping for every parent harvesting and working.

There was a group of them down by the water's edge, sailing leaf-boats out onto the river.

"Addie, you cheat! I saw you toss that stone at mine!" a little boy shouted at an equally small girl, stalking away angrily. She poked her tongue out at him and turned to her friends.

"I never did. You saw, didn't you? I don't cheat."

The other children shrugged, the spell of the game broken, and wandered off, leaving only Addie and a slightly older boy whom Frodo recognised as Jacky Fairbairn.

"Hello there." Frodo walked in close to them.

"Fastred said he climbed your tree. Did he really?" Jacky asked, wiping mud off his hands onto the sides of his pants. Despite the cloudy day his nose was sunburnt.

"Yes. You can come by and try as well, if you like." Frodo offered.

"Fastred's so strong." Addie said with a happy sort of sigh.

"Here now, I'm stronger." Jacky objected. "He still gets scared by storms, but I hardly ever do. And I can swim twice as far as him."

"Nobody's doing any swimming while the water's so choppy." Frodo put in. "You're old enough to know better than that."

Addie pulled one of the late-blooming flowers up out of the ground, pulling the petals off on each beat of her rhyme. "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor." the little yellow tear-shapes fell onto the shoreline in a bright rain. "Rich man, poor man, beggar man, theif."

"I'm going to be a rich man." Jacky told the little girl. "I'm going to be a lawyer when I grow up. I'll wear a smart suit and you'll have to call me sir. Do you want to be a lawyer's wife?"

Addie snorted. "No. I'm not going to be anybody's wife, I'll live by myself for ever and ever."

"That sounds rather lonely." Frodo said as the three of them walked along the riverbank.

"You're not married, and you're not lonely, are you?" Addie asked.

"No, but I don't live on my own."

"Fastred says your home is always wonderfully happy, that it's like a storybook." said Jacky.

Frodo smiled at that. "Yes, I suppose it is, rather, since I'm writing it down like a story."

"You mean all of this, living in Hobbiton and sailing boats on the river and climbing trees, is all part of your big story with the elves and spiders and battles?" Jacky's eyes were wide. Frodo laughed.

"A very important part. I write it all down, every word, on bits of paper, and then I copy the important parts, or the parts that make sense of the rest, into my red book. That way people who want the whole story can find it, and those who only care about the core tale can know that."

"So we'll be in it? You'll write down this talk today?" Addie clapped her hands.

"Yes. But it won't get in the book, only in the sheaf of papers, for I finished the book this morning."

"Really? It's all done? The adventure's over?"

"Finally, Jack, finally. And I'm not that sorry to see it completed, for it was a difficult journey to live through."

Jacky shrugged. He'd heard the stories from Fastred, and it all sounded like grand fun.

"How does it end, then?" Addie wanted to know.

Frodo tilted his head back, letting the first light drops of rain fall on his eyelids and cheeks.

"The only way it ever could." he said in a quiet voice, smiling at the children.

~

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