Sammie wasn’t quite as elegant with the pen as his forbearer yet, but some of the tales that sprung from his hand caused Frodo to pause and look them over once again.
"Tell me what this one is about, Sammie," Frodo said one day from his sickbed as he sorted through the children’s school papers. He picked up the piece of parchment in question and tapped it with his good hand.
Sammie fidgeted, squinting at the paper as if to remember all of the details. "Oh, it’s just some story..."
"Continue..."
He squirmed, blushing. "Well, it’s about a hobbit who had scissors for hands..." He ducked his head, but upon seeing that his uncle wasn’t laughing or poking fun his wounded puppy expression softened.
"Scissors for hands, eh?" Frodo squinted at the paper. The black ink strokes stood out on the golden glow of the paper in the candlelight. "How ever did he get that way?"
Sammie shifted a little more, but Frodo could see that he was easing into the role of story-teller rather than trying to run from it. "Well, it’s like the little button dolls that Primrose and Robin make... A wizard was lonely and needed a friend so he strung together all of the useful little bits he had around, forks and phials and old parchment quills and the sort, and then magiced them together in the shape of a hobbit. But see, he was an old wizard and a little forgetful so he forgot to finish his hands, and before he could, an Urgent Matter called him away and he was involved in various grand and dangerous adventures that he never came back from."
"That’s terribly said," Frodo mused. Sammie nodded eagerly and pointed to a dark scribble in the lower left hand side of the paper.
"See? That’s him. Del drew him for the story. She helped me write it."
Frodo held the paper a little closer to his face and indeed what had formerly been an inkblot transformed into a rather dark sketch with thick, dark lines, of the head and torso of a hobbit, his clothes all in tatters, hair a mess, eyes dark and face tragic, with long shears for fingers. The tenderness in which Del’s normally violent hand had rendered him made him stop and catch his breath.
"Del helped you?"
"Yes. She was the one who said it ought to be scissors in the first place. I was all for pen-quills but she said they weren’t dramatic enough."
"She’s a good head, that girl." He indicated to a portion of the hobbit’s face that seemed to be speckled with dots and lines. "And what are those?"
"Oh. That was Del’s idea. He was sad that the wizard left but every time he tried to rub away the tears he’d only cut himself and make new red ones."
"She’s a flair for the dramatic, as well..." murmured Frodo, but inside he was thinking of how the little drips of blood would roll down pale cheeks and onto metal spikes. And then the skin would scar and there would be little tear-trails there for ever and ever.
"What happened to him? The hobbit with scissors for hands?"
"Well, some nice hobbits with a good smial found him and thought it best that he come and live with them."
"And his hands? Wouldn’t that make things terribly awkward? There’s no magic in a smial to make them soft so they wouldn’t hurt the babies."
Sam-lad waved his question away with a little posh posh gesture his mother used. "Oh, there’s magic enough. They’re still working on it, and eventually it’ll be fixed. Besides, with four hands betwixt them it really doesn’t matter."
Frodo hugged him close and kissed him then, and Sammie had no real knowledge of why.
~