Elven circlets. (Merry's POV)
Elven nobility wear circlets. Hobbits don't.
I can't imagine what the folk back at home would say if they saw me wearing something like that. But I kind of like them, so maybe when I'm master of Buckland I'll introduce the custom. I wonder how that would go down, because as I mentioned, we hobbits are not a fancy folk, and I am no exception really. In fact I rarely even wear clothes without smudges of dirt on them, only on extremely special occasions, and even then they can't compare with what the elves wear. But the circlets took me by surprise. I look now at the council, and can see many elves wearing them, for many of the elves present are nobility.
Elrond speaks, he's talking about some stuff that's probably important but since I wasn't invited to this secret meeting thing, I probably don't need to listen. Pippin certainly isn't. So I just watch Elrond, without really listening, and I notice something strange. His circlet seems less… shiny than the others. I mean, it's not like I have a great viewpoint, hidden here behind columns, but his circlet is just not quite as perfect as the circlets of the other elves. I ponder this for quite a long time, at least for me. Why would such an important elf have a circlet that doesn't quite measure up to elvish perfection?
It is Strider who ends up unknowingly giving me the answer, with his talk of old family heirlooms. That must be it, Elrond is so old, his circlet must be too. I wonder how old it is, and what stories it carries. And as I look back at his circlet once more, I picture the history it must carry, all the stories it could tell. I find as I look that it no longer seems diminished in splendor in comparison with the circlets of other elves, for the years it has seen on the head of this most important elf puts it beyond the measure of the any others.
No matter how many scratches and dents it may carry.