"Moria is going to be great!" Gimli told them repeatedly.
Gandalf and Aragorn may have rolled their eyes whenever he said this, but the rest of the Fellowship believed him. He was a Dwarf after all.
However, after the little incident where the pack of Wargs tried to kill them, they believed him a little less.
Once the octopus...squid...whatever, that thing in the water had grabbed Frodo and tried to eat him, they were downright skeptical.
Upon entering Moria and being trapped by a cave-in and finding the rotting remains of countless headless Orcs and arrowed Dwarves, Pippin went rabid.
"Okay, so maybe Moria's not so great," Gimli admitted.
Sam stared at the one-time entrance to the mines, sniffled, and said, "I can't believe we lost one of us already."
Frodo patted him on the shoulder comfortingly. "Steady now, Sam. I thought you were over Legolas's death by now."
"Who? Oh, him. I meant Bill."
"Don't worry about Bill," grunted Boromir, who was trying to move one of the rocks blocking the entrance. "I'm sure he's safer out there than in here. If you think about it, he has a much better chance of making it back home than the rest of us."
"This whole quest is lousy with danger," Aragorn added darkly as he inspected a Dwarven corpse.
"Gosh, I feel so much better now," muttered Sam.
"Gentlemen, we shall rest here for the night. Please keep quiet, and do be careful of the very deep well over there," announced Gandalf, holding his lighted staff aloft and gesturing at the mentioned hazard.
"What, you mean this one?" Pippin giggled, sticking his head in the well and staring downward. "I don't know, Gandalf, I don't see any dragons flying out of it or anything."
"Fool of a Took! Get away from there!"
But Pippin, surprised by Gandalf's outburst, jerked his head up too quickly and knocked over the cadaver that had been resting comfortably on the edge of the well. His eyes widened and he instinctively dove to grab the corpse and felt himself falling forward into the endless darkness
until a pair of hands grabbed his foot and he jerked to a stop.
Pippin prayed that anyone besides Gandalf had caught him.
"Fool of a Took!"
So much for that wish.
Pippin pondered the number of ways a wizard could kill him while a number of hands pulled him (rather roughly, he thought) out of the well.
Once he was on safe ground again (relatively speaking), and the others had pried Gandalf's fingers off his neck, he managed to squeak out, "Ipromisetoneverdoitagain!"
"You'd better," growled the wizard, "or I might do something drastic."
"Well," said Gimli, "that was rather drastic."
"Don't talk to me about wells," sobbed Pippin.
Things had started going badly when they'd run onto the bridge. Sure, the horde of evil monsters behind them had been bad before that, but theoretically a bridge should have made it difficult for the enemy to follow them en masse...at any rate, the bridge had been a bad idea.
When the Balrog had showed up, no one, not even Gandalf had known what to do. They had almost expected someone to yell "Ai ai!" in fear and to label the unknown terror, but they'd already lost their one wimpy Elf and no one else could have done the job.
"Er, I think that's Durin's Bane," Gimli tried gamely.
Gandalf had shoved a random Hobbit aside, stepped forward heroically, drawn Glamdring, etc. until the inevitable had happened.
"That poor sod," sniffed Boromir.
"Somehow...I almost expected things to turn out this way," said Frodo mournfully. "I think Gandalf knew what would happen...he did not want to come to Moria, after all, and he gave me that heartwarming speech about doing something or other with the time that is given us..."
"I'm going to miss him so much!" Pippin wailed.
Aragorn bowed his head in grief momentarily. They needed time to grieve...but nightfall was approaching, and with it, danger.
"Come," he said. "We must keep on moving. Sam, wake up Gandalf."
The Fellowship looked at him in astonishment.
"He's been unconscious long enough," said Aragorn impatiently. "We must keep moving."
They did as he said. They woke Gandalf from the magical sleep of the Balrog's spell and were on their way.
As they walked, Sam patted Pippin on the back and murmured, "There there. He died heroically, you know. Well, maybe not the part about being shoved into the abyss accidentally by Gandalf, but I'm sure his heart was filled with heroic courage until the end."
"I know..." answered Pippin through his tears, "but I shall miss my Merry so much!"