Attack of the Plot Bunnies Chapter Twenty Nine
Timeline: 1428/F.A. 8 Chapter: Appendices
Credit where Credit is due: previously appeared on my LJ
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Tolkien (except for the bits that belong to Peter Jackson and the rest of the people who made the movies.) I'm just playing with the toys.
Author: rabidsamfan
Title: Mathom
Not much had been saved. Sam sifted through the box of cookware and threadbare linens, smiling as he recognized his sisters' stitchery on the edges of the tea towels.
Near the bottom of the box he found the things that the Gaffer had packed first.
A drawing of his mother. The herbal that Bilbo had given long ago. The carefully rolled family tree.
And at the very bottom, one thing more.
It wasn't much – just a willow-whistle he had made for his tenth birthday, when he thought he was too old to give bunches of flowers like the babies did. It hadn't worked well – it hadn't worked at all really – but he'd given it to his father, because there wasn't time to make another.
Sam turned the wood in his hands and remembered the way that the knife had slipped and the bunny-ears of the bandage his mother had tied on his finger. Hal and Ham had laughed at him, and his father had been gruff in his thanks, spending more words on the damaged hand than the gift. He'd never even tried to get a tune out of it.
The next year Sam had gone back to giving flowers.
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