Chapter nine: Midsummer

From The Calendar Customs of Gondor, by Ferdinand Took, F.A. 1257

Strange as it might seem to us hobbits, the longest day of the year was not celebrated very much in Gondor during the Third Age. This began to change when King Elessar and Queen Arwen got married on Midsummer's Day. It was all bit unexpected - not to them, of course! - and there weren't that many flowers to be found in the city at that time, but the people did what they could to celebrate at short notice.

The following year, when the first anniversary of the wedding came around, the people were determined to give them the sort of celebration they hadn't managed for the wedding itself. Weddings, as we all know, are not proper weddings without lots of food and drink and copious flowers. One year on, there were lots of flowers around - the elves had been busy! - so the people of Gondor twined them into garlands and draped them on anything that stood still long enough to be draped. Their food wasn't up to hobbit standards, though, or so we must assume.

It was King Elessar himself who was responsible for gradually changing the celebration from a commemoration of his wedding to a celebration of Midsummer itself. There were altogether too many high days and holidays centred on his own person, or so he remarked once to his great friend Peregrin Took, my esteemed ancestor. The people of Gondor wanted to make holidays of his birthday, the anniversary of his coronation, his wedding, and many other special days. They usually wanted him to appear at them, too, in his crown (quite uncomfortable, surely!) and shiny cloak. He and the queen had waited many decades for their wedding, and its anniversary was a private thing between them, one of the few private things left to them as king and queen. But the longest day would endure long after they had departed. Let the people of Gondor celebrate the triumph of light over darkness: a tale that would endure for ever more!

In this decision, of course, he was doubtless influenced greatly not only by his hobbit friends, but by his own memories of midsummers in the north. He had often travelled through the fringes of the Shire in his Ranger days, and he must have seen our Lithe celebrations and decided that they were good. (It is, however, difficult to imagine that the king adopted all our hobbit Lithe customs. There was one memorable Lithe when the son of the Master of Buckland - long after Meriadoc's time, of course - danced on the table, slipped on a jelly, and fell slap bang into the lap of the Mayor's wife. It is unlikely that King Elessar ever did a thing like that.)

However, it is said that the biggest leap forward in the development of the Midsummer festival came in the twelfth year of the Fourth Age, when King Elessar rode out to war just days before. He left behind a kingdom that was seething with worry and disquiet. Many people had kinsfolk away with the army, and they were afraid for them.

So when Midsummer came, they observed it with a new intensity. They clung to happiness, because they needed to. They had lived through the darkest days of all, and they knew that these days, however dark, could never be as dark as the days of the Dark Lord's ascendancy. So they celebrated the longest day in order to tell themselves - and each other! - that hope would always survive.

But from that year on, a darker side crept into the celebrations. Darker? Perhaps not, but sadder, anyway. More solemn. Here in the Shire, Lithe is a period of untrammelled joy and endless feasting. (We hobbits do like our feasts!) In Gondor that year, although they celebrated, they acknowledged their fears. The men-at-arms in Elessar's army gathered greenery in Ithilien, because they knew that the next day's march would take them to a place with no trees. To this day, all Midsummer garlands in Gondor carry one dead branch, with dried and faded flowers. Those who were left behind laid an extra place at the table, and poured a drink for the absent soldiers who had marched away. They still do that to this day in Gondor at Midsummer, and at every Midsummer feast, an extra place is set to stand for all the absent friends.

Midsummer in the longest day, you see, and in the Shire we take joy in that. In Gondor, they take joy in it, too, but they also remember that the moment Midsummer ends, the nights grow longer again, and the year ahead grows only ever more dark.

Sunlight woke him as he lay in his narrow bed, alone.

Aragorn sat up, throwing aside the thin blanket that was all that he needed to sleep under in these warm summer nights. There was a bite to the air once the sun went down, but Aragorn had spent many years as a Ranger, and had spent many winter nights outside, without even the advantage of a tent. He had never needed shelter to sleep, but light always woke him.

As well it should, he thought, because this was dawn: dawn on the longest day. Fourteen years ago, his long years of striving and hoping had finally come to an end, and Arwen had laid her hand in his, and become his wife.

Until the previous day, he had not known for sure. He had hoped, of course. He had found the sapling of the White Tree, and taken that as a sign, but there had been no messengers. Elrond, as he had discovered afterwards, had held him to the very letter of his vow. He had not stirred from Rivendell until the crown of Gondor had been laid upon Aragorn's head. And who could blame him? If Aragorn were being called upon to part from Arwen for ever more, he would have clung on desperately to every last hour, cherishing every last moment with her.

Midsummer's Day he counted as the true anniversary of his crowning. It was the day he achieved all his desire, and the day when he had known that his line would endure. But when the sun had sunk into the west at the end of the longest day, and he and Arwen had been alone beneath the stars, he had felt not like a king at all, but like the young man he once had been: Estel, so full of hope, who had glimpsed a lady in a wood and lost his heart to her.

Every Midsummer since then, he had woken with Arwen at his side. Wrapping the grey cloak around his shoulders, he went outside, and looked south-west, where Minas Tirith lay. Did Arwen stand in a window and look towards him?

Yes, he thought, knowing it beyond doubt. He smiled, and almost raised a hand in greeting. But he did not have the gift of seeing her across the leagues. At times, she had known where he was on his travels, but all he had seen of her were memories and thoughts. It was only hope that allowed him to picture her so clearly, standing in a high window in the Citadel, looking towards him in the dawn. Just hope and wishful thinking. How many other men-at-arms were doing the same, as they dreamed of their wives and sweethearts back home?

Turning away from Minas Tirith, he surveyed the camp. Many of the men were already stirring, although the trumpets had not yet sounded to summon them from their beds. Several of them were cutting boughs from the trees, and more sat around their camp fires weaving flowers into garlands, and setting them like circlets around their helms.

This was their last morning in Ithilien. Today they would pass the Black Gate. He was taking the army around to the west of it, and they would not see the Gate itself. They would not march across the place where they had made their desperate last stand; the place where men of Gondor had died. But even there, the influence of the Morannon would be felt. The power of Mordor was broken, and life was beginning to return to the lands near its borders, but some places had been poisoned beyond hope of healing.

And so they bring flowers to the wilderness, he thought, and living branches to the desolation. He would pluck his own bough from the woodlands, he resolved, before he rode away.

But there were tasks to be done ere that happened, and he had spent too long today in thought and dreaming. Returning to his tent, he dressed quickly, waving aside the help of his attendant. Men bowed and saluted as he strode across the compound that housed the commander's tents. Acknowledging them with a nod, he passed through the field where the Rohirrim kept their horses, and headed for the well-guarded tent where they were keeping the prisoner.

"He was quiet during the night, lord," said the guard outside the sealed opening. "He did not attempt an escape."

"Good." Aragorn stood quietly while they unfastened the loops that held the tent flap shut. There were other guards inside, of course. "Leave us," Aragorn commanded them, and although he could tell that they feared to leave their king alone with the prisoner, they obeyed him without demur.

Aragorn stayed near the entrance, the flapping canvas at his back. His sword was girded to his belt. He kept his hand on the hilt, but did not draw it. "Do you know who I am?" he asked.

The prisoner was bound to the central pole of the tent, but with a rope long enough to allow him a certain range of movement. He had blankets and good food, no different from the fare that Aragorn and the other lords had eaten themselves the night before. He was sitting upright, his back straight as he leant against the pole. His knees were bent, and he held his wounded hand carefully in his lap, supporting it with the uninjured hand.

"You are the king of Gondor," said the prisoner, his accent heavy.

"Yes." Aragorn did not move. The sun was rising higher, and the canvas was thin. Enough light fell on his face for the man to be able to see his expression. "And you are a spy."

"And you don't have spies of your own?" the prisoner said. His face went taut as the force of his resentment caused him to jolt his wounded hand, but he made no sound of pain. "Or do you call them scouts? Do you deny the shame of it, and cast all the shame on us, your enemies?"

Aragorn took a step forward, knowing that it would leave his face illuminated all the more. "And even though you are a spy," he said, switching into the language of the clans, "your wound was tended. You were fed and treated well. You were given a night for sleep and recovery before anyone came to question you. And I come alone. You see no torturer, no man who relishes pain."

"Or so you claim," the man began, then stopped as he realised that he had fallen into the trap. He had shown that he understood Aragorn's words, and he had answered in the same tongue, speaking it as one born to it. After this, there was no denying where he came from.

"You were sent by Samir," Aragorn told him, "who has united the clans and now sends them against us. You have been in Minas Tirith, and now you race homewards. What did you see there? What message do you carry?" Another step. Outside he heard the sound of clashing swords: knights at their morning exercises. "Shall I tell you?" he said quietly.

And Aragorn told the prisoner: not everything, of course, but enough. The man's face changed as he told it. Hostility turned to confusion. He shook his head in denial and then in disbelief. His hands rose to his chest, the uninjured one cushioning the other one protectively.

When Aragorn fell silent, having said all those things that it was safe to say, the prisoner spoke, and said the rest of it.

He said nothing that Aragorn had not expected, but at least he had heard it now.

Captain Daerion was dead. He heard someone say that quite clearly. Voices drifting through the window. A cry of dismay. Those savage Easterlings had killed him. Dead, they said. Dead.

Daerion closed his eyes and drifted. A smell of herbs. Bells and flowers. Captain Thorongil was healing him, and there was a green jewel on his breast. No, no. That was years ago now; years ago, and he was now an old man. He should have retired long ago. A younger captain wouldn't have let himself get ambushed like that.

"Not the captain! The captain's slain?"

Dead. Dead. How would he be remembered? Coloured ribbons and flower garlands, where once there had been a vine.

And then he was suddenly and fully awake. He was in his quarters, and it was daylight, sunlight seeping through the thick curtains. He was wounded, yes, but he had been wounded before, and worse, by the feel of things. "Why are they saying that I'm dead?" His voice was weaker than he would have liked. There was no-one there. The room was empty, but someone had put flowers beside his bed: something that none of his guardsmen would have done, surely, "but it is Midsummer," he murmured.

Unless Midsummer had come and gone. Unless he had slept for days. Unless they called him dead because he had lain in a swoon for so long that they had given him up as dead.

An old man, he thought. An old man, past his time.

He threw back his covers, but the sharp pain in his side made him stop half way through the movement. The gouge across his ribs; he remembered that. The duller pain was on the back of his head. From when I fell, he thought. But what…?

His last memory was of his attacker looming over him, armed, and ready to kill.

The door opened, and in came the last people he would ever have expected to see.

"Oh," said the perian; Peregrin, he thought. His name is Peregrin. "You're awake. Good."

"We found you," said the other one, and if the first one was Peregrin, then this was Meriadoc, the one who had helped slay the Lord of the Nazgûl. That was a more than Daerion had done. He had tried to stand against that dread lord, but had failed, falling into darkness and terror.

"Saved you," said Peregrin.

There was only one chair beside Daerion's bed. Meriadoc and Peregrin dithered over it for a moment, each one trying to be polite and defer to the other, before Meriadoc took it. It was too high for him, of course, but he pushed himself dextrously onto it and sat with his legs dangling. Peregrin stood beside the chair, one hand on its back. Daerion just lay there, propped up on his elbow, and blinked stupidly at them.

"We were in the tavern, you see," Peregrin said. "We'd been there for… some hours. It wasn't the beer, you understand, but the pies…! There was cherry pie and apple pie and pie made from some strange purple fruit I've never seen before, and all in man-sized portions, of course. I had three." Meriadoc cleared his throat pointedly. "Well, five, but it all took hours, and then when we were leaving, we wanted a bit of air, when we saw a tall fellow acting suspiciously and popping into an alley…"

"He doesn't mean you," Meriadoc interrupted, speaking in a reassuring tone. "He means the man who attacked you. We followed him, you see, and then he attacked you, and you shouted, and we shouted, and then everyone was shouting, racing up with torches."

"I didn't see you," Daerion managed weakly. He remembered the torches, though, and the dark shadow of his attacker, looming over him, blocking out all light.

"People often don't," Peregrin said. He looked quite proud about it. "Your attacker was about to finish you off, I think, but he saw how close we were, so he gave up on the job and ran away. I ran after him, but I lost him. Little legs," he explained.

"I thought you were dead," said Meriadoc. "You'd fainted, I think. You had a nasty blow to the head; that's what the healer said. 'He's dead!' I might have gasped it out loud, and then the men with torches came, and they started shouting in, too. And then a soldier came running up, and he shouted it, too: 'It's the captain!' and, 'They've killed Captain Daerion!'"

A shadow blocking out the torches. Dead, he thought. Dead… He sank into the pillows, and his head was throbbing. Even his eyes were sore.

"And… well, it gave me an idea," Peregrin said. "I thought your attacker might have heard them. I wondered if he'd run away because he thought he'd already finished the job. If he's one of those enemy agents that Faramir's so worried…" He broke off, shaking his head briskly, as if annoyed with himself. "Well," he said firmly, "I thought that perhaps you'd seen his face, and if he thought you were dead, then he'd think his secret was still safe, and get careless. So I suggested…"

"Commanded," Meriadoc said. "You commanded, Pip."

"I did, didn't I?" A slow smile spread across Peregrin's face, and Meriadoc answered him with a smile of his own, and despite everything, Daerion couldn't resist smiling himself.

"To be honest," said Meriadoc, "most of those men with torches had gone running off quite convinced that you really were dead, and busy gossiping about it to everyone they met, but the soldier stayed, and we told him that it might be best if you stayed dead for a little while."

"I wounded the man," Daerion remembered. "A sword cut to the cheek."

"Good!" Peregrin clapped his hands together. "And if he thinks you're dead, he won't know we know that."

"Dead!" echoed a voice from outside. Far away, he thought he heard someone weeping. Peregrin let out a breath, his shoulders slumping. Meriadoc looked troubled, chewing his lip. A door opened somewhere else in the guardhouse, setting the curtains shivering, and making patterns of light and shade shimmer across the ceiling.

"Of course," Meriadoc said, "it's left everyone sad and angry, and they were already too sad and angry to start with. I think…" He started slowly, as if he was still thinking things through, but then he nodded in sudden decision. "Yes, we shall put it out that you were wounded nigh unto death, but will live, although you are likely to be in a swoon for many days. That will do it, do you think?"

"Yes," Daerion said weakly. "Yes, it will."

But Meriadoc, he realised, was not speaking to him at all, but to his fellow perian. Daerion was captain of the Great Gate of Minas Tirith, but in the matter of his death, it seemed as if he had no say at all.

And then, quite amazingly, quite ridiculously, he found that he was laughing.

Éowyn waylaid her husband in an anteroom, and forced him to sit down. Waving everyone else away, she pressed the glass of watered wine into his hands, then reached into her pouch and pulled out some lemon cakes, neatly wrapped in muslin. "You missed lunch," she said, "and very likely breakfast, too. Eat. Drink."

He dutifully touched the glass to his lips, but she doubted that he drank any. At least he took a bite of lemon cake. Footsteps approached the door. Someone spoke, quiet but firm, and the footsteps went away. She had enlisted help in this.

It was not the first time that Faramir had been left to rule in Minas Tirith in the absence of the king, but it was the first time he had done so in a time of crisis. He was busy, too busy. He would never complain, and he would never break, but she was his wife and she loved him, and so she had given him this moment.

He ate in silence for a while; breathed in and out, and slowly his shoulders relaxed. No more footsteps approached the door. This was not their quarters in the Citadel, just an impersonal anteroom, the stone walls carved with twining leaves. When in Minas Tirith, they lived in the suite of rooms that had once belonged to Faramir and Boromir, and when they dined privately, they did so in his mother's old parlour. The rooms were full of old possessions and warm with childhood memories, but it was too much to expect him to spare the time to retreat there, not in the middle of a day such as this.

"The children gathered flowers today," she told him, "for Midsummer."

"That is good." Faramir gave a faint smile. He drank some wine, but only half lowered the glass, gripping it tightly in one hand. She saw the tension returning; knew that he was preoccupied, and wondered if he would tell her why.

Another sip of wine, his lips stained red. "I have been wondering whether I should order the closure of the gates," he said.

She loved him, and he was troubled. The part of her that was ruled by her love for him wanted to take his hands and beseech him: Faramir, just for one moment, forget your duty. But she was a daughter of kings, and she was no stranger to duty herself. She had tried. The least she could do now was listen to him.

"The people are in a state of fear." Faramir was swirling his wine around, almost spilling it, but not quite. "There have been too many attacks, the most recent one on the captain of the Great Gate itself. That was intended not just as an attack on the man, but as a symbolic attack on our defences itself. The Great Gate is breached, its captain fallen."

"But not dead," Éowyn reminded him. "I have heard the truth of that tale."

"It was quick thinking on the part of Merry and Pippin." Faramir gave a quick smile, like sunlight glimpsed from behind a cloud and then gone again. "It remains to be seen if we will benefit from it, but in this game of ours, we cannot throw away any chances. But alive or dead, he was attacked. That is what matters. That is what is seen to matter."

Had her father ever discussed his concerns with her mother? Had he sat with her across the table and asked her opinion on the organisation of his Riders or his tactics against the orcs? She doubted it, and yet here Faramir was, exposing his doubts to her, talking to her about a problem that was consuming his attention.

Once she had dreamed of being a warrior, but when she had ridden out with the muster, she had done so because she was in despair. When she had married Faramir, she had shed her despair. But when she married Faramir, she had also turned her back on those dreams. She was a wife, a mother. She kept house in Emyn Arnen, and she tended her garden and prized things that grew and brought life, and turned her back on the instruments of death.

But the dreams had not died. The old ladies of Gondor wanted her to hide in Emyn Arnen and take no part in public life, but here was Faramir, speaking to her about the governance of Gondor. Perhaps he wanted her opinion, or perhaps he just wanted her to listen silently, but he was talking to her, and that meant everything. In this world made by men, how many other lords of Gondor would talk to their wives so?

"Aragorn wishes the gates to be closed as seldom as possible," she said.

"I know this," he said, wearily. "The gates were controlled during the war, but that was a dark necessity of the times we were living in. He wants the Gondor to be a beacon, a refuge that welcomes travellers and excludes nobody who comes with peace in their hearts. He offers alliance to our old enemies. He believes that we should not hide behind our mighty walls and glare out at the world outside our borders, with distrust in our hearts…"

His words trailed off. She touched his hand, just a gentle brush of the fingertips, then withdrew, although not so far that he could not claim her hands if he wished. "But Gimli rebuilt the Great Gate, stronger than it was before," she said, knowing that he was thinking it. "And Aragorn has ridden to war."

"Yes." Faramir scraped his hand through his hair. His wine glass trembled, drops of red liquid spilling on his tunic.

"But the enemy is already within the gates, and closing them will do nothing but trap them inside," she said: Faramir's thoughts, once again, and she merely put them into words.

"But will it comfort the people?" He looked her full in the face, and she knew that this time he wanted her to reply not just with his own thoughts, but with an answer.

"It might," she said slowly, "but I think it will fill them with fear, too. They might clamour for it, but while the gates remain open, they know that their rulers are not afraid. And they are comforted by that, because it shows them that however dark things seem, they are not as dark as they were in the days of the War, and they lived through that. Hope survived."

"Yes," said Faramir, and he took her hands in both of her own. "Yes," he said, and he smiled. "Hope survives."

All around his helmet, Ionar was wearing flowers. As he marched, he carried his spear in his right hand, as he had been drilled to do, but in his left, he held a leafy bough. His captain condoned it. His lord tolerated it. The king encouraged it, or so it was understood, although nobody had heard him say anything about it. That was when the practice had started to spread through the army like wildfire. At dawn it was just a few of them. By the time they resumed their march after lunch, almost every man-at-arms carried flowers, and even the proud riders of Rohan had flowers streaming from their helmets, entwined with the horsehair plumes.

"We look like a walking forest," said Thavron beside him, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, so his captain would not hear. "Like those stories of ents in the War."

Ionar didn't reply. There were too many stories about the War, and he didn't like hearing them. He had only been nineteen when he had marched from Minas Tirith to the Black Gate. He had gone with one of the levies from the city, under that Captain Beregond who was now with Lord Faramir in Emyn Arnen. He didn't like to talk about it. He didn't like to think about it.

"So why are you volunteering to go again?" his wife had protested, when once again, fourteen years after the first marching, he had volunteered to follow the king.

He had no answer for that; nothing he could put in words, anyway. But here he was, not far from the Black Gate, the place he still saw in dreams. But it looked different this time. Partly it was the weather, but mostly it because they had brought all these flowers and leaves from Ithilien, to make their camp into a garden, even in this most bleak of lands.

"Will they grow, I wonder?" he mused out loud, looking at the bough that he had jammed between two rocks. There was a thin dusting of soil there, brought by the wind from more fertile lands. He didn't know much about gardens, but he had a vague idea that sometimes fresh plants could grow out of cuttings of old ones, even if they didn't have roots.

In ten years, he wondered, would this place be a garden? They said that the area around the Black Gate was so poisoned that it would never be healed, but how could they be sure? For hundreds of years to come, would travellers rest here and take comfort, remembering that this was where King Elessar's army had halted on Midsummer's Day so long ago, on the way to victory in the east?

I hope so, he thought. I really hope so..

And that was why he had come. He had come out of duty, too, of course. He had done it because those murdering Easterlings had tried to kill the king, and he was furious about that. He had done it because a loyal man of Gondor had to do what was right, even if he was afraid of it.

But at the same time, he had come because he wanted to lay the dark dreams to rest. He wanted to pass through the devastation outside the Black Gate, not as part of an army that thought it was marching to its death, but as part of an army marching to victory.

In the future, whenever he dreamed of the Black Gate, he would see it alive with flowers and leaves.

Night came early in the Citadel, even on the longest day. The towering height of Mount Mindolluin blocked the sunset, and Gondor was further south than the Shire, and that meant that its summer days were shorter that they were in the Shire. In the city below them, people were celebrating noisily, but in the Citadel itself, the day drifted quietly into twilight, and above them, the first of the stars came out.

They were alone in the garden, Pippin and the queen. Faramir had been with them, but he had been called away, and Éowyn had gone with him. Merry had darted off to try to find them some more beer. Pippin hoped he would return soon. This was the first time he had been alone with the queen, he realised. And she was always 'the queen' to him. After the initial awkwardness, he was perfectly at ease thinking of the king as Aragorn, or even as Strider, but he could never imagine thinking of the queen just as Arwen, let alone saying it out loud.

He should probably be speaking. Finding something to talk about was not usually something he had difficulties with, but he considered and rejected several possibilities. At last, he stroked the broad leaf of a nearby plant, and said, "Your garden is very beautiful, my lady."

"I thank you, Peregrin Took." She sounded formal, as if he was a courtier giving her a gift, but then she smiled, a smile even more beautiful than the most lovely flower in her garden.

It left him speechless. He could not be speechless. "It's called the Queen's Garden, I know. Did you plant everything yourself?" Then he could have bitten his tongue off, because he had implied that the queen of Gondor crouched in the mud, her sleeves rolled up as she wrestled with plantings and prunings, getting as dirty as Sam in a Shire garden.

"I planted many of them," the queen said, "but there are gardeners who seem to think that such things are their job, and that I need to be saved from the imposition of such tasks." She smiled. "Sometimes I defy them, and sometimes I let them have their way. But I chose all the flowers, even if I did not plant them."

She had even managed to find some flowers that stayed open after the sun had left them, and even in the twilight, the garden was rich with sweet scent. He would have to ask her for cuttings to take hope to Sam. Or maybe it was merely her presence that caused them to stay wide open and blooming. They said that she made the nights of Gondor as beautiful as the day. Perhaps that was why Midsummer was such a quiet thing here in the Citadel. Why bother celebrating the longest day when your nights were even more beautiful?

Of course, Pippin remembered suddenly, Aragorn and the queen had been married on Midsummer's Day, and Aragorn was away at war. Perhaps this was nothing to do with Midsummer at all. The queen was a wife whose husband was away from home on their special day; a wife whose husband might even now be heading into deadly danger.

"He will return safely," he found himself saying, as if a fool of a hobbit like him could ever know more of the future than a daughter of Elrond! Fool! he chided himself. Fool!

"I believe that he will," she said, and she turned upon him the full beauty and mercy of her gaze. "Thank you, Pippin." She smiled, and for a moment, it looked like the smile of a hobbit lass, delighted by a gift of flowers and a nice sweet bite to eat.

Like his own wife had looked when he had asked her to marry him.

And here he was, far away from her, not out of duty and necessity, which is what had parted Aragorn and Arwen, but because he had chosen to go. Oh, he had asked her if she minded, but in a way that made it difficult for her to say no without seeming shockingly unreasonable. Éomer had left his wife at home, of course, even though he loved her dearly, and none of his Riders would ever think to take their wives and children with them when they went off for months on end galloping across those plains of theirs. In most of the great tales of the past, the men went journeying and the women stayed at home.

"I… I would like to bring my wife here," Pippin said, "if I may. We're the only hobbits who've come here, did you know that? We're the mighty travellers, the special ones, but why shouldn't other hobbits come? I've got a little one now, did you know? Little Faramir. He's too young for such a long journey, of course." But older now. Older and changed since Pippin had last seen him, and likely to be changed again before he returned home. Half a year away. He missed them, of course, but he had still chosen to leave them behind.

"We would be delighted to welcome them here," Arwen said, still with that warm smile, but then it faded slightly, and she sighed. "It has been a poor visit for you and Merry, Pippin, with most of your friends away, and Faramir and Éowyn so busy in their absence. I have been a poor hostess. I-"

"Oh! No!" Pippin protested, interrupting the queen of Gondor. "You haven't! You've been busy doing, er, queen things, and you've got Eldarion. And we're quite happy, as happy as can be expected, what with this dreadful war. We…"

He trailed off, suddenly realising what he had been doing wrong these last few days. Had Legolas or Gimli been the ones left behind when Aragorn had gone marching away, he and Merry would have sought them out. They would have tried to spend time with them. They wouldn't have waited to be asked. 'With most of your friends away,' Arwen had said, putting herself in the role of the outsider. When wives married, they left their own homes and families and went to live with their husbands' people, with their husbands' friends forever knocking on the door and popping round for a drink or three and a bite to eat. It wasn't the wife whom those friends had come to see, and she must always know it.

Had Diamond found it difficult, Pippin suddenly wondered. Long Cleeve wasn't that far away from Tuckborough, but it was far enough, too far for her old friends to pop round for a quick chat after lunch. And how much harder must it be for someone like Arwen, an elf in a world of Men, whose old friends had gone sailing across the sea?

And here she was, stuck with a foolish Took who was happy to think of her husband as 'Strider,' but couldn't even bring himself to think of her as anything other than 'the queen.'

"We're happy enough," he said, as his heart started to beat faster as it realised the audacity of what he was about to say, "but we'll be even happier if you and Eldarion come to second breakfast with us tomorrow. It's become quite a tradition, you see. The cooks put us together a nice tray of delicacies, and they bring it to our room, but if it's a nice day, we take it outside. Legolas and Gimli shared it with us just before the army left, but we'd love it if…"

"We would love to," Arwen said, and that hobbit-lass smile was back, and it was even more beautiful than before.

And so, as night fell at the end of the longest day, Pippin and Arwen sat side by side on the grass, and talked together of this and that, and watched the stars appear in the night sky, as beautiful as the day.