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niamhcinnoir · 3 months

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This fic helps me sleep 😍 so excited for the other chapters!!

Hard Words, Chapter 3

Boromir/Original Female Character, Boromir Lives, a Shire wedding, culture clashes

Rating: T (some adult language and themes)

Chapter wordcount: 5600

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<Previous Chapter

Boromir strode up the Bywater lane, holding his sword hilt to keep the scabbard from banging his knees. Folk were making their way toward the party field in groups, all laughing and singing, all with flowers in their hair. They stopped and gawked at him as he passed, and he offered greetings in return. He knew he stood out more than ever. He’d brushed the black wool of his uniform until it gleamed, polished the buttons and buckles to high shine, oiled his embossed leather vambraces and belt, and cleaned his kit down to the rivets. He’d stitched the embroidered sleeve hem that had been coming loose, though not elegantly—it would need the attention of a better tailor than he when he returned home. He’d washed in soap and hot water from head to toe, lathered and shaved, and pulled his hair back into a short half-tail. His silver piping glinted. His horn shone. His pleated white sash, the mark of the office of the Steward, had not a single crease out of place. Under his arm, he carried the carefully-rolled standard of the King, which he’d kept bound in a leather sheath all the way from Minas Tirith. And in his gloved hand was a single stem of nodding bluebells.

The wedding field was buzzing. Bunting and ribbons fluttered over curly heads as folk rushed around, unpacking baskets of food onto the banquet tables and rolling ale barrels into place. Musicians tuned up, and some folk were already shuffling onto benches to secure good seats. Flower petals, blown free from Fern’s wedding arrangements, drifted in the breeze.

He looked for Fern, his head pivoting at every flash of ginger-blonde hair. He peered over tent canopies and around wagon wheels, but he didn’t see her anywhere. He desperately wanted to make his apology before the ceremony began—he didn’t know when there would be a good time afterward. But he didn’t see her anywhere, nor her basket of flower circlets.

“Well, have a look at you, in your coronation finery!”

Merry grinned at him from the flap of a big white tent. He wasn’t wearing his Rohirric armor, but he did have his sword and the horn of Rohan at his waist, fixed to the silver belt he’d been gifted by the Lady Galadriel in the Golden Wood. Otherwise, he was dressed in a weskit of bright butter-yellow and blue embroidery, with a jacket of green velvet over the top. “You look a right regal portrait, you know—they should make a statue of you.” He posed dramatically, his arm thrust out in a mock sword lunge.

Boromir grimaced. He didn’t want to mention that since Merry had left Gondor, the city had erected a statue of him, down by the causeway gate where he’d fought like something possessed during Pelennor. He had to ride past it every time he left the city, and now thinking about it made his stomach turn.

“Have you seen Fern?” Boromir asked.

“Not yet. She should be bringing the flowers any minute now. It’s not like her to be late.” He nodded at the bluebell in Boromir’s hand. “Where’d you find that? Odd thing to have about. It’s for an apology. Didn’t think she was using them in the arrangements.”

“Never mind,” he said. “How’s Pippin?”

“Sick,” Merry said. “Not from the drink, mind you—we all stopped on the early side last night. It’s nerves, I think. Hasn’t eaten a bite. His sisters are doing him up right now, lots of fuss.” He gestured inside the tent flap. “Want to come pay your respects?”

Boromir ducked through the tent entrance, his head brushing the sloping canopy. The air inside was stuffy and thick with excited chatter. In the middle of a scrum of hobbit maids stood Pippin, his cheeks grayer than usual. He gazed vacantly through the rush of activity, seemingly unaware of the cacophony around him. With a shock, Boromir realized that for the first time, Pippin didn’t strike him as a boisterous child. He looked like a man facing a precious weight.

He’d always been a man, Boromir chastised himself, even seven years ago when they’d marched to war together, but because he wasn’t lined and weary with grim despair, he’d told himself he was a child.

He saw Pippin register his presence, and the hobbit seemed to shake himself.

“Boromir,” he said. “I need… I need your help.”

Boromir waded through the melee until he reached Pippin and crouched down on one knee. “What do you need?”

Pippin held up the braided silver shoulder cord that went with his Gondorian uniform. “I can’t… I can’t remember how to tie it.”

“I’ll do it, lad.” Boromir took it from him and gently turned him to the side. Pippin was in a handsome blue coat, embroidered with patterns of white and yellow flowers, but the coat lacked the military shoulder straps that served to hold the cord and epaulets in place.

“I’m not supposed to wear it, am I?” Pippin said. “If I’m not in full uniform. I’m supposed to wear all or nothing, aren’t I?”

“Perhaps in the Citadel,” Boromir said. “But right now you look just perfect, and I can’t tell you how proud I am to see you wear the King’s regalia on your wedding day. Here.” He snaked his hand under his surcoat to where the backs of his pins pushed through the fabric. He unfastened the closest bar he could reach—the Commendation of Superior Service Aragorn had given Éomer, Imrahil, and himself as the commanders of his forces during the Battle of the Black Gate. Protocol would demand that he rearrange all the other pins with the removal of one, but no one present would care except himself, and it was a good one to lend Pippin, since he had fought in that battle. Setting the bar aside, he looped the silver uniform cord the customary three times over and under Pippin’s shoulder, leaving the final loop on the outside of his sleeve. He pinned the loops in place with the service bar, then tied the whipping knot at the end and let it drape over his chest.

“There,” he said, neatening the silver bead cone at the end of the knot. “Fit and ready for parade as any of the king’s Knights.”

A ghost of Pippin’s usual smile flickered on his face, and he reached for a nearby chair and picked up his sword and silver belt, a match to Merry’s. Boromir took it from him and fastened it around his waist. He leaned back on his knee to see the full effect, and then touched two fingers to his temple. Pippin’s nervous smile grew, and he returned the salute.

At that moment, a familiar voice cut above the hubbub outside the tent.

“Family and wedding party! Come queue for your flowers! One at a time, now!”

Pippin’s head jerked up. “That’s Fern with the garlands.”

“I’ll get them for you, Pip,” Merry said, and he hurried with the others who were crowding toward the tent flap at the call. “Come on, Boromir.”

Boromir stood and followed him out of the tent, though they couldn’t get more than a foot past the entrance. Hobbits were bobbing and massing excitedly, all surging around the single figure standing on a barrel, holding a basket of apricot-colored flowers.

Boromir couldn’t keep from breaking into a smile. Fern Whitfoot looked like a summer’s day, dressed in mint green and white eyelet lace, with an embroidered emerald belt around her waist. She had green and white ribbons in her piled hair and loose ringlets trailing along her pink cheeks.

“Boutonnieres first!” she called into the energetic crowd. “Corsages and circlets over here! Not there, Pearl, here, to my right! Abenard! Abenard, you need a boutonniere!”

It was mayhem—few could hear her directions, and those who could were barely able to elbow their way into proper order. Boromir watched as someone bumped into the barrel Fern was standing on, and she wobbled.

He put his fingers to his lips and let out a sergeant’s whistle, one that shrieked above the hubbub. Folk went instantly silent, and all eyes turned up to him, including Fern’s. He watched her face ripple in shock. Her mouth dropped open, and her gaze traveled down him, then back up. Her brow creased. She looked almost affronted.

Boromir gestured over the crowd of gawking faces. “Miss Whitfoot needs your attention.”

Fern shook herself. “Boutonnieres first,” she repeated. “Everyone else, queue to my right—corsages in front. Circlets last. Merry, here are the garlands—see that Pippin and Diamond get them.”

Folk filed enthusiastically into place, and Fern finally was able to begin the distribution. Merry retrieved the garlands, as well as his and Boromir’s circlets. He gestured Boromir back inside the tent. Boromir hesitated, looking back at Fern, but he couldn’t approach her now. He tried to catch her eye, somehow mime that he wanted to talk to her when she was done, but she didn’t look his way. In fact, she seemed to be directly avoiding his gaze. His heart sank. What if she was so upset that she wouldn’t accept the bluebells at all?

Merry called him, and he followed him back into the tent. Sam and Rosie were there now, along with little Elanor and Frodo and toddler Rose. Rosie and Merry helped arrange the garland over Pippin’s shoulders, and Sam sat Boromir down to fix the circlet in his hair. He set tiny Rose in his lap, and she pulled curiously at the shiny buttons on his uniform while the two older children clambered around his boots, attempting to peek inside the tops.

Time slid past. Folk re-entered the tent with flowers in their hair. The murmur of a building crowd grew outside. Prelude music began, fiddle, harp, and reed whistle. Merry managed to get Pippin to drink some tea and eat a cheese scone, and he looked marginally better afterward. And still, Boromir didn’t have a chance to talk to Fern. Each time he went to the tent entrance, she was still handing out flowers or fixing them to folk’s collars.

“Better get that standard out,” Merry said as a tune wound down outside. “They’ll start the procession of the families soon, and then we’ll be up.”

Reluctantly, Boromir handed Rose back to Sam and pulled out the rolled standard, careful not to let the pole bang anyone. He was unfurling the black field with its silver tree and seven stars when he heard a voice through the tent wall behind him, just feet away.

“Yes, that’s all of them,” Fern said breathlessly. “Let me set the basket down, and then I’ll line up.”

He saw her shadow cast on the canvas. She was heading to Boromir’s left, toward the corner farthest from the ceremony green, and without thinking he scooped up his standard and bluebells and jumped from his seat. Most of the hobbits were clustered by the tent entrance, waiting to be shuffled into order, and so the way toward the far corner was mostly clear. He covered the distance in three long strides, hoisted up the base of the canvas, and ducked underneath into the sunshine outside.

It was a miscalculation.

Fern was just coming around the corner as he burst from the tent wall, and she collided heavily with him. Her basket crunched into his shoulder, and the wicker split. One sharp end caught his repaired sleeve, and he heard the embroidered hem rip. The bluebells were smashed between them, and his standard toppled toward the ground. He snatched it before it hit the dirt, but the same couldn’t be said for Fern. He outweighed her three times over, and she went ricocheting backward to sprawl in the grass. Her head hit the ground, smashing one side of her flower circlet. Her layers of mint skirts and eyelet lace petticoats tangled with her legs, revealing finely-fuzzed bare calves.

Boromir towered over her, his heart hammering, clutching his standard. Crushed bluebell blossoms drifted to the ground. Just two pitiful purple flowers dangled limply from their broken stem.

They stared at each other in horror. Fern’s gaze jumped from the wounded bluebells to his sleeve, where the strip of silver-star embroidery was hanging loose from the fabric.

From the other side of the tent, the music swelled. Voices murmured together excitedly.

Inside the white canvas, Merry suddenly called out, “Boromir? Say—where’s Boromir? Wasn’t he just there? Boromir, where are you? It’s time to line up! And has anyone seen Fern?”

Boromir flung his standard against the tent wall and dropped to his knees, reaching to help Fern sit up.

“Are you all right?” he asked. There was grass in her hair and green stains on one of her lace petticoats. Apricot petals were shedding over her shoulders, and he realized with dismay that one side of her circlet had come undone.

“I’m sorry,” he said, brushing the loose petals away. “I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?”

“No,” she said breathlessly. “I’m fine.” Her eyes again fell on the bluebells.

“I was trying to find you,” he said desperately. “To apologize for last night—I was a complete fool…”

“Never mind that now,” she said, struggling to get to her feet. “The procession is starting! Get your flag!”

He pulled her up and scrambled to stand, thrusting the ragged bluebells behind his white sash. He grabbed the standard where it sagged against the tent. Fern tucked up her skirts and ran for the corner of the tent, followed by a trail of apricot petals.

“Your circlet,” Boromir whispered frantically as he rushed after her. “It’s coming undone.”

On the other side of the tent, Pippin and Diamond’s family members were already bustling down the aisle between the long rows of benches. Eager faces were turned their way, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked in anticipation. Bobbing by the tent entrance were the bride and groom’s party, the lasses neatening each other’s frocks and the lads chuckling and elbowing each other. A handful of hobbit children, including Samwise’s Elanor and a few of Pippin’s nieces and nephews, were behind them, all festooned with ribbons and holding handfuls of white flowers, giggling with each other. Behind them, the second-to-last to process before the bride, stood Pippin, rocking on the balls of his feet, and Merry, staring around wild-eyed.

“There you are!” he exclaimed as Fern and Boromir hurried to his side. “Thundering skies, I thought we were going to have to call the whole thing off. Get in line!” He waved them into place in front of the children.

Boromir shouldered his standard and dropped back to his knee in front of Fern. “Hold still,” he said. “Turn your head—I might be able to tuck it back together.”

“There’s no time,” she said breathlessly. “Anyway, your sleeve is falling apart—worry about that!”

“The wedding’s weaver can’t go down the aisle with a ruined flower circlet,” he insisted, clumsily trying to thread stems back together. “Here—take mine.”

“It’s too big,” she hissed. “Ow! You’ve got my hair.” She winced as a strand of her hair came loose from her pins.

“What are these flowers the children are carrying?” Boromir asked. “Could they work?”

“Turn your shoulder this way,” Fern said, pulling at his vambrace. “Let me see the hem.”

“Elanor, sweet, what have you got in your bouquet?” he asked.

“They’re the fragrance flowers, Mister Boromir,” she replied. “Jasmine and rose.”

“I might be able to tack this up,” Fern said, holding his sleeve against his arm. “Pansy, let me see your corsage.”

“What do jasmine and rose mean?” Boromir pressed, picking through Elanor’s bouquet.

Elanor hefted her bundle of white flowers. “Jasmine’s for happiness, and white roses for love.”

“That’s fine, isn’t it?” he craned to look at Fern, who was holding his sleeve in one hand and ransacking a niece’s pinned corsage with another. “Happiness and love? There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“Hold still!” she gasped. “Turn back. I don’t want to pull the embroidery.”

“I need a few of those, Elanor, for Miss Fern’s circlet,” Boromir said. “Can you help me fix them in place?” He felt a stab through his sleeve. “Never mind the pins, Miss Whitfoot!”

“Stop moving,” she said through clamped lips, where she was pinching several pins. “I only need a few.”

“Will you two knock it off?” Merry hissed from over the children’s heads. “The party is processing! You’re next! Act like adults!”

With little Elanor’s help, Boromir managed to sweep Fern’s circlet over her ear, weaving a few white roses and jasmine flowers among the dahlias and asters. At the same time, Fern bent close to his sleeve, pushing straight pins through the back of the fabric and tacking the embroidery in place.

“Stand up!” Merry whispered. “Get up! Hurry!”

Boromir jumped to his feet and swept his standard off his shoulder. Fern stepped back and shook out her skirts, her cheeks patched bright pink.

“Give me your arm!” she said to Boromir. “Lower, so I don’t look like a toddler!”

He bent his arm low at his waist, and Fern threaded her hand through it. She tucked a few loose wisps of hair behind her ear, and then she sniffed. Her eyes widened.

“Did you put jasmine and rose in my hair?” she blurted.

“Go!” Merry commanded. He pushed Boromir’s seat, and with one ungainly step, he started toward the aisle, holding Fern’s arm.

It was a sea of faces—freckles and curls and flowers on flowers on flowers. Folk openly goggled at Boromir in his gleaming uniform and glinting kit. They beamed at Fern, with many breaking into wide, almost astonished grins. Some giggled. Boromir knew they must make the most mismatched pair to ever walk a Shire-wedding’s aisle, but he’d known that going in. He just pulled his shoulders back, kept the standard of Gondor steady in his hand, and tried to keep his arm low so Fern wasn’t reaching up like a babe asking to be carried.

They neared the end of the aisle and the willow arch Boromir had helped decorate the previous day, where Mayor Whitfoot waited to conduct the ceremony. Diamond’s maids grinned at Fern, nudging each other and giggling into their bouquets. At the end of the aisle, Fern slipped her arm out of his and walked to her place to the mayor’s right. Boromir went to the opposite side, behind Pippin’s lads, where he stood just over Sam’s shoulder. From that angle, he could see Fern’s face properly. She was so flushed she looked almost like she was glowing, and she seemed to be fighting against some expression, though Boromir couldn’t tell what it was. She drew several deep breaths, trying to get a hold of herself. But then, almost accidentally, she glanced at him. Her face broke. She gasped with laughter.

Boromir’s whole body relaxed. He didn’t know what was so funny, unless one counted the collision behind the tent, or the frantic recovery at the head of the aisle, or the ridiculous sight they must have made processing together. All he knew was that she was, for the moment, happy. She clamped a hand over her mouth and shook with suppressed laughter, trying to stay quiet as the music changed and the young hobbit children toddled down the aisle, shedding cascades of scented flowers. Boromir grinned at her, and then fought to arrange his face into solemnity as Pippin appeared at the end of the aisle, trailed by Merry.

Last came the bride, and she was a portrait. Diamond wore a frock of bright blue, embroidered thickly with lacy white and peach-colored flowers. Her sleeves puffed like summer clouds, and the intricate garland lay around her shoulders, mirroring Pippin’s. She beamed down the aisle, and Boromir tilted his head to see Pippin, who was rocking on his feet and smiling so wide that his eyes were reduced to slits.

It was less austere than a Gondorian ceremony. There were fewer formal speeches and no chanting, with plenty of laughter from the audience. There were several bouts of circling, with Pippin and Diamond walking a small ring through the willow arch, first one way, and then another. Halfway through the ceremony, Merry and Opal, Diamond’s sister, removed the couple’s flower garlands and brought them to Fern. The children clustered around her to hold them up while she began the process of joining them together. Boromir watched her work—he’d assumed the job was simply to connect the ends, creating one long string, but it was more complicated than that. Pippin’s garland was largely made of puffs of dahlias and bells of Tookbank, while Diamond’s was a spiraling line of white asters and foxglove, and Fern set about intertwining them. He realized then the strategy that had gone into creating them—pieces that would make their own statements separately but would then slot together into a new creation. She worked steadily and skillfully, making sure no bloom was crushed under another or unbalanced from the rest. The next time Pippin and Diamond made the figure-eight loop under the willow arch, she gave the garland back to Merry and Opal, who draped it over the new couple’s shoulders to uproarious applause from the audience.

The couple kissed and were showered with aggressive armfuls of flowers from the children. Folk cheered them as they walked back down the aisle, followed by the mayor, the children, and their parties. Boromir rejoined Fern in front of the arch and offered her his arm once again. Folk laughed and hollered and flung more flowers as they recessed behind the others, until Boromir felt like he was caught in a cyclone of blooms. By the time he got to the end of the aisle, he was laughing and pawing petals out of his eyes.

There was a crush of folk at the back, as Pippin and Diamond’s party hugged and kissed and congratulated the new couple. Boromir barely got his bearings back from the barrage of flowers when he felt a tug on his arm. He stumbled to one side. Fern was dragging him toward the now-empty tent where Pippin’s family had waited. As the crowd broke up throughout the benches, massing toward the festival green, Fern opened the tent flap and put both hands on the small of Boromir’s back. With surprising strength, she shoved him inside.

He caught his toe on the leg of a stool and fell gracelessly to one knee in the trampled grass. He turned as Fern let the tent flap drop behind her, and then she stomped to him and pushed his shoulder. He spun on his knee and sat down hard on the grass. She leaned over him, her fists on her hips and her face the same bright pink as it was during the procession.

“You,” she said, “have much to atone for.”

“I’m aware,” he said. Quickly, he laid his standard against a chair and dug in his sash for the bedraggled bluebells. He held them up, their two sad, crushed heads drooping downward. “I brought you these…”

She snatched them out of his hand and brandished them in his face. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

He blinked at her. She was positively incandescent with emotion, and he had a sense it might be rage. She’d been laughing earlier, but she wasn’t now.

“I… thought I did,” he said. “But now I’m not so sure.”

Fern jabbed her finger at her hair, where the slapdash white blossoms filled the gap amongst the dahlias and asters. “White roses and jasmine? At a summertime wedding, in front of everyone, as I waltzed down the aisle with someone who looks… who looks like… who looks like you?” Even her leaf-shaped ears were scarlet by this point. “I will never live this down.”

“I, er,” Boromir said, blinking up at her. “I admit… you’ve lost me.”

She grabbed two fistfuls of his surcoat, heedless of the orderly insignia pinned to the wool. She hauled his face toward hers until they were just a few inches apart. He stared in alarm into her blazing eyes.

“White roses and jasmine,” she said through gritted teeth, “in the hands of children at a wedding procession suggest a joyful celebration of love.” She pointed at her circlet again. “But woven together in the hair of a grown lass? They suggest the wearer is wildly, madly, head-over-heels in love, and they want the whole world to know it.”

“Oh,” Boromir said feebly. “Ah. Er.”

“Oh, ah, er, indeed,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I… thought I was helping.”

“I know.” She released his collar and straightened, then held up the broken bluebell stem to study it.

“That’s not what the bluebells are for,” he said. “I realized last night, after I’d left your cottage, what an ass I’d been to you. Making it seem like your troubles and griefs were nothing compared to those of my folk. You’re right to be angry with me.”

She turned the stem. “I’m not angry. You made me feel… small. As if we here live on a lower rung than other folk in the great wide world. Which, I suppose, we do.”

“You don’t,” Boromir said earnestly. “Not at all. Your folk are just as worthy and honorable as any other. Your losses are just as tragic. I was wrong to treat you otherwise.”

The bright flush was slowly leaving her face. Her gaze remained on the bluebells, her brow creased in thought.

“Someone told you about Otto,” she said. “Didn’t they?”

“Merry did,” he admitted. “After I saw your garland over your fireplace. I walked up to the cemetery this morning, before I came here.”

She looked up at him. “You did?”

He nodded. It had been just after daybreak, cool and misty. He’d risen before the sun to wash and dress, and then he strode away from the Green Dragon and up the quiet Bywater lane. The place was easy to spot in the daylight—it was a garden, of course, planted in blue and white, ringed by a flagstone path carpeted with moss. In the middle stood a tall gray stone twice Boromir’s height, which must have taken twenty hobbits to erect. The nineteen fallen were laid in neat rows, with polished granite markers at each head carved with their names. He spotted Tooks and Brandybucks, a Cotton, a Bolger, and, at the end of one row, an Otto Boffin, which meant Fern must have retaken her maiden name after his death. All the graves had lovingly-tended mounds of flowers over the top of them, and he bent to nudge a few river stones back into place around the perimeter of Otto’s.

As the sun climbed over the hills, he’d stood crisply at the tall gray stone, facing the graves. He’d set his heels together, unsheathed his sword, and held it upright in front of his face. Only after counting slowly to sixty nineteen times did he lower the bare blade down and away to the right in the traditional salute to battle dead.

“So the carefree hobbits of the Shire have war casualties,” Fern said. “And thus we merit the respect of the lords to the south?”

Boromir bent his head at the rebuke. “I realize that’s what it sounds like, and I won’t pretend I haven’t earned the accusation. I am more guilty than most at glorying in great deeds and battle-tales. My life has never been anything but war until these last few years, and they are difficult habits to unravel. But I hope I am relearning that the sword is not the only tool of greatness, or even that greatness itself is the standard to be measured by.” He raised his head again. “Though, if you’ll permit—I do admire your Otto. I go to war knowing I have been trained to it, but he went without pausing to ask if it was his job to do. I can think of few things more valiant or selfless.”

She cocked her head at him and was silent for several seconds.

“Interesting,” she said.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “He died bravely, along with the others. You’re right about that. And it’s been seven years since. It’s old sadness at this point, simply a familiar companion.”

“Still,” Boromir said. “I am sorry for dredging it up for you and then demeaning it. And I’m not asking for forgiveness,” he said quickly. “I know that’s what the bluebells mean. I just wanted to undo some of my harsh words.” He opened his hands in his lap. “I wanted to tell you before the ceremony, before you had to walk down the aisle with me. I’m sorry you had to stand up in front of everyone and act like things were fine. Though, I suppose the flowers in your circlet eclipsed that momentarily.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for that, too. You have to understand, folk come to me expecting answers, expecting action, and sometimes in civilian life I… I don’t mean to act without thinking, I just… and I don’t say this as an excuse, mind you, I’m just trying to explain…”

“Oh stop,” Fern said. “Stop it. I forgive you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Well, I do,” she said with a laugh. “And while I’m grateful and frankly impressed with the bluebells, I don’t forgive you because of them. I wasn’t ever angry with you. I know what kind of man you are.” She gestured up and down at him. “You’ve made it abundantly clear what kind of man you are.”

His mouth went unexpectedly dry, and his stomach dropped unpleasantly. Flashes of Amon Hen, the most horrific of his vast catalog of lifelong mistakes, tumbled through his brain.

“Miss Whitfoot,” he said, “I implore you not to pass too hasty a judgement on my character—”

“Mister Captain of Gondor,” she interrupted. “I know what kind of man you are because you spent all yesterday hanging flowers in the Bywater festival field. I know because you, who have more metal on your chest than I have in my cutlery drawer, stopped to pay your respects at the Bywater graves. I know because you, who Pippin claims took the head off a troll with its own axe in front of the gates of Mordor, hold tiny Rose Gamgee like a thing made of spun sugar. I know because you, a foreigner who barely knew what a dahlia was yesterday, cast about in the last shady hedges of spring flowers for the customary way to apologize for a misdeed.”

“That was Samwise,” Boromir said quickly. “I wouldn’t have known—”

“Quiet,” she said. “I’m not finished. Because even if I didn’t know any of those things, even I was just one of the guests in the crowd, I’d still know what kind of man you are, because you are here, having traveled many difficult and dangerous weeks just to honor a son of Tuckborough—a son, I’ll add, who left the Shire as a known mischief-maker and layabout and returned to deliver us from the misery we’d been living through for a year, and who did it all while wearing the same crest you’re wearing on your infernally sublime livery.”

He raised his eyebrows, and then glanced down at the image of the White Tree half-hidden by the steward’s sash. “I thought you disapproved of black at a wedding?”

“I do,” she said. “It’s extremely inappropriate.”

“Then why—”

“Because you look like the fucking standard-bearer of the Valar,” she said. “You look like something you’d see on a fucking plinth at the gateway of Annúminas.”

He blinked at her.

“Thank you,” he said politely.

She crossed her arms, frowning.

“You look upset about it,” he observed.

“I am very upset about it,” she said.

“Well, since you’ve commented on my appearance,” he said, “I think it’s only fair to mention that I think you look perfectly lovely, and I’m not upset about that.”

“Don’t change the subject,” she said, her cheeks brightening again.

“I’d prefer if we did, to be honest,” he said. “I’m not sure how much more flattery I can take. It’s making me anxious.”

“Is it?” she asked, tilting her head to one side. “Well, I have a solution for you.”

“What’s that?”

She held out her hand to him. “A Bywater wedding in June, at which everyone is enamored with you and thinks I am the most enamored of all.”

He grinned at the absurdity of the notion. “And are you?”

“I’m not sure yet.” She wiggled her fingers. “It depends on how well you can dance.”

He laughed and took her hand. He put no weight on it, but simply held it as he pushed himself to his feet.

“I am a graceless dancer,” he said as she pulled him to the tent flap. “Even when I know the steps.”

“You’re in luck,” she said, looping her arm through his. “There is one secret to Shire-dancing that overcomes any and all impediments.”

“And what is that? I shall need it.”

She pivoted to him, skirts and lace swirling, and tugged at his uniform again, right over the emblem of the White Tree. He bent forward, eyebrows raised, and she put both hands on his cheeks. His heart gave an astonished stutter.

She pushed her hands outward, spreading his mouth into a ridiculous smile.

“Enjoy yourself,” she said, her brown eyes twinkling.

She took her hands away, and his grin remained.

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