[piosenniel]

Hísimë, Year 11 of the Fourth Age

She had not intended to stay this long. It was to have been a quick trip to the Shire, gathering in threads to what most would now call an old story. But to her, the faces she had left behind were fresh in her memory. As if just yesterday she had seen Cami draw the attention of her young charges to a small red fox as it flicked its tail and ran to hide from their footsteps. And still she heard the young ones’ laughter peal out through the waiting trees and run down the trail beyond.

Mithadan had been busy; his time taken up in seeing to the repair and refitting of The Lonely Star. He was good at this, and she was not. It was necessary, she understood, if they were to take the ship out again, but nonetheless, she found it a tedious task, and was glad that he had taken over the supervision of it. She found life in Minas Anor a bit confining, also. And there was only so much time she could spend dockside in her old haunts, listening to tales of voyages, before even that grew stale, and she longed to see fresh sights herself.

It had been the quilt, she recalled, that prompted her to go north, seeking a finish to the history of her dear friend. She had taken it out, intending to store it carefully in her cedar wood chest. A basket of lavender to tuck among the layers was at her feet as she unfolded it. The fresh scent of the small sprays of blue flowers filled the room, bringing up memories of the heady scent of blooms that grew in abundance on Tol Meneltarma.

She shook out the quilt and laid it on her bed. There before her lay the story of her last voyage on the Lonely Star. She smiled and touched each square of it fondly, the memories vivid as her fingers ran over the cloth blocks. Her brow furrowed as she came to the last square. The story was not complete. It only told the tale to Númenor, not what lay beyond.

And so Pio found herself, in mid Yavannië, Year 11 of the Fourth Age, bidding farewell to Mithadan. She was on her way to trace the history of her old companion, Cami Goodchild. In the back of her mind was also her promise to Bird, that she would seek clues to the shapechanger race's history. It was her hope that in seeking for the one there would be clues to the other. At any rate, it was to have been only a short trip.

It was not to be so. Time and circumstance conspired against her best intentions, as she found herself filling in as Innkeeper at the Green Dragon in Bywater.

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Child's Post:

Ban had already curled up asleep for over an hour when Cami sang a lullabye to little Maura, one that she remembered her own mother crooning long years ago in the Shire. She watched the boy's eyelids flutter, grow heavier, and then become still as he drifted off in sleep. She felt curiously alert and alive, and could not seem to settle for the night. Being very careful not to disturb the boys, she slipped out of bed and padded over to the table where her own work lay strewn about.

Lists, always more lists! Lists of chores and supplies, lists of important things to remember. The hard thing now was securing enough vellum and ink for the lists she intended to make. Radagast had given her a generous supply, but it would not last forever. Perhaps she'd have to learn to do what the other hobbits did, keeping things straight in her head and not bothering to write them down. But something inside her resisted that. It seemed like another small step in a direction that was very different than the one Bilbo had taught her to go.

As Cami sat down at the table to resume her work, she impulsively reached out, pulling back the heavy leather curtain that had been tacked over the window to keep out the cold night air. The sky looked particularly beautiful tonight. She could see Bright Earendil making his way across the heavens, a glittering beacon of hope, and a personal reminder from a time long ago. She offered a silent plea to whichever of the Valar might be listening that they should take care of her children, her separated friends, and especially the one she held most dear. Then, she lay her head down on the table, unexplainably overcome with drowsiness, and closed her eyes to rest.

Despite all her curiosity and long reflections, Cami could never reconstruct exactly what happened next. From the few scant glimmerings still in her head, there had been a room filled with light, and a serious conversation, only no real words had been spoken. She did remember objecting to leaving little Maura and Ban alone, but had then received assurance that others would be watching over him as well as the others in her family, and that she would soon see them again.

Cami knew she'd said yes to something. Yet, whatever it might be, she couldn't recall. Then all had gone misty, a silver mist that was as soft and sweet as the tiny instant of awareness that comes at the moment when the curtain of night lifts to reveal the sudden surprise of morning. After that, she knew nothing until she woke up lying in a fine wooden bed, nestled in a thick feather bolster, with the warm sun streaming down on her through a large pane of clear glass.

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Pio's Post:

She had seen the tail of his red flannel shirt just as it disappeared into the stables. Standing on the low porch to the kitchen’s entry, she hailed him in a most unladylike manner, yelling loudly, so that he could not say he had not heard her.

‘Hob Hamfast! Come here and help me for a moment!’

Pio watched as his surprised face peeked round the edge of the stable entrance. She waved him over, a smile on her face for encouragement, and noted his slow amble toward her. She sighed to herself. They were still getting used to her, still a little afraid. ‘Well, who would not be afraid,’ she mused to herself, ‘if one of the Eldar appeared out of nowhere and started barking orders at you.’

She had arrived at the Green Dragon just a week and a half ago, surprised to find one of her old acquaintances now ran the inn. He had been called away just two days later, a sudden emergency, he said, and would she consider overseeing the running of the inn until his return. She had a fair head for business, he said, and she laughed at this idea of her. It practically runs itself, he went on. And besides, most of her concerns would be to keep the peace in the inn, and he was well aware that she could do that. Nothing long term, just a few days, he had assured her.

Those few days had turned into a week now, and still no word of his return. The staff at the inn had looked at her warily when she called them together to explain what she would be doing. They had come at first to a sort of uneasy truce, though behind their pleasant faces she could see their hesitations. ‘An Elvish taskmaster! Would she be impossible to please? And why did she dress like some wandering warrior? And would she use those knives at her belt readily if they did not please her?’

She had put her knives away, though the ones hidden in her boot tops and beneath the sleeves of her tunic remained. Her manner of dress she did not change, only that she made sure to wear garments that were clean and unrumpled from being thrown on the floor. And she had made sure to ask for their advice on how things were done at the inn, to appear to take their comments into consideration as she made her decisions. Old habits die hard, though, and at the last consideration it was always her decision which stood.

‘What can I do for you, Mistress Pio?’ came the question from Hob. He had stopped in the yard to wash the stable grime from his hands, and now stood drying them on the tail of his shirt.

‘I need the use of your muscle, Hob.’ He followed her as she made her way to the staircase in the Common Room, that led to the inn’s rooms above. He listened as she told him there were some important visitors that would be coming to the inn later that day. She wanted to get the big room ready for them, and she needed his help to flip the mattress.

They paused outside the door to the inn’s best room. ‘Go on in and strip the old linens from the bed, if you will.’ she directed him. ‘I am just going to the linen closet to find fresh sheets and a coverlet for it.’

Her head was stuck in the closet, her hands pulling out sheets and such when she heard a commotion from the doorway. She turned to see Hob backing out of the room, red faced and stammering. ‘Begging your pardon, Miss!’ he kept saying, as he stumbled backwards.

Pio laid the sheets on the hallway table and turned the Hobbit toward her, a questioning look on her face. He pointed toward the open door, eyes wide. ‘We can’t make the bed, Mistress! There’s someone in it!’ She grasped him firmly by the shoulder and turned him about. Both of them entered the room together.

He pointed at the shaking lump hidden beneath the quilt, and Pio pushed him behind her, drawing the knife from her boot. In an icy voice she commanded the vagrant who had stolen into the inn’s room without paying to come out and face her. Hob peeped from behind her, not wanting to miss any of the action.

Two hands appeared at the upper edge of the quilt, then a mass of brown curls, as the quilt slowly drew down from the hidden form. A face she thought never to see again in the circles of this world peeked out at her, a look of disbelief across it as the brown eyes stared back into her grey ones.

‘Cami!’

The knife in her hand clattered to her floor. Tears clouded her eyes as she sat down quickly on the bed and hugged her dear friend fiercely.

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Child's post

Cami struggled to rub the sleep from her eyes and to shake off her lingering sense of drowsiness and confusion. Then she shot up in surprise at the sudden sight of the familiar figure seated beside her on the bolster.

"Piosenniel, is that you?" she demanded, staring increduously at the Elf.

"Yes, yes, it's me! What are you doing here?"

Cami hesitated for a moment, uncertain how to respond to her friend. Her head felt clear, her mind sharp and alert, yet she had not the slightest idea how to answer Pio's question. "I'm not sure. I remember very little. I know it wasn't anything I did. One minute I was sitting in my burrow in Greenwood feeling sleepy, and now I'm here."

Cami shook her head, hesitent to reveal anything that sounded so strange even to her own ears. "Maybe all this is a dream. Only, if it is, it's a dream that feels more wide awake than life itself. I remember something about a room and a bright light and a conversation without words.... Oh, dear, none of this makes any sense, does it?"

"Yet, something inside me says I belong here, at least for now, though I couldn't tell you how or why." Her confession sounded inadequate and absurd, yet it was as close to the truth as any words she could manage to spell out.

Cami turned and stared desperately into Pio's eyes, seaching for some reasonable explanation as to why all this had happened. Then she sprinted over to the window and gazed outside. She could see the neat streets of Bywater with their burrows and outlying fields of green, and, just beyond those, the even larger outline of Hobbiton itself. Her heart beat curiously fast as she spied the scenes of her childhood again spread out before her gaze.

Cami's fingers instinctively groped for the green gemstone that hung about her neck. She seemed relieved and comforted to find it there again. Her tone was calm and insistent as she turned to ask, "Piosenniel, what is this place? And when is it? If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was the Shire, not far from where I was born and grew up in Hobbiton. What happened to Greenwood, and all the hobbits who were with me from the Tombs? Was everything that happened on the Star only a dream?"

Pio’s Post

Fearing that her friend was some figment of a tired mind, Pio held on to her hand tightly. The work at the Inn had been steady, leaving little time for rest, and less time than that for the real reason she had come to the Shire in the first place. She had come to find Cami, that is, what had happened to Cami after she and her little band of Hobbits had left the Lonely Star and gone north with the Elves. Was this some strange quirk of pregnancy and overwork - a hallucination that she had indeed found her friend? Impossible!

She reached out quickly with her free hand and pinched the Hobbit hard on the arm. Cami let out a surprised yelp and slapped her smartly on the cheek. Both women stared at each other, aghast. Then Pio fell back on the bed howling with laughter. Cami looked sternly at her, and rubbed at the place where the Elf had pinched her. ‘It’s going to leave a bruise, you know!’ she said indignantly.

Pio raised herself up on her elbows, still laughing, and looked warmly at her friend, a look of pure delight and amazement played across the features of her face. ‘You are really here . . . truly here. I thought never to see you again, Cami. Never.’ She reached out softly for her friend’s hand, and brought it to her cheek. ‘I have been searching for any news of you since I arrived here, any inkling of what had become of you, what you had done, where you had gone. And now I have you here beside me, like some great gift granted for this space of time.’

‘It was not a dream, Cami. The voyage and task of the Lonely Star was real. My last remembrance of you is as you went down the trail from the Anduin, heading north with the Elves from Eryn Lasgalen. They brought you to Greenwood, I do know that, and from there you and your family traveled west. Here, to the Shire.’

Pio stood up and drew back fully the curtains at the window. The sun shone in warmly through the leaded glass, and she opened the mullioned window to let in the fresh, crisp breeze. She pulled Cami from the bed, and they stood together looking out the window on the courtyard below.

It was busy, as usual, for this time of year. Late winter in the Shire, not much to do in the way of farming, or gardening, or the raising of any sort of livestock, and so the locals often found their feet bound for the Green Dragon to share a story and a pipeful, and stand a drink or two for friends.

‘We are at the Inn in Bywater. The very same that I am sure you remember from before we ever met.’ Pio told Cami how she had come north and west, leaving Mithadan to deal with the refitting of the Lonely Star. ‘With his blessing, of course.’ she added, as Cami arched her eyebrows. ‘No, I have not run off from him again!’ Cami’s eyes had lit with pleasure at the mention of Mithadan.

‘And Bird?’ she asked. ‘Is she here too?’ Pio explained how Bird had gone traveling, soon after their return to Minas Anor. She was searching for any clues to the background of her own race, and Pio was assisting her as she could with research in the library in the city, or picking up any information in the Shire which Cami might have left for them during her stay here.

Cami sighed as she looked out the window. ‘So I really am here. This is not a dream.’ ‘As real as any piece of time is.’ rejoined Pio, thinking of the layers of time they had traveled on the Star. ‘Shall I pinch you again, and make sure of it?’

Pio smiled as Cami eased away from her in mock fear. One of the babys thumped hard with its foot against her ribs, and she let out a little oof! of surprise. Cami looked at her in concern. Pio drew her close and placed her hand firmly against her belly. The baby kicked hard at Cami’s hand, and the Hobbit smiled in delight.

‘There, Cami, is that real enough for you?’ asked Pio. ‘The twins will be here in six months. And with the grace of the Valar, their Auntie Cami will be here to hold them. I care not how you came here. But only that you are here, and that I may have my friend at my side for what little time is gifted us.’

[ September 14, 2003: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]