[piosenniel]

The floor was awash with pudding. Chocolate and vanilla ran amok between the stickier blobs of tapioca. Pio had crouched down, rather ungracefully, near a particularly treacherous area where Goldie had lost her footing and plunged down onto her chubby, dimpled knees. The little lass’ face had puckered up, and she was on the verge of a wail, when Pio reached down and stood her upright.

‘Look here, Goldie,’ the Elf said, scraping a bit of tapioca from Goldie’s knee, ‘this looks exactly like little frog eyes, does it not?’ Goldie hiccupped, with a long, wavering intake of breath, and turned her attention to the bumpy fragment of cream colored goo. She reached her chubby little finger out and tentatively touched the translucent bubbles clustered in the blob. ‘Froggies!’ she cried in delight, clinging onto Pio’s sleeve for support. ‘And look here, Goldie. I believe I have discovered another interesting use for pudding.’

Pio reached down and placed the flat of her palms in the pudding smears – one in the chocolate and one in the vanilla, then carefully printed the pudding hands onto the fabric of her dress. Placed palms together and fingers outspread, the imprints took on the tenuous shapes of brown and white butterflies. She helped the little one place her baby flutter-bys trailing after her own big one.

‘Pretty Pio!’ laughed Goldie, clapping her hands together, sending spatters of brown and white flying.

They had done just one little butterfly on Goldie’s dress, when Pio felt a looming presence behind her, and a discrete, but firm, ‘Ahem!’ Wiping her hands on the edge of her skirts, she stood up, turning to face a very exasperated looking Prim, with several wide-eyed servers behind her.

‘Was there something I might do for you?’ she asked the Innkeeper.

Prim looked at her sternly, fixing her with the same gaze she had given her younger brothers and sisters when they had done wrong. Pio wiped a bit of chocolate from her face with the back of her hand, leaving a large smear on her cheek. She waited patiently for the lecture she was sure to ensue.

Prim’s shoulders began to shake, and an odd sound, like the squeaking of little mice at play began. She put her hands on her knees and bent over double, then, and loud guffaws began to roll hysterically from her. The servers looked at her in astonishment, not knowing if the sea of now crusting pudding had pushed her quite over the edge. Prim stood up, shaking her head, an amused smile on her face.

‘Oh, Mistress Piosenniel! I never expected such behavior from one of the Fair Folk.’ Prim turned to Ruby and Buttercup, who now stood at her side. ‘Get the mops and buckets, and a few rags. Let’s get this mess cleared up before it dries hard as paste.’ She glanced up at Pio, a calculating look in her eye. ‘I’m certain Miz Pio will have a little extra something for you, for cleaning up after these rascals’ antics.’

Pio grinned back at her, and nodded her head at the two reluctant servers. ‘Five silver pennies each if this corner is spic and span, and six more to split among you, if one of you will see Cook and bring to my rooms a heaping platter of hot buttered toast fingers, a pot of strawberry jam, and a pitcher of cold milk to wash it down with . . . oh, and an apple or three or four, too, please!’

She counted noses as they headed back to the room. Ten sticky children trailed after her. Pio held up her hand to stop them, and counted them again. There was one missing! Pippin and Diamond’s son was nowhere to be seen. ‘Any one seen young Faramir?’ she asked her bedraggled troop. Ten sticky faces, eyes wide, shook their heads solemnly ‘no’.

Hamfast, held securely, in Elanor’s arms, wiggled vigorously and pointed back toward the table. Elanor put him down and he toddled over to the long tablecloth that hung begrimed over the sides and end of the table. He picked up the end of the cloth and bent down, looking for something under the table. They heard his screech of delight, and the muffled sounds of someone saying ‘Peek-a-boo!’

Then out from his safe haven came young Faramir, as clean as when he had first sat down to eat his pudding. His empty bowl was in his hand, and a nut cookie dangled from his lips, as he stood up and faced the others. ‘I gather it’s safe now,’ he said, taking the cookie from his mouth, and smiling impishly.

**********************************

‘Excellent choice of tactics, Master Faramir!’ Pio looked down at her own dress and sighed. ‘Perhaps I should look to you next time the battle fever is upon us!’ Faramir puffed with pride at this adulation from the Elf, and when she asked him would he go to Miz Prim and ask for a stack of towels, he ran like the wind to do her bidding.

Boys and girls were separated into two groups, and the girls, under the direction of Elanor and Rosie were sent into the bathroom to clean themselves as best they could, and wipe what they could from their dresses. The ‘men’ as Pio called them would follow her out to the stable yard and use the pump to sluice off their hands and heads. ‘Young, hardy warriors,’ she termed them, ‘washing off in the waterfall of some eastern river after a valiant fight against the orcs.’ Young Merry and Pippin snickered at the thought of their sisters as orcs, as Faramir pumped the water for them. And Pio reminded them that from the girls’ point of view, the boys were the marauding orcs who had been defeated by them. ‘It’s all a matter of which side you are coming from.’ she said, as she toweled Pippin’s hair dry. Faramir laughed, agreeing with her. ‘From where I sat,’ he said, ‘you all looked like mad orcs!’

Soon a more presentable group of children was gathered in Pio’s front room. Toast fingers piled high with jam and washed down with milk were eagerly consumed, as Pio dragged out her souvenirs of the adventurous life for them to handle and look at and ask curious questions of where she had gotten each one. There were shells of all sizes from the shores along the Sundering Sea, and curious necklaces and pendants, and feathers dropped by birds never seen in the Shire. The old yellowed tooth of a great wolf of the North, was handled quite carefully as Pio told the story of finding it. And rocks, beautiful rocks and plain, all with their different stories of how they came to be in the Elf’s possession.

Frodo-lad, along with the other boys, and Rosie-lass, too, were thrilled when Pio brought out her weapons. Wrapped in a piece of oiled leather was her sword and scabbard, and in a small chest, gleaming in the lamplight as she opened it were her silvered helm, and mithril shirt. She let them all try on her vambraces, and heft the sword, though it took three of them to lift the point from off the ground. Each of them handled her long knives, pretending they were Hobbit sized swords, and Frodo-lad she let strap on her throwing knives to his arms. The only things she shifted from their sight were the two cords, the garrotes – too gruesome, she deemed them, for children to think on.

Finally, when all had been looked at and oohed and aahed over, and sleepy eyes and yawns were becoming the norm, she laid out several quilts in front of the small, cheery blaze in the fireplace and bade them lie down as she told them stories from long, long ago. Backlit by starlight from the open window behind her, her voice moved softly over them, and one by one, from youngest to oldest they closed their eyes and slipped off to their own dreams.

She sat quietly in the dark until their parents came to claim them, and a smile lit her features as she looked out the window and imagined a small island, under a bright moon, sleeping forms turning in dreams much as these Hobbits here. And over them all, her eye lovingly upon them, the great dragon of the mountain top sat crooning, softly.

[ March 05, 2003: Message edited by: piosenniel ]