After dinner, Pippin decided it was time to play yet another game. So far on the journey he had asked the fellowship such questions as "if you were a tree, would kind would you be?" and "what are your favourite foods?", the latter one taking several nights to answer due to the hobbits' love for all things food. The company had begun to dread Pippin's nightly questions, yet secretly they enjoyed the camaraderie they shared with their fellow travelers as they gave their answers.
"So what's it going to be tonight, Pippin?" Boromir asked as they finished their dinner.
"Hopefully not food again," Gimli grumbled. He had gone first the opening night of the food question and later regretted keeping his answer so short after having been forced to listen to the long-winded hobbit soliloquies.
"No, not food," Pippin said, looking around at the assembled company, trying to think. His eyes finally came to rest on his cousin Merry, who was sucking on a wound on his forearm where Boromir had accidentally nicked him during sword practice.
"That's it," Pippin said excitedly. "Wounds!"
Merry dropped his forearm from his mouth and stared blankly at his cousin. "What?"
"Wounds," Pippin explained. "Scars. Everyone has to tell how they got their worst scar."
Sam saw Frodo unconsciously reach for his shoulder, where the wound from the Ringwraith's blade was still fresh. "But we're not warriors," Sam protested, not wanting Frodo to have to relive that terrible night on Weathertop.
"You don't have to be warriors to get hurt," Pippin explained, oblivious to his cousin Frodo's discomfort. "For instance, I'll go first. I was a wee thing, only three or four, and my sister Vinca decided it would be fun to play Hole. So she made my older sister Nel be the father, she of course played the mother, and I got to be the baby. I pretended to cry, so Vinca picked me up and tried to carry me like a baby. But she wasn't that much bigger than me, and according to her I kept squirming, so she ended up dropping me on my head upon the stone hearth."
"That explains a lot," Legolas's voice emerged from the darkness where he was standing watch.
Pippin, however, didn't hear him, or at least pretended not to. "I was completely knocked out, so I missed my mother's lecture. But I still have the scar, somewhere under here," Pippin said, pulling at his curls to try to feel the scar.
Boromir laughed. "My best scar was the result of a sibling as well," he said, launching into his story. "My kid brother and I were playing war, only he was too small and slight to wield his sword with any sort of control. He was--"
"Wait," Sam interrupted, obviously upset. "Your folks let you play with SWORDS?!"
Boromir grinned sheepishly. "My dad didn't exactly KNOW, if you know what I mean."
"But I'll bet her found out," Merry teased, and Boromir nodded.
"Did he! Anyway, Faramir was about to drop his sword for the umpteenth time, so I lowered my guard to try and help him, and he suddenly lunged at me." Boromir chuckled as he opened his shirt to show the large scarred gash across his chest. "Needless to say, we didn't play war together for some time after that." Boromir didn't add that he hadn't even been scolded yet Faramir had been severely punished, something Borormir still felt guilty about.
Aragorn nodded. "I feel for your brother," he said. "I grew up with essentially two older step-brothers. And when you're a kid, you think you can do ANYTHING that they can do, even though they're older and bigger. So one day Elladan and Elrohir were crossing a river...." Aragorn trailed off and began to smile. "I never realized it, but I see now that they were TRYING to ditch me! Anyway," he continued, "they were hopping from boulder to boulder across a river, and I tried to follow, only my legs weren't quite long enough to make the leaps."
"And you fell in," Pippin finished for him.
Aragorn nodded, pulling up his pantleg to show the scar. "And the entire side of my leg was skinned from where I slid down the boulder."
"Ow!" Pippin winced.
Aragorn nodded. "At least they came back for me," he said, grinning, "though I was almost too ashamed to let them carry me home. And, of course, they never let me forget it."
"I can imagine," Boromir said, thinking of the ribbings he used to give his little brother.
"So what about YOU, Merry?" Pippin asked, turning to his cousin beside him. "You're an only child, so you don't have that excuse like the rest of us."
Frodo laughed. "Merry didn't NEED siblings to get him into trouble."
"Neither did YOU," Merry shot back good-naturedly. "But you're right -- my worst scar was entirely my own doing. My mother had just baked a pie for a gathering we were going to, and she saw me eyeing it, so she placed it up high on top of the china cabinet to cool."
"Let me guess," Boromir said, amused. "You tried to climb up to it and fell."
"Climbed, yes," Merry said, "but I didn't fall. I made it to the top just fine and ate the pie."
"The entire pie?" Sam asked, amazed.
Merry nodded.
Pippin's eyes were wide. "What kind of pie?"
"Gooseberry."
Pippin grinned, his eyes sparkling. "I LOVE gooseberry pie."
"Me, too," mumbled Sam. "What I wouldn't give for a nice piece of gooseberry pie right now?"
"But what about the wound?" Gimli asked impatiently. He didn't want this to dissolve into another food discussion, especially not before he got to tell HIS scar story.
"Well," Merry said, "I'd just eaten an entire pie, so naturally I curled up and took a nap."
"Naturally," Pippin said, nodding in agreement.
"On top of the cabinet?" Boromir asked, laughing with amazement.
"That wasn't very smart," Aragorn pointed out.
"Of course it wasn't," Merry said. "And I realized it wasn't when I woke up hitting the ground."
"Ow," Sam said, grimacing.
Merry nodded. "The lucky thing was, my mum was so worried about me being hurt, she didn't have time to yell at me."
"I'm not surprised," Frodo laughed. "As I remember, you were always good at getting yourself out of jams."
"Speaking of jams," Merry teased back, "you haven't told us YOUR story yet, Frodo."
"Oh no," Gimli interrupted before Frodo could speak. He saw that the hobbits were steering the conversation back to food, and he wanted to have a go beforehand. "It's my turn."
Frodo nodded at the dwarf. "Go ahead, Gimli."
"Yes," Pippin said, "tell us about your worst scar."
Gimli noticed all eyes on him and realized he hadn't come up with a story to tell yet. "Well...I...uh...I can't decide which--"
"Then I'll tell mine," Legolas said from the darkness.
Gimli glowered at the disembodied voice but said nothing.
"Yes, Legolas," Aragorn called out to his friend standing guard. "You must have some good stories. What's your best?"
"I got my best scar on the first day I ever held a bow and arrow."
Everyone waited, expecting to hear more of the story, but Legolas didn't elaborate.
Finally, Pippin asked, "So what exactly happened?"
But Legolas didn't respond.
"I guess he didn't hear me," Pippin said to his cousin.
"Oh, he heard you," Aragorn said. "His elf ears hear much more than he'll let on. Witness." Aragorn leaned in towards the hobbits and in a low voice whispered, "Hên arfang."
"Lavan anûl." Legolas was suddenly by the campfire, glaring at Aragorn with a merry twinkle in his eyes.
"So," Pippin persisted, now that Legolas was there to tell the story firsthand, "what happened with the bow and arrow?"
"Yes, Legolas," Aragorn teased, "where IS this scar?"
Legolas grinned and shook his head. "With any luck, none of you will ever see it." And before Pippin could inquire more, Legolas had disappeared back into the woods to stand guard once again.
"Mister Frodo," Sam whispered to his friend, "what was that they were saying?"
Gandalf took the pipe from his mouth and said, "Nothing to worry about, Samwise. Just some friendly teasing."
"But what did they say?" Merry asked.
Aragorn smiled. "I called him a beardless child."
The others gasped at the insult.
Gandalf nodded. "And he called YOU a smelly animal."
Everyone laughed at this.
"Lavan anûl," Merry repeated, smiling at his cousins. "I'll have to remember that!"
Frodo shook his head. "Shouldn't you be learning nice words in Elvish and not just insults?"
Gimli smiled wickedly. "Why would you have anything nice to say to THEM?"
"I heard that," Legolas called back, and Gimli chuckled outloud with amusement.
"How about YOU, Master Dwarf," Aragorn said. "You should go next."
"Me? Oh, all right, if you insist." Gimli took a dramatic puff on his pipe and then began grandly, "The dwarves have always been excellent spelunkers..."
Sam gave Frodo a puzzled look and he whispered an explanation: "Cave explorers."
"Oh," Sam whispered back.
"...and I had a fascination for caves since before I could walk. So one day, when I was still a toddler--"
"You fell down a cave and hurt yourself on the rocks," Legolas called out from the darkness.
"Hey!" Gimli shouted indignantly to the disembodied voice. "That was MY story."
Aragorn laughed. "Go ahead, Gimli -- tell us what happened."
But Gimli was now sulking. "Just what the elf said," he said poutily. "I fell down a cave and scraped my hands on the rocks." He held out his hands, showing the scars to the others.
Frodo shuddered. "I hate hurting my hands, especially my palms."
"I bet I know why," Pippin whispered to Merry in a voice that could be heard miles away, and the two of them laughed gaily.
Frodo turned red as he shot his cousins evil glares. "Because then I can't write," he said adamantly.
"But tell us about YOUR scars, Mister Frodo," Sam suggested, trying to change the subject so that Frodo wouldn't be so embarrassed.
"Don't tell me," Gimli said. "It had something to do with food, didn't it?"
Frodo smiled, shaking his head. "No -- reading."
Boromir chuckled. "You injured yourself READING?"
Gandalf laughed, too. "You never WERE very athletic," he teased.
"Do you want me to tell my story or not?" Frodo asked, pretending to be angry.
"Oh, please do," Pippin said eagerly. "I want to hear about this reading injury."
Frodo laughed. "It wasn't a reading INJURY, exactly. But as a child I loved to read, and I loved the outdoors. And I realized that I could combine these two passions by reading while I took walks in the woods."
"That takes talent," Merry said, impressed.
Frodo nodded. "And good peripheral vision. But I learnt to do it so well that I could walk through the woods without ever looking up from my book."
"You must not have been THAT good," Boromir pointed out, "if there's a scar story involved."
"But the scar wasn't MY fault, it was Aunt Petunia's," Frodo explained. "I was walking along one day, reading and avoiding the trees just fine, when Aunt Petunia called out to warn me not to hit the tree. At least I found out LATER that's why she called out, but at the time I only heard my name. When I turned around to see what she wanted, I ran smack into the tree."
"Ow!" Pippin said, grasping his nose empathetically.
"So where's your scar?" Aragorn asked.
"Right here," Frodo said, drawing a line down the crease of his nose. The company all leaned in to see, and even Legolas emerged from the darkness to witness the reading injury, but the light from the fire was too dim.
"You don't have a scar," Merry accused.
"I DO," Frodo insisted. "It's right here."
Merry walked over and took his cousin's face in his hands. "I don't see ANYTHING. You are SUCH a baby."
"Oh, and eating pies is SO HEROIC," Frodo teased back as Merry sat back down.
"I LIKED the reading injury story, Mister Frodo," Sam said shyly.
Frodo smiled at his friend. "But how about you, Sam?" Frodo asked. "You still haven't gone. How'd you get your worst scar?"
Sam blushed. "I can only think of one story, Mister Frodo, but I'm not even sure it caused it scar."
"Can't you look and see?" Pippin asked.
Sam shook his head. "It's not exactly in a place where you can look."
Boromir smiled. "Now you've got us all intrigued -- you'll have to tell us now."
"Do I have to, Mister Frodo?" Sam asked nervously. "It's kind of embarrassing."
"It's okay, Sam," Frodo said, reassuringly patting Sam on the knee. "You're among friends."
"Well," Sam said, gulping nervously, "I don't even remember how old I was...."
"Seems to be a common theme," Boromir pointed out.
Sam nodded, "And I was out in the garden one day, and there were these beans, and...well...you see...I put one in my nose."
"Ew!" Pippin and Merry said in unison, causing Sam to blush and stop.
"Go on, Sam," Frodo encouraged.
"And it got stuck and I couldn't get it out. So I went crying to my mum, but she couldn't get it out neither. Even the Gaffer had a go. But the bean had started to sprout, and there was just no getting it lose."
Everyone in the circle was cringing in empathy.
"So how did you finally get it out?" Gimli asked.
"I mean, it is OUT, isn't it?" Boromir asked, suddenly nervous
Sam nodded. "Eventually they got it out. But I've never been able to look at a pair of pliers the same way again."
"I'm surprised you could look at BEANS the same way again," Merry said. "How could you ever become a gardener after that kind of experience?"
Sam shrugged. "I've always liked beans."
"And so did your NOSE, apparently," Merry said, and everyone laughed.
"Don't worry, Sam," Frodo said. "We all did embarrassing things when we were little."
"Except for Gandalf," Merry pointed out.
"That's right," Pippin said. "But I don't imagine Gandalf ever WAS little."
"Well, I don't know about the 'little' part," Frodo said teasingly, "but I know he's done HIS share of embarrassing things. Bilbo told me ALL ABOUT some of them."
Gandalf took the pipe from his mouth. "Are you slandering my good name?"
"No," Frodo grinned, "but I WILL if you don't share a story yourself."
The wizard sighed. "Very well. I'll tell you a story of one of my scars. But it shan't be as interesting as the others we've heard."
"I don't know about that," Pippin said, eager to hear a story from the wizard.
Gandalf sighed and began, "As I'm sure most of you know, The Shire, and more specifically Bag End, is known for its fine ales...."
"Here, here!" hailed Pippin.
"...and fine pipeweed...."
"Here, here!" hailed Merry.
"...and fine company," he said, smiling fondly at Frodo. "And Bilbo and I have, on many occasions, shared all three." And Gandalf paused, lost in memories.
"But what about the SCAR?" Pippin asked.
"What? Oh, yes, yes. So as I was saying, Bag End is known for...."
"Yes, yes," Merry said impatiently. "Get on to the good part."
"Patience, Master Buckland -- our companions need to know the background. They don't know the hobbits well, and they don't know what I'M known for in The Shire."
"Fireworks!" Sam burst out.
Aragorn laughed. "This doesn't bode well -- ale, pipeweed, AND fireworks?"
"This I've GOT to hear," Boromir said, rubbing his hands together eagerly.
And the company all leaned in to hear Gandalf's story.
***
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