Disclaimer: The characters and settings contained in this story are the creation of J.R.R. Tolkien and are the property of the Tolkien Estate.

Laughter and Gentleness

The first time she met him was at a dance at the Great Smials. She turned from giggling at the punch bowl with a gaggle of her lass friends to see him looking at her with laughing green eyes and holding out a hand. She handed her mug to a friend and reached up to put her arms around his neck as they twirled onto the dance floor. As a smaller hobbitess herself, like most in her family, his height was new to her. She was surprised how much she liked it.
She stared into those laughing eyes for all that dance -- and the next. He left her for another partner then, and her heart sank for a few moments. Then she realized, as he glided by and winked at her with an impish grin over his partner’s shoulder, that this new hobbitess was one of his three older sisters.
She felt one of the luckiest hobbitesses in the Shire.

* * *
He courted her properly in the following months -- well, as properly as was possible for him. He was ever ready with a joke, and she thought at first that’s all this evening would contain.
They had paused in their strolls among his family’s fields near Whitwell. He grabbed the straw hat from the scarecrow and jammed it down over the tips of his own ears, then flapped his elbows madly and stuck out his tongue while making a horrid face, to frighten off any lingering threatening birds.
Then, still clutching the hat onto his head with both hands, he leaned his face toward her. An orange moon in a sky streaked with the black of watercolor paints shone over his shoulder. Their lips met, hers holding gentleness and peace while his tasted of laughter and an unshakable confidence.

* * *
She was the one who saw the small creature, struggling blindly to find its way back to its nest and siblings. She made him search out a long, but lightweight stick as she knelt a few feet away and made soothing noises to the lost animal. He held her around the waist from behind, ready to snatch her away the instant it nipped, as she carefully brought the stick before its face and then drew it along the rills in the ice and mud along the creek to lead the water mole back to the trails its kin had left. She and her companion already had full bellies, and she felt compassion for all creatures of the fields and of the banks.

* * *
She nestled her head against her husband’s shoulder as he leaned back against the wall of the smial. The summer stars twinkled above them. IN her arms lay their first child. She rocked and cooed a lullaby she’d heard her mother and sisters sing, winding down to shushing noises, soft as her gentle nature, as the babe fell asleep.
Her husband’s arm tightened around her shoulder. He was the champion for the both of them now: their knight without armor.
She breathed his name in a sigh of contentment as their lips met in yet another kiss that mixed her sweetness and his strength.
“Ah, Paladin.”