This story takes place in SR 1463.

I cannot sleep. It is not that I am in an unfamiliar bed. The bed, though not my own, is familiar. The silence of the hill around me, though not that of my own dear Hill, is also familiar: a dark, soft cradle, the comforting earth holding something like two hundred hobbits within its arms.

It is not the bed, it is not the room, it is not the hole. It is what waits tomorrow: a wedding. My wedding, and I am panicking.

Suddenly I am not sure, and being not-sure about this is like being not-sure about whether the sun will rise. Can I doubt that rain will fall, that stars will continue in their courses, that trees will leaf in spring? I do not know. But I am not-sure about my own wedding.

We fought for this, to get married a year before my majority, and won the fight. (Faramir's mother Diamond won it for us, truth be told. She fixed her eye on the Thain and dared him to say a word, and when Faramir's father did not protest, my father and mother felt bound to acquiesce as well.)

Once that victory came, the rest was easy: Choose the date (midsummer's Litheday), invite the guests (everyone in the Shire, it seems, and many from beyond), prepare the meals (mountains of food, rivers of drink). All has been readied, from the flowers twined round the wedding canopy to the ones embroidered onto my dress to the one which will be tucked into Faramir's buttonhole. And now I am panicking.

It has all been too easy.

I was born one year after Faramir (one year and fourteen days, to be exact), and I cannot remember a time when we did not adventure together. From sneaking into the Old Forest on the eastern border of the Buckland, to practicing our wolf calls together in the Northfarthing, from getting lost in the cellars and tunnels of Great Smials to falling asleep in the pipeweed fields down Longbottom way--his green eyes and long nose and clever hands have always filled my sight, always been a part of me, as inseparable as my own hair (yes, it is indeed golden, and now I will sometimes even admit it looks nice--but really it has mostly been an annoyance all my life, and the time that Faramir cut it all off so we could run off and be farmlads was really quite a relief), as necessary as breathing, taken for granted like my Mum and Dad and a dozen brothers and sisters.

It was so easy, to go from playmates to co-conspirators, and then one day just before our tweens, it just happened--Faramir kissed me and I kissed him back, and even that was easy. Though terrifying and exhilarating, it was no more and no less than another adventure, like so many small adventures we had been on already.

But I was raised on tales, I live them and dream them (and so does he), and all this ease and simplicity smacks of danger to me. This wedding seems, suddenly, wrong.

I sit up in bed. The room is not mine alone; because there are so many folk here for the wedding, we are crowded in and rooms that have long gone empty in this winding warren are full. My sisters are all here (all but Elanor, who has a room with her husband and their children): Rose-lass and Daisy, Primrose and Ruby. The lads have the next room over, and beyond them are Mum and Dad.

"Are you awake?" comes Ruby's whisper. The room is near pitch black, but that doesn't stop me; I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand.

"No," I mutter. "I am sleepwalking. Go back to sleep!"

I can almost see her, a shadow among other shadows. "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere," I hiss. "Just out. I need to think."

"You're going to see Faramir!" she whispers accusatorily. "You aren't supposed to see him till the wedding breakfast--we kept you apart all week!"

"I just need to think," I say back. "It's none of your business, Ruby!"

She is sitting up now, I can see her. We both freeze as Daisy murmurs in her dream and then falls quiet again. Ruby whispers again: "I'm telling Mum." She sounds satisfied, and my temper rises. I pace to her bed (one step, no more) and lean down over her.

"You do," I menace, "and I will tell her how I saw you and Hap Roper in the berry thicket three weeks ago."

Ruby draws in a quick breath, but says nothing; I can practically hear the wheels going round in her head, like one of the toys Mr. Merry orders from Dale for birthday gifts. She is probably glaring at me, but the threat of her snapping black eyes is lost here in the dark. I stand my ground and finally she lays back down. "Hmpf," I hear, and then I am gone, out in a whisk, the door snicking to behind me.

The corridor outside is faintly lit by sconces at either end. There is no one about, and I am not worried that anyone will see me. I am dressed, after all--my nightgown covers me from throat to toes. I have never understood those gammers who get all upset at being seen in their nightclothes--more of me shows in my daytime dresses than in this enormous thing. If anyone asks, I will say that I wanted some fresh air.

With this is mind, I turn to my right. But just as I am about to pass my parents' room, their door opens and Rose-mum steps out.

"Mum!" I say, then clap my hand over my mouth.

"And just where are you going, my lass?" My mum has always known far too much about me--about all of us. I feel like a mouse under the hawk's eye, and my story goes by the wayside and the truth tumbles from my lips.

"I need to talk to Faramir," I say.

Mum takes my arm and strolls me to the end of the corridor, down a flight of steps, through two more halls, and then to a little-used side door. I am gaping--I didn't know she even knew about this door--but neither of us speaks until she has opened it and pulled me outside, into the cool, sweet summer night. She shuts the door behind us and then pulls me down to sit beside her on the steps.

I am staring at her, and she is gazing at the stars, breathing the soft air deeply. "Well," she says at last. "Why do you need to talk to your betrothed?"

I open my mouth, but I have never lied to my mum (I have told a thousand stories, but that is a different matter entirely), and I close it again and think for a moment before replying. "I think things are going too easily," I say honestly.

She brought her gaze from the sky to me, her daughter. "How do you mean?"

"I do not know. But I need to talk to him, I need to see his face. I think--" I cannot finish the sentence: I think we should not get married. Even thinking it makes my heart pound with fear, but perhaps it is true--perhaps my fear means it is true. I breathe fast and put my head down on my knees.

I feel my mother's capable hand gently rubbing my back. "Can you not talk of this to me?" she is saying.

"No," I reply. "No. I cannot, Mum, not now." I lift my head. "Just--let me see him, please."

She gazes at me for a long time. I can see how I resemble her at this moment, for here in the starlight she is as young as I, and it is like looking into a slightly blurred mirror to look into her face. I have her grey-blue eyes and cheekbones, the shape of her nose. My hair, though yellower than hers, is fine and thick and curls exactly like hers, in soft, messy ringlets. "You may see him for all of me," she says finally. "The lads are all sleeping in the stable, though. How shall you reach him?"

I had not thought of this. "I do not know." I want to despair. "I must talk to him tonight, I must!" I bury my head again, and feel my nose and ears hot with anguish as tears prickle my eyelids.

"I will see to it," Mum says suddenly. "Go round to the coachhouse and wait there--I'll see that he comes there to talk to you." Once decided she is quick to act, and she stands.

"Mum!" I exclaim, and she turns, feet already poised to descend the steps. "Thank you, Mum. And please--" I gulp. "Please don't be surprised at whatever I may say in the morning about the wedding."

She nods and is off. I sit on the steps for a few moments and then stand. The coachhouse is around the bulk of the hill, and beyond it are the stables where my betrothed is sleeping. Or not sleeping--I am hardly myself tonight and I cannot tell whether he is awake or asleep, though on any other night I would simply know. I can see a glow over the trees where the moon is rising.

Nothing moves except a cat, skulking across my path, and I don't think anyone sees me as I push open the door to the coachhouse and slip inside. I leave the door open, for the light, and sit on the dirt floor just inside. Once settled on my rump, my white nightgown belatedly occurs to me, but I have never been particularly fastidious (I can almost hear Primrose's snort at this understatement) and I shrug to myself.

It seems like a long wait there in the darkness, thinking sad thoughts and trying not to cry. Faramir has always been able to move quietly--more quietly than me, even, it must be the Tookish blood in him--and I never hear his footsteps. "Goldi?" he calls softly. When his voice floats hesitantly out of the darkness I startle and jump up. I can see him standing outside the big wooden door, looking around.

"I'm here," I say, and he startles in his turn and then steps toward me and takes me in his arms.

It has been a week since I have seen him, a long week. His father was staying with him in Took Bank, but then yesterday they came back to the Smials (where the rest of us already were) and since then his family and my family have engaged in an elaborate dance to keep us from catching so much as a glimpse of each other. It has been maddening, and my first instinct--as his, apparently--is to kiss him fiercely and hungrily. This is bliss, and hunger, and passion, but behind it all my panic has not subsided. Indeed it is growing and I break from him with something that is almost a sob.

"What is the matter?" His voice is strained. I know that strain, I have felt it myself.

After that first kiss, many summers ago, there were more kisses, and explorations, and many, many heated moments when our hearts raced and our breathing came fast, but we waited. We had decided, together, to wait until we were wed to take that final, irrevocable step of bedding. It would not be a terrible scandal had we done otherwise; we hobbits are nothing if not pragmatic, and when a lad and a lass are betrothed (and sometimes before), no-one is particularly surprised should they come to their marriage already experienced in the ways and means of love. Most lasses--all I've ever met--know how which herbs to brew for tea and when to drink it to prevent unwanted children; it is not secret or shameful knowledge. But as many wait for the wedding as do not, and Faramir and I had decided to wait, though it was often a sore trial. My family does not know we waited; I do not know what Faramir's believes. It does not matter. It is a private promise that we made, each to the other.

So when I hear his voice, strained and tight, and feel my own the same, I am tempted to forget all my fears and kiss him and tomorrow wed him. But I know also that it is only my body speaking, which has yearned for him for many years now, and does not want to be disappointed at last. So I do not let myself melt for that voice--not quite.

"Faramir, I need to talk to you." I can see his face, shadowy in the starlight, perplexed at my sober tone.

"Let's sit down," he says, and we sit, tailor-fashion, knee to knee and facing one another. He is wearing his nightshirt and a pair of hastily donned trousers, and I wonder briefly how my mother got him to me. He takes my hands.

"I do not think we can get married tomorrow," I say, fighting to keep my words steady.

The moon lifts above the trees and shines in upon us, and I can suddenly see him clearly in the long silence after my words. Wide eyes, long thin nose and sweet mouth like his father's, pointed chin and freckles like his mother's. His mouth is open slightly, and he clears his throat to speak. "Why not?"

"It is too easy," I say, and I explain my thoughts. The War of the Ring wasn't easy, was it? Certainly not. It was not easy for Mr. Frodo (who we never knew) to go with my Dad to the Mountain of Fire and throw that Ring away, no indeed. It was not easy for Faramir's father, when he and Mr. Merry ran across Rohan before the orc whips (even now, at the ages of thirty-two and thirty-three years, we shiver at this thought--I've seen the scar across the Thain's calf, once when he rolled up his trousers and waded into the river to play with us; Faramir has seen--and told me of--other scars, marks of that run and of the Troll that nearly crushed him at the Black Gate). It was not easy when battle raged across the Pelennor field, and the Black Riders swooped down on all those tall Men and made them cower down in fear.

Anyone else would laugh, but Faramir knows better. I can see him thinking hard about what I have said. He looks at the floor now, his brow furrowed. He is very still. Usually his hands move, his face is mobile, his body sways or jigs or paces.

I cannot stand his quiet any more. "Well?" I say.

"You are wrong." His answer is precise and clear and unequivocal, his eyes clear as water in the moonlight.

"Why?" I want him to be right, but I dislike being told I am wrong, and so my voice comes out somewhere between harsh and plaintive.

Now he jumps to his feet and begins pacing, and I am reassured by this as he begins to speak. "Goldi, you are wrong. What you say about our parents is right--the Quest was hard, the hardest thing any hobbit will ever do, and you and I will never do anything so hard or frightening or dangerous." I nod at this, for I know it to be true. There is nothing within my soul that wishes to outdo my father or his, or Mr. Merry, or Mr. Frodo. That is not what I mean, and I start to open my mouth and say so, but Faramir has plunged on.

"But that is not what you mean. We have had adventures already, haven't we?" I nod. But all by our own desire, I want to add, just as he voices my thought once more: "But we got ourselves into them all, didn't we. Well," this is a sidenote, I can hear, "that was true of Mr. Merry and my Da, too, but still, their adventures were different by an order of magnitude." I have climbed to my feet, the better to watch him pace and talk. "So our adventures cannot count as hardships before our marriage. Still, though, there's something you've left out, something…" He walks back and forth in a study, and rubs his hands over his face, a gesture I have seen his father make.

Suddenly he stops. "I have it!" he cries.

"What?" His excitement is palpable, and communicates itself to me.

"The reason you have it all wrong, Goldi!" I make a face at him, but on he goes, leaping forward to grasp my hands. "You think we must have our adventure and then get married as a reward for the hard work, or the waiting, or whatever. But you have it all wrong. We are not our fathers after the adventure--we are them before! When Merry and Frodo and Pippin and Samwise--" now they are the lads of the tales, not our dads or dads' friends at all-- "when they went off into the wild, they were already best friends, weren't they? They had lived together for many years, and been the closest of friends and mates, and had many adventures together, just like us. That is where we are in our story--our adventure won't begin until later."

"Do you think so?" I can feel hope rising in my breast.

"I know so," he says stoutly, squeezing my hands so tightly it hurts, but I smile.

"Oh, Faramir." I kiss him soundly. "I am sure you are right. I knew I had to talk to you."

He pulls me close and holds me tight, and I can feel his heart beating under my ear. "You scared me," he says. "Maybe that was my first adventure, and convincing you to wed is my reward, after all."

"I don't know," I say. "I am still scared, but not as much. And maybe it is just cold feet," I add candidly. "I am scared that maybe things will become dull between us, that we'll be done adventuring."

He nods, his chin bumping my head. "I am scared too, but not of that." He pulls back and looks into my face searchingly. "Don't you know that our adventures will never be done?" He leans down to kiss me again, the passion flaring up between us. There are no words for a while, just breath and mouths and hands and heat. We stop ourselves--we have gotten good at stopping ourselves, after all this time--and spend a few moments rearranging clothes and hair, catching our breath, slowing our hearts.

"I don't think things will ever be dull between us," he says, taking my hand as we walk slowly from the coachhouse toward the Smials.

"But how can you know that?"

"For one thing, I never know what you will say," he says dryly, and I smile. The same is true for me, of him.

"And for another," I say, "you never know if what I will say will make any sense."

"Sometimes you are foolish," he agrees, and I swat him. He laughs. "That just means you shall fit in well with everyone else here in the Tookland."

"Faramir Took," I scold him, but I am smiling. He turns to face me; we are standing again at that small side door into the smial. He puts his hands on either side of my face and draws me in for one last, long kiss.

"Yes, Goldilocks Took?" He is mocking, but there is glee in his voice and I pinch his ear to keep him off-balance.

"Not yet!" I say, and then I am up the steps and through the door, leaving him behind and below to make his way back to the stable and sleep. For I know he will sleep, just as I know I will. I sink into dreams and wake the next morning, and after the wedding breakfast we are married. My father the Mayor and his the Thain share the words of the blessing, and our mothers cry, and my sisters and brothers and all our cousins pelt us with flowers. There beneath the wedding canopy my new husband turns to me and I meet his sparkling green eyes, wondering what his first words to his wife will be.

He leans forward so we are nose to nose, shutting out the merry-makers that surround us. "Well," he says, "there's no denying it now."

"What should I deny?" I reply saucily, my grin threatening to split my face, ears and nose warm with delight. He kisses me and then smiles into my eyes.

"You, my dear, are now officially," he pauses dramatically, "a fool of a Took."