Under the Umbrella

By Mysterious Jedi

Disclaimer: Identifiable objects belong to Tolkien (though the Sackville-Bagginses aspire to obtain them).

Summary: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins takes it into her head to give a tweenaged Pippin a rather unusual punishment for disrespect. Written for Marigold’s Challenge 14 (the first challenge she’ll receive stories for as a married woman! Congratulations, Marigold!) for which my starter is to write as story that at least partially takes place under an umbrella.

Peregrin Took was bored out of his mind. Just because he’d implied that Lobelia Sackville-Baggins was a little bit…acquisitive, to use Frodo’s word, didn’t give her the right to punish him in this absurd fashion. He didn’t think it was her place to punish a tween who was not her own son, at any rate. This was cruel and unusual! To think of imprisoning him in one of Frodo’s closets when the Baggins wasn’t even home! Didn’t she know better than to enter someone’s hole without permission? It was true that he was permitted to do so at the home of such a friend and cousin’s house, but she had no right to make him bring her in here!

45 minutes earlier

Pippin was hungry. It’s not like he was ever not hungry, but that was beside the point. The lengthy walk from Tookland to Hobbiton had aroused his appetite to an even greater level. His mother had sent him with a pack full of travel food and little else, but he was still hungry. At that moment he had his eye on a patch of mushrooms. Edible mushrooms.

Without wasting any time, he hastened over to the promising mushroom patch, his head full of thoughts of plain mushrooms, mushrooms fried up in an omelet, and mushrooms cooked so many ways it made his head spin and his stomach grumble. Unfortunately for this tweenaged mushroom-loving hobbit, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins chose that moment to round the bend in front of him. She also saw the mushrooms and her competition for them. He had never seen her move so quickly as she did at that moment.

The old lady hobbit began to furiously pick mushrooms, stowing them in her umbrella. Pippin picked mushrooms even more rapidly. Finally, their hands brushed the last mushroom at the same time. Pippin, his stomach overruling his etiquette and common sense, began to pry her wrist away with one hand and grab for the mushroom with the other. Suddenly, he felt the sensation of a hand pulling at his ear, and had to look twice to make sure Gandalf wasn’t there.

“You, young hobbit lad, need to learn a lesson in respect!” Lobelia fumed.

“You, old hobbit lady, need to learn a lesson in generosity!” Pippin yelled back.

One must not think that Pippin was always this disrespectful, but everyone knows that ravenous hobbits are irritable hobbits, and nothing irritates an irritable hobbit more than someone standing between said hobbit and the cure for his ravenousness (and thus irritability), namely food. This, added to the fact that no one Pippin knew thought well of Lobelia, made it understandable, if not excusable, for him to be rather rude in that situation.

Lobelia’s jaws clenched, and her eyebrows narrowed. Pippin watched in a sort of morbid fascination as her whole face turned the color of that nice shiny apple he’d eaten not ten minutes ago (but which, alas, was not enough to keep him from soon becoming a ravenous, and thus irritable, hobbit).

The grip on Pippin’s ear tightened. “Take me to Bag End!” demanded the harshest voice Pippin had ever heard. It was even harsher than Gandalf’s, because Gandalf actually cared about the hobbit lads he rebuked.

Reluctantly, Pippin walked up to Frodo’s door and let himself (and, alas, Lobelia) in. She made him help pull a heavy bookcase towards the closet door, much to his confusion.

“Get in!” She ordered.

He was forced to comply. She meant to give him a time-out like a little faunt? Ah, well, at least this closet had plenty of room; he should be able to move about a bit. Or so he thought. Lobelia threw her umbrella in after him (after, to his dismay, she had emptied it of the mushrooms) shouting something about him having too much room without it. Then the old hobbit lady slammed the door, dragged the bookcase fully in front of it, and stormed away.

One would think Pippin could merely close the umbrella and have more room, but one would thus be failing to take into account the fact that this was Lobelia’s umbrella. On previous occasions of observing Lobelia, Pippin had always wondered why it had such a complicated lock necessary to close it, and now he knew. Goodness, did she make a habit of this?

That is how Pippin found himself incredibly bored (and still famished). Finally, he saw nothing for it but to take a bit of a nap. Lying with his head rather awkwardly beneath an umbrella, he fell asleep.

That was how Frodo found him an hour later. Such an odd position demanded a full explanation, of course. To Pippin’s horror, Frodo laughed.

“It’s not funny! It was cruel!” The young hobbit said indignantly.

“I know,” Frodo said, “but that acquisitive Lobelia just lost her prized umbrella when she left it in my closet with you!”