Disclaimer: “The Lord of the Rings “ is the property of Tolkien Estates and New Line Cinema. The characters are used herein for fun (no profit).


Author’s Note: At the time of this story, Pippin has just turned 11 and Merry is 18. (7 and 11.5 in Man years)

“Punctuation”

“Merry!” Pippin squealed, and Merry opened his arms to embrace a squirming 11-year-old: coat, cloak, hat, scarf, and all, while the rest of the Took family followed this littlest cousin into Brandy Hall.

“Merry! Are you glad to see us?” Pippin demanded, spinning around in circles as Merry held one end of the scarf so that it unwound from his neck. “Were you surprised to hear of’’t? And it’s still Afteryule,” Pippin squealed and clasped his hands together as he stopped spinning, the scarf now completely removed. “So it’s close to my birthday and I brought your birthday present -- ‘tis in the carriage!” he concluded with a little hop and the rubbing of his hands together.

“Did you?” Merry laughed, plucking the hat off Pippin’s head with one hand. “Well, I think you shall have to let your Da bring that in, as I’m sure he doesn’t want you out in the cold anymore today.”

“Oh, but he said your mama had invited us to a winter bonfire, and that Frodo and Bilbo were coming, too, and that it should be ever so much fun and that we could come even though I should still have to have lessons and ‘tis it true?” Pippin asked from where he had now wrapped his arms around Merry’s knees and tilted his head back to look up at his cousin. “Merry, did you get my letter?”

“Aye, it’s true,” Merry laughed and ruffled Pippin’s curls with one hand, clutching the hat and scarf in the other. “Though Bilbo and Frodo aren’t due to arrive until tomorrow or the next day. In the meantime, yes, I got your letter. And, while we’re waiting,” Merry bent forward and Pippin leaned back, his feet planted atop Merry’s as he still clutched his older cousin’s legs, until their noses touched. “I know what I should like to give you a lesson in.”

Pippin’s eyes got big, and then Merry whispered to him: “Punctuation.”

A few hours later, both lads were in Merry’s room.

“Dinna you like my letter, Merry?” Pippin asked, trailing his hand along the edge of the coverlet on the bed as Merry extracted a parchment from his desk.

“Of course I did, Pip,” Merry responded to the dejected look as he returned carrying the parchment. “See?” He held the worn, wrinkled page ahead of him while lifting Pippin to sit in his lap upon the bed. “I’ve read it for hours.”

“Oh! Aye!” Pippin squealed from Merry’s lap, kicking his legs and reaching one finger out to run along the lines he’d written.

Dear Merry,

We are to visit you four the Fire as da says we kan and I am happy lots but I gots to write fur my lessons until I fill a page but I like you anyway so its not so bad and i din know what to say but Merry we had Yule and I got a Thing to put Stuff in and I kin bring your birthday gift and it is 3 things a surprize a surprise a serprize

Luv,
Pippin

“’Tis a good letter, isn’t it, Merry?” Pippin asked as he craned his neck to look up at his older cousin. “I filled the whole page!”

“Yes, you did, Pip,” Merry laughed and kissed his curls. “And it is a very good letter, but do you know what make it even better? Punctuation,” he said with satisfaction.

“Oy, Merry,” Pippin protested and rolled out of his cousin’s lap to lie on his side on the bed. “You sound just like lessons!” he said, jutted his lower lip out, and crossed his arms.

“Well, there’s some good in lessons,” Merry said and stood up. He began to pace back and forth, warming to his theme. “You won’t always be writing to me, you know, who loves you enough to understand you even if you haven’t made things perfectly clear.”

“Humph,” Pippin said from where he still lay, with arms crossed, upon the bed.

“First things first,” Merry began. “Do you know what a period is?”

Pippin shot bolt upright. “Oh, aye!” he responded, red-faced. He glanced apprehensively toward Merry’s door which led to the corridor. Still blushing, Pippin whispered loudly and urgently, “But, Merry, ‘tisn’t polite to speak of it!”

Merry took a step back, his mouth hanging open and a blush creeping upon his own cheeks at the thought of Pippin's sisters.

“Er -- yes -- that’s right, Pippin, it isn’t polite to speak of that,” he stammered out, but added in a rush, “but that isn’t what we were talking about. We were talking about punctuation!”

“But you said--” Pippin began, with a suspicious look.

“Pippin!” Merry cut him off and propped a slate against the cubbyholes of his desk so it stood upright, drawing a large dot upon it with a chalk. “This is a period. It goes at the end of a sentence,” he explained. “That’s so you know when you’ve finished a thought. You could have put one here, here, here, here--” Merry pointed to the letter he had picked up again as he spoke.

“And here?” Pippin asked eagerly, hopping up from the bed and pointing after the words “3 things.”

“Nay, actually,” Merry said, looking pleased. “That’s where you would put a different mark of punctuation, one that introduces lists. It’s called a colon.”

“Oh,” Pippin nodded sagely while Merry drew one upon the slate. “Like in the front of Brandy Hall.”

“Pippin!” Merry reproached him with exasperation. “Those are not ‘colons’; they are ‘columns,’ and you know it. The word ‘colon,’ when it isn’t punctuation, is--” Merry shifted his weight awkwardly between his feet.

“’Tis what, Merry?” Pippin asked with guileless green eyes.

“It’s -- it’s a part of your body, that’s inside your bum,” Merry blurted out. “It’s what things come out of when you go to the privy.”

Pippin’s eyes grew round at first, and then he giggled but regarded the parchment mistrustfully.

Merry plunged ahead. “Now, you don’t use colons as oft as you do periods--”

“I should hope not!” Pippin broke in with an indignant mutter. “’Twould be awfully smelly.”

“--but sometimes, like in this case, they can be useful,” Merry went on, doing his best to ignore the commentary.

“Sometimes, when you have two thoughts that are very closely related,” he continued, “like when you said you had Yule and told me what you got for a present” -- he now ignored the grin and the excited little hop -- “you can combine the period and the colon to make a semicolon.”

Merry had set the letter down and was intent upon drawing a period above a comma on the slate, and did not notice his audience’s reaction until Pippin spoke from beneath his elbow, causing Merry to jump and drop the chalk.

“What’s ‘semi’ mean, Merry?” Pippin asked innocently as Merry bent to retrieve the chalk.

“It means only partway something,” Merry said from behind gritted teeth. He stared at Pippin as he stood up with the chalk. “Like hobbits who can read and write, but not very well. They are only ‘semiliterate.’”

“Oh,” Pippin said, his lips slightly quivering and a few tears coming to his eyes. “That’s sad, Merry.”

“Yes, Pippin, it is,” Merry said and continued staring at him hard for another few moments.

He sighed then, picked the letter up, and waggled the parchment in front of Pippin, pointing to “so its not so bad.”

“Now, in this word, what you need is an apostrophe. That tells you that you’ve left a letter out between two words, so ‘it is’ becomes ‘it’s.’” Merry set the letter down and carefully wrote upon the slate “it is,’” then “it’s.”

“So, what does ‘a - pos -tru -fee’ mean, Merry?” Pippin asked.

“I told you, it means you’ve left a letter out of your word,” Merry answered.

“No, Merry, I mean when ‘tisn’t punctuation,” Pippin clarified.

“It -- Pippin it doesn’t really mean anything, besides a mark of punctuation, that you’re ever likely to hear,” said Merry, facing his cousin while still holding the chalk.

“Tha’s boring,” Pippin commented. He set his jaw stubbornly and crossed his arms over his chest. “I shan’t ever remember it.”

Merry looked at Pippin in dismay. A despairing vision of a lifetime’s worth of letters with no apostrophes in Tookish expressions swam before him.

His mind turned away from Pippin for a moment, to address another likely recipient of such letters. ‘Frodo, you are going to owe me for this.’ Merry thought before he mirrored the crossed-arm posture and responded to Pip’s comment.

“Well, then I guess you shall just always have to say ‘it is’ instead of ‘’tis,’” he said.

“Merry, I canna!” Pippin gasped and took a step backward. “I’ll sound silly, like a -- a Bucklander or somewhat!”

Merry raised an eyebrow and then turned back to the slate, not speaking to Pippin. He bit his cheek to further suppress the laugh as, seconds later, Pippin had rushed across the room and was hugging Merry’s legs.

“Merry, I’m sorry! I dinna mean it!” he cried out. “I’ll be good! I’ll -- I’ll use a - pos - toffees!

“Oy, Merry!” Pippin sounded much more cheerful all of a sudden. “That’s what they can be! Do you think my tutor would give me a toffee sweet every time I use an a - pos - toffee right? I’m sure ‘twould help me remember,” he said with both earnestness and a bit of avarice, reflected in a smack of the lips.

“He might, Pippin,” Merry said, smiling down at his cousin and ruffling his curls. “You’ll never know until you ask.”

‘A small price to pay,’ Merry’s mind told the tutor, ‘for what I’m doing for you here.’

“Oh! Good, Merry!” Pippin cried out happily, with a small bounce. “’Tis -- ‘tis there any more punctuation?” he asked shyly in an effort to continue pleasing his cousin.

“Well, in your letter, just one,” Merry said, turning his attention to drawing on the slate again although he kept one hand on Pippin’s head. “It goes between the different things in a list, like ‘surprise, surprise, surprise,’ and it is called a ‘comma,’” Merry concluded with satisfaction.

“Oh,” Pippin’s voice was small, and Merry looked down to see him hanging his head and dragging his foot across the floor.

“What’s wrong, Pip?” he asked anxiously and let the chalk fall to the desktop.

“’Tis,” Pippin’s lip was quivering again, and his eyes were brimming with tears now when he looked up. “I know what a comma is, Merry. ‘Tis what they said I had, the summer I was eight. ‘Tis scary.” And he sobbed a bit.

“No, no, Pip!” Merry cried out, swiftly enveloping his cousin in a hug and carrying him to the bed, where Merry sat down and rocked Pippin in his arms. “That was a ‘coma,’ and you’re all better now! ‘Commas’ can’t hurt you, and I won’t ever, ever let them!”

Merry buried his face in Pippin’s curls and rocked for a while, letting the little one sob while he reveled in Pippin’s warm limbs and small movements in his arms.

When the sobs had died down and Pippin blown his nose upon the handkerchief he tucked back into Merry’s pocket, he leaned his head on Merry’s shoulder and asked, a bit shakily, “Merry? Tell me about some more punctuation.”

“Well,” Merry squeezed Pippin a bit as he thought. “There’s an ellipse. That’s three periods together, and it means you haven’t just left out letters, but whole words.”

“Does an ellipse mean something else, too, Merry?” Pippin asked softly.

“Aye, “ Merry began. “It’s--” He stopped. “It’s -- it’s a shape that I cannot describe, and you’ll learn about it as you study more arithmetic.”

“Oh,” Pippin said and held one arm away from Merry, extending each of the fingers in turn, then raised one foot toward that hand and touched a toe.

“What are you doing?” Merry asked in fascinated confusion.

“Counting the marks of punctuation,” Pippin giggled. “You said arithmetic!”

“You silly,” Merry laughed, leaning over so that Pippin spilled off of his lap and onto the top of the bedclothes, where he lay still giggling while Merry lay on his side and laughed beside him.

“’Im hungry, Merry,” Pippin asked from among his giggles, “d’you think I could have a biscuit?”

Merry had tucked his face into the coverlet to stifle his laughter. He rolled it back to the side again so he could grin at his cousin. “Aye, Pip, I think you could,” he said.

“Goody!” Pippin cried out and sat up, then jumped off the bed with a happy cry of “Oh!

“I’ll get your birthday present, too, Merry,” he exclaimed, and dashed into the corridor.

Pippin returned a few minutes later, carrying one biscuit clenched in his teeth and another in his hands, along with a small package. He pressed both this biscuit and the box into Merry’s hands.

“Open it, open it!” Pippin cried after having bitten off a mouthful of his biscuit.

Merry shook his head fondly at him, set the biscuit to one side and began to eagerly untie the string upon the package. From the box, he brought out: a new quill, an ink bottle, and parchment.

“Surprise!” cried out Pippin, bouncing upon the balls of his feet. “Now you can write a letter to me!”

Merry, of course, did not need this gift for the remainder of the Tooks’ visit, but knew it would be well-used in the months to come.

In fact, it had not been too long after Pippin’s departure when Merry received a missive from the Great Smials which he was sure was a response to the first letter he had sent his cousin upon that parchment, and using that quill and ink.

It was not Pippin’s signature, however, which was revealed when Merry broke the seal, but that of his tutor. A Shire penny clattered to the floor as Merry read the note, which said simply:

Thank you.

The End