“Thinking about him again?”

Merry found Pippin at the window, and joined him. Looking out over the Great Smails all a-bloom, he tried once again to imagine Boromir alive, alive in all this … peace.

Pippin sighed. “He gave us all this, you know. Now, here I am, about to do something he couldn’t … I just wonder what he’d think.”

His throat tightening, Merry turned Pippin around and straightened his collar. “He’d be proud, just like me. Now!” he swallowed. “Come on! They’re all waiting.”

A hundred glasses raised when Pippin entered the hall, and Merry called out: “to the Thain!”