Note to the reader: This is the last part of the draft chapter, Thoughtful Conversations, that split itself into three parts. It might get re-combined, might not. Each part is over 1000 words, after all, and with my slow dial-up connexion I don't want to approach 3,000 words in a single chapter if I can avoid it.

Pippin found Posey in the Queen’s garden.

 ‘Hilly?’ she said, not turning.

 ‘I sent him to escort Diamond to the marketplace,’ Pippin said.

She rose at the sound of his voice, and he gestured her back to her seat, leaning against the back of the hobbit-sized bench with a pensive air.

Posey sat back down obediently, but remained politely half-turned. ‘Were you needing something, cousin?’ she said.

 ‘I have all I ever dreamed of, and more,’ Pippin said, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the garden wall with its climbing flowered vines, bees droning in and out of the blossoms. He shook himself slightly as if coming back from a long way and added, ‘Is there anything I can be doing for you?

Puzzled, she lifted an empty hand ‘All is well,’ she said.

 ‘The healers say...’ Pippin began, and stopped.

 ‘Yes?’ Posey said, turning further around. ‘What do they say?’

 ‘Not a bl—blessed thing,’ Pippin said, and from his expression she knew he’d turned curse into blessing.

She put a gentle hand on his, resting on the back of the bench. ‘You asked them?’ she said simply.

 ‘I know better than to ask,’ he said ruefully. ‘ “Not my news to tell”—it’s what I’ve asked of Sam, and Merry, after all, that they not trouble Elessar with the knowledge of how things truly are. Not that he doesn’t know, blasted healer that he is. He laid his head upon my breast, to hear my breathing, and his face changed. He knew.’

 ‘But he said nothing,’ Posey said.

 ‘Nothing, but to convince Merry that I must remove to Gondor or die.’ Somehow the words that he could not mull over before Diamond came easily in the presence of this cousin in similar straits.

 ‘And isn’t that the case?’ Posey asked gently.

 ‘I’ll die anyway,’ Pippin said. ‘No body lives forever. Save Elves, perhaps.’

 ‘They are a wondrous folk,’ Posey said, her eyes taking on a far away look.

They remained in silence for a time, each lost in his or her own thoughts, before Pippin said, ‘Have they told you how long?’

Posey smiled and lifted her empty hand once more, polite version of a shrug. ‘My life stretches before me,’ she said. ‘A bright ribbon, winding into future days. No one knows how many sips are in the cup. Why, Hilly nearly drowned in a bog not so long ago.’

She could see this did not satisfy him, and so she tried again. ‘It is a slow-creeping malady. I have the possibility of some years, yet, if I eat well, and rest well, and seek for joy around me.’ She smiled. ‘And even if my arms continue empty, there are plenty of little ones to go round, at the Smials, and another pair of loving arms is always wanted.’

Pippin nodded.

 ‘And you?’ Posey ventured after another silence.

 ‘What about me?’ Pippin said, though he knew very well. He watched a fat bee force its way into a half-opened flower and emerge again, pollen-dusted.

 ‘Will you go to Gondor?’ Posey asked.

Pippin did not answer for a moment. ‘I’ve considered,’ he said. ‘I promised Merry that much.’

Posey waited.

 ‘They—not one of them, save Diamond perhaps, knows the truth of the matter,’ Pippin said. There was no answer to this; Posey did not know the truth of the matter, either, but it seemed if she listened well she might yet learn it, and give her cousin’s troubled heart some ease in the process.

 ‘We are all just one breath away from leaving this life, after all,’ Pippin went on after a moment. ‘It’s only that I’m more aware of each breath, perhaps.’

Posey nodded.

 ‘It’s an easy death, at least,’ Pippin said, his voice dropping, as if he spoke to himself. ‘Things grow dim and far away, each breath seems less important as the struggle mounts, and all I have to do is lay down the fight. Only a breath away...’

 ‘Pippin!’ she said softly.

He turned from his perusal of the bees to meet her gaze. ‘But for the pain it would cause those I love best, I would have laid down the fight some time ago,’ he said. ‘And now, to chase a phantom promise of more years, more sips added to my cup, I am to leave all I love behind me?’

 ‘At least you have a choice,’ she said, and he winced.

 ‘None of us has a choice,’ he returned, meeting her eyes once more. ‘Nobody lives forever.’

 ‘Will you not go to Gondor?’ Posey asked.

 ‘At night I lay me down,’ Pippin said, as if to change the subject. ‘D’y’know, I force so many breaths during the day, when I lie down to sleep I always wonder if I’ll still be in the world when the Sun wakens.’

 ‘O Pippin,’ she whispered, her hand at her throat as a sob threatened to emerge.

 ‘I don’t know that going to Gondor would do all that much good,’ Pippin said briskly. ‘Why, the journey in and of itself would be such a strain! I’d be much better off, at my ease in my own home, with everyone waiting on my least wish.’

Posey swallowed hard.

 ‘Diamond had the right of it, you know,’ he went on.

 ‘Oh?’

 ‘Plenty of rest, good food, love and laughter are her cures for nearly any ill,’ he said. ‘The Old Gaffer’s Friend nearly carried me off, you know.’

 ‘I know,’ Posey said wryly.

 ‘But Diamond—she’s a wonder!—she wouldn’t let the Old Gaffer have me. O I know, she wasn’t there for the worst of it. But even after they said I’d live, I felt as if the alternative might be preferable. Diamond, though, she wouldn’t allow it. What a wonder she is! And do y'know, when I've had a long stretch of rest and good food, a long stretch of good luck with few ills to plague me, I feel as if I could live forever!’

Pippin fell silent for a moment, his face reflecting the joy he’d found in love. At last he added, incongruously, ‘She always laughs at my jokes, did you know that? Even the lame ones!’

 ‘I wasn’t aware you told any lame ones,’ Posey observed, her eyes suspiciously bright. She would not cry, she told herself fiercely, and make him think she pitied him.

Pippin threw back his head and laughed, and Posey joined him.

 ‘There’s a grand sound!’ Diamond said, entering the garden with Hilly just behind her. Farry ducked under her arm to run to his father, and Pippin lifted him high and then hugged the lad tight. ‘And what have you been doing, to generate such merriment?’

 ‘Telling lame jokes,’ Posey said, twinkling at her beloved Hilly.

 ‘Pippin excels at such,’ Hilly said, sitting down beside her and slipping an arm about her waist.

 ‘He does, indeed,’ Posey said, and gave a contented sigh as she laid her head upon Hilly’s shoulder.