For GamgeeFest and Celeritas for their birthdays.  Beta by RiverOtter.

Traditions

Red Book

            Elanor cared well for the old red tome entrusted to her by her father, keeping the binding cleaned and oiled, renewing the ribbon marker, making certain the fingers that opened it were clean and dry before being entrusted with it.  Her children learned to read with it, as did her children’s children and all who asked.

            Her father and her Uncle Frodo, she knew, would be well pleased.  On her watch, the Powers providing, there would always be some who knew the true story of how it was the Enemy was vanquished and Middle Earth saved from a second darkness.

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Family Tradition

            “He’s leaving Hobbiton this late in September?” Carnelian Proudfoot asked Myrtle Grubb.

            “Oh, ever since old Mayor Sam left, Mr. Frodo does this every year,” Myrtle assured her.  “Goes off to the Westmarches, he does, to see his sister and her family, there in Undertowers.  ’Tis said as that’s as far west as any Hobbits live.  Can you imagine, goin’ there as where y’can see the Great Sea?”

            “What do they do there?” asked Carnelian.

            “Well, from what Missus Linnet tells me, they reads from that old Red Book as that cracked Frodo Baggins is said to’ve wrote.”

            “How strange!”