Winter

"Merry, wake up." Pippin's voice was low, so as not to startle his sleeping cousin. He would've have given him a nudge, but his hands were occupied with a large bowl of piping hot broth. "Merry, this crockery is getting very hot, and if you don't open your eyes right this instant-"

"All right, all right," Merry grumbled. He peeked over the edge of the blanket and groaned. "Mercy on a sick old hobbit! Not more broth! I'm practically floating as it is."

"The king's orders," Pippin said. "Just be thankful it's broth, and not more tonic."

Merry shuddered. "Then I am thankful." He pulled himself up in the bed and pretended to put on a delighted face. "Oh, be still my heart: Broth. Wonderful, just what I wanted."

Pippin chuckled. "Ho ho, you're not fooling anyone." He climbed up the wooden step next to the bed (placed there for the benefit of hobbit-sized legs, as all the beds in Minas Tirith were so very high,) and sat himself down very slowly. A large napkin was in the crook of his elbow, and he (carefully) wiggled his elbow a trifle to draw attention to it. Merry pulled it out and draped it across his lap, then flopped back against the pillow. He was on the mend from a bad cold he had picked up during the last windy ride from Rohan to Gondor, and still dreadfully tired. In his youth he had walked half-way across Middle-earth, in the rain and the cold, and slept on the hard ground, and had not caught much more than a sniffle, but that was long ago and far away, and he was not a young hobbit-nor even a middle-aged hobbit-anymore.

Pippin rearranged Merry's napkin, tucking it into the neck of his nightshirt, then balanced the bowl on his knee, dipped in the spoon and blew gently on the broth. He touched it to his own lips to make sure it wasn't too hot. "Now then, let's get this in you. Open up."

Merry sighed, but did as he was told. "I'm not a complete invalid, you know. If you would let me give it a bit of effort, I'm sure I could manage."

"Aragorn said complete rest, no exertion," Pippin said firmly. "And if you had waited a day or two for the weather to turn, you wouldn't be sick now, so you brought it on yourself."

Another sip. "No one ever caught cold by going out in the wind and weather."

"Hm. So you say."

"So Aragorn says. He says that Master Elrond told him that colds and sickness are caused by...well, tiny little things, like invisible insects in the air. They get on you, or you breathe them in, and they make you sick."

"Invisible insects." There was a long pause. Pippin looked both deeply worried and highly amused. "Ah...do you see them now?"

Merry gave him a sour look. "No, you old addlepate. They're invisible-oh, never mind." He supposed he had better get off this tack, before Pippin leaped off the bed and ran away screaming for help. "I had a curious dream last night."

Pippin raised an eyebrow at this obvious change of subject, but he let it go. "Really."

"More than one, actually. It was if I was watching scenes from my life, our life, starting from the beginning."

"Nothing dreadful, I hope."

"No, no, not really. They were quite pleasant. Except for the last one."

Pippin wasn't sure he wanted to hear about it. He pulled up the napkin and dabbed at Merry's chin. "Hello, got a bit clumsy there, sorry-"

"I saw myself being taken to the Silent Street."

Pippin was glad holding the bowl gave him something to do with his hands. It wouldn't do for Merry to see them shake. "Was it...terrible?"

"It was peaceful," Merry said. "I did hate leaving you behind, that was the bad part, but at the same time I was glad that was the one place you couldn't follow me, not then, anyway." He sat still, lost in thought, then he saw Pippin's stricken look and wished he had kept quiet. "Pippin, please don't look like that, it wasn't a foretelling, it was just a silly old hobbit's dream." He smiled. "It's just a cold, not the plague, I'll survive it. Anyway, I can't very well go anywhere when I've only just arrived, and you haven't even unpacked the luggage."

Pippin smiled back, and took a deep breath. "You would bring that up. Well. Well, I suppose you've had quite enough of this." He pulled the bowl of broth into his lap and sat looking into, as if it were Galadriel's mirror. He was glad it wasn't-he had no wish to see the future, especially one without Merry in it. "Do you want anything else? I could read to you."

Merry stifled a yawn. He felt like a complete beast for giving Pippin such a turn, but 'least said, soonest mended', as Sam used to say. "No, thank you. I think I will probably fall asleep again. But you can stay and keep me company until I fall out, if you like."

"All right." Pippin took away the napkin and put it aside. Merry closed his eyes, and Pippin watched him, studying the dear face that he had seen and loved, in all its moods and seasons, from the earliest days of his life. He had followed his cousin all down through the years, all over the Shire and across Middle-earth and back again, and if fate decreed that he ended up trotting right at his heels one more time, well, it wasn't his fault that old habits were so hard to break.

"And in any case, I'll be jiggered if I'll let you go on an adventure without me," Pippin said cheerfully to Merry's sleeping face. "So there." Then he tipped up the bowl and drank the last of Merry's soup.

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The end