For the July 2008 LOTR_Community Challenge. 
My sentence was:
The day was beginning perfectly. Everything was going ______’s way.

Merry and Blackie’s Wonderful Day

The day was beginning perfectly.  Everything was going Merry’s way as he ambled down the path through his mother’s garden.

“Today is a wonderful day, Blackie!” he enthused to the little black kitten who was lolling on his back in his young master’s arms.  “The sun is shining.  The air smells nice.  Birdies are singing their songs to us.”  The little lad sighed a contented sigh.  “Yes!  Today is a wonderful day.”

Blackie was still a new addition to the household of Saradoc Brandybuck.  It had only been a fortnight since Merry had first brought him into his mother’s garden, asking her to look at his new pet.  The small, friendly black kitten went everywhere with the lad.

The wonderful day had started being wonderful as soon as Merry woke up.  The sun was peeking through his bedroom window, a pleasant sight seeing as it had been raining all week.  Then, as he started to get dressed, he noticed his small clothes were torn.  The band that held the drawstring had pulled away from the pants.  Merry happily showed them to Blackie.

“Look!  I can finally stop wearing this pair of unders that Auntie Petunia gave me for Yule.  Awful, stiff, itchy, nasty things but Mum always said I was just ex . . . ex-a-gger-ating and we don’t waste perfectly good small clothes.”  He threw the hated garment on top of Blackie then laughed as the kitten worked at finding his way out.

If his mother, father, or a servant had come in just then, they would have not seen the cast off pair of unders wiggling and squirming about on top of the bed, for only Merry could see Blackie.

Once Merry finished dressing, he headed off to the dining room in his family’s apartment in Brandy Hall.  Even though his father was the Master’s son, they rarely took any meal except supper in the Hall’s large main dining hall.  The cook tweaked his ear as she set his filled plate in front of the lad.

“Thank you, Lily!” Merry said cheerfully.  “Might I have some sticky toffee pudding for afters?”

“One doesn’t have afters when done with breakfast, young Master!” Lily said aloud, the appropriate amount of scolding in her voice and expression to impress the child’s parents with her good skills when dealing with their son.  But, as she leaned over the table to remove an empty serving bowl she whispered to Merry, “I’ll put a small bit in a bowl for you on the low shelf of the pastry table.”  Before Merry could respond she whisked herself and the empty bowl back into the kitchen.

He stuffed the treat into his mouth on his way outside to play in the sunshine.  Oh, yes . . . it was being a marvelous day!

As he continued his walk down the garden path Merry’s quick eyes spotted something lying nearly in the middle of the flower bed that had the old broken wagon wheel set in it for the clematis to climb all over.

“Look, Blackie!” he shouted excitedly.  “Isn’t that the fancy button that Mum had made into a pin?  The one that used to belong to her Gammer, I mean her Grandmum?”

Blackie mewed and leapt from Merry’s arms into the flower bed.  The soft dirt of the cultivated bed was mushy mud from the rains and soon his paws were a lighter shade of black than his body.  Merry saw the kitten start to bat at the button and decided he better get it before Blackie’s playing buried it.  He walked into the flower bed, sinking in over the bone on the side of his ankles.  Then, as he bent to pick up the button something bit him.  He lost his footing and fell face first into the mud.

That was when Esme came out to pick some flowers.

“Meriadoc Brandybuck!” she screeched “Whatever are you doing?”

“M-Mum!  My b-bum hurts, M-mum!” was all the answer she got from the crying child.

Esme had to take a step into the flower bed herself to get close enough to pick Merry up without losing her own balance, but soon she was cuddling her messy, crying son.

“We will just get you into the house and see why your bum hurts, shall we dear?” Esme cooed too her lad as she carried him into the Hall.  The fact that his clothes were caked with mud, that he was caked with mud and that some of the flowers in the bed were ruined were of no consequence.  That Merry was hurt was now all that mattered to his mother.

It didn’t take long to discover the bee sting on Merry’s wee bottom.   His muddy clothes were sent off to the Hall’s main laundry.  Old Adamantha could get stains out of anything.  Merry was first put into a coolish sit bath with Dwaling Salts* in it to take the stinging out of his bee stung bum.  Then he had a warmer bath to get the mud off of his feet, hands, face and hair.  Much as he hadn’t enjoyed it, Merry had his Mum wash the mud off of Blackie as well.  Esme indulged her son by going through the motions of washing his imaginary pet.

“Whatever were you doing in the flower bed to begin with, dear?” Esme asked Merry as she was combing out the hair on his head.

“I saw your pin over by the wagon wheel.  Blackie saw it to and jumped into the bed and he started to paw at it and I was scared he would bury it, so I went after it.”

“Oh, you found my pin!”  His Mum hugged him tightly.  “I have been so sad over losing that.”  She paused and held her son at arm’s length.  “Ah, Blackie was after it, was he?” she chuckled.  “Well, it was very kind of you to try to fetch it before he pushed it further into the mud, Merry.”  Esme gave his hair a final touch with the comb, then placed her hands on his shoulders.  “Would you and Blackie like to come and help me put some straw down in the garden, so we can get my pin without getting all muddy?”

“Yes, Mum!” Merry said happily as he bent over to pick up the kitten only he could see.  “Blackie will be happy to help if he can, and if not, he’ll be a good kitty and not get into the mud again.”

After they fetched the pin, Merry and his mother enjoyed a picnic lunch out on the lawn that surrounded Brandy Hall.  He sat in her lap as they swung in the bench swing (his bum was too sore to sit next to her), and Esme joined her son in knocking rocks off the top of a stone wall by throwing rotten apples at them.

Latter that evening, after a supper of all his favorite things, Merry’s Mum gave him a new toy to reward him for finding her pin.  It was a triangle shaped piece of wood with little pegs in it that you had to remove by jumping them, like playing draughts, until only one peg was left.  She gave Blackie a hopelessly tangled ball of yarn for his reward.

As he lay on his tummy playing his new game in the cozy parlor while his Mum knitted, his Dad read them all a story, and Blackie was curled up asleep with his ball of yarn, Merry smiled.  It really had been the most wonderful day ever.

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* A/N  “Dwaling Salts” are what I decided to call what we know as “Epsom Salts”.