A/N: For Cairistiona, who asked me to pull a ficlet from Gilraen's reminiscing in We Lost Enough :). With great thanks to Zopyrus for the beta!

***

T.A. 2933 

“Come on, Nethril!” Halbarad pleaded. “I need someone else to try it with me, it’s not going to be any fun alone!”

His little sister looked up at him with as much disdain as a six-year-old could muster. 

“Mama said we couldn’t go off wandering by ourselves,” she reminded him. “And she’s busy with the laundry today. Besides, how are you going to make berry cakes down by the stream?”

“I’m going to hold them together with the mud from the stream,” Halbarad said, ignoring Nethril as she wrinkled her nose. “They’re not going to be real cakes, Nethril, it’s just going to be pretend. Just like we pretend to slay dragons all the time!”

Halabarad imagined that eating mud couldn’t be the worst thing in the world—his uncle Tarcil told him that once he’d been so hungry on patrol in the Wild that he’d devoured the first edible mushrooms he could find, without even bothering to clear the mud off of them. Halbarad still wouldn’t ever want to try it himself, but it had given him the idea for the berry cakes. They had always been their father’s favorite, but their mother had stopped making them after he died, three years before. Halbarad had never wanted to ask her to make them again—what if it made her too sad? It was time to take matters into his own hands—if he couldn’t have real ones, mud cakes would have to be the next best thing. 

“Mud is disgusting, Halbarad,” Nethril said primly. “I’m going to go play inside now.” 

Halbarad groaned in frustration. Little sisters could be so stupid, sometimes.

He kicked around a pebble as Nethril went back inside their house, and he wandered around to the front and down the dirt road that threaded through their small village. Didn’t his sister miss having berry cakes, too?

In the distance, he saw his Aunt Gilraen sitting in front of her house playing with his little cousin Aragorn in her lap. I’ll bet Aragorn would want to make some berry cakes, he thought, two-year-olds love playing with stuff like mud, anyway. He started to run full-tilt towards his aunt and cousin, and skidded to a stop in front of their house. 

“Aunt Gilraen,” he panted, “can I take Aragorn with me down to the stream to play?” 

“Hello to you too, my dear,” Gilraen smiled. “May I ask what on earth for?”

“I want to, uh…teach him how to skip rocks,” Halbarad said. He felt bad for lying, but he was suddenly embarrassed by the nature of his mission, afraid his aunt would give him the same sort of look his sister had. 

“Not today, Halbarad—your uncles should be returning by tonight, and I need to get some things ready. Besides, I don’t want Aragorn to be so close to the water—he hasn’t yet learned how to swim in the way you have.”

“I could teach him!” Halbarad protested, and Gilraen laughed.

“I have no doubt that you could,” she said. “When the time comes, I’m sure you will make a positively fine teacher for him. But today I need Aragorn with me. Why don’t you go play with your sister? I’m sure she would love to have some company.” 

“She’s probably just playing with her stupid dolls,” Halbarad muttered as he walked away. 

***

Not content to go home and admit defeat to his sister, Halbarad spent the next hour wandering the village restlessly. He stopped to watch the blacksmith work at a new sword, but was ordered home to his mother after he accidentally kicked a stone into an anvil with a clang. When he came back towards his cousin’s house, he saw that Aunt Gilraen had gone next door to talk to her neighbor, leaving Aragorn in his chair by the front of the house. 

An idea forming in his head, Halbarad crept softly towards the house, careful to keep his eye on his aunt, whose back was still turned. 

“Psst…Aragorn,” he whispered. Aragorn turned and clapped his hands together in delight when he saw his cousin, but Halbarad quickly put a finger to his lips. 

“Shh…your mama can’t know I’m here,” he whispered. “Do you want to come play with me? It’s a secret game.” 

“Secret?” Aragorn whispered, eyes wide. Halbarad nodded. 

“So your mama can’t know,” he said. “Do you want to come with me?”

Aragorn nodded. 

“Can I carry you?” he asked his cousin. “We can go faster that way.” 

Aragorn gave another solemn nod, and Halbarad scooped him up. He was heavy, but not too heavy, and Halbarad slipped behind the row of houses as quick as he could and down the hidden path to the stream. He’d found it, almost a year ago, and hadn’t told anyone about it. There were other ways to get down to the water at the bottom of the slope, but this one was the quickest and the easiest. Even his snoopy sister had never figured it out. 

“Where’re we goin’, Hal’brad?” Aragorn asked as Halbarad half-ran down the path.

“Just down to the stream,” Halbarad said, “it’s not much farther now.” 

They reached the stream, and Halbarad set his cousin down near the water. As he sat down beside him, he pulled his precious supply of berries from his bag and let out a satisfied “hah.” Only a few of them had gotten squished. 

“So, Aragorn, we’re going to make berry cakes,” Halbarad said as he gathered a handful of mud. “We just need to take the mud to make the berries stick together, and—“ 

Splat. 

Halbarad blinked as a handful of mud hit him squarely on the shoulder, and Aragorn laughed with glee as he scooped up some more.

“No, silly, that’s not what you’re supposed to do with it,” Halbarad said patiently. “It’s not for throwing, it’s for smashing…”

Aragorn flung another handful of mud and laughed even harder, before smearing some over his own face. Halbarad rolled his eyes. Two-year-olds could be really strange.  

“No, see…you smash it together, just like this,” he demonstrated. “The mud holds the berries together, and the sugar here will make them taste extra good.” He brought out the small bag of sugar he’d borrowed from his mother’s shelf and sprinkled it on top of the berries mixed in with the mud.

Aragorn looked at the cakes in doubt. “We gotta eat ‘em?”

“No, not for real, just for pretend!” Halbarad picked his own up in encouragement, and took a fake bite off the top of one of the berries.

Unfortunately, it seemed Aragorn had not yet mastered the idea of “pretend,” and before Halbarad could stop him he took a full bite of his own pie. He chewed thoughtfully, then made a face and promptly spit out the mud and berries onto Halbarad’s shirt. 

“No good, huh?” Halbarad asked. Aragorn shook his head. 

Halbarad frowned. “Well, I guess we’ll have to try—“

“Halbarad!” He turned to find his aunt striding down the path, hair flying behind her. Halbarad gulped. He had never seen Aunt Gilraen angry before. 

“After I explicitly told you not to, you take him right from under my nose,” she said furiously as she reached the bottom. “You nearly had me out of my mind with worry, you both could have drowned, I was this close to calling out the entire village to search for you…and, Valar’s sake, you’re both filthy! What on earth are you doing down here that’s so important?”

“Hal’brad made mud cakes,” Aragorn said cheerfully. “They’re nasty.”

Halbarad scowled. “Oh, I ought to…”

“You’ll do absolutely nothing at the moment, young man,” his aunt hauled him up by the arm, “Your mother has quite a tale to hear from me, when we get home. Now march.” 

Halbarad sighed. He was in for it now. 

***

Halbarad sat on the small step before the back door of his house, tossing a stick farther into the yard. His mother had already given him the full lecture and threatened to send him to his room without supper, but as she had not made good on it yet he figured he should stay outside for as long as he could before he’d be shut off in his usual punishment. His aunt was still in the house with his mother, and he could hear their raised voices through the back door. 

“…so sorry about this, Gilraen, I don’t know what has gotten into him lately. It seems I need eyes in the back of my head…”

“I know, Finnael, it isn’t your fault,” his aunt sounded tired. “I just…who knows what could have happened, if one of them had fallen in…”

Halbarad sighed, resting his chin in his palms. It seemed he couldn’t do anything right lately. 

“You’re looking awfully glum for someone who’s still allowed to see the light of day. “

Halbarad looked up to find his grandfather Dírhael approaching, a sympathetic smile on his face. 

“Are Mama and Aunt Gilraen gonna be mad at me forever, Ada Dírhael?” 

“They may be a little testy for a day or two,” his grandfather sat down beside him. “But Gilraen is only upset because she was so worried. Little boys get into enough trouble on their own, you know—they hardly need their older cousins as bad influences.”

Halbarad frowned. “What does influence mean?” 

“It means that the things you do can affect those around you.” Dírhael said. “Have you noticed how little Aragorn follows you everywhere and wants to do everything that you do?” 

Halbarad nodded.

“Well, that is what ‘influence’ is, Halbarad. Your cousin looks up to you, as well he should, but you need to be a good example for him. He’s going to learn all sorts of things from you—how to swim, how to climb trees, how to fight, when you’re both old enough. Do you think you’re up for that responsibility?”

“I can do that,” Halbarad said solemnly. “I’ll be a really good example for Aragorn, or at least I’ll try to be. That’s what family’s supposed to anyway, right?”

“That’s all any of us can ask of you, my lad. And no more of this playing by the river, you understand?” He gave Halbarad a stern look. “I’ve had to fish enough gangly sprites out of there in my time, I do not need to add you to the list.” 

“I’m not a sprite!” Halbarad laughed. “Those aren’t real, anyway!”

“Are you sure?” Dirhael ruffled his hair. “You certainly cause enough mischief to be counted as one!”

The door opened behind them both, and Halbarad looked up to see his mother’s stern face staring down at them. He scrambled to his feet. 

“You’re to do all of your sister’s chores for the next week,” Finnael said. “And you’re to apologize to your aunt. And if you ever, ever try and pull a stunt like that again, you’ll have a lot more to answer for, do you hear me, Halbarad?”

“Yes, Mama,” Halbarad looked down at his feet. “Mama, I’m really sorry.”

“I know you are, my dear,” Finnael’s face softened. “And I think, on top of this, that some proper baking lessons are in order. ’Tis high time we had some true berry cakes in this household again, don’t you think?” 

“Really, Mama?” Halbarad looked up hopefully. “You’ll teach me?”

“Of course, ion-nín,” his mother hugged him tight. “I only wish you’d asked me first. Mind that you do next time, before you go running off with one of your uncle’s half-baked ideas!”

“I will, Mama,” Halbarad said. “I promise I will.”