To Stray
by Lullennye-mail: gutter2stars @ yahoo.com
Story notes: Merry is tempted and tested.
Merry sees a pastoral spread near a slow shoal of the Brandywine River. He sprawls with two hobbit lasses on a large blanket around the remains of a picnic lunch. He recognizes Estella -- he has known her all his life -- but he does not recognize the other, a laughing girl with dark hair and a red mouth, though he knows he will know her well in the future. He will know her sooner, if he turns from his path. She is from the north, and her name is Diamond.
Pippin is not on the blanket because he is showing off, you see, having stripped off his shirt and plunged into the river. Pippin stands knee-deep in the water and looking more satisfied than he ought to be: he might have skipped along the rope bridge across the Celebrant, but he was as frightened of the rushing water as Sam had been. He just hadn't looked down.
Merry isn't sure how Pippin got wet, though he can make a guess or two. Pippin might have leapt in from the Brandywine Bridge; Merry can just see it where the river turns, slow and broad. He might have dropped down from the great old tree that leans out over the water.
But Pippin wasn't a swimmer before they left the Shire. Maybe he has learned by now. Maybe that is why Pippin looks smug as he stands in the water, his curls slicked to his face and shining wetly in the sunshine of a future summer day, curlier and cleaner than it is right now where it rests lank and dirty on his forehead as they stand before the elf queen.
"Hail the hero!" cries the girl, Diamond, but Merry just keeps looking at Pippin.
Pippin's trousers are snug. And, being wet, they cling. His hair drips water; drops roll glittering in the sunlight down the smooth planes of his bare torso. Pippin's smile warms, and he lunges out of the water and tumbles down onto the blanket where Merry and Diamond and Estella all catch him.
The river water has thinned the salty bite of Pippin's sweat. Estella's mouth is as sweet as Merry remembers it, having tasted it just a fortnight before he left the Shire. And Diamond's hands are bold, at once strange and familiar in this odd echo of a future that could be.
It comes to Merry that he could have all this, if only he returns to the Shire. And like a storm on the horizon, he sees what he might face if he continues with the remnants of the Fellowship: hoary hands taking him prisoner; a burning cold shadow of fear that strikes his arm useless; Pippin, filthy from blood and battle, his eyes closed, unmoving. And then, almost worse, Merry sees the picnic again and again in splintered flashes of vision: only Estella waits for Pippin on the blanket; Merry and Estella sit on the blanket alone and cast flower petals on the still water of the river; and in one vision the bank is bare, trampled into mud and ruin, and there are no hobbits.
In none of his visions does he see Frodo or Sam, and he quails inside.
The last vision flickers behind Merry's eyes, stronger than the others: Pippin is in the water, and he is larger than he ought to be: inexplicably taller and his hair is thicker and curlier. There is a shadow in his eyes. His torso is not smooth but scarred, and when he leaves the water, he limps, just a little. His smile is restrained, and there is not enough warmth in it for all three hobbits who wait for him on the blanket. He settles next to Diamond on the blanket. There are no shared embraces, but Merry reaches out for Pippin's hand and their fingers lace together.
Choose. The words come not to his ears, but he hears them even as he sees himself on the blanket with his own scars and his own shadows as he and Pippin sit linked together. Do you hold to your path, or would you stray?
Galadriel shines as beautiful and unreachable as a star, yet not without all pity. Merry senses she has made some judgment, and he knows that she expects no answer. But that small mercy does stop his quick mind, and he thinks of his choices.
Merry's heart thuds heavily in his chest, sick with wanting the first vision, yet grateful that he might live to see a future where he could have at least Pippin's hand in his, as it is this very moment, and he looks down at his dirty feet where they stain the clean gray wood of the great flet, his face burning.