‘My Pet Scarf’

Disclaimer: I don’t own LotR, nor anything that Tolkien obviously owns. Ideas, however, are mine. No touchy!

Setting: The Shire, the year 1397, before Bilbo leaves the Shire, so Frodo does not yet bear the Ring…

‘All right, we’re almost ready!’ Frodo shouted to the miscellaneous friends, cousins, and gardeners gathered in the entryway of Bag End; everything was prepared, and had been for nearly a week, and now the travelers were only waiting for Pippin.

‘Hoy, Frodo, why isn’t Bilbo coming along? Wouldn’t he like this kind of excusin’?’ Meriadoc Brandybuck asked the twenty-nine-year-old Baggins.

‘I think you mean excursion.’ Frodo laughed. ‘And yes, but when I asked him if he wanted to come along to watch us, he said he trusted me enough to take care of you youngsters, and, besides, he has some important business to attend to,’ Frodo replied with a grimace. He glanced mockingly from side to side, as if making sure no spies could hear him. ‘The Sackville-Bagginses are at it again!’ he finished with a whisper. His uncle– technically his first and second cousin once removed on his father’s and his mother’s sides, respectfully– had adopted him nearly eight years ago, but the jealous Sackville-Bagginses, especially Otho, who would have been his heir, wouldn’t let go of the claim that Bag End was rightfully theirs, etc. But the current adventure was more impressed on the tween’s mind than some cooked-up legal scheme at that point. He, Merry, Samwise Gamgee, and Pippin Took were to spend the next two days on an overnight camping trip that all of their parents and/or legal guardians had finally agreed (after much pleading and logical debate) to let them have. It was eight o’ clock on a beautiful Wednesday morning, and the adventurers were impatient to get started.

‘Where’s Pippin got to, Mr. Frodo?’ Sam wondered as he shifted his backpack from one sturdy shoulder to the other.

‘I really don’t know, Sam. Last I saw of him, he was in his room, but that was some two hours ago, just after breakfast.’

‘He’s probably asleep. He never gets up this early back in the Smials,’ Merry answered for his older cousin. ‘I’ll go see if I can find him.’ With that, he trotted off down the sunlit hall in search of the young mischief-maker.

The first thing that Merry noticed as he stepped into the guest room that Pippin was currently occupying was a small pair of hobbit feet sticking out from under the bed.

Merry was slightly fearful that Pippin had fallen asleep down there and was silently suffocating or something. However, his fears were soon set to rights when the feet squirmed backwards and the rest of a whole hobbit followed, dusty and whimpering. Pippin turned to see who had intruded upon his search, and, finding it to be his cousin, he dashed up to hug him.

‘Merry! Merry! I lost it! I can’t find it anywhere! I really looked everywhere and it’s completely lost! I can’t go anywhere ’til I find it– and now I can’t go camping with you and Frodo and–‘ The young hobbit’s nearly unintelligible ravings were drowned in hiccups and sobs as he buried his face in his elder’s cloak.

‘Whoa, wait; wait; wait, Pip, what’s the matter? What did you lose?’ Merry asked gently as he kneeled to get level with the younger hobbit. Poor Pippin took several minutes to catch his breath before he answered.

‘My scarf.’

Just two words– that was all Merry got. He bit his lip as he straightened and wondered what to do about Pippin’s troubles.

‘Couldn’t you just go camping with us now, and find it later?’

‘No.’ Again, monosyllabic language dominated the response. Merry sighed as quietly as he could in exasperation. He knew he would need help with this.

‘I’ll be right back.’

‘I’m serious; he won’t come unless he brings that scarf. It was a Yule present from Pearl last year (I think she made it herself, too), and I don’t think he’s parted with it since.’ Merry concluded his retelling of the new predicament. Frodo drew a deep breath.

‘This could be a difficult task. Now, it seems that our only possibilities are to leave him behind, but that will be a long and complicated process, or we could scour the entire place for his scarf, which will also be complicated and tiring. Are there any other suggestions?’

No one could come up with anything, so they were just beginning to tear up the whole hole in search of Pippin’s ‘heirloom’ when the seven-year-old came dashing down the hall, waving something in the air in glee.

‘It’s okay, I got it! I got it!’ Pippin jumped onto Frodo, whose back had been turned, nearly knocking him to the ground, but lucky foot placement had stopped them both from falling over. Instead, Frodo spun his second backpack around before setting him on the floor, still bouncing like a ball. ‘It was right on the hook stuck in the back of my door! I bet you would never could’ve found it there!’ The three older hobbits tried to stifle their laughter at Pippin’s numerous grammatical errors and the obviousness of the solution.

‘No, of course not! We wouldn’t, no! Right, sure!’

‘Now, if you please, may we get started?’ Sam asked as Pippin triumphantly threw one side of his scarf over his shoulder.

‘Come on! What are you waiting for?’ the youngest hobbit said as he shouldered his pack and opened the front door with a jerk, stepping out into the fresh air with a smile on his face and a scarf around his neck.

Twenty-one years later…

‘Oh, yes! I remember that one! Pip, you still never go anywhere without that thing, don’t you?’ Frodo said as he reclined against one of the boulders of Hollin. The entire Fellowship had gathered around a cozy fire to hear a tale as only hobbits could tell them, and Pippin, who had been elected to go first, had chosen the Incident of the Scarf for his retelling.

‘I brought it with me!’ Pippin replied, pulling the scarf in question from his neck. He thrust it into his elder cousin’s face. ‘Let that answer your question!’ Frodo sniffed it, nearly jumping in disgust.

‘Ai, didn’t you ever wash this thing?’ He tried to throw it back to Pippin, who had stepped back at little, but wind resistance did its job and it landed on Merry’s head instead.

‘Lawks! Now THAT is some stink!’ Merry then hurled it at Sam, but the practical hobbit had no desire to be dragged into any kind of quarrel, no matter how jocular, and so thrust the scarf away as quickly as he could. The next victim of the prize was Strider, who also had no wish to elongate any fights among the fellowship. He attempted to hand the poor scarf to Pippin, who had been chasing it the whole time people had started playing ‘keep away’, but Merry jumped between them and snatched it out of his hands and tossed it back to Frodo, who immediately dashed out of sight behind a nice, craggy rock formation. He had by now spotted a stream a little removed from his position.
‘If only we had brought soap,’ he thought wistfully. However, wasting no time, he looked suspiciously over his shoulder and, finding no one, set straight to work with what he had.

‘Hey!’ Pippin shouted as Merry pinned him to the ground, distracting the youngest hobbit from Frodo’s mission, hopefully ere he spotted Sam digging into his seemingly bottomless backpack for a bar of soap and then sneaking over to the makeshift washing machine (which, note, hasn’t been invented yet!) to aid with the stench removal. Strider, deciding that this had gone too far already, removed Merry from the pancake that was left of Pippin and thought fast for a means of distraction; obviously, a story was out of the question… Luckily, Boromir came to the rescue, handing Merry his short sword while brandishing his own at the same time.

‘What–‘ Merry began, but the man cut him off.

‘I’m going to teach you how to use that thing properly.’

‘Oh! I want to learn too!’ Pippin immediately bounced up and grabbed his sword from where it lay near his backpack, eager to hack something in half.

‘Whoa, now, first you have to learn how to hold it. Here, let me show you…’

An hour later, Frodo and Sam sneaked back to the camp, now-clean (and dry) scarf in hand, to find–

Mass mayhem.

All right, not that bad, but Merry, Pippin, Boromir, AND Aragorn were all covered in bruises, Gandalf was trying to break up a fight between Gimli and Merry (apparently having to do with a misaimed stroke at the dwarf’s beard [or an assassination attempt, however you choose to look at it]), Aragorn was treating a rather nasty scratch on Pippin’s shoulder but having trouble keeping the bouncing ball of energy under control, even after Legolas came to help, and at that moment, while Frodo and Sam were still in seclusion, Boromir noticed…

‘Where’s Frodo?’ The Ringbearer’s ‘disappearance’ was soon noted by everyone else, and… NOW mass mayhem ensued. Everyone immediately dropped what they were doing to search for Frodo and, now that they noticed it, Sam. The two hobbits interrupted the fray by stepping out of the shadows, but no one took notice for the longest time. Finally, Frodo coughed, quite loudly, not knowing how else to alert the Fellowship to their ‘not lost’ status. This was just before their friends were about to split up into search parties; everything, even time, seemed to come to a tire-screeching halt as every head turned in their direction. After what was in reality fifteen or so seconds, but felt like an eternity to the uncomfortable hobbits, Pippin broke the silence.

‘I found them!’ He pointed at Frodo and Sam in triumph. The next thing he noticed was his scarf in Frodo’s outstretched hand, so his attention was soon fixed on that.

‘You had it!’ Pippin said, not so much an accusation as an expression of gratitude, as Frodo took it. Merry sniffed the air around the scarf, not being able to get to the actual thing, but he couldn’t smell anything. He sniffed again.

‘Amazing, Frodo. You got rid of the stink! It’s been there for at least two years! Possibly forever. What did you do to it?’ Frodo pulled him aside, where Pippin couldn’t hear him answer.

‘It was Sam’s soap,’ he whispered to Merry as they watched the Fellowship return to normal. ‘Just don’t tell Pippin, he wouldn’t understand.’ He smiled mischievously at his even more mischievous cousin. ‘He might sue!’ The two shared a laugh before returning to their friends and somewhat not really normal routine of Tookish adventure and fool’s hope.

‘All right, Pippin,’ Merry said as he and Frodo rejoined the company around the fire, ‘on with the story!’